Person in the World: Introduction to the Philosophy of Edith Stein (Contributions to Phenomenology, 27)

Edith Stein has become almost a legend in recent years largely because of her heroic personality and her death in Auschwitz at the hands of the Nazis. She is known also as an eminent German-jewish-Christian intellectual and feminist, but more in the realm of the sacred than of the secular. Both are essential to understanding her. To know the real Edith Stein one must have some knowledge of her as philosopher, for philosophy was central to her very being. For this reason the present work is designed to be of interest to the general reader as well as to philosophers. Many of the latter have given evidence of interest in Stein's phenomenology and may welcome an introduction that gives clues to its substance and quality. Those who knew Edith Stein personally and professionally--Edmund Husser!, Roman lngarden, Hedwig Conrad-Martius, Peter Wust, and other friends at the universities of G6ttingen and Freiburg--affirm her genius and her passionate pursuit of truth in philosophy. james Collins, distinguished American historian of philosophy, who discovered some of her works about the time she died, wrote that "we may expect critical studies on her philosophy to multiply rapidly with the issuance of her collected works and the recognition of her high philosophical genius."l The fact is that this has not happened, although fourteen of her major works have been published posthumously by Nauwelaerts and Herder, and many are available from other sources.

The guideline that runs through all [Stein's] work is the inquiry into the question of the nature of the human person. Beginning with her dissertation on empathy and following through to the works of her maturity, the reader becomes aware of the thrust toward revealing the person as person, in its universality, transcending time and place and cultural milieu. Stein holds that phenomenology supplies the most effective means towards arriving at knowledge of what it means to be a person, and that phenomenological analysis can reveal the essential constitution of human-being-in-the-world...
My purpose in this book is to remove the wrapping and lid from the gift that Edith Stein has given us and to say: 'Look! See what is inside.' In a first attempt in English to do this in a comprehensive way... I have indicated the need for ongoing study and critique.

Front Matter....Pages i-xii Light in Darkness: Edith Stein’s Life....Pages 1-20 Overview of Her Philosophy....Pages 21-29 The Human Person....Pages 30-57 Community and State....Pages 58-75 Woman and Education....Pages 76-87 Essence and Existence....Pages 88-101 Intuition of Essence....Pages 102-109 Finite and Eternal Being....Pages 110-122 Concluding Postscript....Pages 123-128 Back Matter....Pages 129-204