Mette Lebech

Many interested reader will have put aside a work by Edith Stein due to its seeming inaccessibility, with the awareness that there was something important there for a future occasion. This collection of essays attempts to provide an idea of what this important something might be and give a key to the reading of Stein’s various works. It is divided into two parts reflecting Stein’s development. The first part, «Phenomenology», deals with those features of Stein’s work that set it apart from that of other phenomenologists, notably Husserl. The second part is entitled «Metaphysics», although Stein the phenomenologist would, like Husserl, initially have shied away from this designation. However, as Stein gradually understood the importance of the Christian faith for completing the phenomenological project of founding the sciences, and accepted it as indispensable for a philosophical view of the whole, her «attempt at an ascent to the meaning of being» can legitimately be called metaphysics, even as it also constitutes a fundamental criticism of Aristotle and Aquinas.

Fließende Identität ist zum Wunschtraum einer ‚androgyn-multiplen‘ Kultur geworden. Utopien im Sinne des totalen Selbstentwurfs verwischen bisherigen Grenzen zwischen Fleisch und Plastik, Körper und Computer. Im postmodernen Plural gilt das Subjekt nur als Momentaufnahme im Fluss weiterer Verwandlungen. Es bedarf mehr denn je eines sinnvollen Durchdenkens: Was ist der Mensch? Edith Steins Denken legt frei, dass es eine Entfaltung gibt vom Unbelebten zum Belebten, über Pflanze und Tier bis zu jenem Wesen, das über Freiheit und Selbstbewusstsein verfügt: dem Menschen. Und zugleich gelangt er aus sich selbst in einem Überstieg, ja, in eine lösende Beziehung: ‚In der Vereinigung mit der Göttlichen Liebe umfasst der geschaffene Geist auch erkennend, selig und frei bejahend sich selbst.‘ Das ist die Identität, um die es dem Menschen in seiner Sinnsuche geht.

This volume brings together revised versions of papers presented at the inaugural conference of the International Association for the Study of the Philosophy of Edith Stein (IASPES). The conference papers are supplemented by a number of specially commissioned essays in order to provide a representative sample of the best research currently being carried out on Stein’s philosophy in the English speaking world. The first part of the volume centres on Stein’s phenomenology; the second part looks at her Christian philosophy; and the third part explores the contexts of her philosophical work.

This article explores the history of the prayer Deus qui humanae substantiae dignitatem as a contribution to the conceptualization history of human dignity. It is argued that the prayer can be traced back to pre-Carolingian times, that it forms part of an early tradition of reflection on human dignity, and that it was adapted to use at the offertory, such that an association was made between human dignity and the holy exchange of gifts. In this way, the prayer significantly shaped the Christian concept of human dignity as the holy ‘place’ of commerce with God.

Stein’s phenomenology is one that is particularly sensitive to intersubjective constitution, and thus her constitutional analysis of the body is one that allows for an analysis of the body as ‘socially constructed’ (in so far as one understands this term to mean the same as ‘inter-subjectively constituted’). The purpose of this paper is to give an account of Stein’s phenomenology of the body as it appears in On the Problem of Empathy, her constitutional analysis being explicitly articulated in this work as including both subjective and intersubjective layers.

After her baptism at the age of 32, Stein engaged with Aquinas on several levels. Initially she compared his thought with that of Husserl, then proceeded to translate several of his works, and attempted to explore some of his fundamental concepts (potency and act) phenomenologically. She arrived finally in Finite and Eternal Being at a philosophical position inspired by his synthesis of Christian faith and philosophical tradition without abandoning her phenomenological starting point and method. Whether one would want to call this position Thomist depends on what one understands Thomism to be.

Because the image we have of the human person determines educational practice, Stein’s philosophy of education consists in anthropology. Her main work in education theory falls into two parts, philosophical and theological, as both disciplines influence our image of the human person. The Structure of the Human Person, the first and philosophical part of this foundational project, constitutes Stein’s mature philosophy of the human person – a subject that had occupied her all her life. This article examines the philosophical anthropology of this work, its historical background and its place within Stein’s entire work.

Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason plays an important role for Stein’s understanding of phenomenology. It exemplifies for her an idealist position espoused by the later Husserl but denounced by Stein as a metaphysical conviction. Nevertheless, in her discussions of the philosophy of the natural sciences she returns many times to Kant to address the nature and experience of causality, and the status of the categories and space. She follows Reinach’s criticism of Kant for subjectivizing the a priori and argues that phenomenology is the way to liberate Kantianism from its uncritical elements. This chapter argues that her engagement with Kant occasions a clarification of her own metaphysical position as closer to that of Plato than that of Aristotle.

What is bioethics? For those involved in the study or the teaching of bioethics this question is a fundamental one. This book proposes a series of possible answers to this question, converging on the idea that bioethics is a myth. As a whole, the book is a response to the so-called French “bioethical” laws (1994) and to the “bioethics” they propagate. It is therefore, for the French-reading English-speaker, a good introduction to these and to the debates around them. Gérard Mémeteau, professor of law and director of the newly established Centre de Droit Médical at the University of Poitiers, documents in his article on the one hand the inconsistencies of the French legal approach, and on the other his own regret at being forced to admit these inconsistencies. Reluctantly, he concludes that the traditional concept of the human being, subject of positive law, is, despite the affirmation of “respect for the human being from the beginning of its life”, …