Body, Text, and Science: The Literacy of Investigative Practices and the Phenomenology of Edith Stein (Phaenomenologica (144))

What is "scientific" about the natural and human sciences? Precisely this: the legibility of our worlds and the distinctive reading strategies that they provoke. That account of the essence of science comes from Edith Stein, who as HusserI's assistant 1916-1918 labored in vain to bring his massive Ideen to publication, and then went on to propose her own solution to the problem of finding a unified foundation for the social and physical sciences. Stein argued that human bodily life itself affords direct access to the interplay of natural causality, cultural motivation, and personal initiative in history and technology. She developed this line of approach to the sciences in her early scholarly publications, which too soon were overshadowed by her religious lectures and writings, and eventually were obscured by National Socialism's ideological attack on philosophies of empathy. Today, as her church prepares to declare Stein a saint, her secular philosophical achievements deserve another look. "What is 'scientific' about the natural and human sciences? Precisely this: the legibility of our worlds and the distinctive reading strategies that they provoke. That proposal comes from Edith Stein, who as Husserl's assistant [between] 1916-1918 labored in vain to bring his massive 'Ideen' to publication. She argued that human bodily life itself affords direct access to the interplay of natural causality, cultural motivation, and personal initiative. This study explores the hermeneutical background of Stein's phenomenology and shows that she composed crucial passages of the 'Ideen' manuscripts. Stein's own works on empathy and on psychology establish that natural science is a cultural achievement, resting on the ability to isolate caused data by recognizing and subtracting motivated data from raw data. This subtractive literacy is the most basic scientific competence, and it is fundamentally interpersonal. The reality of the illegible causal remainder overcomes the critiques of science recently offered by psychoanalytic and standpoint feminisms."-- Back cover of paperback version

What is scientific about the natural and human sciences? Precisely this: the legibility of our worlds and the distinctive reading strategies that they provoke. That proposal comes from Edith Stein, who as Husserl's assistant 1916-1918 labored in vain to bring his massive Ideen to publication. She argued that human bodily life itself affords direct access to the interplay of natural causality, cultural motivation, and personal initiative. This study explores the hermeneutical background of Stein's phenomenology and shows that she composed crucial passages of the Ideen manuscripts. Stein's own works on empathy and on psychology establish that natural science is a cultural achievement, resting on the ability to isolate caused data by recognizing and subtracting motivated data from raw data. This subtractive literacy is the most basic scientific competence, and it is fundamentally interpersonal. The reality of the illegible causal remainder overcomes the critiques of science recently offered by psychoanalytic and standpoint feminisms.

Front Matter....Pages i-x The Genesis of Phenomenology....Pages 1-48 Husserl’s Early Treatments of Intersubjectivity....Pages 49-89 Edith Stein’s Hermeneutic Theory....Pages 90-143 Edith Stein’s Hermeneutic Practices....Pages 144-183 Interpretations of Edith Stein....Pages 184-221 Science as Literacy....Pages 222-267 Back Matter....Pages 268-318