Ethics and Metaphysics in the Philosophy of Edith Stein: Applications and Implications (Women in the History of Philosophy and Sciences, 12) 3030911977, 9783030911973

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Women in the History of Philosophy and Sciences 12

Michael F. Andrews Antonio Calcagno   Editors

Ethics and Metaphysics in the Philosophy of Edith Stein Applications and Implications

Women in the History of Philosophy and Sciences Volume 12

Series Editors Ruth Edith Hagengruber, Department of Humanities, Center for the History of Women Philosophers, Paderborn University, Paderborn, Germany Mary Ellen Waithe, Professor Emerita, Department of Philosophy and Comparative Religion, Cleveland State University, Cleveland, OH, USA Gianni Paganini, Department of Humanities, University of Piedmont, Vercelli, Italy

As the historical records prove, women have long been creating original contributions to philosophy. We have valuable writings from female philosophers from Antiquity and the Middle Ages, and a continuous tradition from the Renaissance to today. The history of women philosophers thus stretches back as far as the history of philosophy itself. The presence as well as the absence of women philosophers throughout the course of history parallels the history of philosophy as a whole. Edith Stein, Hannah Arendt and Simone de Beauvoir, the most famous representatives of this tradition in the twentieth century, did not appear form nowhere. They stand, so to speak, on the shoulders of the female titans who came before them. The series Women Philosophers and Scientists published by Springer is of interest not only to the international philosophy community, but also for scholars in history of science and mathematics, the history of ideas, and in women’s studies.

More information about this series at https://link.springer.com/bookseries/15896

Michael F. Andrews · Antonio Calcagno Editors

Ethics and Metaphysics in the Philosophy of Edith Stein Applications and Implications

Editors Michael F. Andrews Department of Philosophy Loyola University Chicago Chicago, USA

Antonio Calcagno Department of Philosophy King’s University College at Western University London, ON, Canada

ISSN 2523-8760 ISSN 2523-8779 (electronic) Women in the History of Philosophy and Sciences ISBN 978-3-030-91197-3 ISBN 978-3-030-91198-0 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91198-0 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

There are two scholars—dear friends and inspiring mentors, really—without whom this work, and the entire corpus of Stein scholarship, would be tremendously diminished, if even possible at all. It is with the deepest gratitude and immense joy for their collegial spirit, sharing of resources, professional support, and especially their friendship that this book is dedicated in memoriam: Sr. Josephine Koeppel, OCD and Rev. Michael Linssen, OCD

Acknowledgements

This book would not have been possible without the encouragement of Dr. Ruth Hagengruber and Dr. Mary Ellen Waithe. Their work on the history of women philosophers and scientists has created a shift in consciousness, bringing to light the work of important women philosophers like Edith Stein. We are also grateful for the editorial work of Karen Enns, who read and edited a number of essays contained in this volume. Her acuity, care, and grace with language have helped transmit the ideas and thoughts of Edith Stein.

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Contents

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Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Michael F. Andrews

Part I

Ethics

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Edith Stein and Catholic Social Teaching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Marian Maskulak

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Putting the Emotion Back into Empathy: Edith Stein’s Understanding of Empathy Applied to Contemporary Issues . . . . . . Melinda Jolly

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Mystical God-Forsakenness and the Ethics of Solidarity . . . . . . . . . . Jacob W. Torbeck

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Love Divined: Discerning a Contemplative Ethic in the Philosophy of Edith Stein . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Michele Kueter Petersen

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Person in Community, Repentance, and Historical Meaning: From an Individual to a Social Ethics in Stein’s Early Phenomenological Treatises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . William E. Tullius

Part II 7

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Metaphysics

The Empathetic Gaze: A Steinian Approach to the Study of Religion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . L. R. Lovestone

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Edith Stein’s Concept of Soul Revisited . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105 Sarah Borden Sharkey

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The Relationship Between Good and Being in Edith Stein’s Metaphysics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121 Martina Galvani

10 “Is” and “Ought” Reconciled . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133 Mariéle Wulf 11 The Problem of Evil in the Political Philosophy, Ethics, and Metaphysics of Edith Stein . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151 Angela Ales Bello 12 Personal Identity: The Formation of Person in Edith Stein’s Thought . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159 Anna Maria Pezzella Part III Applications and Implications 13 People and the State Community: Two Conflicting Forms of Sociality in Edith Stein’s Conception of A Priori Law . . . . . . . . . . 173 Antonio Calcagno 14 Beyond Ethics: Edith Stein on Suffering, Sacrifice, and Death . . . . . 187 Mary J. Gennuso 15 Ontology and Relational Ethics in Edith Stein’s Thought . . . . . . . . . . 201 Paulina Monjaraz Fuentes 16 Crucible of Empathy: Nursing Service in World War I . . . . . . . . . . . . 211 John Sullivan 17 Edith Stein’s Understanding of the Personal Attitude: Applications and Implications for a New Ethics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225 Michael F. Andrews Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241

Chapter 1

Introduction Michael F. Andrews

Edith Stein’s contributions to ethics and metaphysics presuppose a coherent philosophical framework by which human experience can be explored and thematized. According to a rich and apperceptive methodology rooted in phenomenological descriptions of social reality, Edith Stein proposes exciting and innovate approaches to contemporary ethics of value, care, and reciprocity, at once both dialogical in a Husserlian sense while remaining metaphysically congruent with the perennial philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas. This synthesis is not accidental; it reflects the two great codices that mark Edith Stein’s formative training in terms of phenomenology and scholasticism, philosophy and theology, ethics and metaphysics. In this collection of essays, some of the most respected international scholars on Edith Stein explore various ethical and metaphysical influences at play in the development of her thought. The goal of these essays is neither to present a comprehensive system of ethics and metaphysics drawn from Edith Stein’s various philosophical and theological treatises, nor to propose a particular systematic approach towards interpreting Edith Stein. On the contrary, this book serves as a lacuna to open-up new levels of discourse and meaning steeped within Stein’s scholarly writings. The essays are written with both the scholar and the casual reader in mind. They serve to introduce Stein’s theory of social constitution to a general audience as well as explore creative new initiatives for further professional research. Investigating ethical and metaphysical themes previously unaddressed in contemporary Stein scholarship offers a significant contribution towards understanding the complex development of Edith Stein’s creative thoughts and impulses. At the same time, exploring ethical and metaphysical implications in Stein’s literary corpus will help scholars evaluate her contributions towards applying themes and topics in connection with those developed by several of her contemporaries, including Edmund M. F. Andrews (B) Department of Philosophy, Loyola University Chicago, Chicago, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. F. Andrews and A. Calcagno (eds.), Ethics and Metaphysics in the Philosophy of Edith Stein, Women in the History of Philosophy and Sciences 12, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91198-0_1

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Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Max Scheler, Roman Ingarden, Hedwig Conrad-Martius, Emanuel Levinas, and others. In turn, we will be better able to explore the impact that contributions drawn from Stein’s scholarship may have on emergent fields of empathy theory, feminist thought, social and behavioral ethics, ontology, Christian spirituality, contemporary education, and philosophy of religion. Edith Stein’s early and mature scholarship traverses a kind of arc or broad swath of themes. She draws together ancient, medieval, and contemporary authors even as she anticipates a variance of themes evident in post-modern philosophy, including issues of intentionality, intersubjectivity, post-ethics, and deconstruction. Although Edith Stein does not address many of these themes directly in her writings, the authors gathered in this collection of essays bring Edith Stein’s voice into the polyphony of contemporary philosophical and theological discourse. Who was this prolific philosopher, a woman born into an observant Jewish family at the end of the nineteenth century; educated under the tutelage of Husserl, Reinach, and Scheler; killed in Auschwitz in 1942; and later canonized by the Catholic Church and declared a patron saint of Europe? Edith Stein was born in Breslau, Germany (currently Wroclaw, Poland) on October 12, 1891. The youngest of eleven children, Stein was raised in large part by her oldest sister, Else, following the sudden death of her father. At the age of thirteen, Edith Stein underwent a profound existential crisis of faith, by which she abandoned her traditional Jewish faith and belief in God, though she continued to take part in family religious celebrations due, in no small part, to the presence and satisfaction of her mother. As a university student, Stein began to explore the idea that the world can be described in terms constitution, that is, as appearances of phenomena. Whether real or imagined, all phenomena— including ethics and metaphysics, as well as trees and persons and experiences of every sort, etc.—become meaningful through the manifold of consciousness as such. For Stein, what we call “the world” is constituted through a flow of conscious acts whereby consciousness grasps itself as the temporalizing unity that gives meaning to its perceptual field of experiences. Consequently, “metaphysics” and “ethics” open-up meanings by which the “I” becomes constituted in terms of temporal unity by describing different descriptions of intentional flows of consciousness. The “I,” and with it, the com-possible temporal and spatial descriptions of every possible experience, engages the world as both a constituting and a constituted reality. The “I” that emerges as self-consciousness constitutes or regulates or gives order to primary and temporal experiences of factical existence. Ethical and metaphysical implications of constitutive reality are the themes, practically speaking, of the essays gathered in this collection. At the heart of our discourse is the ethical conundrum of egoic constitution, namely, how the Other is essential in the constitution of the self, especially in terms of ethical reciprocity and metaphysical identity. The Cartesian idea that the human individual is an “isolated monad” is rejected by Edith Stein out of hand. The full articulation of human “personhood” can never be reducible to a pure stream of monadological intentionality. Rather, to be “person” means to be always and already open to a reciprocity of influences that co-constitute individual egoic experiences in a kind of “with-world,” a flow of mutual intentionalities and relationships by which the self is experienced as integrated, that

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is, as one self among others. Without the Other, even my own “I” would remain an existential and thematic impossibility. The “I” always implies the precedence of a social world, that is, a world of others like me, only different. Edith Stein first encountered Husserl’s thought when she read the 1901 edition of his Logical Investigations as a psychology major studying at the University of Breslau, in 1912. Enthralled by what she and others described as Husserl’s “realism,” Stein left Breslau in order to study phenomenology under “the Master” himself. She enrolled as a graduate student in the philosophy department at the University of Göttingen in order to begin what might be described upon hindsight as a loyal, yet critical proponent of Edmund Husserl’s nascent phenomenological method. In 1915, the precocious doctoral student was invited by Husserl to accompany him to his new position at Freiburg University. There, Edith Stein was awarded the Ph.D. summa cum laude in 1916. Her dissertation, written under Husserl’s tutelage, explored a lacuna in Husserl’s own phenomenological description of empathy in terms of his theory of egoic constitution. Due to political and social realities of Germany in the 1920s and 1930s, Edith Stein was unable to achieve the rank of a university professor or even teach at a German university, first because she was a woman and, later, because she was Jewish. On January 1, 1922, Edith Stein was baptized into the Roman Catholic Church. The impact of her decision to seek the sacrament of baptism was profound in terms of the themes which she engaged following her conversion regarding a binary relationship she saw between ethics and metaphysics. After successfully completing her habilitation defense in 1922 (Philosophy of Psychology and the Humanities), Edith Stein became a noted advocate for women’s education as well as a strong proponent for Catholic education. Following her conversion, Edith Stein formally encountered the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas and subsequently entered the strict Order of Discalced Carmelites in 1924. She took as her religious name Sister Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, thereby signifying the profound impact of her two spiritual mentors, Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross. The influence of Carmelite spirituality, Thomistic thought, and Husserl’s early realist phenomenology offered Edith Stein a remarkable and quite unique perspective into unitive yet multi-dimensional aspects of the inter-relationality between ethics and metaphysics. The essays in this volume represent what is the first, major, international scholarly investigation towards integrating Edith Stein’s understanding of the relationship between ethics and metaphysics. All of the essays are presented in English, though some have been translated from Spanish, French, and German texts in the original languages of leading international Stein scholars, including from Europe, Australia, North America, and South America. The scholarly and supplementary topics of these essays speak for themselves. Or, rather, they allow Stein to speak for herself—as a woman and also as a philosopher. To allow Edith Stein to speak in her own voice is not an easy task. She was a Jewish woman writing in a substantively male academic environment during the first half of the twentieth century in Germany during the decades leading to and including the implementation of Aryan laws by the National Socialist Party in Germany. Edith Stein knew well the limitations that gender, race, and historical context imposed upon her. Add to this Edith Stein’s choice

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to enter the strict cloister of the discalced Carmelites, and the elusiveness of Stein’s own voice becomes even more deafening. Placed under arrest by the Gestapo on August 1, 1942, Edith Stein was forcibly taken from her convent in Echt, Holland, along with her sister Rosa. She was sent by train first to Westerbork, a site at which many Jews, including Etty Hillesum and Anne Frank, were also processed before being transported “East” to forced labor and extermination camps. From Westerbork, Edith Stein was transferred directly by railroad to Auschwitz by way of her hometown of Breslau. There, she and her sister were killed a few days later on August 9, 1942. After being murdered in a gas chamber at Auschwitz, Stein’s voice largely remained silent for forty years, except for surviving friends and family members and a handful of scholars seeking to engage her ideas through texts mainly limited to primary archival research in Germany and Holland. The next time the world “heard” her voice was when Edith Stein was beatified as a martyr on May 1, 1987 in Cologne and declared a saint eleven years later by Pope John Paul II in Rome. But it was no longer merely Edith Stein’s voice or words; hers was now the voice of Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. Having been eclipsed as a woman in the male-dominated emporium of early twenty century German academic circles and then as a Jew following the promulgation of the Nuremburg Laws, Edith Stein’s voice remains particularly elusive. Even today she speaks to us “from on high,” namely, as a Catholic saint, following her canonization in 1998 and her being named “Co-Patroness of Europe” the following year, along with St. Catherine of Siena and St. Bridgett of Sweden. A former atheist and a daughter of observant Jewish parents, Edith Stein is currently venerated by millions as a Catholic saint. A woman philosopher as well as a mystical doctor of the Church, Edith Stein is as much at home in her adopted Latin as she is in her native Hebrew. On every level, Edith Stein remains an enigma, a sign of contradiction as well as a promise of reconciliation. Nowhere is this more evident than in her scholarly attempts to expose the tensions and conditions of possibility that make ethics possible and, at the same time, undo every metaphysical attempt to justify them. The essays collected in this volume do not present a systematic interpretation of Stein’s position regarding any particular ethical or metaphysical theme or school of thought. On the contrary, they represent a breadth and scope of tensions that permeate a broad swath of applications and implications concerning multiple scholarly perspectives. This is true, not only for the collection of scholars represented here, but also for Stein herself. For example, many issues raised by Stein in her own primary allocutions remain unresolved in a text even after a rigorous systematic approach outlining various positions, definitions, and axioms. What is helpful in exploring ethical and metaphysical issues, both within and outside Stein’s texts, is a spirit of suspicious engagement that reaches beyond the texts themselves, including dialogue with other leading phenomenologists, Catholic and non-Catholic apologists, contemporary philosophical thinkers, and primary and secondary interpreters. At times, her work can feel frustratingly elusive as well as profoundly groundbreaking in its scope and insight, and opposed to easy interpretation. I would argue that what is needed to understand the complexity and richness of Edith Stein’s thinking is a distinctive non-modern trait, namely, to be able to live with tensions of ambiguity

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and ambivalence amidst many layers of meaning and complexity. In this respect, the range of ethical and metaphysical interlocuters engaged in exploring the full range of Edith Stein’s work runs from Aristotle to Aquinas, Dionysius to Derrida, from pre-Socratic metaphysicians to post-modern deconstructionists. Many ideas and insights collected in the chapters that comprise this manuscript were shared and presented in their nascent form at the fourth International Association of the Study of the Philosophy of Edith Stein (IASPES) conference convened in June 2017 and co-hosted by the University of Portland and the University of Portland’s McNerney-Hanson Endowed Chair in Ethics in Portland, OR, USA. Subsequent and weighty revisions ensued over the next several years through scholarly conversations, discussions, and formal events. My deepest gratitude to all those whose work and support over the past several years made the collection of this volume possible. The text is divided into three parts, though the dividing into three sections is more pragmatic or functional than determinant and exclusive: (1) Ethics; (2) Metaphysics; and (3) Applications and Implications. Each of the three parts contains scholarly essays that explore themes and reflections drawn from key philosophical texts written by Edith Stein. The essays are presented in order to engage primary sources and explore ideas that were key to Stein’s intellectual development and which offer vital insight to contributions to contemporary discussions. As a whole, these essays offer a rich historical and thematic contextualization of Stein’s thought. For example, “Part Three: Applications and Implications” involves a robust discussion concerning practical and pedagogical implications of Edith Stein’s ethics and metaphysics on such varied contemporary topics as right human action, a priori law, the genesis of authentic community, the meaning of suffering, and the emergence and destiny of human identity. Part One explores various themes in Edith Stein’s writings relating to ethics. Marian Maskulak, CPS notes in her essay, “Edith Stein and Catholic Social Teaching,” that the corpus of Edith Stein’s philosophical and pedagogical writings supports several important principles of Catholic social teaching. Such principles hinge on the interplay between the individual human person, the community, and the person’s origin and goal in the love of the Triune God, all of which are key concepts in Stein’s thinking. Moreover, Stein’s awareness of the importance of the formation of the individual, and specifically, the formation of the individual for community, provides valuable considerations for the implementation of Catholic social teaching in terms of Stein’s own interest and involvement in social issues. Not only would Edith Stein feel very much at home with contemporary Catholic social teaching, Maskulak notes, but properly understood, Edith Stein should be considered an early proponent of this type of teaching. In “Putting the Emotion Back into Empathy: Edith Stein’s Understanding of Empathy Applied to Contemporary Issues,” Melinda Jolly argues that the abundance of literature in Edith Stein’s writings offers various ways of applying Stein’s insights to issues in the contemporary world, especially her understanding of empathy. Stein first develops how we empathize with one another in her doctoral dissertation, On the Problem of Empathy, and offers an appropriate application to issues in contemporary society. Because contemporary social issues are multifaceted, they are grounded in

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various layers of inter-relationships, whether between individuals or institutions. For Stein, empathy is the key to understanding the nature and context of human relationships, as empathy meaningfully engages other persons as centers of ethical value and integrity. In her essay, Jolly applies Stein’s understanding of empathy to current issues questioning the results of science and terrorism. Jacob W. Torbeck explores important links between the Carmelite mystical tradition that Stein investigates phenomenologically in Science of the Cross and the broader mystical theology investigated in Edith Stein’s essay, “Ways to Know God.” Set in the context of her life and other writings, “Mystical God-forsakenness and the Ethics of Solidarity” argues that links between these two works offer opportunities to understand the normative implications and demands that impinge upon anyone who enters this “most sacred darkness.” What emerges from an encounter with the dark night of the soul is an ethics of solidarity. Through an understanding of “surrender” that remains illuminative and valuable in our time, Edith Stein emphasizes that it is not merely the carrying of the cross that offers redemption. The analogous crucifixion and seemingly God-forsakenness of the dark night enables real solidarity between persons and, ultimately, union with God. Michele Kueter Petersen explains that, for Edith Stein, the individual human being is in content an embodiment, that is, a particular instantiation of something that is more universal. In her essay, “Love Divined: Discerning a Contemplative Ethic in the Philosophy of Edith Stein,” Petersen posits that, for Stein, an individual human being is described as always a part of a whole. As a “vital unity [Lebenseinheit],” the individual human being achieves her unfolding and full flowering only within the context of a whole. Such rootedness in a particular place and time requires working together in order to provide life sustenance for contemporary humans and generations to come. With its spirit nature [Geistnatur], humankind “is called to a communal life which—after having grown from a temporally, spatially, and materially determined soil—eventually annuls the limitations of time and space.” Stein applies the poetic metaphor of the unfolding of an exquisite flower to explain how the individual soul, after blooming in its earthly homeland, is inserted into an eternal, imperishable wreath surrounded by other small, seemingly insignificant blossoms. Nature and grace cooperate in a kind of reciprocal relatedness, such that Stein’s ethics can be described as a relational freedom that brings together the mind and the heart through an integrating hermeneutical principle of discriminative discernment. At the limits of finitude, grace is bestowed by the divine as pure gift in a contemplative ethic of call and response. The final essay of Part One by William Tullius argues that, as Stein develops her social ontology, from her early works in phenomenology to her later Christian writings, the relationship between ethics and personal unfolding becomes more explicit. Although some of the ethical implications of Edith Stein’s personalism are visible early on in her scholarly endeavors, it is not until the 1930s that the implicitly Christian dimension of her personalism becomes explicit. “Person in Community, Repentance, and Historical Meaning: From an Individual to a Social Ethics in Stein’s Early Phenomenological Treatises” explores ways in which Edith Stein utilizes Christian personalism to mine ethical implications for a teleologically oriented self-formation.

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Part Two explores various themes in Edith Stein’s writings relating to metaphysics, especially as they touch upon ethical questions. L. R. Lovestone’s essay, “The Empathic Gaze: A Steinian Approach to the Study of Religion,” offers a study of religion based on Edith Stein’s phenomenology that may perhaps best be described in terms of “the empathetic gaze.” Stein’s phenomenology offers a critical engagement of “the gaze” in the academic field of film and cultural studies. In effect, the emphatic gaze explores what are some of the implications and effects about issues of openness and affirmation in relation to experiences that qualify as scientifically rigorous. In “Edith Stein’s Concept of Soul Revisited,” Sarah Borden Sharkey argues that various aspects of Edith Stein’s understanding of soul are deeply Aristotelian. Nevertheless, Stein does not simply want to supplement the Aristotelian-Thomist view of soul; rather she wishes to challenge it. Stein holds that the Aristotelian model of potency to act is inadequate. What is needed is a new model of “soul” that focuses on levels of fullness, and not simply actualization of capacities. In Finite and Eternal Being, Edith Stein reimagines what is meant by being created in the image of God. Stein’s understanding of the relation between phenomenology and metaphysics focuses primarily on Stein’s critique of St. Thomas’ Christian description of Aristotle’s understanding of the soul. Martina Galvani argues in her essay “Moral Interiority and Self-Realization: The Relationship Between Good and Being in Edith Stein’s Metaphysics” that Stein’s investigations about the human spiritual dimension are synthesized through a relationship between phenomenology and metaphysical-theological research. Edith Stein describes the human being as “essentially spiritual,” meaning that the human being is a synthesis or integration of intellect and will. Such synthesis is required in order to comprehend reality in its full “meaning” [Sinn] and in order to act freely in it. The ethical implications of Stein’s metaphysical reflections can best be described in terms reminiscent of St. Augustine’s understanding of “moral interiority.” C. M. Wulf argues that Hume’s moral distinction between “is” and “ought” is significantly challenged by Stein’s onto-social framework. Insofar as the “is” becomes personal for Stein and insofar as Steinian ontology roots is-ness in essence, the “ought” of moral duty has an ontic and personal ground that makes possible the ought of morality. In her essay, “‘Is’ and ‘Ought’ Reconciled: The Contribution of Edith Stein’s Essentialism and Existentialism to Postmodern Ethics,” Mariéle Wulf notes that the logical inference of “is” to “ought” is removed by Edith Stein from its linguistic and logical frameworks and reset within the existential framework of being and person. In “The Problem of Evil in the Political Philosophy, Ethics, and Metaphysics of Edith Stein,” Angela Ales Bello offers an analysis of the genesis, structure, and dissolution of the state within western modernity. From her particular perspective, Edith Stein is very well aware that she is referring to a particular thing or matter [Sache], which belongs more to the realm of culture than to that of nature. She seeks to grasp the essential aspects or senses that make the “state” a state in and of itself, a form of sociality, beyond its historical and factual determinations. For Stein, historical and factual elements, for example, geography and economics, may condition the

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historical nature of the state. That these elements may be more or less present in no way varies our understanding of what the state is. The state, according to Stein, is a social formation that is distinct from other forms of sociality, including the mass, society, and community, which Stein investigates in her exhaustive study, Philosophy of Psychology and the Humanities [Beiträge zur philosophischen Begründung der Psychologie und der Geisteswissenschaften]. This essay establishes an interesting parallel between the individual and intersubjective forms of sociality. Having described with great acuity the different types of lived experiences proper to the lived-body, psyche, and spirit in her text On the Problem of Empathy, Edith Stein proceeds to investigate the sociality of the mass, which is described in purely psychic terms, as well as the sociality of society, which is directed by specific objective ends or goals, and the community, with its deep psycho-spiritual structure. Anna Maria Pezzella’s “Personal Identity: The Formation of Person in Edith Stein’s Thought” raises the question of identity as part of a broader anthropological reflection, deepened by phenomenology. Max Scheler, for example, is very interested in anthropology and some scholars consider him as the founder of philosophical anthropology, in particular, the science of essence and eidetic structure of man, of his relationship with the kingdoms of nature (inorganic, plant, animal), and with the psychophysical problem of the relationship between the soul and the body. Husserl is interested in anthropology, too, especially in the second book of Ideas, largely elaborated and revised by Edith Stein. Husserl gives a very precise and broad anthropological vision; nevertheless he is critical towards the scientific anthropology of that time because it considered the human being as an animal species and described how the functions and constitution of the human being differed from those of other animals. This type of anthropology, which was closer to biology and zoology, was based solely on a morphological description and causal explanation that did not meet the complexity of the human being. For this reason, it was necessary for Edith Stein to seek and even found a new anthropology that would take into consideration the whole human being, living body, and soul. Part Three explores important applications and implications concerning ethics and metaphysics drawn from Edith Stein’s writings. Antonio Calcagno raises significant questions about culture and social ontology in his essay, “People and the State Community: Two Conflicting Forms of Sociality in Edith Stein’s Conception of A priori.” In her early phenomenological social ontology, Stein conceives of the state as an important community of law-givers and -followers. But by the time Stein is teaching in the 1930s in Münster, her philosophical anthropology pays scant attention to the sociality of the state. In fact, “the people” becomes one of the highest and largest forms of sociality. Indeed, God is seen to relate to the human collective as a people. This latter development in Stein’s philosophy creates a problem, in that it diminishes the role of a priori law and all that it seeks to preserve in Stein’s social ontology, including the universal and necessary value of persons as persons, the preservation of life, and the concept of universal human rights. “The people” is an idea that finds it maximum expression in culture, yet culture unfolds in the time and space of human history, with all of its vicissitudes and changes. The advantage of an a priori theory of law defended and lived by the state community is that it

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preserves a realm of personal existence that transcends the shifting desires, needs, and shortcomings of the human history of a people. Perhaps the only way to reinsert what a priori state law achieves is through the idea of a people that is also a universal human community, an idea that Stein develops in her Münster anthropology. Mary J. Gennuso argues in her essay, “Beyond Ethics: Edith Stein on Suffering, Sacrifice, and Death,” that, although Edith Stein did not write a formal work of ethics, her philosophical and theological writings, as well as her life, highlight particular ethical ideas. It is an ethic that can be situated in the existential tradition that emerged out of phenomenology, and even further in a Catholic response to existentialism, and deeper still, particularly later in her life, in a Carmelite way of life, one that ultimately reveals itself in the life and martyrdom of Edith Stein herself, from her particular life. Stein’s later writings concentrate on the themes of suffering, sacrifice, and death. Edith Stein responds by placing particular points of Heidegger’s existentialism into conversation with themes drawn from Carmelite spirituality, including such key concepts as authenticity, the soul, and free will. In her essay, “Ontology and Relational Ethics in Edith Stein’s Thought,” author Paulina Monjaraz Fuentes notes that Husserl’s ethics was deeply influential on Stein’s thought insofar as it conditioned Stein’s relational ontology. The Husserlian notion of the value bearer is amplified by Stein as she demonstrates that the objectivity of values must be constituted in a deeply subjective and intersubjective framework. It is only by situating values within the aforementioned framework that one can understand the personal contexts that lie at the core of Steinian and Husserlian ethics. John Sullivan, OCD notes that there is a tendency in those who follow the destiny of Edith Stein to place the high point of her life at its very end in the infamous Auschwitz/Birkenau Nazi death camp and thus identify her as a victim of World War II’s tragic conflagration. In “Crucible of Empathy: Nursing Service in World War I,” Fr. Sullivan posits that it is important to recall that another significant point on her life’s arc occurred during the First World War, some 27 years earlier. Regardless of where we center our attention, we ought to keep in mind that Edith lived during the two immensely cataclysmic and catastrophic events we now term “World Wars” I and II. Through her autobiographical account, Life in a Jewish Family, Stein explains how she engaged directly in the “Great War.” Her autobiographical account allows us to delve into the war’s mayhem scenario through fascinating eyewitness vignettes. For example, in Chap. 9 of her autobiography, Stein describes fully the service of “Nursing Soldiers in the Lazaretto at Mährisch-Weisskirchen.” Her nursing collaboration exercised a distinct formative influence and would stay imprinted in her memory to the very final days of her regrettably abbreviated life, in effect showing how much these turbulent experiences marked her outlook. Michael F. Andrews observes in his essay, “Edith Stein’s Understanding of the Personal Attitude: Applications and Implications for a New Ethics,” that Edith Stein’s phenomenological description of the human person is a lacuna that invites further reflection. As a re-imagining of Enlightenment ethics, Edith Stein’s understanding of the personal attitude attests to a fundamental critique of the underlying principles of metaphysics, namely, what has been called by Heidegger as the onto-theological

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“metaphysics of presence.” By Enlightenment ethics, Andrews means the presupposition that proper moral behavior is based on self-evident truths and universal principles common to all human beings, including reason, the capacity for pleasure and pain, utility, and a commitment to freedom as a categorical imperative. Properly speaking, the project of Enlightenment ethics was to uproot and de-historicize both the subject and the methodological search of inquiry related to ontological issues. The goal of the Enlightenment was to ground ethics on a priori, universal principles. Edith Stein’s “personal attitude” challenges the onto-metaphysical assumptions upon which Enlightenment ethics and medieval/Greek metaphysics have rested for centuries. Stein’s description of the demise of the isolated epistemological subject points to no less a fiction than the notion of an isolated moral subject who looks helplessly about with the eyes of pure reason for rules of conduct and ethical criteria. Turning to the earlier work of Husserl’s realist phenomenology, Stein challenges the strict epistemological description of the constitution of the Other to include a more robust and deconstructive element, namely, the co-constitution of the Other through the phenomenology of empathy and emotional and social experience. Edith Stein does not present a concise ethical or metaphysical system per se. What she does offer is a methodological inquiry into being qua being by which she never leaves behind her phenomenology; indeed, she continues to discuss the manner in which phenomenology can relate to both metaphysics and ethics in an indirect and exploratory capacity. Following Husserl’s early realism and Scheler’s personalism, Stein attempted to develop both an ontology of the human person and a phenomenology of empathy that together could account for the existence of the objective world that includes the manifestation of social values. From Hedwig ConradMartius and associates of the Munich school, Stein reached towards a realist social ontology that valued what was unique and original in human existence, even as a reaction to Martin Heidegger’s growing influence in Freiburg. And from Przywara, Stein attempted to provide a reorientation away from Husserl’s later idealist turn to transcendental phenomenology. Stein begins with Descartes’ discovery of the ego cogito, that is, the discovery of the ego as the original recognition of the facticity of one’s existence as a conscious subject, and then implements a fully developed Thomistic metaphysics in which being is revealed amidst the complexity of human consciousness. For Edith Stein, the certitude about my own existence as the most primordial, intimate, and immediate self-experience I can have remains consistent with the way St. Thomas thinks of the living organism as the model for understanding substance. For Stein, actus essendi is a dynamic act of genuine agency. Consequently, being is neither divorced from ethical engagement with the concrete world nor is it reducible to a merely static metaphysical principle like a Platonic Form that needs matter in order to be actualized. In effect, Stein points to an original account of human existence that is ethical insofar as each individually situated, historical, existent person manifests the absolute singularity and uniqueness of its own finite and eternal being. Here is an important contribution from Stein regarding a thematic synthesis between Husserl and Aquinas.

1 Introduction

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Taken together, the essays in this volume present a significant contribution to contemporary studies concerning the interrelationship between ethics and metaphysics. As a phenomenologist, as a woman, and as a member of the Carmelite Order, Edith Stein synthesized quite diverse fields of inquiry, including philosophy, theology, education, social sciences, and spirituality. The implications and applications of her thought are vast and largely unchartered. Like many of her Göttingen and Freiburg companions, Edith Stein remains both an enigma and a profound source for deep personal and scholarly introspection. She is an important and original thinker whose scholarly contributions demonstrate a depth of thought and an approach to truth that is as much needed in the twenty-first century as it is rare.

Part I

Ethics

Chapter 2

Edith Stein and Catholic Social Teaching Marian Maskulak

Catholic social teaching provides a framework for addressing numerous social and ethical issues. Rooted in scripture and the tradition of the church, which includes a long tradition of Catholic moral teaching, contemporary Catholic social teaching has developed from numerous papal, conciliar, and episcopal documents beginning with Rerum Novarum (1891) [On Capital and Labor]. In line with the Catholic theological tradition of utilizing both faith and reason, Catholic social teaching draws on other fields of knowledge, not least of which is philosophy. The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church states that philosophy contributes to understanding key “concepts such as the person, society, freedom, conscience, ethics, law, justice, the common good, solidarity, subsidiarity, [and] the State.”1 Most of these terms are basic components of Edith Stein’s corpus and I propose that Stein’s philosophical and pedagogical writings support several principles of Catholic social teaching. Such principles hinge on the interplay between the individual human person, the community, and the person’s origin and goal in the love of the Triune God, all of which are key concepts in Stein’s thinking. Moreover, her awareness of the importance of the formation of the individual, and specifically, the formation of the individual for community, provides valuable considerations for the implementation of Catholic social teaching. I submit that much of her writing, along with her own interest and involvement in social issues, indicate that Stein would feel very much at home with contemporary Catholic social teaching and that she can be seen as an early proponent of this type of teaching. I will begin by briefly noting Stein’s own interest in social concerns. Doing so provides some contextual background for her thought and offers further rationale

1 Pontifical

Council for Justice and Peace (2005), no. 76–77.

M. Maskulak (B) Saint John’s University, Queens, NY, USA © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. F. Andrews and A. Calcagno (eds.), Ethics and Metaphysics in the Philosophy of Edith Stein, Women in the History of Philosophy and Sciences 12, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91198-0_2

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for viewing Stein’s work in terms of Catholic social teaching. I will then highlight how her thinking supports five principles of contemporary Catholic social teaching: human dignity, association, participation, solidarity, and care of creation. Finally, I will conclude with Stein’s understanding of who is to be regarded as one’s “neighbor”—a term that is used in each of the encyclicals and episcopal documents mentioned in this chapter that deal with Catholic social teaching.

2.1 Stein’s Interest in Social Issues A few scenes from Stein’s life point to her active interest in the social issues of her time, ranging from women’s issues to the ever increasing dangers of National Socialism. Here, I will focus on only two examples. Writing about her life during the years 1911–1913, Stein states that her love of history was tied to “a passionate participation in current political events as history in the making.” She also describes herself as having “an extraordinarily strong social conscience, a feeling for the solidarity” of all humankind as well as smaller social groups, and notes that her “deep conviction of social responsibility” made her advocate women’s full political equality and led her to join the Prussian Society for Women’s Right to vote.2 She writes that she was “repelled by chauvinistic Nationalism”3 and in a 1932 lecture, Stein calls “brutal” the National Socialists’ attitude that valued women solely from a biological perspective for the purpose of racial breeding. She attributes the loss of the gains made for women in the previous decades to this attitude, as well as to a romantic ideology of women and the economic conditions of that time.4 Even more striking in terms of viewing Stein as an early proponent of Catholic social teaching is her 1933 letter to Pope Pius XI requesting that he denounce “deeds taking place in Germany which make a mockery of all justice and humanity – not to mention love of neighbor.”5 This letter was precisely a call for a papal pronouncement, perhaps even an encyclical, that would have fallen directly into the then nascent body of Catholic social teaching. Ironically, it was Pius XI who two years earlier coined the term “Christian social teaching” in his encyclical, Quadragesimo Anno (1931) [Reconstruction of the Social Order].6 Stein’s ongoing knowledge and concern about Germany’s current events is apparent in the details that she includes in this necessarily concise letter. For instance, she notes that the leaders of National Socialism had been preaching hatred of the Jews for years and the hatred had grown once the National Socialists seized government power and armed their followers, including criminals. She reports that public opinion had been silenced, riots were 2

Stein (1986). The English translation of Life in a Jewish Family, 190, mistakenly states, “Darwinistic” Nationalism. 4 Stein (2000e). 5 Stein, “Der Brief an Papst Pius XI”. Henceforth, translations from Stein’s German texts are mine. 6 Pius XI (1931). 3

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not isolated incidents, and reaction from abroad pushed the government to “milder” methods, namely, boycotting. However, she writes that boycotting “deprives people of their economic existence [wirtschaftliche Existenz], civic honor and fatherland” and “drives many to despair.”7 Here, one has to wonder if Stein was hoping that the mention of “economic” existence would cause Pius XI to recall his own encyclical (Quadragesimo Anno) two years earlier in which he uses the term “economic” over 70 times. Her writings confirm that Stein was familiar with three of the pope’s other encyclicals,8 and given her own interests and public speaking engagements, it seems very likely that she stayed current with papal pronouncements. The desperation in Germany led to many suicides, five of which Stein had personally learned about in the week just before writing the letter to Pius XI. She unequivocally states that the responsibility must fall on those who brought people to this point and on those who remain silent before such happenings. And she does not hesitate to say that Jews and thousands of Catholics were waiting for the Church to speak out against this government that called itself “Christian” and yet hammered a message on daily radio that idolized race and government power.9 Stein’s letter really causes one to pause, not only at her grasp of the situation as it had already escalated by April 1933, but also at her courage as a woman of her day, not hesitating to straightforwardly address the pope in seeking action against this injustice. And as she states, her first choice of action had been to speak directly to the pope one-on-one herself.10 With this brief backdrop pointing to Stein’s own practical involvement in the social issues of her time, I will now turn to some of Stein’s philosophical and pedagogical thinking that clearly resonates with five principles of contemporary Catholic social teaching.

2.2 Dignity of the Human Person The foundational principle of Catholic social teaching is the dignity of the human person. Stein, of course, maintains the Judeo-Christian belief on which this principle is based, namely, that all human beings are created in the image of God11 and thus, rightfully deserve the utmost respect. For Stein, the human person is a rational and free being, characterized by the conscious, free, self-determining “I” who “determines its life out of its own self in the form of free acts.”12 The person not only “is” and lives, 7

Stein, “Der Brief an Papst Pius XI.” Stein makes references to the following encyclicals of Pius XI: Ubi arcano dei consilio (1922) [On the Peace of Christ in the Kingdom of Christ], Divini Illius Magistri (1929) [On Christian Education), and Casti Connubii (1930) [On Christian Marriage]. See Stein (2001c), 124; Stein, “Probleme der neueren Mädchenbildung,” 131; and Stein (2000f). 9 Stein, “Der Brief an Papst Pius XI.” 10 Stein (1990). 11 Stein (2001c). 12 Stein (2002), 376. 8

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but knows about her being and living, and that of others.13 At the same time, each “I” is unique in that it possesses something that is singular to itself that cannot be shared with any other created being. This incommunicability is the hallmark of being a human person, in distinction to the persons of the Trinity who have in common their entire quid. Stein makes her point about the unique singularity of each person with the analogy of uniformed marching soldiers—despite the appearance of being an undistinguishable mass, a loved one awaits and identifies one individual who is unlike any of the others.14 The imagery of the military was a reality for Stein, who volunteered as a nurse’s aide during World War I, and had many friends and acquaintances who fought in the war.15 Another way Stein conveys the particular singularity of each human being is by her conviction that “[e]very human soul is created by God; each receives from God an imprint which distinguishes it from every other.”16 Furthermore, each individual has her own particular way of being the image of God,17 for “in each creature a ray of the divine essence is imaged, and in each, a different ray.”18 Stein posits a possible reason for the existence of such diverse individuals that is based on perceiving God as the plenitude of love. Since created spirits are unable to receive into themselves and realize the full plenitude of divine love, she suggests that “[t]heir share is measured according to the measure of their being, and that means not only a ‘so much,’ but also a ‘thus’ [‘certain manner’]—love bears the stamp of personal particularity.”19 It is reasonable “that God may have created in every human soul a dwelling for himself so that through the diversity of different kinds of souls, the fullness of divine love would find a wider scope for its communication.”20 For those who believe that humans are made in the image of God, Stein’s view that each individual has her own particular way of imaging God only strengthens the principle of human dignity. Moreover, she further supports the inherent dignity of each person by drawing attention to the indwelling presence of the Trinity within the human being. As she pens in a poem, “The innermost chamber of the human soul is the Trinity’s favorite abode, its heavenly throne on earth.”21

13

Stein (2004), p. 78. Stein (2002), 343, 356, 508–509. 15 Stein (1986), 318–367. 16 Stein (2000e), 179. 17 Ibid., 175. 18 Stein (2016). 19 Stein (2006b). 20 Stein (2006b), 423. 21 Stein (2007b). 14

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2.2.1 Association Integrally connected to the dignity of the human person is the principle of association that recognizes that humans are social by nature. As William Byron points out, beginning with the family, the way “we organize our society economically, politically, and legally and how we structure all human relationships…directly affect[s] the capacity of individuals to grow in community.”22 Likewise, humans achieve their fulfillment through “association with others in families and in other social institutions that foster growth, protect dignity, and promote the common good.”23 Of primary importance for Stein in regard to the principle of association is her phenomenological study of empathy—how one undergoes another subject’s experience. Empathy is at the root of intersubjectivity and community living, and also plays an important role in self-knowledge.24 Her foundational work on the question of empathy brought Stein’s thinking on the individual and human relationships into sharper focus, for which her treatise “Individual and Community” was a natural progression of inquiry. She concisely summarizes her discussions in An Investigation Concerning the State by stating that the individual person “is just as originarily a community member as she is a lone subject, or, her natural mental posture is to be open to exchanges with others.”25 Later, in her philosophical anthropology, she articulates that the study of the isolated individual is an abstraction and dedicates the eighth chapter of that text to the social being of the person. Here she emphasizes that it belongs to the structure of the human being to exist in the world and to be integrated into a larger whole.26 Likewise, in Finite and Eternal Being she writes, “It pertains to the essence of the human being that the individual is a member of the human race and that this individual realizes himself as a whole (with all the possibilities implied therein) in a humankind in which the individuals inhere as ‘members of one another.’”27 The individual achieves his “unfolding only in the vital context of the whole, in [his] particular place and in cooperation with the other members.”28 In this way, she speaks of the person’s unfolding in community just as Byron speaks of humans achieving their fulfillment, but goes a step further, stating that community is necessary in order for a human being to attain his ultimate end—union with God.29 Also, by emphasizing that a person’s life unfolds in a certain place prepared for it within the context of the historical development of a nation, locale, and family,30 Stein highlights the particular circumstances of each individual within the vast array 22

Byron (2013). Ibid. 24 See Lebech (2009), 322–323; Borden (2003), 29–30. 25 Stein (2006a), 93; see also 93 note 189. 26 Stein (2004), 134. 27 Stein (2002), 507. 28 Ibid., 508. 29 Stein (2016), 106–107, 114. 30 Stein (2002), 508. 23

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of community connections. From the perspective of Catholic social teaching, this draws attention to the fuller context and specific conditions in which a human being lives and develops, which is pertinent to a broad range of global issues related to human development.

2.2.2 Participation The position that everyone has a right (and some, like Stein, would also say a responsibility) to participate in society is known as the principle of participation. In the words of the U.S. Catholic bishops, “Basic justice demands the establishment of minimum levels of participation in the life of the human community for all persons. The ultimate injustice is for a person or group to be treated actively or abandoned passively as if they were nonmembers of the human race.”31 Participation includes seeking the common good, especially for the poor and vulnerable. This principle also applies to conditions related to work and the basic rights of workers, since “it is through work that the individual participates in God’s creation.”32 In a lecture on girls’ education, Stein looks at some of the underlying dynamics that come into play when considering a person’s participation in society. She emphasizes the importance of forming students by helping them develop their own gifts and talents to prepare them for their future work, understood as their vocation.33 In line with her emphasis on the particular singularity of each individual, Stein sees each person’s call as specific to each person. She writes that the goal of individual formation work is for the human being to attain to who “he quite personally ought to be, who goes his way, and does his work. His way: that is not the way that he chooses arbitrarily, but rather the way to which God leads him.”34 Also, in a lecture on men’s and women’s occupations she states: Therefore, in the “nature of the human being” his vocation is sketched out and his profession, that is, the activity and creativity to which he is destined. The path of life brings it to maturity and makes it clear to people so that they are able to articulate the “call”—in the good fortune that someone finds “his place” in life. But the “nature of the human being” and his “path of life” are no gift and game of chance; rather—seen with the eyes of faith—God’s work. And so ultimately, the one who calls is God himself. He it is who calls: every human being to something to which everyone is called, every individual human being to something to which he is quite personally called.35

31

Unites States Catholic Bishops (2009), no. 77. Byron, 9. 33 Stein (2000e), 179–180. 34 Ibid., 180. 35 Stein (2000c). 32

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Finding and following one’s vocation seems integral to effective participation in society. Yet, as Stein notes, people often strive for positions and jobs for which by their nature they are unqualified and for which they cannot meet the demands.36 Another important point that Stein makes is that the vital interconnection among all human beings goes far beyond the physical realities of propagation and division of labor needed for the necessities of life. It also involves the realities of the spiritual life whereby the products of the human spirit, i.e., areas of intellectual or cultural achievement, become the common property of humanity with the potential of nourishing souls of present and future generations. It is through its spirit nature that humanity “is called to a communal life which—after having grown from a temporally, spatially, and materially determined soil—eventually annuls the limitations of time and space.”37 Stein was very aware of the benefits of learning from other cultures as well as one’s own.38

2.2.3 Solidarity The concept of “solidarity” has gained growing usage in Catholic social teaching. It takes the communal idea of humans being social by nature (association) to its fullest expression—the entire human community and the responsibilities that accompany membership therein. In 1939, nearly a year after Kristallnacht (November 9– 10, 1938), Pius XII, in the encyclical Summi pontificatus [On the Unity of Human Society], draws attention to what he calls a widespread error deriving from religious and moral agnosticism: “the forgetfulness of that law of human solidarity and charity which is dictated and imposed by our common origin and by the equality of rational nature in all [human beings], to whatever people they belong.”39 In 1967, Paul VI pointed out that the call “to further the development of human society as a whole” belongs to all people, not just certain individuals, and that “the reality of human solidarity brings us not only benefits but also obligations.”40 Likewise, the “development of the individual necessarily entails a joint effort for the development of the human race as a whole.”41 Twenty years later, John Paul II further defined solidarity as not “a feeling of vague compassion or shallow distress at the misfortunes of so many people both near and far. On the contrary, it is a firm and persevering determination to commit oneself to the common good; that is to say to the good of all and each individual, because we are all really responsible for all.”42 36

Stein (2016), 115–116. Stein (2002), 508. 38 Stein (2004), 156. 39 Pius XII (1939). 40 Paul VI (1967), no. 17. 41 Ibid., no. 43. 42 John Paul II (1987), no. 38. 37

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Once again, Stein’s writing strongly supports the thinking behind the principle of solidarity. Maintaining the phenomenological focus on the whole and the part, Stein highlights humanity as a whole as well as the individual as a member. Endowed with one’s own special nature, each human being also shares in the one nature of the whole.43 Stein suggests that the living form active in the first organism of a species can be thought of as the form of the totality of all individuals of the species which works towards the goal of its completion until the species dies out. She points out that this is how scripture depicts humanity “which in Adam is created as a whole.”44 She maintains that salvation history is understandable only under such a supposition.45 In other words, the notion of the solidarity of the human race is supported by the doctrines of creation and redemption which understand the origin of all people as deriving from one ancestor and envisions “the goal of the entire evolution of the human race [to be] its union under one divine-human head, in the one ‘Mystical Body’ of Christ.”46 Also, made in the image of the Triune God who is an individual in the complete sense of the word (one essence, indivisible, perfectly simple, unique) and community in the complete sense of the word, so too the human being is an individual and member in essence at the same time, but as though side by side, not in one as the Trinity.47 Similar to Paul VI’s stance that the call “to further the development of human society as a whole” belongs to all, Stein states that as a member of the whole, “each individual has his place and task in the one great development of humanity.”48 The full unfolding of the whole—the species human being—will only reach its full realization in the course of world history, and it is dependent on the unfolding of every single member, each individual’s cooperation, and the common effort of all.49 Stein’s idea that the fulfillment of the human race is dependent on the fulfillment of each individual human being speaks strongly of the value and dignity of every human life, as well as the need for the participation of all. Each person does not exist solely for oneself, but for the whole of humanity. This holds true not only for the strong and gifted, but also for the weak and disabled. Stein also notes that anyone who injures one member harms the entire organism. Likewise, emphasis on either the individual or the community at the expense of the other also harms both.50 It is especially striking that Stein specifically uses the term “solidarity.” It was already mentioned that she describes herself as having a “strong social conscience, a feeling for the solidarity” of all humankind and smaller social groups. In a pedagogical lecture, she states that others remain responsible for the formation of those

43

Stein (2000e), 174; see also Maskulak (2007), 116–118. Stein (2004), 64. 45 Stein (2002), 510. See also Stein (2009b); Stein (2000e), 168. 46 Stein (2002), 510. 47 Stein (2016), 107–108. 48 Stein (2000e), 168. 49 Stein (2002), 526; Stein (2000e), 168. 50 Stein (2016), 113. 44

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who have awakened to reason and freedom due to the “solidary responsibility [solidarischen Verantwortung] with which humanity is created, and to the individual’s character of being a member within this most comprehensive unity and within the concrete communities into which it structures itself.”51 Family, state, and church all play a role in the individual’s development.52 Stein also uses the word solidarity in her treatise, “Individual and Community.” Here she contrasts her understanding of two social groupings, association and community, acknowledging that in reality, “personal alliances are mostly mixed forms” of these two.53 In an association (not to be confused with the principle of association used in Catholic social teaching), “one person approaches another as subject to object.” In community, “a subject accepts the other as a subject and does not confront him but rather lives with him and is determined by the stirrings of his life.” While in an association everyone is “alone, ‘a windowless monad,’” solidarity prevails in a community.54 It is also worth noting that in this section of her treatise, Stein suggests that a demagogue is the purest example of an “association man” whose goal is “to make a crowd of people subservient for his own purposes.” But in order to do so, he first has to take on the posture of the community man.55 Some commentators have noted that this part of Stein’s 1919 analysis articulated the process actually used by the National Socialists.56 Stein also underscores the need for reciprocal relationships in the solidarity of community. “[T]he solidarity of individuals, which becomes visible in the influence of the attitudes of one upon the life of the others, is formative of community in the highest degree. To put it more precisely: Where the individuals are ‘open’ to one another, where the attitudes of one don’t bounce off of the other but rather penetrate him and deploy their efficacy, there a communal life subsists, there the two are members of one whole; and without such a reciprocal relationship community isn’t possible.”57 On the other hand, taking a stance of perceiving another as an object whose reactions require precautionary actions, harms the unity of life that comprises community. This contradicts the essence of community that “demands open and naïve commitment: not separated living but common living.”58 John Paul II strongly echoes Stein’s perspectives on solidarity when he writes: The exercise of solidarity within each society is valid when its members recognize one another as persons…. Solidarity helps us to see the “other” – whether a person, people or nation – not just as some kind of instrument, with a work capacity and physical strength to be exploited at low cost and then discarded when no longer useful, but as our “neighbor,” a 51

Stein (2000e), 184–185. Ibid., 185. 53 Stein (2000d). 54 Ibid., 130. 55 Ibid., 131. 56 Ibid., 131–132, note 10. 57 Ibid., 214. 58 Ibid., 215. 52

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An important point for consideration by proponents of Catholic social teaching would be Stein’s position that individuals must be well advanced in their development to embrace humanity as a whole and to recognize their obligations to it. Becoming aware of the totality of humanity that encompasses and sustains the human being requires an experience of the common bond that, despite all differences, links us with peoples and individuals of every time and place along with the realization that, by contact with those foreign to us, we ourselves are enriched and perfected.60 Yet, such contact is often fragmentary, misinterpreted, and sometimes completely misunderstood, resulting in “the one-sidedness of nationalism, internationalism, etc.”61 Writing these thoughts between 1935 and 1936, Stein had to be thinking of the anti-Semitism of the Third Reich. Today, it seems that global awareness and various possibilities for service learning and volunteer opportunities can contribute to an individual’s growth in grasping humanity as a whole, but more would be needed by way of a person’s individual formation and his/her formation for community, including the global community.

2.2.4 Care of Creation A final principle of Catholic social teaching that I would like to mention is the care of creation. The U.S. Catholic bishops’ pastoral statement, Renewing the Earth (1991), and Pope Francis’s encyclical, Laudato Si’ (2015) [On Care for Our Common Home], both emphasize human stewardship of creation. While she herself enjoyed nature, Stein does not specifically write about the care of creation as such. But in her ontology, she very methodically considers the being of both inanimate and non-human animate creation. Her view that the image of the Triune God can be found in the entire created universe62 significantly undergirds a positive view of human stewardship of creation. Unlike Aquinas who understands non-rational creation as a vestige of God, Stein, distinguishing between a proximate and more remote image character, perceives a certain image character in the entire created world. Stein sees all creation as an image of God because she finds “in creaturely autonomy of being and in creaturely fullness of meaning and life, a genuine likeness of divine autonomy and plenitude of meaning and life, not a mere sign or trace of the authorship of the triune God.”63 Moreover, she also discerns a broader understanding of the Mystical Body of Christ as encompassing all of creation since 59

John Paul II (1987), no. 39. Stein (2002), 510. 61 Stein (2006b), 426, note 64. 62 Stein (2002), 464. 63 Ibid., 604 note 88, 464, 596 note 1; see also 355, 420–427. 60

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everything was created in the image of the Son, the Son entered the total context of creation through the incarnation, grace flows into all creatures, and nature, which was implicated in the Fall of the human being, will also share in human beings’ restoration.64 While she makes no explicit mention of the need for humans to respect creation, from a Christian perspective, there could be no greater call for doing so than to realize that all creation carries a certain image character of the Trinity and that creation can be considered part of the Mystical Body of Christ. Stein also brings up the idea of creation in a discussion about love. She maintains that in its ultimate meaning, love is “a surrender of one’s being and becoming one with the beloved.”65 The perfect actualization of such love is found in the mutual self-giving of the Triune God, and its closest approximation in the created realm is the self-surrender of persons to God. Moreover, “the surrender to God is at the same time surrender to one’s own God-loved self and to the entire creation, particularly to all spiritual beings united in God.”66 Stein does not elaborate on this very strong statement of interconnection between the person who loves God and the entire creation, but at the very least, it seems it would imply the care of creation.

2.2.5 The Neighbor Love plays a key role in the implementation of Catholic social teaching. As previously mentioned, Pius XII drew attention to the need for both solidarity and charity. In his 1987 encyclical, Sollicitudo Rei Socialis [The Concern of the Church for the Social Order], John Paul II states that “true development must be based on the love of God and neighbor, and must help to promote the relationships between individuals and society.”67 In a 1930 lecture that deals with the need to help form and educate individuals for community, Stein somewhat abruptly concludes with the statement: “The principle of all social formation work can be summed up in very few words: you shall love the Lord your God above all, and your neighbor as yourself.”68 This is a timeless message for those of diverse faiths, as can be seen in several variations of the Golden Rule. Elsewhere Stein elaborates on her understanding of the love of “neighbor”: Our love for human beings is the measure of our love for God. But it is a different love than natural human love. Natural love applies to this or that one who is near to us, bound by the ties of blood, or kinship of character, or common interests. The others are “strangers,” who are “none of our concern,” perhaps even disgusting to oneself by their being, so that we keep them at bay. For the Christian, there is no “foreign person.” The “neighbor” is each time the person we have before us and who precisely needs us the most – regardless whether he is 64

Ibid., 527. Stein (2006b), 376. 66 Ibid., 385. 67 John Paul II (1987), no. 33. 68 Stein (2016),126. 65

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M. Maskulak a relative or not, whether we “like” him or not, whether he is “morally worthy” of help or not. The love of Christ knows no boundaries, it never stops, it does not shrink back from unsightliness and grime.69

In yet another discussion on love, Stein notes that one’s responses of attraction or aversion to others are subject to God’s commandment to love one’s neighbor as oneself and is to be applied without conditions or compromise. The following quote that reflects a similar view of the neighbor as just stated is well known: “The ‘neighbor’ is not the one whom I ‘like,’ but any and every human being with whom I come into contact, without exception.”70 Since God requires this stance of love toward the neighbor, God “makes possible” what a person would find naturally impossible.71 The world has greatly changed since the 1930’s when, as Stein reports, public matters reached into every German home through radio, newspapers, and daily conversation, pulling the youngest children into politics.72 Through global technology and social media we now come into daily “virtual contact” with countless people, many of whom are victims of social injustice. By extrapolation, Stein challenges us to also see these individuals as our “neighbors.”

2.2.6 Concluding Thoughts Writing at a time when Catholic social teaching was just beginning to be articulated, Stein’s philosophical and pedagogical writings on the human being and community prove to be foundational for what were later named as some basic principles of this teaching: human dignity, association, participation, solidarity, and care of creation. Stein’s thinking remains valid and applicable because her primary foci are the human person and the human community, along with the recurring theme that all humans are called to union with a God who is the plenitude of love and who calls all humans to exercise an inclusive love of “neighbor.” In addition, Stein’s lectures on formation highlight the importance of a person’s individual formation that includes formation for community living. Furthermore, her sense of responsibility for social issues, such as women’s issues and the Nazi’s crimes against justice and humanity are real-world applications of her conceptual thinking. Stein herself would no doubt find a home in contemporary Catholic social teaching; but it seems more accurate to say that in both theory and practice, she can rightly be seen as a precursor of this teaching.

69

Stein (2009b), 8. Stein (2009), 446. 71 Ibid. 72 Stein (2004), 152–153. 70

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References Batzdorff, S. (ed.) (1990). Edith Stein: Selected writings. Springfield, IL: Templegate. Borden, S. B. (2003). Edith Stein. NY: Continuum. Byron, W. J. (2013). Framing the principles of catholic social thought. Catholic Education: A Journal of Inquiry and Practice, 3(1), 9. http://digitalcommons.lmu.edu/ce/vol3/iss1/2 Byron, W. J. (2013). Framing the principles of catholic social thought. Catholic Education: A Journal of Inquiry and Practice, 3(1), 7–14. http://digitalcommons.lmu.edu/ce/vol3/iss1/2 Francis. (2015). Laudato Si [On Care for Our Common Home]. Libreria Editrice Vaticana. http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_201 50524_enciclica-laudato-si.html Lebech, M. (2009). On the Problem of Human Dignity: A Hermeneutical and Phenomenological Investigation. Würzburg: Königshausen and Neumann Maskulak, M. (2007). Edith Stein and the body-soul-spirit at the center of holistic formation. Peter Lang. Maskulak, M. (Ed.). (2016). Edith Stein: Selected writings. Paulist Press. John Paul II (1987). Sollicitudo Rei Socialis [The Concern of the Church for the Social Order]. Libreria Editrice Vaticana. http://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/ hf_jp-ii_enc_30121987_sollicitudo-rei-socialis.html Paul VI. (1967). Populorum Progressio [On the development of peoples]. Libreria Editrice Vaticana. http://w2.vatican.va/content/paul-vi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-vi_enc_ 26031967_populorum.html Pius XII (1939). Summi pontificatus [On the unity of human society] (Libreria Editrice Vaticana) (no. 34–35). http://w2.vatican.va/content/pius-xii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xii_enc_ 20101939_summi-pontificatus.html Pius XI. (1931). Quadragesimo Anno [Reconstruction of the social order]. Libreria Editrice Vaticana. http://w2.vatican.va/content/pius-xi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xi_enc_ 19310515_quadragesimo-anno.html Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace. (2005). Compendium of the social doctrine of the church. USCCB Publishing. Stein, E. (2000a). Die Frau. In M. A. Neyer (Ed.). Freiburg: Herder. Stein, E. (2000b). Philosophy of psychology and the humanities. Translated by Mary Catharine Baseheart and Marianne Sawicki. Washington, DC: ICS Publications. Stein, E. (2000c). Beruf des Mannes und der Frau nach Natur- und Gnadenordnung. In M. A. Neyer (Ed.), Die Frau (p. 57). Freiburg: Herder. Stein, E. (2000d). Individual and community. In Philosophy of Psychology and the Humanities, trans. Mary Catharine Baseheart and Marianne Sawicki (p. 131). Washington, DC: ICS Publications. Stein, E. (2000e). Probleme der neueren Mädchenbildung. In M. A. Neyer (Ed.), Die Frau (pp. 136– 137). Freiburg: Herder. Stein, E. (2000f). Jugendbildung im Licht des katholischen Glaubens. In M. A. Neyer (Ed.), Die Frau (pp. 72, 73, 76, 78, 84). Freiburg: Herder Stein, E. (2007a). Geistliche Texte II. In S. Binggeli (Ed.). Freiburg: Herder. Stein, E. (2007b). Ich bleibe bei Euch. In S. Binggeli (Ed.), Geistliche Texte II (p. 180). Freiburg: Herder. Stein, E. (2009a). Geistliche Texte I. In U. Dobhan (Ed.). Freiburg: Herder. Stein, E. (2009b). Das Weihnachtsgeheimnis: Menschwerdung und Menschheit. In U. Dobhan (Ed.), Geistliche Texte I (p. 7). Freiburg: Herder. Stein, E. (1986). Life in a Jewish family 1891–1916: An autobiography. Translated by Josephine Koeppel (pp. 190–191). Washington, DC: ICS Publications. Stein, E. (1990). How i came to the cologne carmel. In S. Batzdorff (Ed.), Edith Stein: Selected writings (p. 17). Springfield, IL: Templegate. Stein, E. (2001a). Bildung und Entfaltung der Individualität. In B. Beckmann-Zöller & M.A. Neyer (Eds.). Freiburg: Herder.

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Stein, E. (2001b). “Rezension: Zum Kampf um den katholischen Lehrer,” in Bildung und Entfaltung der Individualität, ed. Beate Beckmann-Zöller and Maria Amata Neyer (Freiburg: Herder, 2001), 124. Stein, E. (2001c). “Zur Idee der Bildung,” in Bildung und Entfaltung der Individualität, ed. Beate Beckmann-Zöller and Maria Amata Neyer (Freiburg: Herder), 49. Stein, E. (2002). Finite and eternal being. Translated by Kurt F. Reinhardt. Washington, DC: ICS Publications. Stein, E. (2004). Der Aufbau der menschlichen Person: Vorlesungen zur philosophischen Anthropologie. In B. Beckmann-Zöller (Ed.). Freiburg: Herder. Stein, E. (2006a). An investigation concerning the state. Translated by Marianne Sawicki. Washington, DC: ICS Publications. Stein, E. (2006b). Endliches und ewiges Sein: Versuch eines Aufstiegs zum Sinn des Seins. In A. U. Müller (Ed.). Freiburg: Herder. Stein, E. (2016). The theoretical foundations of social formation work. In M. Maskulak (Ed.), Edith Stein: Selected writings (p. 109). NY: Paulist Press. Stein, E. Der brief an Papst Pius XI. Stimmen der Zeit. http://www.stimmen-der-zeit.de/zeitschrift/ archiv/beitrag_details?k_beitrag=1649540&k_produkt=None. United States Catholic Bishops. (1991). Renewing the earth: An invitation to reflection and action on environment in light of catholic social teaching. Washington, DC: United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. http://www.usccb.org/issues-and-action/human-life-and-dignity/environment/ renewing-the-earth.cfm Unites States Catholic Bishops. (2009). Economic justice for all: Pastoral letter on catholic social teaching and the U.S. economy. Washington, DC: United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 1997. http://www.usccb.org/upload/economic_justice_for_all.pdf

Chapter 3

Putting the Emotion Back into Empathy: Edith Stein’s Understanding of Empathy Applied to Contemporary Issues Melinda Jolly

Abstract “Putting the Emotion Back into Empathy: Edith Stein’s Understanding of Empathy Applied to Contemporary Issues.” Applying Edith Stein’s understanding of empathy to contemporary issues aids in developing better relationships in order to more fully recognize a common humanity shared amongst diverse cultures and peoples. This paper argues that the change in “self” through empathy, as outlined by Edith Stein, offers an important contribution to engage current issues of cultural diversity in the world and thereby secure unity and meaning in a shared, common future.

3.1 Introduction The abundance of work by Edith Stein features various applications of her insights to contemporary issues in the world. I would like to apply Stein’s understanding of empathy to the current issues of science and the threat of terrorism. Stein first develops her ideas on how we empathize with one another in her doctoral dissertation, On the Problem of Empathy. Her understanding of empathy remains a particularly relevant part of her philosophy to apply to issues in contemporary society because, although today’s issues are multi-faceted, they are all grounded in human relationships. For Stein, empathy is at the core of relationships; it is how we fulfil the constitution of the other. Stein claims the continuous driving force behind her life-long love of learning was simply that her “primary interest was obtaining knowledge.”1 However, for Stein, understanding humanity is not just a philosophical exercise; the questions she asked of her fellow philosophers, the proposals she put forward to them, and the 1 Stein 2

(1986, 187). Ibid, 177.

M. Jolly (B) St Vincent s Private Hospital, SYDNEY, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. F. Andrews and A. Calcagno (eds.), Ethics and Metaphysics in the Philosophy of Edith Stein, Women in the History of Philosophy and Sciences 12, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91198-0_3

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debates, disputes, and agreements she had with them, shaped her. She understands philosophical enquiry as a serious path of academia that can have an impact on humanity. She states in her autobiography: “We are in the world to serve humanity. …This is best accomplished when doing that for which one has the requisite talents.”2 Alisdair MacIntyre, when asked what it would be like for philosophers to transfer the implications of their thinking to other parts of their lives, responded with: One answer to that question is supplied by the life of Edith Stein, a phenomenologist who … deliberately and intentionally brought her philosophical thinking to bear on the practices of her everyday life and drew upon the experiences afforded by those practices in formulating philosophical problems and arriving at philosophical conclusions.3

Using phenomenology as her method, Stein aims to understand the essence of things that can only begin with an experience of the thing. This can be the only starting point; everything else should be excluded as it is in doubt.4 As Lebech states, “Stein grounded her thinking in (her) personal life and also tested it there.... She encouraged her readers to examine this same experience... to test the plausibility of what she [said].”5 In this chapter, I will use Stein’s example and apply her understanding of empathy to my own experiences in Australia. Evaluating my own experiences draws out a gradual movement over the past ten years in my country. The issues explored will illustrate a social and political decline over the past ten years, from the increasing reluctance on the part of society to listen to experts in any field, which has led to the phenomenon of ‘fake news,’ to the growing dominance in contemporary society of self-interest and, finally, to the response of the community to the continuing threat of terrorism. Edith Stein’s understanding of empathy will be developed by focussing on it as a unique act of perceiving that makes possible emotional encounters between individuals. Discussions of these issues have often led to comparisons made to the crisis in Germany before and during World War II. Beneficial for this chapter is Rachel Feldhay Brenner’s analysis of diaries written during that period by two Polish women, and Brenner’s application of Stein’s understanding of empathy to their images of the Polish Jewish people. In Feldhay Brenner’s assessment, empathy is not enough to stop atrocities, such as the genocide, from reoccurring. However, when it is applied within a context that is focused on emotional encounter, different outcomes are observed. The development of the self through reiterated empathy aids in bringing personal deceptions to the fore so that self interest can be challenged. Empathy as an emotional encounter will be applied toward the acceptance of diversity in communities to show a true empathic community is one that promotes living in peace with others, allowing them to be other.

3

MacIntyre (2006, 6). Stein (1989, 5). 5 Lebech (2011, 687). 4

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3.2 Challenging Science When examining the issues confronting contemporary society in Australia during the past decade, it becomes apparent that a political shift in the country during that time has had an enormous impact. There was an alarmingly quick turnaround about climate science that set the tone for a changed dialogue on different topics. Before that time, climate science that advocated for a reduction in fossil fuels to reverse the damage of global warming was accepted scientific knowledge in Australia. The following personal experience gives a small example of this. In 2008, while researching global warming for a presentation in a Philosophy of Science class, I was amazed to find information on the internet that rejected the claims of scientists about global warming and the effects of pollution in the atmosphere. I was prepared for a student to mention this denial during the presentation, but no one did, and when I told the class what I had discovered online none of them had heard of denial of climate change. In 2008, it was still new to easily find online content that disagreed with mainstream science. This coincided with what was happening in Australian politics at the time. In 2009 both the party in power, led by Kevin Rudd, and the opposition party agreed on carbon pricing to reduce the effects of global warming. It was a bold move and one that would have set Australia at the forefront of countries tackling climate change and encouraging research and the use of renewable energy. But not long after this the opposition party under new leadership became convinced climate scientists were wrong. They argued there was no consensus about global warming among scientists and there was proof human activity was not a factor. This signalled a cultural change in our country. Rather than listening to those who were educated experts in their scientific fields, people relied on their own perceptions of the issue; they had only to look outside and see that it was cold to know that global warming was not happening. This negation of science allowed people to be comfortable using fossil fuels to enhance their lives; they did not have to spend their hard-earned money on renewable energies; and, more importantly, the coal industry was being hailed as the backbone of the Australian economy. The message was clear: experts do not understand the science as they are all motivated by their own interests. What mattered to most of the population, it seemed, was self-interest, anecdotal evidence, personal opinion, and the economy. It allowed people to stay in their comfortable environment without having to be challenged or induced to change their lifestyles. And the argument challenging science became a catalyst that led to arguments challenging other realities in our country. My experience of climate change denial in 2008 has now become commonplace. Those early seeds present within a small group have grown to produce populations not listening to experts in many fields; in fact, each person’s personal experiences and personal “research” has made them an expert. Money and the economy are front and centre on any issue and anyone’s opinion can be justified and supported by likeminded experts on the internet. Although this is my experience in Australia, it seems to be similar in other parts of the Western world.

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3.3 Terrorism It is clear a major change has been the rise of terrorism. No one is immune to the threat of violence from a terrorist attack, and the addition of this alarming fact to the changed social fabric I have described, has created a global environment that would have been unthinkable merely a decade ago. The vote on Brexit, the election of Donald Trump in America, and the popularity of Marine Le Pen in France highlight the disturbing trend. Terrorism has enabled the growth of nationalism and protectionism hoping to reduce the threat of terrorist violence. Unfortunately, some of the blame is being cast towards any person of the Muslim faith. We have the largest numbers of displaced peoples in human history, including during World War II. Some Australians blame particular groups of refugees for terrorist attacks and thus believe that stopping them from coming to our country will stop terror attacks. This again highlights the number of people who believe individual opinion is more relevant than the opinions of experts. This was highlighted when the Director General of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, Major General Duncan Lewis,6 stated in the Senate that no connection could be made between refugees and terrorist attacks in Australia. The Sydney Morning Herald included the following statements by General Lewis: I have absolutely no evidence to suggest there’s a connection between refugees and terrorism,” Mr. Lewis replied. . . . Mr. Lewis made clear the overall security environment was “worsening,” and said ASIO was dealing with an “unprecedented caseload” in both volume and gravity. The threat to Australia would persist despite the weakening of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, he said. “We assess that well beyond the physical existence of this so-called caliphate, the threat of terrorism and the threat of a terrorist attack against Australians and Australian interests will continue,” Mr. Lewis said.7

So even though the threat is still growing, it has nothing to do with Australia’s acceptance of refugees. The Director General endured a backlash from sections of the Australian community over his comment. The backlash included a newspaper article titled “Just What is the ASIO boss smoking?” The article said: He has to be kidding. Just a day after the NSW coroner pronounced the Lindt cafe siege a terrorist attack, committed by (fake) Iranian refugee Man Monis, Lewis can’t be ignorant of the connection. His deceptive attitude undermines faith in the government to keep us safe . . . The fact is that refugees, fake or not, and their offspring are significantly represented in terrorism attacks and foiled plots in this country, Europe and the US.8

Another article in the newspaper was Andrew Bolt who begins his newspaper article with “ASIO boss Duncan Lewis should tell us the truth about refugees and 6

Major General Lewis served in the Australian Army for thirty years. His major awards include Officer of the Order of Australia, the Distinguished Service Cross, and the Conspicuous Service Cross. His extensive biography and information on his experience working with world peace and security issues are available at www.asio.gov.au/director-general-security.html (2018). 7 Koziol (2017). 8 Devine (2017).

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terrorism, or shut up. The danger is too great for our top spy to pretend there’s no link here.”9 Once we stop listening to those whose knowledge and expertise qualify them to speak publicly on a particular issue, alternate facts can be accepted. An illusion is created to show that all opinions are equal, that the experts do not make decisions based on the best interests of the country. Specialists in various fields are labelled at times as the ‘lunileft’, ‘leftards’ or ‘snowflakes,’ when what they say does not match the narrative of opinion. This is not to say that the threat of terrorism is not real. We see sickening images of ISIS members carrying out decapitations, suicide bombings carried out by children, and the kidnapping of Yazidi girls who will be offered as prizes to fighters. The call by ISIS leadership to kill the infidels and their simplistic view of prophecy show those fighting for the Islamic State to be perceived as the face of evil for the West. However, the fear is extrapolated to include any Muslim, not just those fighting for ISIS. Even those deemed to be moderate Muslims are believed to be quislings. This kind of propaganda breeds a total distrust of Muslim people. The same can be said for the propaganda about the Jewish people during the Second World War. This is highlighted by Feldhay Brenner when she says, “Because others were incapable of an empathic recognition of the Jewish experience of the genocide, Jews were effectively deleted as subjects in the human community.”10 The effective dehumanisation creates an environment where Muslim people are not welcomed by others in communities. It is isolating and challenging for them to live in the Western world; any terrorist attack means Muslim people can expect retaliation from sections of the community in which they live. They are effectively seen but not engaged with, and they are viewed as people so different as to be incapable of understanding human caring. If groups of people in contemporary society can be classed as inhuman, we have to ask ourselves, what makes us uniquely human? What makes a community accept people as human beings living in relationships with each other? What mechanism allows us to recognize this and separate the acts of violence and war committed by some in a faith community from others who have nothing to do with the atrocities? How can we stop tarring all people within any group with the same brush? This is where Stein’s work on empathy can help us create these communities. Some of the central ideas Stein develops about empathy will be explored and evaluated with a focus on the emotional connection.

3.4 Stein’s Theory of Empathy Stein addresses the question of how we constitute other I’s in her thesis. In other words, how do we understand that each person has a lived inner life? Rather than 9

Bolt (2018). Brenner (2015, 63).

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addressing this problem in a strictly intellectual sense, Stein approaches it with an appeal to emotional means. She came to this theory as it had been a problem encountered in Husserl’s explanation of the experience of an I. Each I lives in a stream of consciousness being shaped and formed with each moment through experience. As appearances in the world press in on an I, it constitutes that appearance. For example, I only see one side of the chair in front of me, but my experience is able to constitute the idea of a chair. I know there are sides to the chair that I cannot see. It is not that I imagine a chair; it is the object intended by my consciousness that I understand.11 The problem here for Stein is if I see one side of this chair and constitute the intended object, each one of us also constitutes the intended object: we all understand the object together. If this is true, how do we constitute the other mind that also constitutes objects? If this is not true, how do we all understand others and intended objects? Stein argues our ability to constitute the other lived inner life is possible through empathy—a unique act of perceiving. Empathy, according to Stein, is “the experience of foreign consciousness in general, irrespective of the kind of experiencing subject or of the subject whose consciousness is experienced.”12 In just the same way we constitute the chair without seeing all sides of it, we constitute the consciousness of the other through empathy. One example Stein gives is that we may see the pain of another in their expression and be pulled into the feeling in the subject’s place. In this way we are at the position of the other while retaining our own zero point of orientation.13 The pain is experienced primordially by the subject while the one being pulled into the feeling experiences the pain non-primordially. Stein suggests that empathy is analogous to a memory, expectation, or fantasy of our own experience,14 as it is during these moments that we are confronted with our own mirror images. However, the memory, for example, is primordial whereas the remembering is non-primordial. In the same way, when I am living at the place of another’s feeling, such as pain, that other’s experience is primordial, and my empathy is non-primordial.15 If Stein argues that we can see the pain or joy in another and are pulled into the feeling, how does she explain the relationship between feelings and the bodily expressions that we see? She argues that feelings and expressions are not causally related. If they were, she explains, a feeling of happiness would cause an individual to smile, or a feeling of grief would cause someone to cry. However, she argues that the two phenomena—feeling and expression—are joined. A feeling, no matter what that feeling is, contains energy. The feeling of happiness, for example, contains an energy that is released in the smile. Rather than one causing the other, the feeling terminates

11

Sawicki (2012). Stein , 11. 13 Ibid., 10. 14 Ibid., 10. 15 Ibid., 10. 12

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in the release of the energy so the feeling and expression are not two separate things.16 Although we can be mistaken when seeing the pain or joy in another’s face, we are correct in our analysis most of the time because of the release of the energy. Of course we may have some types of feelings that we cannot express physically; this is where Stein argues these feelings are released as a fantasy, or in the imagination—in “the creation of another world where I can do what is forbidden to me here.”17 In this way she contends that all feelings by their nature, regardless of their type or intensity, must have their energy released in some form. There is a clear, distinguishable difference between the release of energy in expression and the simulation of an expression; as Stein says, the “expression(s) appear as the outpouring of feelings, they are simultaneously the expression of the psychic characteristics they announce.”18 Therefore, what we see cannot be anything but what the I is feeling as the expression is the outward termination of the feeling’s energy. This allows us to understand others. It is by connecting empathically to another that I become aware of being one among many. This is not only how others are constituted to us, but how we are constituted to ourselves. Stein says, When I now interpret it as a sensing living body and empathically project myself into it, I obtain a new image of the spatial world and a new zero point of orientation. It is not that I shift my zero point to this place, for I retain my “primordial” zero point and my “primordial” orientation while I am empathically, non-primordially obtaining the other one.19

So my zero point of orientation becomes one among many, and I have now constituted other I’s like my own. This understanding of each point of orientation being one among many is what allows us to constitute ourselves through empathy. Not only do I empathize with others and constitute their I’s, but, at the same time, through reiterated empathy,20 I empathically understand my individual acts through the others’ constitution of me. This is how I understand the projection or image of myself presented to the other I. In this way empathy is able to aid us in understanding and constituting our own selves. Through empathy others’ attributes are announced to me and through reiterated empathy I empathically have my projected attributes announced to me. It is through empathy that my inner perception can grasp myself as my inner perception can harbor a possibility of deception. Stein gives the example of someone who believes s/he is acting in a kind and generous manner. However, reiterated empathy can illuminate the fact that s/he is looking for approval from those around her/him rather than acting by motivations of kindness and generosity.21 Empathy provides greater understanding and clarity about oneself. As Stein says, “This is how empathy and inner perception work hand in hand to give me myself to myself.”22 16

Ibid., 53. Ibid., 52. 18 Ibid., 54. 19 Ibid., 61. 20 Ibid., 18, 88. 21 Ibid., 89. 22 Ibid., 89. 17

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Stein argues that grasping emotions through empathy gives us greater depth of insight into the person we are empathising with. Although we have established that we empathize the content of another’s experience, we do not necessarily grasp the fullness of their being. Stein comments that: it is possible to conceive of a subject only living in theoretical acts having an object world facing it without ever becoming aware of itself and its consciousness, without “being there” for itself. But this is no longer possible as soon as this subject not only perceives, thinks, etc., but also feels. For as it feels it not only experiences objects, but it itself . It experiences emotions as coming from the “depth of its ‘I’.” This also means that this “self”-experienced “I” is not the pure “I,” for the pure “I” has no depth. But the “I” experienced in emotion has levels of various depths. These are revealed as emotions rise out of them.23

In other words, we need emotions to be part of the empathic exchange. As Stein says, theoretically, anyone not engaging in emotional empathic encounters is not engaging in empathy. If one is not aware of itself and one’s consciousness, there can be no partnering with another’s consciousness, no constitution of the other’s I and no way to experience reiterated empathy. For Stein, the emotions flow forth over all aspects of the I and flow out of me. She gives the example of someone who has a “cheerfulness of character.” This cheerfulness is announced in every experience of the person: it permeates all parts of the I. Therefore, empathic acts need both knowledge and feeling for fulfilment. “As my own person is constituted in primordial spiritual acts,” writes Stein, “so the foreign person is constituted in empathically experienced acts. I experience his every action as proceeding from a will and this, in turn, from a feeling. Simultaneously with this, I am given a level of his person and a range of values in principle experienceable by him.”24 Stein’s development of empathy as I have outlined it above covers only part of her understanding of empathy, but this is the focus of this chapter. It is the appeal to emotion, the focus on the emotional connection only available through the act of empathy, which is necessary in today’s world. An emotional connection necessarily reduces fear and hate, as the other becomes someone with emotions. Establishing an emotional connection humanises the person, they are no longer a faceless one among many in a group of people. They are recognised as having loving connections who are a part of the community rather than a member of a group living in the community.

3.5 Polish War Diaries Rachel Feldhay Brenner applied Stein’s concept of empathy to the Polish war diaries of Maria D˛abrowska and Aurelia Wyle˙zy´nska. Feldhay Brenner was asking the questions “Could empathy—the capacity to understand ‘you’ as another ‘I’—remain viable in a world in which one group of people dehumanized and exterminated 23 24

Ibid., 98, emphasis mine. Ibid., 109.

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another group of people on account of ethnic difference? Could empathic ethics— the capacity for moral self-correction through an intersubjective encounter—function under racist domination, which abrogated the universality of human dignity, respect, and the sanctity of life?”25 In Feldhay Brenner’s conclusion she argues that “the Final Solution undermined the essence of empathy by invalidating the universality of human beings experiencing each other’s consciousness.”26 I will focus here on Feldhay Brenner’s analysis of the diary belonging to D˛abrowska. We can see why Feldhay Brenner argues that Stein’s theory of empathy was not enough to deter the ill treatment of the Jews, and prevent the Holocaust, but the focus on emotional, empathic connection can lead to a different conclusion. Feldhay Brenner’s examination of the Polish diaries provides an excellent example of Stein’s philosophy of empathy applied to world experiences. One of the diaries she analyses was written by Maria D˛abrowska, a Polish novelist living in Warsaw, and covers the period of the establishment of the Warsaw Ghetto and the Ghetto Uprising. Feldhay Brenner claims that D˛abrowska experienced a transitory development of the self through reiterated empathy with the Jewish people. As the development was transitory, Feldhay Brenner argues that there is “a discrepancy, which attests to the relative accuracy of Stein’s theory of empathic ethic in the praxis of the genocidal experience.”27 What I will examine here is whether the discrepancy that Feldhay Brenner says questions the accuracy of Stein’s theory, includes the emotional element in the evaluation. A change in our understanding will reveal that D˛abrowska does not engage in an emotional encounter of empathy, nor reiterated empathy as Stein understands it, and this is precisely why her development is transitory. In the end, her diary is a confirmation of Stein’s theory of empathic ethic and evidence of the desperate need for it during this genocide and, indeed, in our contemporary world.28 D˛abrowska is revealed as a very complex writer. She was known as a champion for the Jewish people after she published a paper called “Annual Shame” in which she argued against the rising violence towards the Polish-Jewish students in 1936, well before the construction of the walled Ghetto but at a time when most of the Jewish population lived within their own separated area of Warsaw.29 However, what Feldhay Brenner uncovers in Dabrowska’s diaries is a person motivated by Polish Nationalism rather than by her concern for the safety of the students.

25

Feldhay Brenner, “Edith Stein’s Concept of Empathy and the Problem of the Holocaust Witness,” 58. 26 Feldhay Brenner, “Edith Stein’s Concept of Empathy and the Problem of the Holocaust Witness,” 81. 27 Feldhay Brenner, “Edith Stein’s Concept of Empathy and the Problem of the Holocaust Witness,” 82. 28 Unfortunately I do not have access to the diaries myself to confirm what Brenner draws from them in her Chapter. The diaries were released in 2005 and Brenner herself states that she could not obtain a copy but she had the text sent to her privately and used it with permission for her chapter. Hence the focus here is on the argument Brenner makes from the source. using the source? 29 Feldhay Brenner, “Edith Stein’s Concept of Empathy and the Problem of the Holocaust Witness,” 65.

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D˛abrowska believes the Polish people have a destiny as the chosen race and should be leaders in Western Europe, but she sees that her country is not nearly as enlightened as its Western European counterparts.30 She is against the violence imposed on the students and the compromising of their education—education being one of the ideals of the Enlightenment period and of a democratic system—but she comes to see the students as a group that holds back progress. The only way Poland can become the kind of country it is destined to become is to separate from the Polish-Jews— as Brenner says: to achieve a “disengagement of the parties.”31 D˛abrowska herself reports in June, 1944, that the removal of the Polish-Jews was in fact a great thing for the nation. She notes in her diary: This is the strange secret of this occupation—the destitution has not increased. On the contrary, affluence has been on the rise and it seems to be spreading into wider spheres of society. From the stories of the teachers, I conclude that today, despite everything, not fewer but rather more people are getting education than in the time of independence. Simply, those who did not have the means to educate their children—find them today. Many people attribute it to the disappearance of the Jews—and though it is terrible to admit it (because of the inhuman way in which they have disappeared)—I suppose they are right. Despite the concerns—how could Poland manage without Jews—I think that without them it would have blossomed like a flower.32

It is clear from this quotation that D˛abrowska has no real engagement with what is happening in Warsaw at the time, and her words draw attention to the prejudices she holds about her nation and its place in the world. D˛abrowska also refers only to anecdotal evidence to confirm her view, despite obvious historical facts to show that Poland would not have flourished without its Jewish citizenry.33 D˛abrowska had set up her nationalistic ideal in opposition to the Polish-Jews, and the negative empathy here highlights her choice to keep her I in the nationalistic space. It is clear she is aware of the fate of the Jewish people, but her use of the word “disappeared” is evidence she does not want to engage with this.34 Rather, she focusses her I on what she considers positive outcomes. This would have been enhanced by the pervasive culture of anti-Semitism. What is evident in Feldhay Brenner’s analysis is D˛abrowska’s lack of engagement with any Jewish person about their experience within the Ghetto. In fact, Feldhay Brenner uses terms such as “detachment,” “unemotional,” and “impersonal.”35 D˛abrowska’s detachment, however, changes with the news of the death of her Jewish lover in the Ghetto. To engage, for D˛abrowska, takes an intimate,

30

Ibid., 66–67. Ibid., 68. 32 Ibid., 69. BN/ML CD nr 4, Tom X, R˛ ekopsis, zcszyt 2.IX.1943 – 5.X.1945. 33 Ibid., 69–70. Feldhay Brenner explains the economic and educational situation at this time that highlights Dabrowska’s self-deception. 34 Ibid., 69–70. Feldhay Brenner has the same conclusion. 35 Ibid., 71. 31

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emotional connection with a Jewish victim. Feldhay Brenner argues that this experience reorients D˛abrowska’s value hierarchy, and humanism then outweighs her nationalistic pride and sense of destiny.36 (D˛abrowska) saw her trust in humanism as her most fundamental concern because in this particular moment of personal crisis she understood that the evil of the Holocaust threatened to destroy humanism. This insight forced D˛abrowska to place the universality of humanistic ethics over the particularity of her nationalistic creed. For a moment, therefore, D˛abrowska’s empathic concern about humanity’s overpowering proclivity to evil transcended her nationalistic concerns about the special destiny of the Polish nation.37

This, however, is only transitory as “D˛abrowska’s empathic illumination points to the limitations of the humanistic universal values when countered by the ideology of exclusionary national convictions.”38 This leads Feldhay Brenner to the following conclusion: The lasting impact of the witnessing experience reveals a discrepancy, which attests to the relative accuracy of Stein’s theory of empathic ethic in the praxis of the genocidal experience. As we have seen, Stein saw the empathic experience in terms of the unfolding of the person’s unique potential. The lack of introspection evinced in D˛abrowska’s regression to her ideological nationalist creed in her appreciation of Warsaw sans Jews does not seem to show progress toward ‘the meaning of life,’ as Stein saw it.39

D˛abrowska was clearly confronted by the treatment of the Jewish people in Warsaw even though she believed Poland’s people were the “chosen ones” and had a nationalistic ideology that determined they should not be inferior to the rest of Western Europe.40 D˛abrowska’s failure to develop herself with her new-found hierarchy of humanism could be because her empathic concern was not on an emotional level. D˛abrowska’s grief at the death of her lover, which Feldhay Brenner argues turns her into a witness of the tragedy, is really focussed solely on the loss of her lover. It is her pain, sadness, and depression that motivate her to write she is “scared of the sea of evil released by people and of loss of faith in human beings.”41 D˛abrowska’s concern is an idealistic humanist argument that conflicts with her national pride once the conflict is over. In this instance, D˛abrowska questions her own value hierarchy system but does not feel emotional concern for the individual Jewish people themselves. It is not obvious that D˛abrowska feels hatred toward Jewish people; the fact she has a Jewish lover for whom she cares supports this. Her loss of faith in human beings in the face of evil draws parallels to her original writing that supports the Jewish students at the university. D˛abrowska maintains that the rejection of humanist ideals that reduces the standing of the Polish people involved in the persecution of Jewish students, and that lack of engagement with enlightenment thought reduces Poland’s standing among Western European countries. For 36

Ibid., 72. Ibid., 72. 38 Ibid., 71. 39 Ibid., 82. 40 Ibid., 66. 41 Ibid., 72. 37

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D˛abrowska, the treatment of the Jewish people in the Ghetto was problematic because their engagement in the behaviour reduced the nations standing in relation to Western Europe. There is a tension here for D˛abrowska, who wants the fulfilment of an elightened Poland as the chosen country, but fulfilling that goal does not mean that the Jewish people need to suffer, hence her support for them. The two ideals could both be achieved for D˛abrowska; the Polish people needed to fulfil their own destiny rather than blame the Jewish people. When the conflict was over, D˛abrowska did not necessarily return to her past ideology; rather, she had a comfortable understanding of how the two should work together. Had D˛abrowska engaged fully with the Jewish community, drawing on the human capacity for emotional empathy before and during the development of the Ghetto, she could have found inspiration in motivating Poland, including the Jewish community, to attain a nation together that flourished with the Enlightenment ideals D˛abrowska could see in the Jewish people. It is only through the use of an emotional connection of empathy that D˛abrowska could have developed her own self in relation to the other—the Jewish people.

3.6 Conclusion By making sure we preserve the emotional component in Stein’s theory of empathy, we are able to make transformative relationships, just as Stein herself did. However, this is an incredible challenge. By engaging fully in empathy we become open and vulnerable to the other. But it is a way forward in being able to sort between fact and fiction. Opening to those who think differently to you help us to develop our understanding of the world. It reduces the threat of terrorism by standing with those who are different and can inspire lasting change when witnessing atrocities in our world. To understand Stein’s development of empathy, it is important to include the need for emotion as part of the empathic process, and to highlight reiterated empathy as the means to attain a more mature self-individuation. It is crucial that empathy is an engagement with the other that allows the other to remain different. Appropriating the experience of the other, or negating the experience of the other, is not empathy. Stein says, “If we take the self as the standard, we lock ourselves into the prison of our individuality. Others become riddles for us, or still worse, we remodel them into our image and so falsify historical truth.”42 As an example, if we are to truly engage with the outsider within our communities, we need emotional, empathic connections that allow them to be other. True emotional empathy reduces self-interest as it is through empathy that the other is brought into constitution and, as a consequence, we understand ourselves better: each one of us as one among many. We are then able to speak about people from different 42

Stein , 116.

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backgrounds—whether the differences are cultural or faith-based—as a part of the community rather than a section in the community. Through a true exchange of empathy, we not only experience what it is like to be the other, but we also allow reiterated empathy to help us develop and grow in our understanding of what it is to be human. Sarah Borden Sharkey argues that we are all individual, non-repeated human beings as far as Stein is concerned.43 This of course agrees with the Christian tradition of being created in the image of God. By accepting that we are each an individual form of a human being, we can understand other ways of being human only through a true empathic encounter with the other. I am one way of being human, just as everyone reading this is also one way of being human although each one of us has a different, individual way of being human. One person cannot show in a complete sense what it is to be human. The more we engage with otherness, the more we understand what it is like to be human in a multi-faceted way, and this helps shape our understanding of humanity. Therefore, it is when we make an emotional, empathic connection with others that we can engage in our call to love our neighbours as ourselves. It is through understanding our neighbours as other, but as uniquely human, that we come to share in the divine love through all humanity. Through an empathic unity within community we can address and reduce the threat of terrorism and violence in our societies. Once an emotional connection is formed, and once we allow people to remain other, we are capable of unity in difference. Frances Horner explains that in true empathy, as Stein understands it, there needs to be this encounter with the ‘other’ as the ‘other’. She states: For an encounter to be empathy . . . we must refuse to reduce the “other” to the horizon of the same. Stein gives two ways a reduction to sameness can happen. The first is assimilation by imitation, where I negate my own experience and take on yours . . . A second way to achieve “sameness” is suppression or negation of the other’s experience by appropriation. I appropriate your experience by reinterpreting it to fit my own. I project my own values and experience onto your circumstances—I know how you feel, we say. But this is NOT empathy. Neither assimilation of a foreign experience nor suppression of it engages alterity in its truth, that is, encounters the “other” in a way that permits it to be what it is—to be different.44

By applying Stein’s understanding of empathy practically, we can truly engage with the other in contemporary society to reduce fear and hatred, and by emotionally connecting with the other’s experience, we can in turn develop our potentiality as a part of the human family. Through Stein’s understanding of empathy we can develop a true, unconditional love of neighbour that is our call from Christ for humanity.

43 44

Borden Sharkey (2010, 157). Horner and Frances (2011, 1).

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References Australian Government. (2018). Director General Security. Retrieved May 16, 2018, from www. asio.gov.au/director-general-security.html. Bolt, A. (2017). Tell the truth or shut up, Duncan Andrew Bolt. Herald Sun. Retrieved May 16, 2018, from https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy2.acu.edu.au/docview/1902890278?accountid= 8194. Borden Sharkey, S. (2010). Thine own self: Individuality in edith stein’s later writings. Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press. Brenner, R. F. (2015). Edith Stein’s concept of empathy and the problem of the holocaust witness. In M. Lebech & J. H. Gurmin (Eds.), Intersubjectivity, humanity, being: Edith Stein’s phenomenology and christian philosophy (pp. 57–82). Bern: Peter Lang. Devine, M. (2017). Just what is the ASIO boss smoking? The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved May 30, 2017, from www.dailytelegraph.com.au/rendezview/just-what-is-the-asio-boss-smoking/newsstory/0cb9492e2d24ef54605429058f448357. Horner OCD & Frances. (2011). Suffering and its end: Edith Stein’s empathic community. Carmel Stream. Retrieved October 17, 2012, from http://carmelstream.com/CarmelStream/Short%20A rticles/Edith%20Stein%20Empathy.pdf. Kaziol, M. (2017). Absolutely no evidence: ASIO boss shuts down Hanson over refugee terror links. Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved May 30, 2017, from www.smh.com.au/politics/fed eral/absolutely-no-evidence-asio-boss-shuts-down-hanson-over-refugee-terror-links-20170526gwdkkl.html. Lebech, M. (2011). Why do we need the philosophy of Edith Stein. Communio: International Catholic Review, 38(4), 682–727. MacIntyre, A. (2006). Edith Stein: A philosophical prologue 1913–1922. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Sawicki, M. (2012). Personal connections: The phenomenology of Edith Stein. The University of Notre Dame, Hesbergh Libraries. Retrieved March, 10, 2012, from www.library.nd.edu/colldev/ subject_home_pages/catholic/personal_connections.html. Stein, E. (1986). Life in a Jewish FAMILY: Her unfinished autobiographical account. In L. Gelber & R. Leuven (Eds.) (J. Koeppel, Trans.) Washingon, DC: ICS Publications. Stein, E. (1989). On the problem of empathy (3rd rev. ed.) (W. Stein, Trans., Vol. 3). Washington, DC: ICS Publications.

Chapter 4

Mystical God-Forsakenness and the Ethics of Solidarity Jacob W. Torbeck

Abstract This paper investigates important links between the Carmelite mystical tradition that Stein investigates phenomenologically in “Science of the Cross” and the broader mystical theology investigated Edith Stein’s “Ways to Know God.” Set in the context of her life and other work, these links offer opportunities to understand the normative implications and demands that impinge upon anyone who enters this “most sacred darkness.” What emerges from an encounter with the dark night of the soul is an ethics of solidarity. Through an understanding of “surrender” that remains illuminative and valuable in our time, Edith Stein emphasizes that it is not merely the carrying of the cross that offers redemption, but the analogous crucifixion and seemingly God-forsakenness of the dark night that enables real solidarity between persons and, ultimately, with God.

“We go for our people.” The hagiographical retelling of Edith Stein’s life almost inevitably includes these legendary words of encouragement, spoken by Edith to her sister Rosa as they were being deported from Echt.1 As the story is told, we who hear these words imagine that Rosa is comforted by Edith’s expression of purpose— that somehow, in enduring this injustice, they find themselves in solidarity with “their people,” those Jews who had been similarly taken. The retelling has further narrative resonances, if we consider that the Carmel from which the sisters were taken represents Mount Carmel, a “high place” where Elijah is said to have dwelt and to which has been attached the notion of holiness by a half-dozen religious traditions. We recall also the story in the Gospel of Matthew during which Jesus, having been praying on a “high place,” the Mount of Olives, is similarly arrested and taken from the mountain before his trial and execution. I point to the hagiographic symbology here not to make some pious overture to the holiness of Edith Stein, but to highlight the already present link we find 1 See

Posselt (2005), gleaning 16 from Chap. 20, p. 336.

J. W. Torbeck (B) Loyola University Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. F. Andrews and A. Calcagno (eds.), Ethics and Metaphysics in the Philosophy of Edith Stein, Women in the History of Philosophy and Sciences 12, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91198-0_4

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in the retelling of her own story between prayer, contemplation, persecution, and action—in both instances, a persecution for, with, and on behalf of others. This connection and the presence or foreshadowing of the Cross is ensconced further when we consider the religious names of Teresa Benedicta of the Cross and John of the Cross. However strong the presence of the Cross is in her life and thought, any suggested link between spirituality and mysticism, on one hand, and ethical praxis, on the other, is often contentious, with some scholars expressing the opinion that pursuits such as metaphysics, mysticism, and spiritual theology have little practical value, especially when we consider a field like ethics, which deals constantly with real human problems, here and now. The widespread existence of this opinion has roots in the historical division, even tension, between the contemplative and the active life.2 The anonymous author notes in the Cloud of Unknowing, “[j]ust as Martha complained about her sister Mary, in the same way, even to this day, all actives complain about contemplatives.”3 The persistence of this tension into the present time can be gleaned by looking at the continual, though perhaps relatively small, stream of articles and books written in response to it, which take up (because it is necessary to do so) the relationship of spirituality to theology, and of mysticism to ethics, sometimes referred to as “the mystical and the prophetic.”4 In a 2001 article, Robert J. Egan, S.J., cites a 1952 article in which Ray C. Petry declares this relationship “‘a predominant area of ignorance within the Western World,’ identifying it as ‘the growing unawareness of the balance maintained in the Christian tradition between contemplative worship of the Divine and active service of the human.’”5 In his address, Petry has little difficulty in pointing to several well-known mystics who lived and encouraged others to live lives of active service. Nevertheless, Egan continues, this balance “seems always to be fading from awareness.”6 It is thus the purpose of this essay to bring this relationship—between the contemplative life and the active life—back to our attention. While Stein’s explicit mentions of ethics are few and seldom grace the pages of her most well-known philosophical works, I contend that by understanding the connection between the Carmelite mystical tradition that Stein investigates phenomenologically in her Science of the Cross and the broader mystical theology investigated in “Ways to Know God” in the context of her life and other works, we may understand the normative implications and demands that impinge upon those who enter the “most sacred darkness” of Christian mysticism. What emerges, I contend, is an ethics of solidarity-throughsurrender that remains illuminative and valuable in our time, emphasizing that it 2

For example, Thomas Aquinas’s classic distinction between these forms of living in ST IIa IIae Q. 179–182. 3 James (1981, 158). See John 19:38. 4 For example, the 2016 conference in Limerick, entitled “Wrestling with Angels? Practical Theology as Spiritual Practice,” Toine van den Hoogen (2014), Peterson (2005), and Nava (2001). 5 Petry (1952, 3); as cited in Egan (2001, 93). 6 Egan, ibid. It is interesting to note that Egan (2001) cites Petry (1952), who himself cites numerous other authors whose work spans the late nineteenth and earlier twentieth century, demonstrating the persistence of this dialectic.

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is not merely the carrying of the cross, but the analogous crucifixion and seeming God-forsakenness of the dark night that enables real solidarity.

4.1 Stein as Mystic I want to begin with a question and a brief anecdote: To what extent are mystical categories appropriate for understanding the complex life and thought of Edith Stein? I recall early on in my studies of Edith Stein hearing the critique that Stein “didn’t really understand” mysticism, and didn’t really “get” Teresa of Avila, and so used Teresa in ways that were often inadequate. Bracketing the skepticism about whether the mystical and the ethical are related, it seems to me that in some circles, there existed a mutual mistrust between philosophers and mystics or scholars of mysticism. At the time, I was a very new scholar, only interested in Stein’s philosophical works, and so I had no bearing from which to weigh the validity of this statement, except that it sounded like the preface to what we might now call “mansplaining” mysticism. When I posed the same question to Mette Lebech, her answer (which was accompanied by a certain look on her face that let me know what she thought the aforementioned critique was worth) emphasized that Edith Stein’s status as a mystic has every bit to do with her own exploration of the questions of empathy, constitution, consciousness, the soul, the mind, the body, and the relationships between them. And indeed, the phenomenological practice of the epoché, when turned on the soul, has at least a cursory resemblance to Teresa’s interior castle, even if the aims are expressed in vastly different language and the results themselves are different.7 And further, inasmuch as we understand Levinas, Derrida, and Marion to understand their own mystical sources in Pseudo-Dionysius, Maximus the Confessor, Augustine of Hippo, and the Kabbalah, we may extend this courtesy to Edith Stein, but perhaps more so. When Josephine Koeppel notes in her biography of Stein’s life and work that “[Her] mysticism […] will be understood by persons who practice it themselves,”8 one has the sense, however, that phenomenology and the reduction, or even other means of knowing, are not that of which she speaks. Instead, Koeppel speaks of an interior disposition of self-offering manifest in the day-to-day loving kindness practiced by Sister Benedicta in Carmel despite every cause for grief; this kindness sprang from the cultivated peace of her inner life.9 Nevertheless, the degree to which the ways to know God and ways of loving others overlap in Stein’s thought rule out a strict separation between mysticism as a way of knowing and mysticism as praxis. Instead, as has become a common axiom in theology, “theory and praxis are inseparable” in Stein’s thought. That Stein does not take up praxis or more 7

See Stein (2002a, 373), where the pure-I is said to be able to move freely among the mansions. Hereafter cited as FEB. 8 Koeppel (1990, 168). 9 See also FEB 444 (7.9.4).

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specific ethical commands is in part a function of this unity, but also a function of the purpose of Stein’s writings in relation to ethical action: Rather than investigating ethical precepts and their application in specific circumstances, Stein investigates and explicates those conditions by which even seemingly impossible ethical demands may be understood and met through supernatural help.

4.2 The Roots of a Steinian Mysticism: To Know and to Love God While, as I have written just above, a strict separation between “knowing the precepts of God” and “doing the precepts” of God is not sustainable, Stein nevertheless focuses much of her writing on means of knowing God and the precepts of God. As early as her On the Problem of Empathy (1916), Stein is referring to knowing the precepts and the love (and the anger) of God through empathy, “an act of perceiving sui generis.”10 While here we focus on Stein’s later and thus more developed thought, we might speculate that these early investigations into the problem of empathy shaped Stein’s personal understanding of how one might come to know God. Following upon this, her early encounter with the autobiography of Teresa of Avila, in which the ascent of the soul is spoken of in a series of devotions that include giving oneself over to contemplation of Christ’s passion, doing penance, and a state of peace (and ultimately mystical union and ecstasy), can be seen as highly influential not simply because Stein did join Teresa’s order but also because of the degree to which Teresian ideas come through in her subsequent work.11 And indeed, in her communications to others through letters and books intended for those in her community, Stein points to the writings of the Carmelite mystics Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross as the best sources on mystical experience.12 While John of the Cross might be Stein’s foremost source for her Science of the Cross, the work itself draws deeply upon the Platonic and Neo-platonic mystical tradition of the Church, especially Gregory of Nyssa, who in the Life of Moses speaks of “Luminous Darkness,”13 and more importantly Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. Like the Areopagite, she says, John wants to direct souls through his writings, as if he was leading them by the hand when he says that one must “rather strive … not to understand as to understand … rather to be blind and transport oneself into darkness… than to open the eyes.”14 This citation of the Areopagite undoubtedly comes about because of her study of his works, which would later become her article “Ways to Know God,” but it 10

Stein (1989, 11). See Teresa d’Avila, Autobiography, cf. 8.5, 11.20, 14.1. 12 See Stein (2014), Letters 117, 120, and 159, for example. 13 See Gregory of Nyssa, Life of Moses, §46 and surrounding. 14 Stein (2002b, 33, 66); cf. Pseudo-Dionysius, Mystical Theology I.1; John of the Cross, Ascent of Mount Carmel 2.8.6. 11

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also serves the function of linking John of the Cross and thus an important font of Carmelite mysticism to the long tradition of Christian mysticism in an explicit manner, when the rest of her discourses on the contemplative mystical tradition seems only to reference ideas and not the mystics themselves. Dionysius’s mysticism thus offers an identifiable heritage for John of the Cross’s, a patrimony that confirms its authenticity. Bracketing her explicit comparisons, having read Dionysius, it would be impossible to read Stein’s treatise on John of the Cross and not connect this Carmelite father with the “father of mysticism.” For Dionysius, Stein writes, “the ascent to God is an ascent into Darkness and Silence,”15 where even unveiled mysteries still seem impenetrable. And indeed, Stein later offers, even in those instances of divine encounter, “God remains deus absconditus, the hidden God.”16 Seeing God in God’s hiddenness is the purview of faith, she explains, and elicits the desire for face-to-face encounter with the Mystery who dwells in that unapproachable light that is shrouded in darkness.

4.3 The Interior Roots of Ethical Action The message of the Cross, in Stein, is always linked with self-denial. “I think it is possible to affirm that the more necessary the doctrine the less it is practiced by spiritual persons,” she comments, before highlighting the counsel of Jesus in Mark 8:34 (and following): “If anyone wishes to be my disciple let him deny himself, take us his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses it for my sake will save it.”17 Here she elaborates that this cross is akin to the Dark Night, a phenomenology of God-forsakenness that includes the annihilation of God’s sweetness in exchange for desert trials. This is poverty of spirit, she says, and in this manner, the poverty and desolation that comes with the Dark Night is focused on the interior disposition. In her 1939–1941 essays on the occasion of a first profession and the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, however, the material component comes to the fore. The way of renunciation is not merely renunciation of spiritual consolation, but also of earthly goods and the materialism and consumerism that they inspire.18 This is nevertheless not framed as a “horizontal” or “outward” concern along the lines of what we might expect with an ethics of solidarity, but as “vertical” or “inward,” as the disordered desire for things obstructs the direction of our desires toward the Crucified God. Taking the apophatic approach of Dionysius, John of the Cross states that none of the things we might rejoice in is God. Thus, we aim for a spiritual detachment from goods and, after Augustine, desire for enjoyment of the Good itself.19 John’s words 15

Stein (2000, 87); cf. Exodus 19; and Pseudo-Dionysius, Mystical Theology 1.3. WKG 106. 17 SC 32. 18 Stein (1992, 102). 19 SC, 90. 16

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recall from Dionysius the curiosity or desire to know that Mystery who dwells in unapproachable light, and forecast Stein’s rare ethical commentary: “Only a religious position is truly ethical.”20 Only in longing for the Good and seeking the divine will can a person know what is truly just. Thus, complete self-surrender to and loving union with God in the inmost regions of one’s soul is the precondition for a truly ethical life and ethical praxis. However, if our goal is to be fully dispossessed of ourselves, implicitly seeking God through seeking the Good, or to organize one’s life around the horizon of the Good, this is indeed setting oneself to do the divine will, but the dispossession will remain incomplete—while it is a partial dispossession to hand oneself over, the completion of this ethical dispossession requires, she says, recalling again her commentary on Dionysius, knowing that this Good is God, meeting God “eye-to-eye.”21 Seemingly following a path similar to Augustine’s in On Christian Doctrine, Stein earlier invokes John of the Cross in cautioning against seeking moral good for any reason other than the love of God, saying that enjoying the good for any other reason counts as naught for one’s sanctification.22 This includes not only the exercise of virtues, such as justice and charity, but also those gifts such that might lead one to God, such as prophecy, healing, and so on—all of these can essentially become commodified fetishes that distract from rather than reveal the Crucified One. To put it in more contemporary phenomenological parlance, they become idols, rather than icons. Quoting extensively from John of the Cross, she advises with him that those wishing for divine union seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, or justice (Mt 6:33).23 Again, the question of the specific constitution of justice is left aside, even as she continues to discuss John’s comments on sermons. In John as in Augustine (as in Paul, and Hauerwas, etc.), the criterion for credibility in preaching is an exemplary life, lived in a spirit of piety.

4.4 On Dark Contemplation and “Mystical God-Forsakenness” This kind of ethical action, founded on a desire for God alone, is akin to, but not quite, the passive night of the spirit, the “dark, mystical contemplation, joined to detachment from all that which so far has given light, support, and consolation.”24 As Stein puts it, all of these things are removed from the soul except faith—that desire for light in the darkness that sets Christ as poor, as humiliated, as crucified,

20

SC, 165. SC, ibid. Cf, WKG 106. 22 SC, 99. 23 SC, 107. 24 SC, 120. 21

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and as abandoned in front of the eyes of the soul.25 What I call a “mystical godforsakenness,” we read about in John’s writings as the “Dark Night of the Soul.” Stein recalls in the early pages of The Science of the Cross that John “experienced this darkest night”—God’s self-withdrawal—in prison, after which he wrote, “Where have you hidden, Beloved, and left me behind in tears?”.26 The anguished feeling of God’s abandonment is itself an experience of the cross that brings John (Stein says) to a mystical union with the crucified. This union is itself based on common experiences, namely, Christ’s own experiences of this forsakenness in anticipation of the Cross in the Garden of Gethsemane on the Mount of Olives, and the explicit citation of Psalm 21 during his Crucifixion on Golgotha, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” This “common experience” calls to mind again that moment in On the Problem of Empathy when, almost as an afterthought, Stein says that empathy is how a believer might “claim to know the precepts and the love of God.” In this instance, again, it is the taking up of this cross that leads to union with God, a participatory surrender and dispossession of one’s self “into the hands of the invisible and incomprehensible God” that grants the Dionysian “ray of darkness” that grants divine wisdom, not through the illumination of the intellect, but through being plunged into love that knows not its object.27 This love, she continues, is readiness for action and sacrifice. Again, however, we ask: What action? Sacrifice for whom? The sacrifice may be of one’s comfort, for God. This stage seems to roughly correspond to contemplative katharsis (before theoria and theosis), as it erodes or wears away weaknesses such as pride and arrogance and spiritual gluttony (for consolations), which is itself painful. The luminous darkness is so called because it renders those within it blind and anguished by the relative wretchedness exposed in its rays.28

4.5 The Ethics of Solidarity and the Interior Life Other clues about this action might be gleaned elsewhere. In a section of Finite and Eternal Being 7.9.5, on capability, obligation, and the inner life (7.9.5), Stein maintains that no precept of God is taught without also the power to fulfill this precept being given, and she cites the second of the divine commands, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” as the basis for any ethics of solidarity, with the clarification that these neighbors are absolutely anyone.29 Aversions or attractions, she says, must be attended to but also questioned and interrogated, because selfdelusion and misjudgement may arise due to outward appearances or other reasons. 25

SC 121. SC, 30. 27 SC 121–122. 28 One is reminded also of Plato’s allegory of the Cave, in that the light of true day initially blinds and causes pain. 29 FEB 446. 26

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Ultimately, however, one must give way to the command to love. The resolution “to practice heroic love” of one’s enemies gives one over to supernatural assistance, and aversion gives way to the superior force of “that divine life which fills the soul [and… becomes] our own inner life.30 Likewise, in her short hagiographical account of “The Spirit of St. Elizabeth as It Informed Her Life,” we find Elizabeth’s choice to live in solidarity with and among the poor, allegedly taking the habit of a Franciscan, and serving the poor and sick at a hospital she built until her death only two years later. While Stein admits this show of heroic charity awakens amazement, her concern is once again not what was done but under what conditions it became possible in the life of this saint. In Elizabeth’s case, Stein says that the path of radical solidarity with the poor flowered from “a burning heart that comprehends everything around her with earnest, tenderly adaptable, and faithful love.”31 Citing an arranged political marriage, the subsequent death of her husband, remaining faithful to lifelong friends, enduring their removal by her severe confessor, and bearing children at such a young age, only to give them up, Stein mentions that in steps, Elizabeth was being detached from all loves but serving God and the poor. She highlights that Elizabeth’s abundant love and compassion went beyond tending to material hunger and bodily illness, but for the care of hearts with the warmth of maternal love, drawn through Elizabeth from the inexhaustible well of divine love. She closes her account with the Augustinian maxim, “Love and do what thou will,” echoing a point she reiterates in many texts, namely, that love is both caused by and results in doing the divine will.32 In the case of Stein’s treatment of Elizabeth as well as in her essays for the women’s movement and in Finite and Eternal Being, we get some sense as to why Stein speaks so frequently in more or less vague precepts, which, as I have stated, tend more to fostering of the love of God than how one might love their neighbor: It is Elizabeth’s individuality, her status as both a unique I and an irrepeatable other, her unique temperament and calling that sends her among the poor.33 Whether personal style or individual form, as we have seen, loving God is seeking to do the divine will, which prompts that same love to empty oneself in a manner fitting to an individual.

4.6 The Way of Benedicta of the Cross If we continue to posit the connection between contemplation and action, between theory and praxis, we might now wish to look to Stein’s life for further evidence of this connection. In her own practical or spiritual life, however, it is difficult to discern how exactly Stein saw her meta-ethics manifest itself. “Secretum meum mihi, my

30

FEB 446–447. Stein, The Hidden Life, 21. 32 Stein, The Hidden Life, 28. *Ama et fac quod vis. 33 For more on Stein’s understanding of individuality and vocation, see especially Borden (2010). 31

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secret is my own,”34 she said of her conversion and attraction to Carmel. Gleaning much from Stein’s ethical relationship to others requires poring over letters and the testimonies of those who knew her. Certain details are obvious or made explicit by her own hand: we see the pouring out of herself as a nurse during the Great War, the kindnesses she lavished on her family, and the lectures given in solidarity with other women promoting their dignity in an era in which the dismissal and objectification of women and their worth was even worse than our own era’s. We read in her letters her belief that the need of the other in anguish transcends every precept or commandment. Beyond the time she spent as nurse, we also read recollections of her taking warm clothes to the people in a village near Speyer, of her speaking out politically to her sisters, who wondered whether voting under the Reich would serve any purpose. As it is retold, Stein argues that to not offer a voice in opposition is to risk complicity through silence. There is also the matter of how Stein’s understanding of her vocation relates to a theology of atonement, an idea that Joanne Mosley highlights in her biography as being resonant throughout Stein’s life, and one that she carried with her as she sacrificed her secular life outside the Carmel.35 There is a sense in which the evangelical counsels she kept can be seen not simply as an imitation of Christ but also a sacrifice that bespeaks solidarity; by taking up poverty, chastity, and obedience, one finds themselves in a form of solidarity with the poor, the orphan, the widow, and the stranger, and the powerless. Finally, we glean from her own will and also the testimony of others that her life and death were understood as being linked to the suffering of all those persecuted under the Nazi regime, and the sins of those responsible and complicit in that suffering, and that this was, at least in the accounts we have, accepted with the serenity that was fed by the font of divine love. However, just as she said that one cannot crucify oneself but rather must be put there, Suzanne Batzdorff looks to Stein’s death in solidarity with her people as an inevitable outcome,36 much as some Christian theologians might look at the crucifixion of Jesus, in light of his life, as inevitable. However inevitable, the victim is an atoning victim insofar as their will is to offer oneself in loving solidarity, united to and in Christ and sharing in his passion on behalf of others.37

34

Andrews (2016, 381–401, 386). Cf. Conrad-Martius (1960). Mosley (2004), throughout, but see especially pp. 51–52; in the Paulist Press reprinting as Stein (2006), see 48–49. 36 These sentiments were voice in her address to the International Association for the Study of the Philosophy of Edith Stein, given at the June 2017 conference. 37 See Posselt, note 20 on p. 262. 35

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4.7 Conclusion The mystical God-forsakenness of the Dark Night, through its fostering of the love of God (the first greatest commandment) through a purification analogous to crucifixion thereby sets the mystic in an empathetic, dialogical relationship with the Crucified God, who is, as Michael Andrews says, “revealed precisely through nonknowability and absolute singularity of the primordial experience of alterity.”38 We find ourselves entering into spiritual solidarity, therefore, with the God-man who has already descended into solidarity with humanity. In this solidarity we act not only in a manner akin to the Crucified, but also from the same meta-ethical font: the infinitely kenotic love of God that pours itself out into us as we seek to do the divine will, which is love of neighbor (the second greatest commandment, which is like the first). This self-surrender to and outpouring for the needs of the other (which transcend every precept) serves as the means by which one finds themselves in the midst of things, in solidarity. As Dostoevsky writes, and is summarized in John Paul II’s 1987 encyclical, Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, concerning the meaning of solidarity, “All are responsible for all.”39 Or to elaborate further, “There is only one way to salvation and that is to make yourself responsible for all men’s sins. As soon as you make yourself responsible in all sincerity for everything and for everyone, you will see at once that this is really so, and that you are in fact to blame for everyone and for all things… and I more than all.”40

References Andrews, M. F. (2016). The ethics of keeping secrets: Edith Stein and philosophy as autobiography. In A. Speer, S. Regh, & A. Sondermann (Eds.), “Alles Wesentliche lässt sich nicht schriben”: Leben und Denken Edith Steins im Spiegel ihres Gesamtwerkes. Verlag Herder. Borden, S. (2010). Thine own self: Individuality in Edith Stein’s later writings. Catholic University of America Press. Conrad-Martius, H. (1960). Vortrag über Edith Stein (vor der Gesellschaft für christlich-jüdische Zusammenarbeit). In Edith Stein: Briefe an Hedwig Conrad-Martius. Mit einem Essay über Edith Stein, hrsg. von Hedwig Conrad-Martius. Kösel. Egan, R. J. S. J. (2001). The mystical and the prophetic: Dimensions of Christian experience. The Way, 102, 92–106 James Walsh, S. J. (Ed.). (1981). Cloud of unknowing. Paulist Press. Koeppel, J., OCD. (1990). Edith Stein: Philosopher and mystic. The Liturgical Press. Mosley, 2004.Mosley, J. (2004). Edith Stein: Woman of prayer. Gracewing. Published 2006 in the Unites States as Edith Stein: Modern Saint and Martyr. Paulist Press. Nava, A. (2001). the mystical and prophetic thought of Simone Weil and Gustavo Gutierrez: Reflections on the mystery and hiddenness of god. SUNY Press. 38

Michael Andrews, Keynote Address to the International Association for the Study of the Philosophy of Edith Stein, given on June 8, 2017. 39 John Paul II, Sollicitudo Rei Socialis 38. 40 Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, part II, Book 6, Chap. 3, Sect. g.

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Peterson, E. H. (2005). Christ plays in ten thousand places: A conversation in spiritual theology. Wm. B. Eerdmans. Petry, R. C. (1952). Social responsibility and the late medieval mystics. Church History, 21, 3–19. Posselt, T. R. (2005). Edith Stein: The life of a philosopher and Carmelite. In S. Batzdorff, J. Koeppel, & J. Sullivan (Eds.), ICS Publications. Stein, E. (1989). On the problem of empathy (W. Stein, Trans.). ICS Publications. Stein, E. (1992). The hidden life (W. Stein, Trans.). ICS Publications. Stein, E. (2000). Ways to know god. In Knowledge and faith (W. Redmond, Trans.). ICS Publications. Stein, E. (2002a). Finite and eternal being (K. F. Reinhardt, Trans.). ICS Publications. Stein, E. (2002b). The science of the cross (J. Koeppel, OCD, Trans.). ICS Publications. Stein, E. (2014). Letters to Roman ingarden (H. C. Hunt, Trans.). ICS Publications. van den Hoogen, T. (2014). Spirituality in the perspective of foundational theology. HTS Theological Studies, 70(1), 1–5.

Chapter 5

Love Divined: Discerning a Contemplative Ethic in the Philosophy of Edith Stein Michele Kueter Petersen

Abstract Edith Stein, in her philosophical thought, applies the poetic metaphor of the unfolding of an exquisite flower to explain how the individual soul, after blooming in its earthly homeland, is inserted into an eternal, imperishable wreath surrounded by other seemingly insignificant blossoms. To illustrate her point, she explains that whereas the superficial observer will see merely a throng of people in the rows of soldiers marching by, a mother or bride can discern him whom they were eagerly searching out in the crowd. “Their love divined” the mystery at the heart of his existence, fully known only by God. This vignette serves as a paradigm for the contemplative ethic that can be discerned in Stein’s philosophy. Empathy and freedom work together, and a contemplative space of the heart unfolds, as the center of the authentic nature of human being. Its status, whereby nature and grace work together, is the result of free choices made throughout a lifetime. Stein’s “ethics” is a relational freedom for the sake of this mystery, for the sake of God. “Ethics” and the practice of contemplative silence are two sides of the same coin, so to speak. This paper will explain the dynamics of empathy and freedom at work in Edith Stein’s thought; discuss the contemplative space of the heart; and discern the contemplative ethic at work in her philosophy. Contemporary applications of such an approach will be explored.

Edith Stein, in her reflections on the meaning of human individual being in her text, Finite and Eternal Being, explains that an individual human being is in content an embodiment—a particular instantiation of something that is more universal. An individual human being is a part of a whole who realizes herself in terms of a “vital unity [Lebenseinheit]” and is able to achieve her unfolding and thereby full flowering only within the context of a whole—with her rootedness in a particular place and in working together with other members of the whole.1 Essential to this unfolding 1 Stein

(2002a).

M. K. Petersen (B) Iowa City, IA, USA © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. F. Andrews and A. Calcagno (eds.), Ethics and Metaphysics in the Philosophy of Edith Stein, Women in the History of Philosophy and Sciences 12, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91198-0_5

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of human being—in addition to the fundamental laws that govern all of animate life with its propagation, including care and provision for basic life necessities—are the laws of spiritual life in that whatever is produced and created by the human mind is shared in common and provides life sustenance for contemporary humans and generations yet to come; these “orders of life” in their directive force as well as formative power are integral to understanding human life.2 Further, humankind with its spirit nature [Geistnatur] “is called to a communal life which—after having grown from a temporally, spatially, and materially determined soil—eventually annuls the limitations of time and space.”3 Stein applies the poetic metaphor of the unfolding of an exquisite flower to explain how the individual soul, after blooming in its earthly homeland, is inserted into an eternal, imperishable wreath surrounded by other small, seemingly insignificant blossoms. She uses an example typical of her time to illustrate her point: Whereas the superficial observer will see merely a throng of people in the rows of soldiers marching by, a mother or bride can discern him whom they were eagerly searching out in the crowd; he resembles no one else. “Their love divined” the mystery at the heart of his existence, a mystery fully known by the divine.4 This vignette serves as a paradigm for the contemplative ethic that can be discerned in Stein’s philosophy—a mature relational awareness characterized by a pattern of call and response. A contemplative space of the heart unfolds as the center of the authentic being of human life. Its mysterious status, whereby nature and grace cooperate in a kind of reciprocal relatedness, involves also empathy and freedom working in tandem throughout the course of a lifetime. Stein’s ethics is a relational freedom for the sake of this mystery. My thesis is that Stein brings together the mind and the heart through an integrating hermeneutical principle of discriminative discernment, in order to illuminate what it is to live into fully human life—divine life. The purpose of this study is to lay bare the dynamics at work in her philosophical thought. To live a collected life is to live more fully in the present moment, and to engage, process, and understand personal relational realities inclusively within a larger contextual field of shared meaning and value by self-reflexively employing critical thinking concerning one’s own instrumentality. For contextual and heuristic purposes the mind is juxtaposed to the heart in this study. I assign the term “mindfulness” to the first part of my discussion to indicate something of the overarching significance of the practice of contemplative silence in the life and thought of Stein. I shall focus primarily on her theory of empathy and also on what her texts say about freedom. Next, I shall focus on the heart. At “the heart of matter” is a contemplative space where grace is freely given and builds on nature. At the limits of finitude, grace is bestowed by the divine as pure gift. Then, I shall discern the contemplative ethic of call and response at work in Stein’s philosophy. It is the contemplative heart engaged in discriminative action who discerns “love

2

Ibid. Ibid. 4 Ibid., 509. 3

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divined” in the fullest sense of the term. Finally, I shall conclude with some remarks about the significance of Stein’s philosophy in our time. Stein is acutely aware of difference—of what may seem foreign—whether it be in terms of the experience of specific communities, or of encounters with particular individual human beings. We become aware of the integral unity of our own communities (of discourse) in and through the very experience and realization of what is “foreign” or different in our midst. Stein is equally aware of the common bond that connects us with all peoples and individuals across every age. As we increasingly become aware of the whole of humankind, we are not only enriched but perfected by the experience of “foreignness” in the process.5 In short, she reveals a highly developed relationality in her life and thought and understands the personal relational realities that are at work. Her philosophical thought is characterized by a strong sense of relational wholeness, an awareness at once of both the individual and the unity of the larger human community to which the individual belongs.

5.1 Part One: Mindfulness: Empathy and Freedom at Work 5.1.1 Empathy I want to begin this study by presenting Stein’s theory of empathy and emphasize the important role that hermeneutics plays in her texts. Stein considers “empathy as the understanding of spiritual persons,” which is, in fact, the title of the last chapter of her dissertation.6 She attempts to carry out hermeneutical work in the final section of the work. In order to understand the hermeneutical dimensions of many of her texts, let us consider that being comes to be apparent in the medium of language when we go about the act of understanding the meaning of a sentence; being becomes accessible to the human mind. Further, consider that we go about seeking truth in interpreting a text by ascertaining whether or not there is correspondence between the truth that manifests in the meaning of a sentence and the truth that manifests in actual reality. But when we consider understanding as an act that we undergo that involves a thought process, we can correlate understanding and thought, and thus arrive at an understanding of what it is that we are understanding. Interpretation and hermeneutics enter into the picture here because their premise rests on the possibility that we can express what we have understood through a separate act that is distinct from our original understanding of meaning, or what is said, and reality, or what is so.7 Stein’s theory of empathy—insofar as we attempt to understand the situation or 5

Ibid., 510. Stein (1989). 7 The passing of understanding as a mode of knowledge to understanding as a mode of being occurs within language. Paul Ricoeur will take a long route through semantics and the theory of text, to 6

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perspective of the other—involves the ongoing critical process of understanding our understanding. In her text, Potency and Act, a forerunner to Finite and Eternal Being, Edith Stein considers the “Spiritual life as intellectual life.”8 She goes on to explain what she means in that “Living means being in motion from within. Living spiritually also means being aware of this motion, being illumined for oneself, being conscious of oneself and possibly of something else—intelligere [understanding]—, setting oneself and something else in motion from oneself.”9 Both reflection and reflexivity are at work in the relational awareness that she is referring to. In God, she writes, this is all one, but in humans this process involves “a manifold of different acts.”10 In other words, in the human being who is reflexively aware, there is being and the meaning of being, which has to be interpreted. In Finite and Eternal Being, Stein articulates it this way: “Spirit [Geist] is meaning and life in full actuality. It is a life filled with meaning [Sinnerfüllt]. Meaning and life are completely one only in God. In creatures we must distinguish between a fullness of life which is formed by meaning, and the meaning which actualizes itself in the fullness of life.”11 Stein believes that consciousness is spirit and not nature in its correlation to the object world. Our outer perception transpires in spiritual acts. Similarly, in an act of empathy in which we grasp or understand an act of feeling we have already entered into the domain of the spirit. She explains that just “as physical nature is constituted in perceptual acts, so a new object realm is constituted in feeling. This is the world of values.”12 Empathy then, according to Stein, is a perceptual consciousness whereby other persons come into awareness for us. The spiritual subject is an “I” who in and through its acts constitutes an object world and creates through its will the object realm of values. For the spiritual subject, spiritual acts stand together in relationship, with one act experientially proceeding from another act, and so on. Motivation is the “experiential ‘meaning context’” of spiritual subjects, or the form that the “I” takes as it moves from one act to another.13 Further, motivation comprises what is lawful about spiritual life such that spiritual acts have a rational lawfulness about them. And significantly, for the spiritual subject, the experiential meaning context is intelligible as a totality of meaning, whether the experience be primordial or empathic.14 In the end, the spiritual subject is governed by rational laws and its experiences are considered to be intelligibly related.

avoid the Heideggerian short route of transforming hermeneutics into an ontology of understanding or an ontology of selfhood. Thus, in following Ricoeur’s hermeneutical theory, we would avoid an onto-theological program. 8 Stein (2009). 9 Ibid. 10 Ibid. 11 Stein, Finite and Eternal Being, 380. 12 Stein, On the Problem of Empathy, 92. 13 Ibid., 96. 14 Ibid.

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For Stein, a personality unfolds in the following way: A spiritual subject can feel a value and experience a correlative level of her own nature in the value. The spiritual subject cannot lose that value which it feels. And the psycho-physical individual cannot through habit find a value for which there is no correlative level. The different levels of a person do not “develop” or “deteriorate,” and can only be disclosed or not during psychic development.15 She says it is possible for the personality not to unfold; an example would be that of someone “who does not feel values himself but acquires all feelings only through contagion from others” and he is therefore not able to fully experience “himself”—who he really is.16 We can ascertain here the importance of personal experience and the necessity of relationships which are integral to the unfolding and growth of the personality. The spiritual person exists whether or not she is unfolded. The psycho-physical individual can be referred to as the “empirical person” and is “the realization of the spiritual person.”17 If one is sensitive to ethical values and yet refuses to follow them with the will due to permitting sensual motives to be the guide, then they do not contribute to a unity of meaning and lack intelligibility. Thus, an action calls for understanding and should be experienced as emanating meaningfully from the entire structure of a person.18 According to her theory, empathy enables us to learn from others. Stein says that we cannot complete what is in conflict with our own experiential structure, and yet something can be given as in an empty presentation.19 She uses the example of how she can be skeptical in regard to matters of faith and at the same time understand a person who will sacrifice everything on earth for his faith. In this case, she is able to empathize a value and understand it as what motivates his actions even though this type of religiosity may be altogether foreign to her and may remain unfilled by her.20 Another example she uses is that of people who organize their entire lives around the acquisition of material goods, or modern consumerism. While the higher range of values may be closed off to such people, Stein says she is nonetheless able to understand them although, to be clear, they are different in type.21 She refers to Dilthey in saying that one has to be able to experience oneself as a person who is a meaningful whole in order to be able to understand those other persons whom we meet in life.22 We become prisoners of our own individuality if we take our own “self” as the standard; then others are an enigma or, we run the danger of remaking them into our own image. Empathy is significant for our own self-knowledge and for our ability to engage in self-evaluation. When we can empathize with people who are in a certain respect similar to us, we can allow a dormant part of ourselves to develop. In and through 15

Ibid., 110. Ibid., 111. 17 Ibid., 112. 18 Ibid. 19 Ibid., 115. 20 Ibid. 21 Ibid., 116. 22 Ibid. 16

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empathizing with people who have different values than ourselves, we are able to gain clarity in understanding “what we are not” or “what we are more or less than others.”23 We become aware of our own deficiency when we empathically encounter value ranges that are closed. When we express preference or disregard for something, we sometimes discover a value that otherwise would have gone unnoticed, which is a way of occasionally learning how to correctly assess ourselves.24 While Stein acknowledges that as a psycho-physical individual there is no other way to acquire information about the spiritual life of others except through the medium of corporeality, she concludes her study on the theory of empathy by leaving open to further investigation the question of religious consciousness, i.e. the possibility of genuine exchange between spiritual persons such as when one purports to have experienced what are the effects of God’s grace.25 She leaves open the possibility for delusional experience as well as for genuine experience, all of which is connected with our motives. In a later text, she will say that “human souls are capable, by virtue of their free spirituality, of opening themselves in loving self-giving to one another and of receiving one another into their own selves….And this receiving is not merely a knowing comprehension…but an inward reception…which aids in nourishing and forming the soul.”26

5.1.2 Freedom Personality is marked by freedom and reason.27 Beyond that, in the inner life of the soul, the human “I” has the capability as a spiritual person to take in and understand external impressions and respond in personal freedom. By and large, however, people do not make full use of the freedom they have and lose themselves “to the pressures and forces of external and internal ‘events’ and ‘drives’ [Geschehen und Treiben].”28 Moreover, as sentient beings, they do not possess the power to actualize full freedom in their action when considering their lives as a whole. Spirituality and bodily sentient being come together and reticulate, which is the distinguishing factor of the particular being of a spiritual soul as opposed to the being of a sentient soul.29 Stein believes that the conscious, perceptive I is able to disengage or assume a level of awareness and a certain distance in terms of embodiment—the adage “mind over matter” has import here—such that the mind rises in freedom above bodily corporeality, while still remaining joined with itself as a sensual organism. Spiritual life continuously arises up out of lower, sensorial life in this manner. Importantly, while spiritual life 23

Ibid. Ibid. 25 Ibid., 117–118. 26 Stein, Finite and Eternal Being, 514. 27 Ibid., 343. 28 Ibid., 370. 29 Ibid., 371. 24

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cannot stand on its own ground, the I does have the capability to take a stand in its higher being such that it can freely exercise dominion over its lower being of sensorial life. The domain of spiritual life is the authentic domain of freedom where the I has the opportunity to be genuinely creative from its own depth of self. All free acts or deeds share one thing in common: The I decides the content as well as the direction that its own being will take. Insofar as it has freely chosen its experiential content, it has generated its own life. Stein makes an important distinction here: Generating one’s own life is not synonymous with being the creator of one’s own life as she explains, “The I has received the freedom of self-determination as a gift.”30 The vitality of the I is received, with every deed a response and a grasping of something proffered for acceptance. Free acts do continue to have that distinguishing feature of “selfengagement [Selbsteinsatz]” that is genuinely personal life.31 Spiritual life and acts of freedom have their foundation in matter which is at the disposal of human intellect and free will so that the human being may be “illumined, formed, and used.”32 Out of this “dark ground,” in all of its bodily sentience, emerges a life personally formed now as an integral part of the human person. It is the task of a lifetime for the human spirit in its freedom to illumine the ground and therefore communicate and disclose an increasingly personal form. Ultimately, the personal I is able to move around freely and has its home in the soul, which is a space at the center of the totality that is the body-soul-spirit with the soul abiding in its very own self—the crossroad and locus of everything that comes from the world of sense and the world of spirit. In her text, The Science of the Cross, Stein explains, too, how the personal “‘I’ is that in the soul by which she possesses herself and that which moves within her as in its own space.”33 One can conscientiously devote herself to whatever demands her attention in the world, relying on the value as well as the meaning it carries in and of itself and in terms of the soul, and allow whatever it is to enter at the appropriate depth level of the soul. The deepest, inmost space of interiority is also the locus of her freedom: here “she can collect her entire being and make decisions about it.”34 It is a calling for human beings to live in that inmost region, which is to say that human beings then have themselves in hand—or at least as much as is humanly possible. It is from this still center-point that one can rightly deal with the world and find one’s truly intended place; this is important lest one be unduly influenced by outside factors. Personal life hinges on our free choice in which we engage in the spiritual transaction of freely giving and receiving; this exchange has to do with the communal life that spiritual persons live, and individual spiritual growth and spiritual formation, in addition to the creation of spiritual association. Stein regards the highest form of community to be the union of free persons insofar as they are united in “their 30

Ibid., 372. Ibid. 32 Ibid. 33 Stein (2002b). 34 Ibid. 31

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innermost ‘personal life.’”35 The human soul has to be freely formed so that it must possess self-knowledge as well as the capability to take a stand in regard to itself: “It must find itself in a dual sense: It must learn to know itself, and it must come to be what it is destined to be. And freedom has a share in the attainment of both of these ends.”36 The soul takes the form of the body and is positioned between spirit and matter. In personal freedom it can go beyond itself and is capable of receiving higher life, divine life, into itself so that it is able to dominate the body and its very own nature. Transformation of the soul takes place as a result of the received divine life. Participation in this divine life happens by way of free and personal self-giving. Freedom for Stein is being able to give and receive love freely—for the sake of God; this is the highest action one comes to and is related to the search for God as knowledge of reality grows. It should be noted that she considers “cognitive work” and “achievements of the will” to be free actions.37 A human being who is aware of freedom can either accept or reject exterior influences such that the free activity of individuals factors into the spiritual formation of that person. In terms of Stein’s life experience, early on she has a strong sense of freedom and inner authority. When, for example, she grows weary of the lack of collaboration that her former teacher, Edmund Husserl is willing to engage in, she writes in a letter to Roman Ingarden that “In principle, I just cannot bear the thought of being at someone’s disposal. I can place myself in the service of a cause, and I can lovingly do all kinds of things for someone, but to be in service to someone, in a word, to obey someone, is something I cannot do.”38 Thus, she concludes that she may have to take leave of her current working arrangement with him if he is not willing to collaborate with her. Several days later, in a follow-up letter to Ingarden, she proclaims her freedom from “The Master” even though she is not the happiest about the situation.39 Within a different context, in her autobiography, she explains how she previously had decided to leave study at one university for another: “…I was able to sever the seemingly strongest ties with minimal effort and fly away like a bird escaped from a snare.”40 Again, we see that strong sense of purposeful inner freedom surface in her life.

35

Stein (2000). Stein, Finite and Eternal Being, 430. 37 Edith Stein, Essays on Woman, Revised Second Edition, in The Collected Works of Edith Stein, vol. 9, trans. Freda Mary Oben (Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 1996), 98. 38 Stein (2014). 39 Ibid., 90–91. 40 Stein (1986, 2016). 36

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5.2 Part Two: The Heart of Matter 5.2.1 Grace When there is a divine call one may obey it or not as “nature, freedom, and grace collaborate.”41 Grace is a formative power that does not operate according to the limits of nature, but can further transform one’s inner form from within. When one accepts natural limitations through a humble acquiescence to the divine order, then transcendence of these natural limitations becomes “the highest effect of grace….”42 Stein explains grace as “an elevation of creaturely being by means of union with God and effusion of divine being.”43 And, “Grace calls for a ‘personal’ receptive response.”44 A person can make the free choice to listen, that is, she has the capacity to open herself in surrender to the divine. Spiritual beings who have free openness are capable of receiving the divine life. Grace presupposes freedom and nature, too, because the efficacy of grace can only discover fertile ground in free creatures.45 Unlike grace, nature does not entail freedom and cannot be personally received; creatures discover themselves to be in existence having been endowed with a particular nature which they do not have the freedom to accept or reject. Nature, then, has to do with limitation, constraint, confinement, and restraint, with no absolute, unconditional freedom for the creature. Free creatures such as human beings have the possibility however, to say “yes” or “no” when it comes to relationship with their very own natures.46 Pure human nature should be the goal of any transformational educational work that is carried out, although it will be beyond human power to achieve it perfectly and wholly.47 The possibility exists for a further effect of grace in a kind of restoration of one’s perfect integrity: That is, human beings can freely cooperate in the orders of creation and redemption.48 With human cooperation, grace can initiate and make possible this integrity. The heart of humankind has to do with every individual of the human family becoming what they, according to their nature, are destined to be. “Becoming” involves temporality in a process of unfolding. There is a twofold dependency at work in this process of temporal unfolding: It is dependent upon the cooperation of every individual as well as the common endeavor of all people.49 Grace initiates the process, Stein says, of “the future fulfillment of the original ordination of the natural being

41

Stein, Essays on Woman, 162. Ibid., 85. 43 Stein, Finite and Eternal Being, 405. 44 Ibid., 399. 45 Ibid., 400. 46 Ibid. 47 Stein, Essays on Woman, 194. 48 Ibid., 195. 49 Stein, Finite and Eternal Being, 526. 42

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of people.”50 This future fulfillment is participation in the divine life that transpires through free and personal self-giving.

5.2.2 Purity of Heart In 1941, Stein writes a meditation for the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross in which she explains that the created will lacks the freedom to be able to exalt itself. There is a calling the created will receives to enter into unison with the divine will, and if the will freely undergoes submission to this unison, then it may be allowed in freedom to take part in helping to perfect creation. If this unison is declined it falls into bondage, while choice is retained in the human will; however, the will then becomes subject to constraints imposed by others who may pressure it in unintended directions that pull it away from developing the nature that God desired, and therefore, the goal it had been directed to in its original freedom.51 When original freedom is lost, so, too, is the security the human has in making sound decisions. The way back on course is through obedience to the divine will, which releases the human from enslavement of the will and creaturely bondage; this is the way of freedom and leads to purity of heart.52 We have moved deeper relationally with “purity of heart” and are now in the inmost region of the soul where a union of love between God and the soul comes about. The Spirit of God directs and leads a person in this complete surrender. However, it may be the case that one has made a basic decision to place her will within the divine will and lacks the clarity yet that a “good action” that has been taken corresponds to the divine will.53 Stein explains that if things are not clear, then “the sure way of discerning what is right is still wanting,” and she does not yet have herself in hand as the inmost region is not yet open to her.54 However, when she is at the point in her life of faith when she is so committed to God that she wants only what God wills for her, then the “ultimate depth” unfolds whereby she is drawn by the divine into the inmost region of the soul and surrenders in a union of love. This blind faith of wanting only what God wills is God’s grace at work in her, and she has attained to the highest state that a human being can attain, although the highest union of love is the mystical marriage.55 The mystical marriage is union with the tripersonal God, and that is the goal of the writings of John of the Cross, explains Stein.56 Very few people live in and out of the inmost region of their soul, and even fewer people constantly live from and out of this deepest interior region of the soul. In 50

Ibid., 526–27. Stein (1992). 52 Ibid. 53 Stein, The Science of the Cross, 165. 54 Ibid. 55 Ibid., 166. 56 Ibid., 179. 51

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a letter written in 1931, she gives the advice to patiently persevere in prayer and not set a deadline with the divine.57 She emphasizes that human beings are led in an individual way with some persons reaching their goal more quickly than others. While in relative terms a human being can do very little compared to what is done to one, she advises that nonetheless one must do the little that one can. One can find the right way to do that little bit in prayer and should follow the attraction of grace whenever it is felt. In another letter Stein discusses the contemplative vocation and how one should seek to become “an empty vessel for divine grace.”58 And, in yet another letter, she says that without any human assurance whatsoever, one has to place oneself in the hands of the divine, with the resultant security being “all the deeper and more beautiful.”59

5.3 Part Three: Discerning a Contemplative Ethic 5.3.1 Call and Response The focus shall now be on the mind and the heart working together in order to ascertain what goes on, according to Stein, when the movement of contemplation and action are fully operative. In a lecture she delivers on vocations in Aachen in 1931, she speaks of a vocation as “something to which a person must be called.”60 Someone sends out a call for something in a distinctive way. Vocation has to do with formation that develops based on a person’s deepest abilities, which is an inherited set of gifts. A person’s call and, indeed, vocation—that is, the works and creations that a person is destined to carry out—is determined by human nature and recognizable by other people.61 The nature and life course of a person if seen through the eyes of faith are the work of God, so that it is, therefore, God who calls. More specifically, in a biblical sense, God calls people to a vocation—to be the imago Dei, or the image of God. There are several ways that people can receive this call: First, God speaks it in the words of sacred scripture—in the Book of Genesis as in the above example from the Hebrew Bible and Old Testament, and in the New Testament as well. Second, the call is inscribed in the very nature of people. Third, history illuminates this matter. And finally, “the needs of our time” advance a message of urgency.62 If we examine her life, Stein understands the teaching profession itself to be a religious calling, especially during her years at Speyer. The transformative educational goals in teaching are twofold: To inspire the student’s receptivity, and to collaborate with the 57

Stein (1993). Ibid., 286. 59 Ibid., 105. 60 Stein, Essays on Woman, 59. 61 Ibid., 60. 62 Ibid. 58

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student so as to deflect any of the student’s initial personal attachment to the subject material at hand.63 Thus, academic study is of enduring value for both student and teacher. In Finite and Eternal Being she says that whatever it is that penetrates into the depths of the soul calls the person and appeals to a person’s intellect—to the power the person has to “understand” whatever it is that is happening.64 Second, it is also an appeal “to reflection [Besinnung]”—to the power that is in search of the meaning of whatever it is that “approaches the soul.” Finally, it is an appeal also to freedom, as “the intellectual search for meaning” always already is free activity.65 The soul has a personal spiritual life that is integrated into a larger contextual field of meaning. A meaning that is understood dictates the corresponding attitude, along with behavior, and impels the soul to meet the demand. Stein refers to the “being-moved of the soul” as having to do with “a call and response” in which a person is not coerced by whatever it is that approaches, but must “take a stand” to either negate or freely affirm its own position.66 It is through the reasoning power that the person has “to clarify its position, to discover by way of understanding in what manner it ought to behave, and finally to engage its personal power freely in pursuing the required course.”67 It is in the inmost part of the soul that the personal I is most at home. When it is able to live in this interiority, then it has the capability to freely dispose of and freely engage the collected power of the soul. The I draws closest to what is the meaning of an event, fully opens to demands that confront it, and is situated in the most efficacious way to evaluate the meaning and importance of the demands. Few people live a “collected” life such as this.68 When one lives collectedly in the deepest reaches of the personality, then even seemingly insignificant things can be understood within a larger context. Moreover, one lives the present moment inclusively such that the moment is processed and then, in a spirit of openness, generously brought forward. That is, one transcends the present moment by keeping the future open to new possibilities, and thereby opens to a larger field of meaning and value. It is interesting to note here that Stein previously had a great interest, as Husserl’s doctoral student and private assistant, in organizing his work on internal time-consciousness. Her philosophy, then, brings together the mind and the heart through an integrating hermeneutical principle of discriminative discernment, whereby the reasoning power with its self-reflexive critical thinking is put to a higher purpose within the contemplative space of the heart. Stein notes that the vocation of the human soul to union with God entails the vocation to eternal life—the full realization of finite being is eternal being. It is the will of God that the soul should receive an eternal participation in the life of God. She explains that “the soul is destined for eternal being, and this destination explains why 63

Ibid., 10. Stein, Finite and Eternal Being, 438. 65 Ibid., 439. 66 Ibid. 67 Ibid. 68 Ibid. 64

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the soul is called upon to be an image of God in a ‘wholly personal manner.’”69 What is innermost and most authentic about a human being, that is, what we understand or divine concerning “this deeply hidden nature in ourselves and in others remains dark, mysterious, and ‘ineffable,’” until earthly life has ended, she says.70

5.3.2 Contemplation and Action as an Operative Force for Good in the World Ethics, in Stein’s philosophy, is relational freedom for the sake of the divine and it cannot be understood apart from the contemplative space of the heart. In a meditation written in 1940, Stein writes, within the context of discussing the vow of poverty, that spirits and hearts are to be “free for God.”71 When one lives in unity with the divine life then, as she explains, “everything is one: rest and activity, looking and acting, silence and speaking, listening and communicating, surrender in loving acceptance and an outpouring of love in grateful songs of praise.”72 We have here superb textual evidence of the seamless nature of contemplation and action when they are fully operative. Earlier in 1932, in the second of a series of four lectures that she presents, she talks about the importance of having “sufficient intellectual training.”73 She explains that “Intellect and emotion must cooperate in a particular way in order to transmute the purely emotional attitudes into one cognizant of value.”74 Further, when one exercises intellectual critique, then one is able to distinguish spiritual truth from falsehood. In the final analysis, she articulates the importance of the unity of thought and action: “Words should inspire action; otherwise, words are mere rhetoric camouflaging nothingness, concealing merely empty or illusory feelings and opinions.”75 In Stein’s personal letters, too, we see the seamlessness of contemplation and action—the dynamic of call and response at work: She discusses how the highest acts of personal freedom are “a free gift of bridal love;” these acts are also the way that our “personal uniqueness will come into its own.”76 In another letter, she says that her basic attitude is one of gratitude with “no other desire than that God’s will be done in me and through me.”77 And, she writes, too, that what one believes one understands about one’s own soul is merely a “fleeting reflection” of what is God’s secret, and lest one become discouraged about what one perceives in oneself or in 69

Ibid., 504. Ibid., 505. 71 Edith Stein, The Hidden Life: Essays, Meditations, Spiritual Texts, 100. 72 Ibid., 16. 73 Stein, Essays on Woman, 103. 74 Ibid., 103–04. 75 Ibid., 104. 76 Stein, Self-Portrait in Letters, 1916–1942, 313. 77 Ibid., 309. 70

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others, one has to go about life having faith in a secret history and rely on that for strength.78 Her treatise entitled “Individual and Community,” written following her experience of World War I, in 1919, details communal experience and the experiential current that flows in community, with certain individuals being carriers of the life of the community. In the treatise, she explains how there is coherence among experiences that have a role to play in the growth and life of the community, which in their content come together into a meaningful whole.79 These realized experiences are united by motivation, which “give to the experiential current of the community the character of a unique intelligible coherence.”80 She describes the contours of what I would refer to as the creation of a “third space” between individuals, a relationship of ethical import when two individuals share the motivation of being a force for good in the world: “When the other is ‘imparting’ his thoughts to me, the sense originally constituted in his thinking is dawning upon me step by step in understanding. And when I am experiencing that sense, it is moving me to ‘further thinking’ that no longer is a re-realization but rather an original realization, and in which new portions of the total sense-coherence disclose themselves to me. So in the ‘exchange of thoughts’ a thinking-together arises that no longer is experienced as an experience of one or the other, but as our common thinking.”81 It is in this way that we become part of a vast network of motivation, “the knowledge-process of humanity.”82 Intellectual coherences are important in the life of the community and are an example of super-individual motivations. Stein makes a crucial distinction regarding value in her treatise on politics that is telling in revealing the importance of personal relationships and community, and the interconnection and interdependence of human beings: She distinguishes between “ethical quality” and “ethical duty.” She explains that while the ethical duty—the bare fact of what needs to be done—is addressed to one’s liberty, the ethical quality of a person is not solely dependent on the person alone—neither the aptitude to embrace values nor the manner in which the person is “filled with them is a matter of her liberty.”83 If it is not within our personal scope to be able to obtain access to those values, we nevertheless can and should “listen” in our freedom for them. Stein believes that it is important to seek the image of the divine in each human being which entails assisting her to win her freedom.84 And towards that end, she readily acknowledges in a soul-searching letter that in the contemplative life it is deeply

78

Ibid., 331. Stein, Philosophy of Psychology and the Humanities, 169. 80 Ibid. 81 Ibid., 170. 82 Ibid. 83 Edith Stein, An Investigation Concerning the State, in The Collected Works of Edith Stein, vol. 10, trans. and ed. Marianne Sawicki (Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 2006), 171. 84 Stein, Essays on Woman, 259. 79

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important to stay connected with the world.85 In fact, the deeper one finds oneself drawn into the divine, the more, she says, one must be a channel, an instrument for carrying that divine life into the world.

5.3.3 Discriminative Discernment The integrating hermeneutical principle of discriminative discernment is at work in Stein’s life in that during her years in Speyer, for example, she explains how she does not cultivate a social life comprised of mutual visits as she points out in a letter written at the time.86 She goes on to explain that anyone familiar with the commitments she has made in her life will not take offense with her for that decisive action. Stein does note in the same letter, however, that many people do seek out her help and receive hospitality from her. Thus, Stein is living her life purposively with a higher goal in mind not only for herself, but for others as well. Later, in another letter, she is self-effacing and quick to point out an important relational distinction in that she is readily available as a conduit to help lead people to the divine, and yet if someone should become more interested in her personally, then she is quick to point out that she cannot be an instrument of the divine and must appeal to the divine to assist the person by other means.87 And once she connects with a person as she writes in yet another letter—and she readily acknowledges her large circle of friends—a relational bond is established such that even if there is no regular, ongoing contact she acknowledges that she has other means of keeping the established bonds alive.88 In her correspondence when she mentions having once again traveled to the abbey at Beuron, she emphasizes the importance of keeping one’s inner life nourished; and this is especially important when a person is required to give so much of one’s self to others in their work and daily life.89 Finally, Stein is astute, realistic, and self-critical about social context and location and travels the wide path of mutual respect: She refers in one of her letters to the strong opposition that she encountered in one of her lectures due to what she notes as her “radical orientation to the supernatural.”90 She later writes that she has established a friendly relationship with the very same people who had shown such opposition to her thinking before. She mentions the serious intentions of those people who put everything they have—“their entire personalities”—into their positions which merits respect; and all this despite the fact that differences of opinion continue to surface in their ongoing discussions.91 She admits that now that her life situation has changed, 85

Stein, Self-Portrait in Letters, 1916–1942, 54. Ibid., 68. 87 Ibid., 77. 88 Ibid., 91–92. 89 Ibid., 110. 90 Ibid., 74. 91 Ibid., 120. 86

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i.e. social location, she can understand how she so displeased those people who live their lives in the midst of everything. She understands in her new situation that she had become utterly estranged from the world and concedes that it is difficult, indeed it is a real struggle for her to return to the mainstream, and probably will never succeed entirely in doing so.

5.3.4 Conclusion: Relational Awareness of Eternal Being Discriminative discernment entails for Stein the embrace of whatever it is that presents itself to her in everyday reality. There is a ready disposition of openness and acceptance about her. It entails a life of genuine freedom for the sake of others that is ultimately for the sake of the divine. The exercise of freedom is circumscribed by the demands that present themselves to her. She has the abiding sense that she is about something larger in life—that the events in her personal life are part of a larger, emergent story. Moreover, she continually contextualizes her life and acquiesces to the deeper meaning of events at work in the world by discriminatively making herself present and available to all those who enter her sphere of contact.92 Ultimately, she believes that through these life experiences and the workings of grace, freedom, and nature, that one day she will be able to come to know herself as she is known by the divine; this is what it is to live an authentic life in light of the free choices she makes over the course of her lifetime, a life characterized by call and response.93 The more she comes to know herself and understand who she is, the more she can see people for who they are; this is love divined. It is telling that Stein explains how in order to be able to embrace the whole of humanity, human beings must be considerably advanced in their understanding, indeed, in their development to be able to have an understanding of their “obligations” to that whole.94 She concentrates on how a person can make a meaningful contribution in the midst of life, which shifts conversation from an abstract concentration on moral, ethical, or legal principles to a mature relational awareness, a general sense of indebtedness to other human beings simply by virtue of a relational understanding of human being and human life. Stein lays out the intersubjective dynamics at work in human encounter in her philosophy and, at the same time, draws from several different academic disciplines, in addition to the spiritual and theological tradition, to reveal how relational realities in the wider culture as well as the church work. Discriminative discernment, which includes both fluidity in moving between contextual meanings and self-critique, assists her to uncover the forces at work in her life. This is deeply significant work as it shows a way to carry a faith tradition 92

See Francis (2018). Pope Francis, in his Apostolic Exhortation, explains in the section entitled “Discernment” how “the same solutions are not valid in all circumstances and what was useful in one context may not prove so in another”. 93 Stein, Finite and Eternal Being, 505. 94 Ibid., 510.

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forward with integrity and, at the same time, to meaningfully engage with other faith traditions and the wider culture in terms of globality and the human community. I believe this is also a significant aspect of Stein’s philosophy in her pursuit of truth. She practices self-critical thought with love and, in so doing, reveals a life of personal integrity, which is the contemplative ethic of being fully present—to self, world, and the divine—or, love learning to love by being an active, real presence— love divined—in the world. This mystery is continually being revealed and unfolds in the contemplative heart who is engaged in discriminative action. For Edith Stein the philosopher, it is an ongoing event of understanding: It is the relational awareness of Eternal Being.

References Francis, P. (2018). Gaudete et Exsultate (p. 69). USCCB, Libreria Editrice Vaticana. Stein, E. (1986, 2016). Life in a Jewish family. In The collected works of Edith Stein (Vol. 1, p. 217, Trans. J. Koeppel and Ed. L. Gelber & R. Leuven). ICS Publications. Stein, E. (1989). On the problem of empathy. In The collected works of Edith Stein (Vol. 3, p. 91, Trans. W. Stein). ICS Publications. Stein, E. (1992). The hidden life: Essays, meditations, spiritual texts. In The collected works of Edith Stein (Vol. 4, p. 103, Trans. W. Stein, Eds. L. Gelber & M. Linssen). ICS Publications. Stein, E. (1993). Self-portrait in letters, 1916–1942. In The collected works of Edith Stein (Vol. 5, p. 101, Trans. J. Koeppel, Ed. L. Gelber & R. Leuven). ICS Publications. Stein, E. (2000). Philosophy of psychology and the humanities. In The collected works of Edith Stein (Vol. 7, p. 278, Trans. M. C. Baseheart & M. Sawicki, Ed. M. Sawacki). ICS Publications. Stein, E. (2002a). Finite and eternal being. In The collected works of Edith Stein (Vol. 9, p. 508, Trans. K. F. Reinhardt). ICS Publications. Stein, E. (2002b). The science of the cross. In The collected works of Edith Stein (Vol. 6, p. 160, Trans. J. Koeppel). ICS Publications. Stein, E. (2009). Potency and act: Studies toward a philosophy of being. In The collected works of Edith Stein (Vol. 11, p. 129, Trans. Walter Redmond, Eds. L. Gelber & R. Leuven, Intro. H. R. Sepp). ICS Publications. Stein, E. (2014). Letters to Roman Ingarden. In The collected works of Edith Stein (Vol. 12, p. 89, Trans. H. C. Hunt, Intro. H.-B. Gerl-Falkovitz, Ed. and comments by M. A. Neyer, notes with E. Avé-Lallemant). ICS Publications. Stein, E. (2014). Letters to Roman Ingarden. In The collected works of Edith Stein (Vol. 12, p. 438– 439, Trans. H. C. Hunt, Intro. H.-B. Gerl-Falkovitz, Ed. and comments by M. A. Neyer, notes with E. Avé-Lallemant). ICS Publications.

Chapter 6

Person in Community, Repentance, and Historical Meaning: From an Individual to a Social Ethics in Stein’s Early Phenomenological Treatises William E. Tullius Abstract Various commentators have noticed a trajectory in Stein’s early thought, which arcs from focus upon the individual human being as essentially open to the experience of alterity to a philosophy of community in its many forms. This paper argues that, in tandem with this intellectual trajectory, one can also view Stein as developing an account of the moral life, read off the back of her developing anthropology of the human being as interiorly individual and as social. Stein’s individual ethics highlights in particular the responsibility to the development and unfolding of an authentic moral personality in attunement with the objective order of values and the absolute value of persons. Her social ethics crystallizes around a theory of repentance, highlighting the solidary sharing of responsibility for the development of community and, through the shaping of culture, for carrying out the process of meaning in history.

6.1 Introduction As Stein scholarship continues to advance beyond its early hermeneutical and historical concerns in the relation and impact of Stein’s thought on the currents of early phenomenological and neo-scholastic debates, a new freedom has emerged in the exploration of themes hitherto little studied, yet important for further understanding the full potency of her thought, and for situating her contributions against the backdrop of both current and historical philosophical concerns. Among those important implications are Stein’s contributions to philosophical efforts that wrestle with ethical life and responsibility. For the purposes of this paper, I assume that Stein’s philosophical corpus implicitly entails a consciously developing ethical vision entering into conversation with ethical

W. E. Tullius (B) The American University in Cairo, New Cairo, Egypt e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. F. Andrews and A. Calcagno (eds.), Ethics and Metaphysics in the Philosophy of Edith Stein, Women in the History of Philosophy and Sciences 12, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91198-0_6

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philosophy’s major representatives.1 Stein’s ethics, to the extent that we can speak of them, are consistently linked to developments in her philosophical anthropology and, later, in her metaphysics. Focusing on the early phases of her philosophical career, one may notice in the elaboration of her philosophical anthropology a certain trajectory of analysis that leads from inquiry concerning the constitution of the individual human being to the development of a multi-faceted and multi-layered social theory into which person is always already integrated. Stein’s ethics in this period, underpinning these ongoing inquiries, demonstrate a parallel, transitional development from an initial focus on the disclosure of individual, personal lines of ethical responsibility to a focus on the articulation of the nature of individual ethical becoming in relation to the community of others, as well as the nature of ethical becoming and responsibility in the community itself. This paper will endeavor to explicate the development of Stein’s ethics from her earliest focus on the person and personal “unfolding” to the development of a social ethics of community necessary for the role of communal repentance that is crucial for the further growth of contemporary ethical society.

6.2 Value, Personal Unfolding, and Individual Ethics in the Early Stein Stein’s dissertation appeals to anthropological analysis to resolve Husserl’s problem of the constitution of the objective world through empathy (Einfühlung), a move which entails a quick and necessary exit from the domain of anonymity of the transcendental constituting subject by reintroducing the concreteness of human being in the world.2 In the theory of spiritual personality that follows, Stein, albeit often tacitly, introduces the thematic of ethical life and endeavors to characterize the nature of the individual’s ethical task. For Stein, like many phenomenologists following Brentano, the spirituality of the person is revealed especially in the value-tropism of personality, through feeling-acts, towards the world as a world imbued with axiological meaning.3 The personal “I” is constituted in the feeling of values, and particularly in the specific levels of values to which the person is open.4 In acts of feeling, the self-experiencing “I” ceases to be the quality-less and anonymous “pure I” of transcendental phenomenology and acquires its proper particularity, identity, and, most importantly for our purposes, its 1

For reasons to suppose that Stein indeed intended the ethical implications of her work, see Tullius (2016, 2019, 2021). 2 Calcagno (2014, 13). 3 For a thorough analysis of Stein’s appropriation of the Brentanian/Schelerian theory of value and value-motivation given in acts of feeling, see Lebech (2015, 27–40, and 51–55). On the close identification between meaning and value, see Gricoski’s implicit analysis in (2020, 118–126). In a similar vein, see also Patoˇcka (1996, 55). 4 Lebech, 39.

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“depth.”5 In On the Problem of Empathy, Stein elaborates on the meaning of the “depth” metaphor; affective phenomena, such as anger or joy, strike a chord within the self either more deeply or more superficially, and thus involve and shape the self in and through the uniqueness of the dynamic of surface and depth and the valuetropism of the individual personality that it evinces.6 Stein provides the following example: Anger over the loss of a piece of jewelry comes from a more superficial level or does not penetrate as deeply as losing the same object as the souvenir of a loved one. Furthermore, pain over the loss of this person himself would be even deeper. This discloses essential relationships among the hierarchy of felt values, the depth classification of value feelings, and the level classification of the person exposed in these feelings.7

In this scenario, Stein describes the contours of personality by evincing the “levels” at which the self is engaged by value. Whether the feeling of value pierces to one’s deepest center, so to speak, or affects one more superficially, it is evidently value and value-response that especially constitute the structure of personality in the particular configurations that mark each person. As we open or close ourselves off to new levels of the hierarchy of value—the structure of which she borrows directly from Scheler’s Formalism8 —we make new “acquisitions in the realm of our own personality.”9 A capacity for new and higher domains of value, in the sense of value-feeling, positiontaking, preferring, and value-response, marks our personalities as we acquire higher personal levels and, correlatively, moral values. According to Stein, this correlation [of value-height and levels of personality] makes feelings and their firm establishment in the “I” rationally lawful as well as making possible decisions about “right” and “wrong” in this domain. If someone is “overcome” by the loss of his wealth (i.e., if it gets him at the kernel point of his “I”), he feels “irrational.” He inverts the value hierarchy or loses sensitive insight into higher values altogether, causing him to lack the correlative personal levels.10

For Stein, following Scheler, there is a right and a wrong order of the “soul,” that is, the structure of personal depth and periphery as it is mapped out in response to a range of values. A person ought to be affected in the deepest way by the highest values; correlatively, the person ought to be affected only in more superficial ways by values that are objectively lower and thus less significant, so that, in Stein’s words, the “ideal person with all his values in a suitable hierarchy and having adequate feelings would correspond to the entire realm of value levels.”11 This ideal is both universal and particular: universal inasmuch as it is a generically human task to conform one’s inner responses to the objective value-hierarchy and to 5

Sawicki (1997, 134). Lebech, 37–36 and 53. 7 Stein (1989, 101). 8 Sawicki, 134–136. 9 Stein, On the Problem of Empathy, 101. 10 Ibid. 11 Ibid., 108. 6

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develop an openness to every level of value within it; and it is particular inasmuch as the ideal can be realized only within the distinctive “style” available to the individual who arranges value-responding patterns of depth and surface in themselves from their unique “‘core personality,’… that invariable repertoire of being that is not a result of development but, on the contrary, prescribes how the development proceeds.”12 Nonetheless, for Stein, the person, who works in and from the particularity offered by her core, fulfills her moral “destiny” through the ethical work at “unfolding” towards the totality of value-levels.13 Since the personal core, in value-response and value-openness, can unfold itself out in character either fully, incompletely, or distortedly,14 the person is responsible for the formation of a virtuous character: “to suppress negatively valued deeds and stirrings of [one’s] soul and to combat the disposition to them, or even not to let them arise, and conversely to hold [one]self open for positive values.”15 Stein’s conceptualization of the moral life within this initial framework is especially focused upon the individual task of moral self-formation interiorly attentive to the “renovation” (Erneuerung) of the “architecture” of the soul, as she will eventually describe it.16 Such a picture could initially be construed as a purely individual ethics, with nothing directly to say about the social contexts in which morality is lived. However, as early as her treatise on “Individual and Community” in the latter half of her Beiträge, a further development of ethical theory emerges in tandem with, and predicated upon, her individual ethics of personal self-formation, which is best conceived as a social ethics of repentance and communal renewal that establishes itself as a “calling” of community in historical time. We will now turn to this theme.

6.3 The Sociality of Ethical Life: Meaning, Value, and Repentance in Stein’s Social Ethics Stein’s social ethics emerge particularly in the development of her philosophy of community in the latter half of the Beiträge and in An Investigation Concerning the State. However, its development, like the theory of community from which it emerges, grows out of her theory of the person and the nature of personal ethical responsibility. Thus, in order to lay the framework for Stein’s social ethics, a brief discussion of her theory of community and its relation to the person is necessary. The 12

Stein (2000, 92–93). The concept of the “core of personality” becomes increasingly prevalent and important for Stein’s ethical thinking in later works. For more on this topic see Tullius, “Edith Stein and the Ethics of Renewal,” 688–699. 13 Stein, On the Problem of Empathy, 110. I use the language of moral “destiny,” here, in the sense in which Scheler deploys it in his essay “Ordo Amoris” as the fulfillment in time of the inner calling prescribed in one’s personal essence. See Scheler (1973b, 100–109). 14 Gricoski, 122, 126, and esp. 139–140. 15 Stein, Philosophy of Psychology and the Humanities, 232–233. 16 Stein (2002, 372 and 433). See also, Tullius, “Edith Stein and the Ethics of Renewal,” 677–680.

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way in which Stein develops her phenomenology of intersubjectivity is not as crucial here as how that analysis presents the being of community as a carrier of value and the stage of both individual and communal moral becoming, thus highlighting a few salient features of her early moral analysis. Taking the Husserlian pure ego as her point of departure, Stein illustrates how individual streams of consciousness converge, as in the case of communal mourning. On such occasions, grief does not belong only to isolated subjects who endure sorrow atomistically cut off from one another. This grief is not “mine only” but is simultaneously “ours.” The subject in such experiences is not a set of mere individual egos in monadic isolation, but a communal “We-subject”—although the “We” of communal experiencing is neither a singular personal consciousness of its own, nor the sum-total of all individual conscious streams contained within it.17 Although Stein will follow Husserl and Scheler in appealing to the community as a personality of a higher order (Personlichkeit höherer Ordnung), she also consistently maintains its limits. While it possesses the structure of communal character, a communal consciousness, and even a communal network of what Stein calls “vital power” (Lebenskraft), community does so only insofar as its conscious life, structure of personality, and other such elements are “borne” by the individuals who “carry” community within themselves across time and place; this includes particularly those members who have a special consciousness of the community and a special responsibility for and effect upon its life, for example, the person who is the “life of the party.” The life of community is borne in the levels of individual, subjective existence essentially permeable to shared life. Especially within historical, socio-political, military, and other attitudes, the normal orientation of interpersonal experiencing, focused upon individual persons as members and bearers of community, can be shifted to the encounter of the solidary community itself as an independent unit of meaning. Within this orientation, Stein writes, “we find communities ‘out there in life.’ But we find them within us as well, for we live as their members.”18 As we find communities “out there” and “within” in intertwining and overlapping relations, we can discern how they live, act, feel, and value as solidary unities of a higher order in modes that are analogous to the individual personality.19 As a “personality of a higher order,” then, community, like individual persons, acquires a “character,” and thus also a moral sense. The structure of the relations between individuals within the community, as well as the community’s specific acts and orientations towards the world of values, also takes on a distinctive moral significance. Of obvious ethical importance are Stein’s investigations into the significance of prevailing social attitudes for constituting the character of the community. Stein writes, “there are attitudes of the person that matter directly to another person in her individual quality and affect her to the core: love, trust, gratitude, and so forth, and even that which we call ‘faith’ in a human being.”20 Such acts and attitudes 17

Stein, Philosophy of Psychology and the Humanities, 144. Ibid., 197. 19 Calcagno, Lived Experience from the Inside Out, 120. 20 Stein, Philosophy of Psychology and the Humanities, 211. 18

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have the effect of “enlivening” the person who receives them inasmuch as there is real community among persons who are evaluatively “affirmed” in and through them. Drawing on Scheler, Stein observes that the opposite acts of “distrust, aversion, hatred—in short, the whole set of ‘rejecting’ manner of behavior—”21 are devitalizing because, in them, the person is evaluatively negated. By contrast, if I find that I am not loved by a stranger with whom I share no community, that is to say, no common life, I experience this fact with indifference, which might be otherwise if I learn that I am hated. Then, as in the case of enemy states, a community of life might emerge along with the mutual hostility arising in my reaction to being hated.22 The contrast here is telling, to the extent that, while hatred devitalizes and negatively valorizes individuals and the communal life into which they enter, love invites persons into community in a uniquely vitalizing way, especially insofar as love is a responsiveness to values of a determinate sort, that is, the absolute value of the person as person. Although hate also constitutes community, as we have seen, and one that can even be temporarily energizing—for instance, when one nation becomes energized for a fight by the presence of an enemy state on its borders—its “propellant” character taxes the vital powers of the community and the individual alike, and requires a constant consumption of energy from alternative sources to continuously “fan the flames” of hatred.23 By contrast, for Stein, love operates within the one who loves as an invigorating force that might even develop more powers within him than experiencing it costs him. And hate depletes his powers far more severely as a content than as an experiencing of hate. Thus, love and positive attitudes in general don’t feed upon themselves; rather, they are a font from which I can nourish others without impoverishing myself.24

From this perspective, then, the act of love is vitally valuable for the community and the individual alike; by contrast, hate as a social attitude operative within and constitutive of community is a vital disvalue. Since, within the limits of possibility positive values ought to be realized and negative values ought not to be realized, according to Stein, the philosophy of community is structured at this stage upon a moral intuition—communities constituted in love ought to be and those constituted in hate ought not to be. Further, the more a community is filled with love as its characteristic orientation, the higher its value and vice versa. Moreover, Stein argues, community requires reciprocal relationships of openness between its members, so that its primordial form is built on the nature of love rather than hate. A community can be constituted by hatred, but such a community 21

Ibid. Ibid., 206. 23 This is not to deny the cyclic character of reciprocal violence borne (born? Just checking.) of hate, but only to recognize that hate burns out if the cycle is somehow broken, and if one does not possess reserves of anger or indignation to fan the flames once more. That is not to say that the attitude of hatred could also not continue in the absence of such sources of vital forcefulness, but it would endure only as an orientation of valuative position-taking, that is to say, as a spiritual act. In that case, though, hatred would not be “felt” until some source of vital energy (perhaps even the disvalue of what is hated) is once again presented for it to become actualized as “felt.” once more. 24 Ibid., 212. 22

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is intent upon its own dissolution, as it aims at the negation and annihilation of the other. It cannot serve as archetype, but serves instead as a counter-image of authentic community. Constituted in the relation of love, which is community-constituting, the authentic community orders persons towards “open and naïve commitment: not separated living but common living, fed from common sources and stirred by common motives,” rather than the self-closure of individual monads.25 Community, in other words, loses its intelligibility in the absence of a common life grounded in shared sources of vitality and spiritual value. Furthermore, the intuition into the structuration of authentic community according to the patterns of love that bind it becomes informative of intra- and extra-communal ethical relations of obligation. In the immediate context, Stein first indicates this in terms of the valuable, enlivening functions of patriotism as a love for one’s own political community and the willingness to sacrifice for its good, energizing the community as a political whole.26 Such love performs a vitally valuable service for the national community, just as the hatred received becomes a vital disvalue through its effects on the communal life as such.27 On the other hand, blind patriotism, as the case of Stein’s Germany so tragically illustrates, is a problematic moral value. Patriotism and “love” for one’s community can drive the individual acting in the community’s name to commit moral atrocities. This is why Stein highlights the important ethical role played by a moral elite— individuals who have a special consciousness of the objective order of values and of their responsibility for the development of their communal character in receptivity to those values.28 Community may be formed with an authentic or inauthentic morality, and an adequate or inadequate receptivity for values in their objective hierarchy. The condition of the community as receptive to authentic regions of values is not a function of community as a whole, but rests in a particular way on singular personalities within it. Stein’s example is the horror which the European Alps and its inhabitants had inspired in much historical literature until Rousseau, Goethe, and others first “discovered” their aesthetic beauty, which is today, “a self-evident possession of the world of European civilization … gained for it by single personalities.”29 Such peculiarly value-open personalities thus have an important role to play in the moral “revival of the community by the world of values.”30 Consequently, individuals such as artists, philosophers, and saints, for example,31 serve as “organs making the community capable of contact with the world of values, like the open eye with which 25

Ibid., 215. Ibid. 27 Ibid., 216. 28 Michael Gubser has shown that the idea of a moral elite, particularly the community of phenomenologists, possessing a privileged intuition into moral values, much like the Aristotelian phronimos, is a theme running throughout the phenomenological tradition, with roots in Brentano who first pioneered the idea in this context. See Gubser (2014, 40). 29 Stein, Philosophy of Psychology and the Humanities, 221. 30 Ibid., 220. 31 Scheler refers to such characters as “exemplary persons.” See Scheler’s complementary analysis in Scheler (1973a, 583–595). 26

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the community peers into the world.”32 Serving as “functionaries” of community, such personalities especially furnish the discovery of the authentic and inauthentic forms of community-life on the basis of rightly ordered relations of love for persons and values that are the condition not only of community but of moral community. It is still up to the mass of the community to be receptive to the “prophetic” witness of its moral visionaries33 ; nevertheless, as Stein writes, “it’s important that those who possess the eyes open to the world of values be living as members of the community, in live interaction with its components. Whoever locks himself up inside himself, whoever won’t let the abundance of his inner life become efficacious outwardly, can’t be considered an organ of the community and doesn’t open up access for it to the sources from which it can be supplied with propellant powers.”34 Ethically, those who possess an intuition into the right order of values and do not open themselves to the community in the effort towards its moral renewal, fail in the proper social responsibility which is uniquely their own and through which community can develop along newly defined moral lines. The person’s permeability for authentic values, however, is the essence of moral “character,” so to speak, as is the manner in which practical action is determined by such value-insights.35 The character, or soul (Seele), of the individual person and the character of the community are measured according to their openness to objective orders of values, including the absolute value of persons themselves,36 in their proper relations and felt according to their proper depth. The community, as an analogue of the individual personality, is the bearer of an ethical personal value or disvalue attached to its members (albeit unequally according to the degree to which one participates in the virtues or vices of communal personality as a whole). Relative to other sociological forms, including the “mass”—which, because it is constituted through the mechanisms of psychic contagion without genuine spiritual “motivation,” has no “character” to speak of37 —and association (Gesellschaft)—which, as an artificial rationalization of community and subordinated to it, is morally ambivalent relative to the value of its goal-oriented ends—community proper (Gemeinschaft) possesses a distinctive value with a kind of moral primacy of its own. As Stein writes, within the essential mutuality of communal life, “acts turn up that don’t occur in the life of a solitary soul: acts in which one subject confronts others … and in which one subject turns to the other, asking, inviting, demanding, and the like.”38 Within these acts, moreover, “emotional attitudes that one induces in another [come to givenness] …: so the moral evaluation and judgement of the character of a person, of her sentiments and deeds (approval, admiration, contempt, indignation, and the like).”39 32

Stein, Philosophy of Psychology and the Humanities, 221. Gubser, 119. 34 Stein, Philosophy of Psychology and the Humanities, 222. 35 Ibid., 226–227. 36 Calcagno, Lived Experience from the Inside Out, 101. 37 Stein, Philosophy of Psychology and the Humanities, 243. 38 Ibid., 256. 39 Ibid. 33

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As Stein had already argued in On the Problem of Empathy, one’s own moral life and moral character is constituted alongside the moral encounter with the other and in one’s own response to her moral character. Thus, community is the originary context in which I discover and take up the ethical task, as Stein insists, writing that “just as there are attitudes that would be impossible in the soul living solitarily, so there are also properties that can develop only in unions of persons: humility and pride, servility and defiance, power lust and affability, team spirit and helpfulness; in short, all ‘social’ virtues and vices.”40 If community, in a privileged respect, is the space of moral development,41 as Aristotle had also recognized, then it also reflects a more than individual moral responsibility. While the moral development of the individual person is uniquely her own responsibility, since freedom of will is never suspended by communal circumstance or environment, community can be an authentic or inauthentic influence upon the development of the person, especially as stronger personalities characteristically impress themselves on those that are less strong. Within community, I have a responsibility for the impact of my own doing, loving, hating, and relating on the development of others as my actions can guide or shut off their proper formation. The community as a whole also bears a responsibility that is realized individually within its members, especially those who peculiarly bear the life of the community, for example, community leaders and those who are the functional organs of communal moral intuition. The community itself is already a bearer of value in its unification of individual, subjective life: in “the release of the individuals from their natural loneliness, and in the new super-individual personality that unites in itself the powers and abilities of the discrete [members], turns them into its own functions, and through this synthesis can produce achievements.”42 In other words, community, which synthesizes the lives of individuals into a solidary union, unleashes valueproductive forces within the world that is itself a bearer of value. Stein insists that the value of community persists even when the community unites for morally wicked purposes43 ; but the community’s freedom to choose good or evil in collective action imposes a communal self-responsibility. It must direct its action towards right values. Since such responsibility is not borne by the community independent of its members, the moral ideal of social and ethical life consists in “the highest mode of community [as] the union of purely free persons who are united with their innermost ‘personal’ life, or the life of soul, and each of whom feels for himself or herself and for the community.”44 Such a community—of love freely given and received—is oriented around the consciousness of collective and individual responsibility for one

40

Ibid., 266–267. By the 1930s, Stein will appeal to an Aristotelian teleological concept of the necessity of community for the attainment of the human end in moral and theological terms. See Borden (2003, 46). 42 Stein, Philosophy of Psychology and the Humanities, 273. 43 Ibid. 44 Ibid., 278. 41

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another.45 However, like Stein’s “ideal person,” it serves as a regulative ideal; actual communities will consist of a mixture of social-intentional and structural forms deviating in one respect or another from the ideal. These deviations are value-laden to the extent that the ideal of community is more or less the orienting pole of daily life. For instance, in families with younger children, the life and responsibility of community must be borne especially by the parents whose goal is, among other things, to raise their children within the community to be its future responsible members. Here, family is still referred to the ideal as its teleological goal. Other deviations more remote from the ideal include forms of community in which individual members are not free and self-responsible at all, where communal life is regulated externally, for example, as in libertine, anarchic, demagogic, and totalitarian societies, among others. Since communities typically deviate from the ideal patterned on the forms of freedom, love/sympathy, and co-responsibility, such deviations must be navigated ethically, and simultaneously offer criteria for moral evaluation of the structures and character of the community. This intuition is of greatest impact in Stein’s An Investigation Concerning the State, in which she dedicates herself to an explicit and extended interrogation of ethical concerns. We must turn, finally, to that work in order to address the issue of political community as a major stage upon which social-ethical responsibility is borne, and by means of which it comes to play a primary role in the realization of ideal values in time. This is done through the cooperative development of a communal, ethico-political character that, in repentance in particular, shoulders responsibility for “history.” Following from her analysis of the constitution of community in the Beiträge, Stein reaffirms her starting point that community is founded in individual persons who bear a communal life within themselves. Community as a bearer of ethical value is part of what Stein and Husserl call “objective spirit,”46 a bearer of “personal values” that “attach to the essential substance of the person and her ways of comporting herself,” as well as in her inner responses to values.47 Even within this individual framework, though, the social dimensions of moral responsibility are especially underscored in Stein’s treatment of the problem of moral guilt/sin and repentance. All guilt, whether legal or moral, calls for a response; however, in contrast to the idea of legal guilt, which is effectively cancelled in the act of being-punished, sin as a personal disvalue is unaffected by any possible punishment, since “punishment does not penetrate into the sphere of the person in any way.”48 Although the legal guilt of my act of theft, for instance, is cancelled in my giving back the stolen goods, paying a fine, or serving prison time, I am still morally guilty to the extent that I have not altered my interior disposition towards the act and the disvalue attached to it. While punishment has the potential to serve as a motive for repentance, it has no significance at all for the remaining guilt so long as no repentance has taken place. Only repentance, as well 45

Lebech, 42–43. Togni (2018, 72). 47 Stein (2006, 155). 48 Ibid., 159. 46

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as expiatory acts—for example, making restitution for a sin committed—can erase the debt of moral guilt that otherwise continues to defile the soul. In the legal sphere, then, “punishment re-establishes the equilibrium of the world that was disrupted by the guilt, so the expiation [of sin through voluntary repentant suffering] re-establishes the equilibrium of the soul that was disrupted by sin.”49 Guilt and sin, however, may be mutually overlapping states of affairs, as when, in the legal domain, sinful acts also constitute injustice. In such cases, guilt may be cancelled out by punishment, or by a positive act of forgiveness/legal pardon, but the sin remains so long as repentance has not been carried out internally. Likewise, the sin might be erased through my act of repentance, but guilt may remain so long as I have not been punished, thereby restoring social equilibrium. Sin may also be erased through repentance, even if the offense is never forgiven by the victim. Conversely, right actions merit reward just as guilt merits punishment.50 All of this is significant, not only as an analysis of moral justice and its complex relation to the states-of-affairs in which justice and injustice are realized, but also, for Stein, as a disclosure of the social character of moral states. “Just as you become guilty ‘toward someone,’” she writes, “so do you make yourself ‘meritorious with regard to someone.’ A gain for someone is always bound up with merit. And the ‘gaudens’ thereby becomes obligated for thanking the originator of the merit.”51 Guilt and merit are not merely interior states of a monadically constituted ego; they are personal qualities constituted interpersonally therein. Ultimately, for Stein, the interpersonal character of all guilt (including sin) as well as merit points phenomenologically to the theological character of morality, so that the reward and punishment of interior moral states and external moral acts alike “can be vested in no finite person by her inherent right, it is a matter for the lord of the world.”52 Prescinding from the theological implications, however, the social character of all sin and merit serves as a justification for social interventions into the moral lives of individual members of communities. Legally, this might reach as far as punishment of criminals in the interest of the “reform of the guilty party.”53 More immediately, it reminds us of the specific functions of interpersonal love, patterned in diverse ways in communal contexts such as friendship, marriage, family, and church, in the moral formation of individual persons. Stein also recognizes the important question of the moral status of the community that accompanies the concern for individual moral guilt and merit. Since the community is, as we have seen, not a personal actor independent of its individual bearers, its moral status will not resemble that of the person who individually bears merit and guilt. On the other hand, the moral personality of the community is subject to moral evaluation, especially in the recognition of the important distinction between a priori

49

Ibid., 163. Ibid., 165. 51 Ibid., 165–166. 52 Ibid., 168. 53 Ibid. 50

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ethical norms and the objective order of values from which they flow, and the structure of the historically and culturally constituted prevailing morality. The prevailing morality of any given community, culture, civilization, or nation “can deviate from the just-so of ethics obtaining a priori.”54 In that regard, the prevailing morality is subject to an ethical evaluation of its own, and may be judged to be more or less perverse to the extent that it departs in greater or lesser degrees from the a priori of ethical norms.55 The prevailing morality “mirrors back the habitus of soul of a community of persons, its basic stance toward the world of values,”56 and in so doing serves as a standard of judgement for the moral character of the community itself that is structured by a more or less right relation to values, including those borne by the persons who constitute the community and its social environment. The community cannot readily reform itself in the order of its values, except in the souls of the individual members. Even then, it can do so only on the basis of alternative, practical behavior and a renovation of the structures and forms of social interaction that will transform the morality “through large-scale, earnest personal repentance,” leading, ideally, to the ethical renewal of humanity at large.57 The state, through its legal apparatus, may play an important function here in the transformation of morality through the institution of laws that alter practical comportment and thus provide a space for the alteration of the inner habitus of soul in relation to the order of values—that is, repentance—but the process of morality’s reform cannot be “run” by the state or legal apparatus.58 It must originate in the souls of those who, as functionaries of the community, are capable of intuiting the right order of values and the a priori of ethical norms, for example, social reformers of all stripes: philosophers, activists, priests, and politicians. Nonetheless, the state can utilize, and perhaps ought to be utilized as, the specific “tool” of social moral reformation and repentance by combating the prevailing morality through legal regulation as well as through the development of institutions facilitating proper moral development.59 In regard to the latter, Stein might highlight especially the functions of schools and churches, although it is equally plausible that such institutions could become functional roadblocks to moral reformation as well, and thus might themselves require state interventions of their own reform as functionaries of communal ethical development.60 Nonetheless, even in the face of such legitimate political and social efforts to take command of the community’s moral life, interventions in regard to the prevailing morality cannot legitimately pursue their ends through coercion, as 54

Ibid., 170. Inasmuch as real moral communities are always imperfect, we can assume that the prevailing morality in every community is at least to some degree perverse, even if it comes especially close in attunement to the a priori of ethical norms. 56 Ibid., 170–171. 57 Gubser, 121. 58 Stein, An Investigation Concerning the State, 171. 59 Ibid., 174–175. 60 For example, the Constantinian interventions in Church controversies at the Council of Nicaea in 325 A.D. 55

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repentance is ultimately an autonomous act and cannot be forced.61 This applies to the individual as well as to foreign communities. Thus, freedom is a central pillar of ethico-political community as such. Finally, Stein is concerned to articulate the dimensions of communal morality in terms of historical process. This is not a disconnected issue for Stein; it arises in connection with the problems of moral value and society. She takes issue with Hegel’s reduction of the meaning of history to the process of freedom’s coming-toconsciousness with the emergence of the liberal state, and holds that “history” must be understood as a “process of spiritual development.”62 However, what develops is “not freedom but its carrier: the individual person or the community of persons.”63 Moreover, history is not merely the process of the development of free communities of persons, as though the triumph of the liberal state constitutes the “end of history,” as Fukuyama has (in)famously argued; it is rather the process of the realization of concrete values.64 Such development is not a narrative of inevitable progress, however, but is subject to movements such as evolution and devolution, and progress and regress.65 However, inasmuch as “development toward morality would not mean just awakening to freedom, but training of susceptibility for values … [the] content of history turns out to be the creation of culture.”66 The struggle for a moral culture, then, is a historical struggle and takes on a historical significance. Moreover, inner moral acts of value-intuition, -affirmation, -negation, and repentance, to name a few, as well as individual moral acts of participation in, or struggle against, the life of the historically situated community such as personal and social interventions into the moral development of persons, the moral structures of the community as open to or closed off from values and other persons as bearers of value, and, finally, efforts at intervention into the development of the prevailing morality, all bear a new significance here to the extent that they take on responsibility for the “sense of history: the realization of values.”67

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Ibid., 177. Ibid., 179. 63 Ibid. 64 Baseheart, 74. 65 Thus, as Calcagno notes, Stein’s theory of history and the state is generally hostile to utopianisms of all sorts, including those minimal utopian theories at work in any concept of an “end of history.” See Calcagno (2016, 414). Although she will eventually draw connections between community and its historical vocation and the thematic of Salvation History, the notion of a transcendent “end of history,” which will be crucial there, operates on a level utterly distinct from the utopian interpretation of the course of immanent history. See Maskulak (2012, 68). 66 Stein, An Investigation Concerning the State, 181. 67 Ibid., 184. A full consideration of the development of Stein’s moral thought will thus have to come to terms with Stein’s philosophy of history, a theme which, like the theme of ethical life, implicitly and at times explicitly runs throughout her works. Full development of this theme, however, goes beyond the scope of the present inquiry and must be reserved for another time. 62

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6.4 Conclusion In spite of the fact that Stein does not explicitly frame her phenomenological investigations as studies in ethical life, ethical concern is deeply and thematically woven into the fabric of her studies in anthropology, community, and political existence. Thus, I have attempted to chart the development of her early ethical thought as it expands from an initial focus on disclosing the ethical project as the proper unfolding of the individual person, to the elaboration of the social dimensions of moral life in the ethically correct structuration of community, the ethical obligations arising in and with community, and the sense of communal responsibility for carrying out the meaning of history through the constitution of a moral culture in personal repentance and social responsibility for communal renewal. Stein’s individual ethics consists largely in articulating the moral task in terms of the re-organization of the patterns of depth and periphery in the feeling of values in attunement to their objective order. Her social ethics redeploys her analysis of the ethical person against the backdrop of the phenomenology of community as an analogue of the person, and as analogously structured by patterns of value-feeling, willing, and living borne by its members, each of whom bears a unique responsibility for communal life in the current history of its ethical unfolding. Of primary concern for Stein is the foundational importance of love and hate as structures of openness or closedness, which themselves constitute the moral value of communal existence and which structurally predispose its historical unfolding to the proper or improper receptivity to values in their a priori height or depth. Likewise, Stein’s understanding of the unique role of political order, as well as the spiritual representatives of the community’s concrete ethos, contributes to a robust theory of ethical responsibility in the midst of the concrete concerns of the communities of life of which we are a part. These communities share, in solidarity, the responsibility for one another and for each individually in the goal of creating communities of love ordered to the flourishing of person and community alike, which itself deserves further study and development.

References Borden, S. (2003). Edith Stein. Continuum. Calcagno, A. (2014). Lived experience from the inside out: Social and political philosophy in Edith Stein. Duquesne University Press. Calcagno, A. (2016). A place for the role of community in the structure of the state: Edith Stein and Edmund Husserl. Continental Philosophy Review, 49, 403–416. Gricoski, T. (2020). Being unfolded: Edith Stein on the meaning of being. Catholic University of America Press. Gubser, M. (2014). The far reaches: Phenomenology, ethics, and social renewal in Central Europe. Stanford University Press. Lebech, M. (2015). The philosophy of Edith Stein: From phenomenology to metaphysics. Peter Lang.

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Maskulak, M. (2012). Edith Stein: A proponent of human community and a voice for social change. Logos, 15, 64–83. Patoˇcka, J. (1996). Heretical essays in the philosophy of history (Translated by E. Kohák and Edited by J. Dodd). Open Court. Sawicki, M. (1997). Body, text, and science: The literacy of investigative practices and the phenomenology of Edith Stein. Springer-Science+Business Media, B.V. Scheler, M. (1973a). Formalism in ethics and non-formal ethics of values (Translated and Edited by M. S. Frings and R. L. Funk). Northwestern University Press. Scheler, M. (1973b). Ordo Amoris. In Selected philosophical essays (pp. 98–135, Translated and Edited by D. R. Lachterman). Northwestern University Press. Stein, E. (1989). On the problem of empathy (Translated and Edited by W. Stein). ICS Publications. Stein, E. (2000). Philosophy of psychology and the humanities (Translated and Edited by M. C. Baseheart and M. Sawicki). ICS Publications. Stein, E. (2006). An investigation concerning the state (Translated and Edited by M. Sawicki). ICS Publications. Stein, E. (2002). Finite and eternal being (Translated and Edited by K. F. Reinhardt). ICS Publications. Togni, A. (2018). Starting from Husserl: Communal Life according to Edith Stein. In S. Luft & R. Hagengruber (Eds.), Women phenomenologists on social ontology: We-experiences, communal life, and joint action (pp. 61–74). Springer Nature Switzerland AG. Tullius, W. (2016). Edith Stein and the truth of Husserl’s ethical concept of the ‘true self.’ In A. Speer, S. Regh, & Sr. A. Sondermann, OCD (Eds.), Alles Wesentlich lässt sich nicht schreiben. Leben und Denken Edith Steins im Spiegel ihres Gesamtwerkes (pp. 290–306). Herder Verlag. Tullius, W. (2019). Edith Stein and the ethics of renewal: Contributions to a Steinian account of the moral task. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, 93(Fall), 675–700. Tullius, W. (2021, March). Person and spirit: On Edith Stein’s Christian personalism and its ethical and pedagogical implications. International Philosophical Quarterly (forthcoming).

Part II

Metaphysics

Chapter 7

The Empathetic Gaze: A Steinian Approach to the Study of Religion L. R. Lovestone

Abstract The aim of this paper, as part of a larger project, is to develop an approach to the study of religion based on Edith Stein’s phenomenology—what I refer to as “the empathetic gaze.” This paper will look at how Stein’s phenomenology can attend to the implications and effects of being open to the subjects that scholars study as well as the consequences of objective indifference for both the scholar and the communities that scholars engage. For orientation, this paper starts with a brief history of method in religious studies, after which is a critical engagement with the concept of gaze in the field of film and cultural studies. Then, I draw on pieces from Stein’s first two published works—On the Problem of Empathy (1917) and Philosophy of Psychology and the Humanities (1922)—to offer some beginning places for thinking with Stein to develop an approach to the study of religion.

This paper is the beginning of a much larger project that argues for a better theory of religion based on Stein’s phenomenology. The aim of this paper is smaller: to introduce some aspects of how Stein helps us attend to the implications and effects of theories of religion as an academic practice for both the scholar and the communities that scholars engage. Also, this paper aims to offer a philosophical proposal for how current methods that endorse openness and affirmation of subjects’ experiences qualify as scientific. Scholars of religion have struggled over how to be open to the realities that religious people express and qualify them as the object of study of a “scientific” Many thanks to those in the Edith Stein Circle for their encouragement and feedback during the Fourth Bi-Annual IASPES Conference at the University of Portland, Oregon, June 9, 2017, that helped improve this paper. Many thanks to Drs. Amy Koehlinger, Barbara Muraca, and Martin Kavka for offering encouragement and insights that helped to improve this paper, and thank you, most importantly, for how much fun it is to work with you all. Thank you also to Dr. Alycia W. LaGuardia-LoBianco for your encouragement and insights into the larger implications of my argument and for the many parallels you pointed out to other key thinkers I had not considered. L. R. Lovestone (B) Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, USA © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. F. Andrews and A. Calcagno (eds.), Ethics and Metaphysics in the Philosophy of Edith Stein, Women in the History of Philosophy and Sciences 12, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91198-0_7

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discipline—two goals that have historically been in tension. Beginning in the nineteenth century, the separation of religious studies from theology meant engaging the natural and social sciences such that religion could have a place in modern universities.1 Over time, the struggle has manifested as a tug-of-war opposition, a binary of theology versus science, that has produced burdensome inconsistency of critical terms and approaches.2 One scholar has characterized the binary as “critics not caretakers,” arguing that empathetic engagement with religious people is inappropriate for a religious studies scholar.3 Overall, the competing claims in the field about what constitutes religious studies as a science currently produces an overwhelming insecurity about what it is that we scholars of religion do. Religious studies scholar Robert Orsi offers a solution grounded on a critique of the field’s history. He argues that the privileged posture of objective, disinterested distance as the dominant critical stance that negates religious reality is the result of the dominance of Protestantism in the field of religious studies since its inception in the mid-nineteenth century. Instead of a Protestant-derived disinterested disposition, Orsi endorses an affective attitude of “disciplined openness” towards subjects.4 His call to overcome the bias of being closed to claims that religious people make in the name of being scientific is the same as overcoming the Protestant history of religious studies. For Orsi, and scholars like him, the study of religion must move beyond the hegemony of its Protestant past.5 Beyond the critique of the dominance of religious studies as a critique of Protestantism, Orsi has expanded a central scientific concept—empiricism—to “abundant empiricism.” Here the data of religious reality are not limited to material entities perceptible through the five bodily senses (as is the traditional conception of scientific empiricism). Rather, abundant empiricism attends to how religious reality is already and always inter-relationally constituted with cultural figures, including divine agents.6 With “abundant empiricism,” Orsi wants to retain scientific authority but move beyond the strict materialism that has fundamentally constituted the concept. However, the extent to which Orsi neologizes empiricism to account for pregiven relationally-constituted reality lacks philosophical grounding. There is nothing to account for why Orsi’s method is epistemologically better than others. Critical engagement with the genealogical forces of the field is not a sufficient foundation for the study of religion. There needs to be a basis for what religious studies scholars do

1

Orsi (2012) Ibid., 9. 3 McCutcheon (2001). 4 Orsi (2005). 5 Orsi “2 + 2 = 5,” 117–118; Orsi (2016). 6 “The world precedes the subject so that he finds it as real already in the relationships that form him and that connect him to culture and culture to him; he takes hold of the real for himself in the company of the figures his culture gives him or that he makes or finds. I have begun thinking of this as “abundant empiricism,” Orsi (2006). 2

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that is more than for the sake of overcoming a dominant interpretive stance. Neologizing a central scientific concept is not enough. It is one thing (albeit a significant thing) to name and resist the oppressive powers of one’s field, but there is a lack of clarity in Orsi’s work regarding what it is that provides the new basis of authority for claims about religious reality. Constructing yet another theory of religion without an epistemological ground perpetuates the habitual problem evident in the history of religious studies of picking up new alternatives blindly and blindingly that are not well-grounded philosophically. We still need a solid foundation upon which to stand, upon which to think about our approaches, and upon which to unify the conversations that constellate our field. As Stein saw it, providing the fundamental principles of all the sciences, especially the humanities, is a function of philosophy.7 It is necessary to subject a method’s adopted concepts and principles that already come with multivalent meanings to philosophical investigation to achieve the precision and clarity that qualifies it as scientific in the first place. In order to substantiate the methodology that Orsi is advocating for the field of religious studies, I turn to Stein’s phenomenology to formulate a foundation for qualifying as scientific an open attitude to the reality of religions that believers express—what I refer to as an “empathetic gaze.” As I want to offer a method that is captured by a new iteration of the concept of the “gaze,” it is necessary to distinguish the different critical aspects of what is meant by the gaze, according to its use in the discipline of film and cultural studies. Jacques Lacan and Michel Foucault initially popularized the concept of the gaze, but beginning with the essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” (1975) by feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey, more scholarly work has been produced in feminist film studies about the gendered nature of gaze, the privileging of visuality, and how gaze uncovers a particular position of power. Mulvey argues that the camera and the orientation of movie-viewing itself is a “male gaze.” Mulvey’s “male gaze” was grounded on examination of the socialcultural context of Hollywood in the beginning of the twentieth century, where film producers and camera operators were predominantly male, and their position of power informed angle shots, storylines, the way actors were portrayed, and so on. Gaze is a sociological concept that argues “cinema reflects the society that produces it.”8 The way subjects are filmed not only reflects the asymmetrical power structures of American society gendered as male, but dominant gendered power asymmetries are reiterated constantly through the practices of movie viewing. Likewise, beyond film studies, the gaze has been extended as a critical concept to think about how epistemology is reflective of the society that produces it. According to Lisa Cartwright, the gaze is not only something that underwrites artistic expression but is also integral to the systems of power in society that establish epistemological norms.9 As critique, what most versions of the gaze do is call attention to the privileging of visuality. The gaze makes explicit the assumption that what is seen is really what is 7

Stein(2002). Mulvey (2010). 9 Sturken and Cartwright (2009). 8

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seen, the assumption that visual cues are transparently the really real. Thus, the gaze calls attention to how visuality is an epistemologically empowered position. The concept of gaze uncovers power relationships in showing that the gazer occupies a powerfully passive role: the gazer can stare and examine people without the experience of them staring back. Gaze eliminates the gazer from being seen as an object or entity: there is no one looking back that calls them to account. It is a unidirectional action of a stance that has the power to look at people and assess them in a way that removes the interpersonal encounter. Concerning the dominant epistemological register in religious studies, scholarly texts also reiterate the power asymmetry of the gaze in rendering the scholar interpersonally invisible as part of an assertion of authority. On the one hand, this type of authority invokes an idea of scientific critique adopted from the natural sciences that historically has not been justified as appropriate to the nature of its proper object of study—religion—which is an object widely accepted as inaccessible to the scholar.10 On the other hand, such authority based on the scientific critique has yet to be justified as ethically responsible to both scholar and subject. While we can see an ethical appeal in assertions of humility in the admittance of inaccessibility to the subject we study, admitting human limitation and fallibility but also exercising authority as resistance and reversal of its subject renders that humility nominal.11 It is not the norm to receive an account from religious studies scholars about how their presence affected those they studied, nor how the experience of being seen by their subject affect the scholar and his study of them. It is the norm for religious studies that texts present the scholar in just as powerfully passive a role as Mulvey’s male gaze. There is not an account of the scholar’s experience of their subjects being able to gaze back at them and how the knowledge created was constituted by their mutual encounter. An account of mutuality as constitutive of scholarship has become the norm for the ethnographic practices in anthropology, a field that has come to terms with how its epistemology and qualification of being a science is grounded in intersubjective authority.12 For the minority of religious studies scholars that do offer an account of the intersubjective experiences that ground their work, they do not explain why such self-reflexivity is epistemologically valid. In other words, they do not give the criteria of their fundamental orientation through which they have

10

With religious studies established as a separate discipline from theology, using natural science methods developed for strictly studying outwardly observable data has resulted in a crisis of concept regarding "religion" that has been an unresolvable problem of the field. For a narrative of the field’s conceptual history of “religion,” see Smith (1998). Eric J. Sharpe offers one historical narrative of the adoption of methods from the natural sciences to assert religious studies as a scientific discipline starting in the mid-1800s with Max Müller’s use of evolution: Sharpe (1986). 11 Here I have in mind the characterization of humility in the description of the voice of religious studies scholars as “human and fallible” in the second of Bruce Lincoln’s theses in (1996). The thirteen theses were originally part of a presentation to the Comparative Studies in Religion Section at the American Academy of Religion meetings in Philadelphia, November 1995. 12 See Clifford (1986).

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understood their subjects. Furthermore, as in the case with Orsi’s notion of abundant empiricism, they have not established how they have scientifically explained something about religion.13 Stein offers a way to acknowledge and attend to the scholar’s gaze with her phenomenology of empathy. Steinian empathy can account for how a scholar’s subjects set the technical limits to the structure of a scholar’s perception that determines the terms for representation of realities, representations that have their ultimate epistemological grounding in the scholar’s self. Steinian empathy explains how it is we know others’ experiences. How and when scholars can claim they understand what their subjects communicate or that they have asserted something scientific about religious reality is indexed by the dynamics of openness and reciprocity through which the scholar constructs self-knowledge and knowledge of realities. Regarding ethical responsibility, Steinian empathy gives a way of articulating a more ethical theory of religion that provides a robust way to take account of the interpersonal effect on the communities that scholars study and why those effects are epistemologically significant. In offering a robust and rigorous account of empathy and how it is we obtain knowledge of others, Stein renders the gazer visible in their constitution of knowledge. Thus, Stein provides a way to critique the absolute power position that the concept of gaze normally evokes. Fundamentally, empathy is the act that brings about self-knowledge that forms the basis by which one can discern similarities with and differences from others.14 At its most basic level, Stein asserts that it is in empathy that we come to know the basic spatial edges of our own body. Empathy is required because we do not have direct experience of all possible perspectives of our body in space. Rather, through empathy as an experience of another’s experience I can achieve perspectives of my body not directly available to me. The view of our own living body is limited and cannot be fully constituted independently. Even if I were to try perceiving the back of me, Stein says, “It would withhold its rear side with more stubbornness than the moon….”15 The viewpoint of others, and their ability to perceive me, is needed to fully constitute my own living body, to trace the curves and edges of its spatiality to delimit my position in the world, what Stein refers to as the “zero point of orientation.”16 From the viewpoint of [my] zero point of orientation gained in empathy, I must no longer consider my own zero point as the zero point, but as a spatial point among many. By this means, and only by this means, I learn to see my living body as a physical body like others. In “reiterated empathy” I again interpret this physical body as a living body, and so it is that

13

Here I intentionally echo Marianne Sawicki’s description of the hermeneutic accomplishment of Edith Stein’s phenomenology in (2004). 14 See Calcagno (2014). 15 Ibid., 41. 16 Stein took the concept of the “zero point of orientation” from Husserl. See §32 in Husserl(1989). It describes the first-person perspective as the “sole absolute point of reference” or the specific “geometric center” of the individual’s particular spatial orientation in the world, and everything else in the world is situated as a “there.” See Bell (1990).

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It is the “psycho-physical” individual that is the site of the empirical observation of the world. The concept of the gaze, a concept that examines how certain stances are empowered, is complicated by Stein making explicit that at a fundamental level we are radically dependent even in the most basic way of delimiting our bodily spatiality in the world. Even as the position of the scholar is an empowered social position, the fact that we cannot assert our perspectival boundaries without others who can return our gaze allows us to see that mutuality conditions what makes knowledge possible in the first place. The precise location of knowledge and perspectival possibilities in relation to the embodied beings we are is fundamentally intersubjective. Stein’s phenomenology offers a new understanding of the concept of the gaze. Stein also provides a sophisticated way to have integrity about using people’s life experiences as research data. Stein asserts that the content of empathy—the experiential data used for knowledge—always retains the reference to its source and is never plagiarized or taken as one’s own. She defines empathy as an act that provides an original experience (what she refers to as “primordial”) of the content of another’s experiences: “So now to empathy itself. Here, too, we are dealing with an act which is primordial as present experience though non-primordial in content.”18 Steinian empathy is more than perceiving others; it is grasping the thoughts and feelings of others: “This [empathy] is how human beings comprehend the psychic life of their fellows.”19 Moreover, this comprehending of others is done with them, versus to or against them. Thus, for Stein, the scholar’s perception of a subject’s experiences is not a moment of conquest or domination to assert a universal, i.e., a singular stance on the world. Rather, it is an acceptance of another center of the world: It is not that I shift my zero point to this place, for I retain my ‘primordial’ zero point and my ‘primordial’ orientation while I am empathetically, non-primordially obtaining the other one. On the other hand, neither do I obtain a fantasized orientation nor a fantasized image of the spatial world. But this orientation, as well as the empathized sensations, is con-primordial, because the living body to which it refers is perceived as a physical body at the same time and because it is given primordially to the other ‘I,’ even though non-primordially to me.20

Empathy is to see with another person21 who has to be recognized as more than an object or simply another viewpoint on the world. To see with another person 17

Stein(1988). The term ‘psycho-physical’ here is a common term in contemporary psychology. But in Stein’s phenomenology, this term is a bit different. By ‘psycho-physical’ Stein means interrelationship of physical stimulation and mental life. 18 Stein, ,10. 19 Ibid., 11. 20 Ibid., 61–62. 21 Person is a complex concept in Stein’s first two publications that are central to her phenomenology. By person, Stein refers on the one hand to her sense of the structuration of humans in a metaphysical sense: that people are constituted as physical, sentient, intellectual, and soul-core. In Stein’s phenomenology, person also means an individual who is a unique and irreplaceable entity that is developing into its uniqueness in relationships.

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is to acknowledge that they constitute another site of reality. It is possible to have experiential content of that reality, but it is not possible for the scholar to have an experience of the original viewpoint that grounds another reality. The particularities of the subject’s viewpoint and the experience given at that viewpoint will never be originally the scholar’s. The scholar cannot assume that his understanding of the subject’s experience gained in empathy is the only one. Rather, the scholar’s understanding and viewpoint is in addition to, and in connection with, the original experience grounded in their subjectivity. When Stein asserts that the content of empathy—other people’s experiences—is “non-primordial” this means that the content of a subject’s experiences remains theirs originally and will never fully or only be the scholar’s; it is the scholar’s-with-subject’s. Accepting more than one center of authority offers a more complex view than either affirmation or denial of religious reality. Additionally, empathy requires particular affectivity. It is an act of obtaining content of another’s experience that requires openness. Stein’s phenomenology asserts the necessity of being open to other people, to be open to the realities that people tell us about. For Stein, community, including but not limited to religious communities, is never an impersonal social entity. To treat a community impersonally is contradictory to accessing community as such. Community starts in the mutual sharing of life when there is living together of shared subjectivity: "We’ve seen that a mutuality of life belongs first of all to the essence of community. This mutuality of life is such that one individual doesn’t confront the other as subject to object, but rather lives with him, is impelled by his motives, and so forth."22 Community occurs both within one-on-one relationships and in extended attachments of a larger group. Community takes the forms of friendships and marriages, anywhere where there is a basis of unifying convictions.23 Stein’s conception of community is complex. Even though community can be distinguished as one type of social organization among others, it cannot be isolated from other kinds of social life: "To begin, we’re not going to hold ourselves strictly to that which we were initially defining as ‘community’ over against other social unions. We can’t do that because, as we’ll see, those other social unions themselves can become bases of communal life."24 Other kinds of social organizations emerge from, and are fundamentally based on, community, because all types of social organization are rooted in people. It is when people start to engage with each other more fully, especially when their depths of soul and core are engaged, that a community emerges.25

22

Ibid., 264. Ibid., 284. 24 Stein(2000). 25 The concept of the soul does not have the typical religious associations in Stein’s phenomenology. The soul is a functionary component of what constitutes the person. Stein contrasts the function of the soul with the mind. Unlike the mind, the soul not only confronts the world but takes the world in: "With the mind we simply take on the world, but your soul takes up the world into itself” (Philosophy of Psychology and the Humanities, 230). In the soul, the contents of experience are integrated into the existing unity that is comprised as the soul: “At any given time, what is being received is not merely being picked up, but is also being assimilated to what you already possess” 23

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The Steinian concept of community methodologically bears on the situation of a scholar in that it clarifies how in a religious community she must accept the people as subjects (and not objects) and open her life to them. Largely, this is because person and community, in terms of basic structure and development, are analogous. From a structural standpoint, Stein asserts that the person has a unique core that constitutes each person’s uniqueness that informs their particular matrix of values: “The human personality considered as a whole shows itself to us as a unity of qualitative distinctiveness that is fashioned out of a core, a formative root.”26 Similarly, Stein argues that within community there is a core that grounds a larger constellation of shared values: In any case, there’s an identical core that can recur in the egoic [the individual self] contents of different subjects. And this core makes it possible for intentions to arise on the basis which bring ‘the same’ value to givenness for all those subjects. Furthermore, the core makes it possible for those intentions to mesh with one another and to allow the value to appear as an object common to all, or better: as a communal object that comprises within itself everything that’s accessible to single members.27

Stein’s emphasis that the community has a core analogous to individual persons is significant because this is what is necessary to understand why impersonal or objective engagement in a community is harmful, why Stein emphasizes that our community engagement requires the scholar to open herself to others versus a stance of disinterested objectivism. Stein has much to say about how the humanities qualify as a science, especially in her second phenomenological work.28 One of the most powerful aspects of Stein’s phenomenology regarding how the humanities qualify as science in contradistinction to the natural sciences is her critique of scientific objectivity’s characteristic interpersonal attitude in how it affects community. What makes a community possible is solidarity among the individuals, a “living with.” But that unifying “living-with” sustains community can be damaged by a scientifically “objective” observer: First of all it must be said that the solidarity of individuals, which becomes visible in the influence of the attitudes of one upon the life of others, is formative of community in the highest degree. To put it more precisely: Where the individuals are ‘open’ to one another, where the attitudes of one don’t bounce off of the other but rather penetrate him and deploy their efficacy, there a communal life subsists, there the two are members of one whole; and without such a reciprocal relationship community isn’t possible. If we imagine a behavior in which the one individual takes the other purely as an object whose ‘ways of reacting’ he must take precautions against, then the unity of life that makes up community is sliced apart.”29 (Stein, Philosophy of Psychology and the Humanities, 109). Thus, Stein describes the soul as a container and unifier of all of an individual’s life experiences. See Calcagno (2014). 26 Stein, Philosophy of Psychology and the Humanities, 238. 27 Ibid., 165. 28 See “Second Treatise: Individual and Community,” in Stein, Philosophy of Psychology and the Humanities, 129–314. 29 Stein, Philosophy of Psychology and the Humanities, 214. Thank you to Dr. Kavka and Dr. LaGuardia-LoBianco for pointing out the difficulty of the epistemological requirement of openness

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In other words, if a scholar confronts a community as an objective observer and is unwilling to be affectively open and reciprocal towards the persons of that community, this not only forecloses the possibilities of understanding but also damages the community. What is actually “protected” in the mode of objective observation? It is not that objectivity keeps our sources pristine from contamination, but objectivity serves primarily to keep the observer "pristine," or protected from change. Stein specifically calls attention to this in the context of observing an excited mob: If I as a cold observer confront a feverishly excited mob of people, diagnose their excitement, and consider what measures could be taken in order to cope with an outbreak of this excitement, and if my observational orientation in the face of contagion protects me from the atmosphere that all the others are caught up into, and nothing can penetrate me, then between them and me there lies the invisible but insurmountable borderline that separates subject and object.30

Using other people as a means to an end as putting others at risk, but not the self, makes the mutuality that preserves community an impossibility, and community as such ceases. Stein’s description of the effect of the objective attitude on community is contrary to notions of the scientific method in the humanities that privilege the objective standpoint as the best means of perceiving an object of study. The objective standpoint is supposedly valuable because it preserves what is observed against the disturbance or effect of the observer. While this may be true of non-human subjects, what Stein argues is that the objective attitude causes damage when it is used as an approach to human subjects. We come to realize that the objective view in the context of religious studies, and for the humanities in general, is not for the sake of the community. Objective affectivity is enacted to protect the boundaries of the empowered position of the scholar. Unless the scholar engages with their subject with openness, he is never actually accessing the community as such. Stein provides the phenomenological insight into why a disciplined openness is the ethically and epistemologically better position: it is only in affective openness that we access communities as such to justify the claims we make about them. Moreover, the empathetic gaze is a mode of engagement that is not a mode of inherent conquest for the sake of knowledge possession, which is still the prevalent posture in many religious studies methods. Ultimately, Stein provides a sophisticated way to discuss how and why the way we treat and value those we study matters in the context of interpersonal engagement: and love that can be seen as unwise or unrealistic in considering the inverse: does this mean that as scholars we always have to love, be open, or join the communities that we study? Is it ethical to expect this of scholars? How does Stein account for when judgments are warranted? I am deeply grateful that at the beginning of my studies with Stein, that, especially as I engage more with trauma studies and engage more deeply with Stein’s works, I keep this excellent criticism in mind. I admit of the possibility that the openness, love, and with-living in community that Stein endorses may admit of qualifications that restrict the scope of her epistemological standards as not applicable in every scholar-subject interaction or relation. It may also mean that while Stein sets an epistemological standard for scholarly engagement, it is not a standard that can be ethically standardized or, worse, weaponized to hierarchically valuate one another’s scholarly work. 30 Stein, Philosophy of Psychology and the Humanities, 214.

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But besides such acts, there are attitudes of the person that matter directly to another person in her individual quality and affect her to the core: love, trust, gratitude, and so forth, and even that which we call ‘faith’ in a human being. On the other side stand distrust, aversion, hatred—in short, the whole set of ‘rejecting’ manners of behavior.31

Stein offers a way to come to terms with the significance of how we relate to the people we study as having consequences that go beyond what we can know about them and their experiences. The methodological stance we take will influence our attitudes and how we value those we study whether we know it or not, and those attitudes matter in positive and negative ways to who people are at a fundamental level. However, at the same time, the demand for openness raises a key ethical issue regarding the scholar’s personal boundaries and rights of self-protection. Certainly, a scholar’s interpersonal engagement should not harm the subject, but neither is it ethical to demand a scholar forfeit their boundaries. Objectivity can be a healthy relational modality. But openness does not mean not having boundaries. Engaging subjects openly does not necessarily mean the scholar becomes radically vulnerable to the possible changes to their person that interpersonal contacts may provoke: Nevertheless the individual person isn’t surrendered to external impacts in a totally powerless way, but rather has the freedom, within certain limits, either to consent to their influence upon her development or to withdraw herself from it. First of all, she already has the possibility, to a certain degree, to choose her personal surroundings themselves and thus to determine the quality of her environment as well. Furthermore, she has the freedom to nip in the bud any stirrings of the soul that are induced within her.32

While it is the case that interpersonal encounters may be negatively harmful or positively empowering for personal development, the extent to which either possibility becomes actual in the life of the scholar or the subject is mitigated by personal agency that is variable from individual to individual. Nevertheless, there are influences that vary in type and strength, some which call for more protection than others. The array of decisions for accepting the danger of vulnerability for the sake of openness has to be grounded in the capacity that comes with developing a robust sense of the self in the way Stein presents in her concept of the human person33 : “To the extent that the person has freedom in the determination of her development, the freedom of others to influence that development is curtailed….It hardly needs to be stressed that this possibility doesn’t exist for just any sentient individual, but only or the person in the full sense of the word.”34 A scholar always retains the ability to make informed decisions about the risk of themselves entailed with vulnerability according to the extent that they have developed as their own person, which includes the decision to leave a community and stop studying it altogether.35 31

Stein, Philosophy of Psychology and the Humanities, 211. Ibid., 268. 33 See footnote 16 . 34 Stein, Philosophy of Psychology and the Humanities, 268–269. 35 Thank you to Drs. Martin Kavka and LaGuardia-LoBianco for your insightful comments and language that helped shape this paragraph. I take responsibility for the final version. 32

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Stein’s phenomenology addresses how people can harm or help develop one another in interpersonal relationships as well as the extent to which relational influences are resistible. In seeking out how deep destructive influences can extend, Stein does not seem to allow for the possibility of ultimate destruction of persons as such. Stein sets the limit of how much a person can be damaged by external circumstances in the soul, but not the core (the deepest part of a person that grounds their uniqueness): “If its inner powers are crushed by the world to which it opens itself, your soul doesn’t ‘grow them back’ like a sentient capability from which the needed powers are taken away; rather, your soul withdraws back into itself, as it were, and becomes inert and therefore invisible.”36 Thus, instead of the opening to the world, the soul becomes a prison of the core. A barrier is enacted that ultimately preserves the person against true destruction, but preservation comes at the cost of that person becoming rigid or inaccessible to others, thus making unfolding impossible: “This switching off of your soul is an arbitrary one. Its counterpart is a pervasive rigidity of your soul against all endeavors, a running dry of its life. The ego descends into its depths, it holes up there. Yet the ego meets up with a gaping void in there.”37 In other words, when a person is met with adverse experiences, this inhibits their ability to develop out of their fundamental core that is an irreplaceable point of orientation to reality, and they are no longer able to live life out of who they are at their depths. With the empathetic gaze, not only can we be attentive to the power dynamics at play concerning our capacity to harm the subjects we study, but Stein also helps us to come to terms with how open engagement with communities we want to study fundamentally requires who we are. From an empowered position such as that of scholarship, we cannot ethically take an objective and distanced stance without giving an account of the harm it can do to those we study. In examining the noxious effects of objective affectivity, we have only looked at one side of Stein’s emphasis on how a scholar’s interpersonal engagement with a community can be harmful. Another possibility is that a scholar’s engagement with a religious community can result in an exchange that makes it possible for both the scholar and the people in the community to develop more fully into who they are as unique individuals, what Stein means by persons. This is because Stein locates relationships as the site of what she describes as “awakening.” That is, the attributes of what makes each individual unique is deeply set in what roots them at the center of their being—their core—and is not an automatic given in life but consequential to interpersonal interactions that cannot be controlled or predicted: Anything and everything can suddenly strike in the depths, to where nothing was able to make headway before. And if that happens, it doesn’t impart training to this or that ability. Rather, the whole abundance of your soul bursts forth in the actuality of living, an actuality which discloses that that living is just now becoming ‘soul filled.’38

Up until the point of awakening of the core, particular aspects the person remains inaccessible, dormant and enclosed. But once the core is awakened, what is enacted 36

Stein, Philosophy of Psychology and the Humanities, 236. Ibid., 234. 38 Stein, Philosophy of Psychology and the Humanities, 233. 37

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plays an active part in the entirety of the person and, by extension, their communities. There may be new values that emerge in the person that makes their way of being in relationships and in the world more grounded in who they are at their depths. As we develop through open engagement with subjects, it becomes possible that the work that we do as scholars is more grounded in who we are versus values we may have uncritically adopted by the norms set by the current power structures of our academic communities. Further, for Stein, what is scientific about any study in the humanities is its epistemological grounding in the person who produced it. Work that is more grounded is work that comes from a person as such, whose own knowledge claims and valuations of validity accord with their core constitution and first-hand experience with their subject and not what is uncritically adopted from other scholars and disciplines. The empathetic gaze asserts that understanding the value of persons and communities depends on who we are as scholars and what of ourselves we can develop: I consider every subject whom I empathetically comprehend as experiencing a value as a person whose experiences interlock themselves into an intelligible, meaningful whole. How much of his experiential structure I can bring to my fulfilling intuition depends on my own structure.39

Stein emphasizes the importance of community and the personal development of each scholar as a person for epistemologically grounded work in the humanities, and how communities are vulnerable to scholars’ affective valuations that can either restrict or enable access to the religious realities that believer’s express and constitute. Access to people’s experiences through empathy only happens to the extent that a religious person is met as a person, that is, they are met with the affirmative and open responses of scholars, in which their value is affirmed, even as the two perspectives of believer and scholar are necessarily metaphysically different.40 Regarding the empathetic gaze, I have explained how this iteration of the gaze acknowledges that it is not just through writing and reading that we become scholars, but we develop into our scholarly selves with the people that we study, who may awaken what is unique in us as scholars when we engage our subjects with openness. The empathetic gaze is different than iterations of the gaze invoked in contemporary feminist film scholarship. A relationship of equality is fundamentally not possible between a scholar and his subject. To ignore or be blind to the position of power a scholar occupies and to assume equality that is not possible is dangerous. Rather, the empathetic gaze posits an acceptance and ownership of the fact that we are in positions of power as religious studies scholars. The empathetic gaze attends to power difference, and it complicates the conception of the gazer in a way that does not assert a negative valuation of the interpersonal positions of power we as scholars occupy toward subjects. Rather, the empathetic gaze is modeling how to go about being in a power relationship in a more epistemologically effective and more ethical way that seeks to be responsible about that position of power and what that means for the people we engage in our process of making knowledge. 39 40

Stein, Empathy, 115. Wallenfang (2014).

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Again, there is a tension in the field of religious studies between theorists who claim that religious studies scholars are not to act as caretakers of religion and those that take a stance of openness to the realities religious people express. The view that delegitimates scholarly openness forecloses taking it seriously when people share experiences of anything that falls into otherworldly or “uncanny,” because to do so would be to implicitly affirm and endorse a religious reality and not to subject it to deconstructive critique. As Stein has shown, openness to the reality people experience is not to make scholarship sacrosanct. Rather, it is that there are other possibilities for criticism where constructing authority is not done as deconstruction.41 As religious studies scholars, if we value a diversity of perspectives as a critical ideal, then there have to be more options than oppositionality. Stein’s phenomenology supports suspending the scholar’s explicit judgment of whether or not the realities people claim are “really real.” Instead, we can assert as empirical the content obtained in empathy of others’ religious experiences. Stein supports a stance of “disciplined openness,” to the claims about reality made by believers. Stein’s discussion of community helps us to clarify what “disciplined openness” is and how openness constitutes a point of access to the reality of religious lives. Thinking carefully with the tools that Stein gives us about how to function in those positions of power provides ways to be ethical in our access to subjects’ experiences and lives and how to be responsible with that data. Again, she shows how the objective orientation for the student of human subjects is inappropriate, as it has been shown to be concerned about protecting the power of the scholar and harmful to communities. We must get beyond our affective enclosure so that we do not simply reiterate our knowledge onto others but rather, through an openness, a co-constitution, create knowledge with them. I have yet to do the ethnographic work of religious communities that will inform part of my larger project. I do not have case studies to illustrate what a Steinian approach to a study of religion may look like. That is on my scholarly horizon. I will continue to dwell on the epistemological significance of relationships and the becoming of a person in Steinian phenomenology in the work I will do for investigating the intersection of religion and trauma. This project calls for a methodology that deeply and critically engages the power dynamics that underwrite scholarship. And because none of the available theories in religious studies can attend to how we affect our subjects interpersonally, this is a tool I need to develop beforehand, since interpersonal engagement and its consequences are a central focus in the study of trauma. Even though I want to develop the empathetic gaze particularly for studying the intersection of religion and trauma, I think it may potentially have a great deal to contribute to the field of religious studies as a whole.

41

Here I have in mind the methodological stance of Bruce Lincoln (1996). The thirteen theses were originally part of a presentation to the Comparative Studies in Religion Section at the American Academy of Religion meetings in Philadelphia, November 1995.

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References Bell, D. (1990). Husserl. Routledge. Calcagno, A. (2014). Lived experience from the inside out: Social and political philosophy in Edith Stein. Pittsburg: Duquesne. Clifford, J. (1986). Introduction: Partial truths. In J. Clifford & G. E. Marcus (Eds.), Writing culture: The poetics and politics of ethnography (pp. 1–26). Berkeley: University of California Press. Husserl, E. (1989). Ideas pertaining to a pure phenomenology and to a phenomenological philosophy: Second book studies in the phenomenology of constitution. Kluwer Academic Publishers. Van der Kolk, B. (2014). The body keeps the score: Brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma. New York: Viking. Lincoln, B. (1996). Theses on method. Method & Theory in the Study of Religion, 8(3), 225–227. McCutcheon, R. T. (2001). Critics not caretakers: Redescribing the public study of religion. State University of New York Press. Mulvey, L. (2010). Unmasking the gaze: Feminist film theory, history, and film studies. In V. Callahan (Ed.), Reclaiming the Archive: Feminism and Film History (pp. 17–31). Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press. Orsi, R. A. (2012). Introduction. In R. Orsi (Ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Religious Studies (pp. 1–16). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Orsi, R. A. (2006). 2 + 2 = Five, or the quest for an abundant empiricism. Spiritus: A Journal of Christian Spirituality, 6(1), 113–121. Orsi, R. A. (2016). History and presence. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Orsi, R. A. (2005). Between heaven and earth: The religious worlds people make and the scholars who study them. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Sawicki, M. (2004). Personal connections: The phenomenology of Edith Stein. In M. Lebech (Ed.), Yearbook of the Irish philosophical society (pp. 148–169). Sharpe, E. J. (1986). Comparative religion: A history (2nd ed.). Duckworth. Smith, J. Z. (1998). Religion, religions, religious. In M. C. Taylor (Ed.), Critical terms for religious studies (pp. 269–282). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Stein, E. (1988). On the problem of empathy. Translated by Waltraut Stein, 3rd Edn. Washington, DC: ICS Publications. Stein, E. (2000). Philosophy of psychology and the humanities. Translated by M.C. Baseheart and M. Sawicki. Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications. Stein, E. (2002). Finite and eternal being: An attempt at an ascent to the meaning of being. Translated by Kurt F. Reinhardt. Washington, D.C.: Institute of Carmelite Studies Publications. Sturken, M., & Cartwright, L. (2009). Practices of looking: An introduction to visual culture (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press. Wallenfang, D. (2014). The heart of the matter: Edith Stein on the substance of the soul. Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture, 17(3), 118–142.

Chapter 8

Edith Stein’s Concept of Soul Revisited Sarah Borden Sharkey

Abstract Various aspects of Edith Stein’s understanding of soul are deeply Aristotelian. Nevertheless, Stein does not simply want to supplement the AristotelianThomist view of soul, but rather wishes to challenge it. Stein holds that the Aristotelian model of potency to act is inadequate. What is needed is a new model of “soul” that focuses on levels of fullness, and not simply actualization of capacities. In Finite and Eternal Being, Edith Stein reimagines what is meant by being created in the image of God. Stein’s understanding of the relation between phenomenology and metaphysics focuses in Chapter VII on her critique of St. Thomas’ Christian description of Aristotle’s understanding of the soul.

This paper will focus on a topic Stein cared about deeply and wrote about often—the soul. I don’t hope to cover all of her thought, and in fact, this paper is very limited in nature. I would like simply to look at the opening sections of Chap. VII of Finite and Eternal Being, with the question: In what ways and at what level does Stein challenge more Aristotelian models of soul? There are aspects of Stein’s view of soul that are deeply Aristotelian. I have become convinced, however, that Stein does not simply want to supplement the AristotelianThomist view of soul, but to challenge it. As far as I can tell, she thinks that the Aristotelian model of potency to act is inadequate and that we need to move to new models, including that of carrier and carried, that is, a model that focuses on levels of fullness, and not simply actualization of capacities. Although this paper will be narrow in focus, there is in the background of this paper questions about the unity of Finite and Eternal Being, Stein’s vision of how we are in the image of God, her understanding of the relationship between phenomenology and metaphysics, and others. I will only touch on these briefly at various points, focusing primarily on the details of Stein versus Aristotle on the soul.

S. Borden Sharkey (B) Wheaton College, Wheaton, IL, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. F. Andrews and A. Calcagno (eds.), Ethics and Metaphysics in the Philosophy of Edith Stein, Women in the History of Philosophy and Sciences 12, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91198-0_8

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If I may, I would like to begin with a personal story. I grew up in a smalltown Methodist church, the product of the 19th-century rural circuit riders. It was a lovely church in many ways; my family attended there for many generations and the communal bonds within the church are deep. But it also shares in fairly common Protestant dualist tendencies, and, in my childishness, I interpreted those in quite gnostic ways. I had a whole series of little experiments I would do with myself, based in a strong separation of body and soul, with marked denigration of body. I then attended a Protestant college, the school where I still teach. It was there— perhaps somewhat ironically—that I first learned to love embodied, physical life, and it was there that I fell in love with Aristotle. I knew then that Plato is beautiful; he’s wonderful in an other-worldly way, but my great wariness of the Gnosticism of my early religious imagination ensured I could not let Aristotle go. I moved to Thomistically-modified and thus more Augustinian versions of Aristotle, but I have never lost my love of the Aristotelian models. In the last several years, however, especially since co-editing a volume for Institute for Carmelite Studies Publications on Stein’s writings on the great St. Teresa of Avila, I have been challenged in the strong Aristotelian leanings of my existential Thomism. I have become convinced that Stein does not think that such Aristotelianized Thomism is philosophically sufficient, that the models at the heart of the Aristotelian conversation miss something essential. This paper is thus a deeply personal one for me. It is an exploration of why Stein is not happy with Aristotle, or even an Aristotelian Thomism, at least when it comes to the soul.

8.1 Stein Versus Aristotle on the General Vision of Soul Edith Stein is, of course, always her own thinker. She never merely repeats, and she certainly develops distinct features to her model of the person. Before digging into a few of the details, it would be helpful to have a general account of Stein on the soul. I recently re-read Marian Maskulak’s wonderful book on the body-soulspirit unity and was struck again by the helpfulness of her images. In particular, I like Maskulak’s image, adapted from Mariéle Wulf, of Stein’s overall model of the person. Maskulak asks us to picture the outline of a human being. We ought to see this whole outline as the body-soul unity, or, as she puts it, “the permeation of body and soul.” We should then draw layers within the body, beginning with the outermost sentient layer, then mental, then what she calls the “will and sense of values layer, and finally the innermost being of the soul.” Maskulak asks us to place a dot in the center of the innermost layer “[t]o highlight the ineffable aspect of that center.” And from that center dot, lines should be drawn which radiate outward and “indicate how the person’s individuality radiates outward when one lives a centered or recollected life.”1

1

Maskulak (2007), all quoted passages from p. 78.

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This image seems to me illuminative of Stein’s notion of soul throughout her career, even if different aspects take pride of place in various texts, and even if a few details are changed here and there. For Stein, the soul is our home, the multi-layered being in which we dwell. The I—that is, our first-personal, conscious awareness— moves through the various layers of soul or the soul-body unity, and our personality radiates out (in conscious and unconscious ways) from our interior. Although Stein does not discuss Teresa of Avila’s vision of the soul as an interior castle in her earlier writings, it is a metaphor for soul that fits nicely even with the earlier discussions. When Aristotle speaks of soul, biological models are at the foundation. Aristotle came from a long line of physicians, and he maintained a deep love of the natural, biological world. He frames much of his metaphysical reflections around notions like potency and act, the acorn growing into an oak tree, the child into an adult, each potency coming to fullness. In many ways, Thomas Aquinas picks up this focus on potency and act and radicalizes it, especially in the existential Thomist readings.2 That is, for Aristotle, once we have an existing thing—perhaps a baby chipmunk—we can talk of the potencies or capacities of that chipmunk’s soul. These potencies differ from the capacities of baby zebras and naked mole rats; they are a kind of directed non-being that can be actualized in and through the chipmunk’s material life; and they provide unity to the chipmunk so that she remains the same chipmunk even amid the many changes of life. We can see Thomas radicalizing this view insofar as he sees potency as characteristic not simply of the already existing chipmunk soul, but that which makes an act of existence to be finite at all, rather than the fullness of Infinite Being.3 For Thomas, the primary mark of finite being is longing, orientation toward, the becoming of potencies in act. If we turn our focus to soul in this tradition, it is understood primarily as a seat or set of potencies that long to come to full actuality. That is, the being of the soul is primarily marked its orientation to becoming, with a particular focus on becoming in and through matter. Aristotelian matter needs to be read broadly. The books we read are the matter for our intellectual development, as the pizza we eat is for our physical growth and development. Matter is whatever can be formed by soul. And soul is that which actualizes itself in and through the matter. Soul is thus a kind of externalization; soul is insofar as it becomes itself in and through that which it is not. When one thinks of soul on primarily on this model, one can see why Aristotelian ethics focuses on habituation, the formation of virtues, character developed over time. One cannot rest in the notion that one’s soul is somewhere back there, having some formation already. Its being is only the ‘being’ of potency, at least prior to any action, decision, or formation. Although the soul has an orientation, a set of 2

I am deeply influenced in this reading of both Aristotle and Thomas by Fr. Norris Clarke. See, for example, Clarke (2001), as well as the collection of essays, Clarke (1994). Of Stein’s contemporaries, this reading shares most with that of the ‘existential Thomists,’ including especially Étienne Gilson. 3 I am following here Fr. Norris Clarke’s particular way of interpreting the story of Thomas’s project, a reading that has becoming increasingly mainstream, but is nonetheless not the only way to read Thomas. See especially his “The Limitation of Act by Potency in St. Thomas: Aristotelianism or Neoplatonism?” in Explorations in Metaphysics, 65–88.

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capacities and directedness, it is nothing until it takes in the other and becomes what it is in potency.4 Thomas Aquinas certainly grants that human souls are not exhausted in the formation of our physical bodies; human souls are not related to corporeal matter in the way other living souls are, and it is, in fact, in virtue of these aspects of our souls that survival after death is a possibility. But the metaphor or image of potency coming to act is the place where Aristotelian-leaning Thomists (myself included) begin reflection on the soul. Discussion of soul focuses on capacities and the actualization of those capacities, whether one is talking of a primarily matter-bound soul or one that can function independently of matter. When Stein summarizes Thomas’s position, she emphasizes precisely these elements. She focuses on the different kinds or levels of formation, a “living shaping,” a coming to act—in different ways—in appropriate matter.5 There is no doubt that Stein wants to preserve part of this tradition. She titled the precursor to Finite and Eternal Being, Potency and Act, and she maintains this emphasis in the opening discussions of Finite and Eternal Being. She regularly describes the soul as the form of the body and matter as “potency for formation.” It would be wrong to say that she rejects the Aristotelian-Thomistic notion of soul; she does not. She, in fact, endorses the model as a partially adequate description of soul. But I don’t think she is satisfied with this model. Strikingly, in Chap. VII, Sect. 3, of Finite and Eternal Being, she writes: Let us keep firmly in mind, first of all, the meaning of soul as the center of being of animate material structures, i.e., of everything that “bears within itself the power of self-formation.” But the meaning of soul finds an even more authentic fulfilment where interiority is no longer merely a forming-of-matter but a being-in-itself [Sein in sich selbst], where each soul is a self-enclosed inner world, even though this “inner world” is not severed from the body and from the totality of the real world.6

Stein grants here that the meaning of soul is self-formation, in presumably a broadly Aristotelian way, but this is not the ultimate, or most authentic, meaning of soul. Rather, the more adequate meaning focuses on interiority as “a being-in-itself,” “a self-enclosed inner world.” Stein makes this claim near Chap. VII, Sect. 3.2, and the very next section introduces the discussion of Teresa’s interior castle. I take it Stein intends to illuminate what she means by “a self-enclosed inner world” through her appropriation of Teresa’s metaphor of an interior castle. If the Aristotelian-Thomistic model gets us part-way to an understanding of soul, Teresa gives us “an even more authentic fulfilment.”7 4

Aristotle certainly describes form as a principle of actuality in contrast to matter, which is a principle of potency, but I take this to be relational: In relation to matter, soul (i.e., the forms of living, corporeal things) is that which actualizes and forms the matter. But in itself, the soul is but a set of capacities until it is actualized in some matter. 5 Stein (2002, 367–368). Hereafter cited as FEB. 6 FEB 369. 7 Stein makes an analogous claim about the theoretical importance of Teresa’s model in her appendix on St. Teresa. After expositing The Interior Castle in some detail, Stein states quite forcefully: “We

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8.2 Stein’s Appropriation of Teresa’s Model of Soul There are numerous aspects of Teresa’s model that are likely significant for Stein, but the ones Stein emphasizes, at least in Chap. VII and the appendix to Finite and Eternal Being on Teresa, include: (a) the soul as a character-rich interior space; (b) the soul as having depths to be both explored and unfolded; and (c) one’s need to come to ‘possession’ of one’s own soul. We can see a couple of these themes in the following passage: The soul as the interior castle … is not point-like as is the pure ego, but “spatial.” It is a space, a “castle” with many mansions in which the I is able to move freely, now going outward beyond itself, now withdrawing into its own inwardness. And this space is not “empty,” even though it can and must receive and harbor a fullness in order to become capable of unfolding its own individual life.8

Here she explicitly uses Teresa’s spatial image, even emphasizing the ‘spatiality.’ One can envision one’s soul as having features and a character that one discovers by entering the various rooms, seeing what is there and what is not. She does here, in the final sentence quoted, speak of “unfolding its own individual life.” But notice, first, that she puts this in the context of a prior space that must receive in order to then unfold. The spatial image here is prior to the language of unfolding. And, second, the language is unfolding, not becoming or actualizing. The German term she uses here is entfalten, to unfold, unfurl, unroll. When she speaks of the more Aristotelian view, in contrast, she generally uses terms that draw from “wirken” or “wirklich,”9 that is, to act or be actual. This linguistic shift is important. Of course, all of the spatial language is metaphorical, in some sense. Stein does not think that we have, within our physical brain, somewhere in our chest region, or even in our body as a whole, a little castle that we physically could find and move around in. But she does think that spatial metaphors are the right ones here in talking of the soul, in contrast to the more Aristotelian metaphors. For Aristotle and Thomas, spatializing metaphors are nearly always problematic, at least when one speaks of potency and act. Whatever you can point to, whatever has a spatial dimension (physical or imaginary), must already be an actualized unity of form or soul and matter. This is precisely why Aristotle wants to insist that form and matter are principles, not things. They are principles within things but not, themselves, things,

cannot draw a proper picture of the soul (indeed, not even a cursory, inadequate picture) without describing what makes up its innermost life” (Edith Stein, Endliches und ewiges Sein, in Edith Stein Gesamtausgabe, volumes 11 and 12 (Freiburg: Herder, 2000), p. 501, translated by Redmond. Hereafter cited as ESGA). The appendices were not included in the published English translation, and thus a FEB page is not given here. 8 FEB 373. 9 For example, Vorwirklichkeit, Wirklichkeit, and Auswirkung. Note, first, the connection of these terms with wirkliches Sein (actual being), discussed in Chap. III of Finite and Eternal Being and, second, her frequent use of quotation marks in VII, §3, 4 around, for example, “Möglichkeit” and other terms that may be connected to Aristotelian models.

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and he resists all attempts to imagine them, even though we can understand them.10 Stein, in contrast, explicitly embraces the spatial metaphors for soul. She is well aware of the power of spatializing images, and in other cases, she rejects them. For example, she objects to the adequacy of spatial metaphors for understanding spirit,11 and when discussing soul in the sense of that which forms matter, she similarly does not use them. What is striking is that, despite her rejection of spatial images in relation to other things, she accepts, and even embraces, the spatial images for the fundamental nature of soul. We get a similar description, developing some of the concepts, in the appendix, where Stein writes: The main thing we [i.e., Teresa and Stein] have in common is that we both view the soul as a wide kingdom which its owner must first come to possess, own, since it is proper to human beings by their nature (or better, by their fallen nature) to lose their way in the world outside. We must distinguish here between an objective giving of ourselves, say as a child or an artist, even to the point of “forgetting ourselves,” which would in due course allow for entering—likewise objective—into our own interior, and an entanglement in the things of the world that springs from sinful desire and prevents us from “turning inward [Einkehr],” or may lead to an improper preoccupation with ourselves.12

Here she welcomes once again the very spatial and vivid language of Teresa of Avila. She emphasizes here the appropriateness of thinking of the soul as that through which we can move, the notion of coming to possess that property, and the notion that we can get lost in that which is outside our proper home. In the second half of this quotation, she very carefully articulates how the interior castle is to be related to an external world. By losing one’s way in the world outside, Stein does not mean merely engaging the external world but, rather, doing so in a problematic way. It is helpful to read this with her Husserlian formation in mind.13 Like Husserl, Stein thinks that consciousness is always relational; we are always already oriented toward an object. That need not be in the least bit problematic; it is, in fact, the mark of spirit, and Stein repeatedly emphasizes throughout Finite 10

Imagine here would refer to image-based thinking, whereas understanding need not rely on any image. Descartes’ example of a thousand-sided figure in Meditations VI helpfully captures the distinction. 11 She writes, for example: “We characterized the spiritual (or intellectual) as the nonspatial and non-material, as that which possesses an ‘interiority’ [Inneres] in an entirely non-spatial sense, and which remains ‘within itself’ while going out of itself. This going-out-of-itself pertains to the spiritual essentially. It is indicative of its being completely ‘selfless,’ not indeed in the sense of having no self but rather in the sense of a total self-surrender without any loss of self, a self-giving in which the spiritual reveals itself completely—in contrast to the soul and its sphere, which remain in concealment” (FEB 360). Note both the explicit rejection of spatial metaphors for spirit and the contrast of this with soul. 12 ESGA 519–520. 13 I am becoming increasingly convinced that Stein is always dialoguing with Husserl, even and perhaps especially where his name is not mentioned. She herself says in the Foreword that her mind “was no longer a tabula rasa: It has already received the firm impress of her philosophical training, which could not be ignored” (FEB xxvii). Remembering that “firm Husserlian impress” in Chap. VII is especially helpful.

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and Eternal Being that spirit is a going out of itself. But the question is from what perspective, from what depth, are we oriented toward objects? We can see things from a superficial perspective, perhaps one dictated by the norms of an imperfect society or from inadequate or sinful motives and concerns. Or we can see things from a broader or deeper perspective—one that takes more issues into account, sees things in their developmental trajectory, etc. If this is a right way to read Stein’s appropriation of the metaphor, then we can understand “possession of one’s soul” to include coming to a deeper perspective from which one lives and responds to the world. The motion within the castle is not opposed to the external world but, rather, how we engage objects, in what way we understand and relate to other things. We might consider another passage, which makes this phenomenological reading even clearer. Stein writes, once again in the appendix: What the saint has depicted so clearly, then, remains quite valid: that our entering and passing through [the castle] stands for our drawing near to God by degrees. But this signifies, at the same time, that we gradually gain an ever purer and more appropriate way of viewing the world. Our sinful entanglement in the things of the world here below demands, first of all, that we become detached from them so that we may to be able to reach God; but then “detachment [Entrückung, desasimiento]” is not the end but a means. For the end will tell us why the soul is given all her natural power to act: that she may labor in the service of the Lord.14

This passage makes explicit the phenomenological reading of Teresa’s castle— that is, that the ‘space’ ought to be understood in terms of the perspective from which the I stands in relation to other things. It is a character-rich space, however, in the sense that there are inadequately illuminating perspectives, perspectives that are limited by our selfish concerns, or myopic in their focus on what is present before us at this moment, perspectives that are marked by apathy or hardness or heart, etc. And then there are deeper, broader places from which to perceive the same thing. As we move into that space, we get closer and closer to the perspective of Eternity, the place of God in the soul. We see and care for more of the created order, and see better what it is and how its relations ought to be weighed and understood. Thus, Stein appears to think that the capacities-model, or the potency to act vision of soul is not fundamental insofar as it fails to adequately capture the way in which a soul is not simply that which comes to act in and through matter, but also something that already exists in some sense, which we, as conscious I’s, live out of, stand and view the world from, unfold (and not merely become) in our actions and lives, and something we can possess.

14

ESGA 520.

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8.3 Aristotelian Response A more Aristotelian reader of Stein might object at this point that this need not present a fundamental critique of the Aristotelian capacities model. It certainly differs in language and way of explicating the points; there is a focus and way of making the points that is clearly influenced by her years in phenomenology as well as her religious life and practice; there may be here a focus on individuality that presents perhaps some theoretical differences. But it is not obvious that there is a fundamental divergence of position. The Aristotelian-Thomist model may be a right one, even if benefitting from the further development of the experience of soul provided by Stein (and her mentors). I am tempted by this line of argument—in fact, deeply tempted. I don’t think, however, that this is quite how Stein herself understood her position or the depth of her critique. But I would like to give the Aristotelian-Thomist a chance to speak and explore this possibility for a moment. We might begin with Stein’s distinction between soul and spirit.15 This is not quite a distinction made, at least in the same way, by Aristotelian-Thomists, but perhaps we can see commonalities between the two positions by beginning with Stein’s distinction here. Stein regularly describes soul as in its essence spirit. Spirit is, for Stein, “the nonspatial and non-material,” which “possesses an ‘interiority’ [Inneres] in an entirely non-spatial sense, and which remains ‘within itself’ while going out of itself.”16 Similarly, she describes spirit as “a self-giving in which the spiritual reveals itself completely—in contrast to the soul and its sphere, which remain in concealment.”17 One might say that soul is ultimately spirit, in its core spirit, but when one has “space-filling matter”—as with human beings—our spirit is then a soul. Thus, there are pure spirits—i.e., angels and demons—who lack corporeal matter, and human beings who are spirits in matter, and their spirit, insofar as it is immersed in matter, is called ‘soul.’ Stein certainly says something like this in several passages. For example, she writes that the human spirit “is immersed in a material structure which it be-souls and molds into a bodily form.”18 Similarly, “Where there is a body, there is also a soul. And conversely, where there is a soul, there is also a body. … A spiritual nature [Geistwesen] without a corporeal body is a pure spirit, not a soul.”19 Aristotelians and Thomists tend to think in terms of form and matter, with the term ‘soul’ used for the type of form characteristic of living, corporeal things. Stein tends to use the language of ‘spirit,’ with ‘soul’ characteristic of living, corporeal beings. But her decision to use slightly different terminology perhaps is not a significant concern. And the more 15

Marian Maskulak nicely summarizes the things that are included under spirit: “For Stein, spirit describes a realm of being to which different kinds of being belong: God, the so-called pure spirits (angels and demons), human souls, and also meaning” (Edith Stein and the Body-Soul-Spirit at the Center of Holistic Formation, 66), which ultimately includes all of creation (68). 16 FEB 360/ESGA 307. See Footnote 12 above for a more extended version of this passage. 17 FEB 360/ESGA 308. 18 FEB 364/ESGA 310. 19 FEB 367/ESGA 313.

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Aristotelian readers might say that there is no problem here. The language is a bit different, but we are all in agreement. A more Aristotelian reader might account for the spatial images used by Stein in at least three ways, all of which are consonant with both Stein and the Aristotelian capacities model of soul. We might point out, first, that each soul has a whole set of capacities for formation, and that formation begins in the very first moment of one’s being. Long before we are richly conscious, long before we have a concept of the self as a free I, one’s soul has already developed and become in many, many different ways in the particularities of one’s matter.20 Furthermore, even when the free, conscious I has awakened, much of the development of soul, the development of one’s capacities, continues outside a sphere accessible to conscious awareness. These aspects of the actualization of soul provide the ‘space’ that needs to be discovered, that which we must come to possess. One might think of some of the examples Stein herself gives21 : the anger that one thinks one has conquered but is still there, the dullness one discovers when one tries to work through a problem, etc. The formation and actualization that may occur through some experience can be misunderstood by us. We might, for example, think that we have truly forgiven a friend; we think we have worked through the harm we have suffered and truly, deeply repaired the relationship. But a flash of resentment or anger at an unexpected time or from some small slight shows that we have not, in fact, worked through that anger. We can come to discover that we have been formed through those previous experiences in ways that we do not always appreciate and must, truly, discover.22 Second, a more Aristotelian thinker might emphasize that the matter through which we become ourselves is never sheer potency. Aristotelian matter is potency for formation, and is considered material insofar as it is open to formation by a soul. But the matter is what can be termed secondary matter. That is, there is some formation to the matter already, such that it is a piece of pizza or a cheese sandwich that will form us in certain ways rather than others, that will provide certain nutrients and not others. Matter as encountered is never sheer openness to formation. It is considered material insofar as it is open to further formation by a soul, but it would be a mistake not to notice the formal dimensions of all matter that we take in and are formed by.23 Thus, an Aristotelian-Thomist might see the secondary quality of the matter as providing something to be discovered. Matter does not simply respond to our soul, but brings its own forming power with it and part of our work may involve 20

Stein makes this point in FEB VII, §3, 4. See FEB VII, §3, 4. 22 We might too look at recent studies on the effect of experiences on, for example, the structure of our DNA, and the various ways in which we can physically pass those formations on. These suggestions, although not yet evidence, provide a productive way of seeing Stein and the Aristotelian-Thomist in dialogue. 23 See, especially, Stein’s discussion of such secondary matter in her way of appropriating evolutionary theory in Der Aufbau der menschlichen Person, as well as my discussion of this point in Thine Own Self (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2010), Chap. 2. See also FEB Chap. VII, §4 for discussions of matter that give it a broad meaning. 21

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discovering how we have been formed by that matter and those material interactions. Thus, because of their common commitment to secondary matter, the AristotelianThomist can celebrate with Stein the ways in which soul must truly be discovered and not merely actualized. There is a further, third way the Aristotelian-Thomist might see the spatial metaphor for soul as appropriate. In the section immediately following her initial discussion of Teresa, Stein once again appeals to phenomenological distinctions, writing: Primordial consciousness turns into self-apperception or inner apperception only when the I rises above the original experience and turns the latter into an object. The I then envisages the soul as a thing-like substance with enduring properties, with faculties or powers which are capable and stand in need of formal development and growth …24

From a first-person perspective, as experienced, the I is always self-aware; concomitant with consciousness is self-awareness. But self-awareness need not rise to the level of self-reflection. It requires maturity and personal growth to get to the point where we reflect on our actions, tendencies, and habits—that is, see ourselves as objects to be understood, evaluated, and about which we ought to take a stand. Perhaps Stein intends to value the spatial metaphors for soul, not primarily for their metaphysical insight, but their experiential relevance. Becoming mature as a person requires us, to some degree, to treat ourselves as an object one comes to understand. One grows into the ability to understand and describe oneself as having certain tendencies, traits, proclivities, etc. Further and significantly, insofar as the first-person subjective perspective is more foundational than any third-person metaphysical perspective, then this account of the soul is rightly seen as more foundational, getting more centrally at the meaning of soul.25 All metaphysical work needs to begin from the soul as experienced and lived, rather than the soul as an object comparable to rocks and typewriters. To begin with the soul as metaphysical object (as Aristotelians tend to) is to treat our primary experience of soul as non-personal, to fail to take seriously the right lessons of the turn to the subject, to miss the best lessons of phenomenology. 24

FEB 375/ESGA 319–320. We might look at another passage that, once again, gives this Aristotelian-friendly reading of the spatial images for soul. She writes, “it is a fact that none has delved into the depths of the soul as deeply as those who have whole-heartily embraced the world and were then freed from its entanglements by the strong hand of God and drawn into their own interior, into their innermost depth. Here St. Augustine holds the first place together with our holy mother Teresa; he was most deeply akin to her in essence and she saw him as such. For these two masters of self-knowledge and self-portrayal, the secret depths of the soul shown bright. For them, not only the ‘phenomena,’ the shifting surface of the living soul, were undeniable facts of experience, but also the powers at work in the immediately conscious life of the soul, even down to the soul’s very essence” (ESGA 524). Stein praises Augustine and Teresa for not simply noticing “the shifting surface of the living soul,” how presumably a soul has developed thus far, but also “the powers at work,” which we could read as the capacities of soul, the powers characterizing our type of actualization. If we add the role of unconscious formation and secondary matter (a concept Stein was herself fond of), we have a good start on a reconciliation.

25

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We can thus read both Stein’s emphases and content as part of her phenomenological appropriation of the soul, her implicit argument that metaphysical analyses need to be rooted in phenomenological description—without necessarily seeing a metaphysical dispute between Stein and the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition. As I read the following passage, my Aristotelian heart was at rest: The foundation upon which the spiritual life and free acts arise and to which they remain attached is the matter …. In this way the bodily sentient life of the human being becomes a personally formed life and a constituent part of the human person. But it never ceases to be a “dark ground,” and it remains the life-long task of the free human spirit to illumine this ground more and more so as to impart to it an ever more personal form.26

We can read matter, our bodies, as the source of the darkness and the spatiality of soul at a metaphysical level, while the character of the move from self-awareness to self-reflection makes spatial models particularly fit to our experience of our own souls. Thus, the images used by Teresa and Stein are appropriate, and even profoundly important, for articulating the nature of one’s soul. They might be, on the surface, at odds with the dominant models employed by the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition, but that opposition is only surface level. Were Aristotle and Thomas willing to take the turn to experience, willing to supplement, expand, enrich their metaphysical reflection in significant ways, we could see how both models are ultimately right and important. And we might even grant that, methodologically, the spatial, interior castle model has priority, even if metaphysically, the vision of potency to act is correct. And yet immediately following this passage, Stein writes: However, these considerations do not yet penetrate to the ultimate meaning of the realm of the soul. The soul is the “space” in the center of the body-soul-spirit totality. As sentient soul it abides in the body, in all its members and parts …. As spiritual soul it rises above itself, gaining insight into a world that lies beyond its own self …. As soul in the strictest sense, however, it abides in its own self, since in the soul the personal I is in its very home. In this abode there accumulates everything that enters from the world of sense and from the world of spirit. Here in this inwardness of the soul everything that enters from these worlds is weighed and judged, the most personal property and a constituent part of the self—that which, figuratively speaking, “becomes flesh and blood.”27

Stein continues, at this point, to explicitly invoke Teresa’s image of the soul as castle. She had just discussed “bodily sentient life” as the dark ground out of which the soul arises and then claims, quite clearly, “these considerations do not yet penetrate to the ultimate meaning of … soul.”28 There are several possible reasons why she is not willing to simply accept the account thus far. Perhaps, in relation to Thomas’ qualified hylomorphism, one might say that, well, of course, the soul has more-than-matter-forming powers; Thomas is, after all, a qualified hylomorphist, and to fully understand human souls, we must look to these non-matter based powers. In saying that the more Aristotelian description does not yet capture “the ultimate meaning of … soul,” perhaps Stein is merely 26

FEB 372–373/ESGA 317. FEB 373/ESGA 317. 28 Ibid. 27

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indicating here that the powers responsible for the formation of matter do not capture what is essential to a human soul. And yet, her language here—the centrality of the very non-Aristotelian spatial model, the emphasis on the inadequacy of the discussion thus far, the notion of what soul means in itself—all point to a desire to focus on how her account differs or, at least, goes beyond in some significant way the Aristotelian and Thomistic vision of soul. I take it that she wants to say, not simply that she is a qualified hylomorphist à la Thomas but, more so, that the potency-act model dominant in both Aristotle and Thomas is itself to some degree inadequate. She does not merely say that some of our capacities are actualized (more or less) independently of matter but, rather, that the discussion thus far does “not yet penetrate to the ultimate meaning of the realm of soul.”29 She writes very clearly: “soul in the strictest sense … abides in its own self.” Selfabiding, reception, inwardly weighing and judging are the dominant descriptions. Not actualizing per se, or becoming—which, interestingly, often appear in scare quotes in these sections30 —but being-in-oneself, taking in in one’s own way, sitting with, etc. This difference strikes me as having significance.31

8.4 Language of Thomas on the Soul Were we look at Thomas’s discussion of the soul in the Summa, he describes soul in general as “the first principle of life, [which] is not a body, but the act of a body.”32 Thomas uses here the language both of soul as principle rather than thing and the language of act, Stein’s wirken. When he speaks of human souls, he grants that each “has an operation per se apart from the body,”33 but he develops the discussion primarily in relation to matter. He speaks of “rising above corporeal matter,” being less “merged in matter,” excelling “matter by its power and operation.”34 When he discusses human knowing, he emphasizes again how even the intellectual powers— those which can “rise above matter”—do so by working through sense experiences.35 Certainly, Thomas thinks that our soul can survive the death of the body. There is no doubt that he thinks that the immaterial soul is a substance, in at least one important sense. But he does not use Stein’s language of the meaning of soul in the strictest sense, the language of abiding in itself, etc. And, perhaps most significantly, 29

Ibid. See especially Sect. 4. 31 Near the end of the appendix on St. Teresa, Stein gives an illuminating account of the relation of spirit and soul, one supporting the contention that soul has to be understood in a way that goes beyond the Aristotle-friendly vision of ‘spirit becoming within body.’ See ESGA 525. 32 Summa theologica I, q. 73, a. 1c. 33 Summa theologica I, q. 73, a. 2c. 34 Summa theologica I, q. 76, a. 1c. 35 See, for example, Summa theologica I, q. 76, a. 5. 30

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he begins with sense-bound experience and speaks of rising above it, rather than beginning with spirit and then seeing some spirits as bound to matter. It is here, it seems to me, that we can see a crucial difference between the two positions. Thomas understands soul as fundamentally a set of capacities or potencies that must be actualized, some of which can be actualized more or less independently of matter. In contrast, Stein sees the soul as, at core, spirit, having a fullness of being characteristic of spirit. As spirit in matter (that is, as a soul), it has a concealed character that can be discovered, that needs to be unfolded, and can come to be possessed more or less fully. Among the things to be discovered about the soul, on Stein’s account, is that it has powers and works, in a broadly Aristotelian way, to actualize and form our material life. But it has a being that goes beyond this. It is in part because of the nature of soul as that which forms matter that there is an element of discovery involved in coming to know our own souls. But it is also in virtue of the soul’s own being, prior in some sense and independent of its being through actualization, that the I can live in that being in different ways, live within and out of the various depths of soul.

8.5 Spirit-Matter Versus Soul-Matter My working thesis at the moment is that the key distinction between Stein and Thomas is that Stein distinguishes between spirit and matter, whereas Thomas distinguishes between form and matter. It is tempting to see the two as simply using different languages, and certainly Thomas Aquinas will talk of spirit in other places. But I have become convinced that these differing pairings indicate not merely a linguistic difference, but an important conceptual one. Whereas Aristotle and Thomas begin from lower types of souls (e.g., plants) and then move ‘upward’ to animals, human beings with their rational souls, and, finally, pure forms (that is, angels and demons), Stein goes the other direction. She begins with spirit and then asks how spirit works itself out in various kinds of beings. There are, on her account, pure spirits and then matter-bound spirits, i.e., souls. But here’s the kicker: In itself, in its core, soul is, for Stein, spirit, albeit working itself out in matter. And when we look at Stein’s descriptions of spirit, we can see why she differs from the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition. Whereas “matter-bound life,” as she puts it, “is the coming to be of an existent, a becoming that must gain possession of its essence,” spiritual life “is an ‘unfolding’ of essence … and as such the active manifestation of something that is already essentially perfected.”36 Spirit is “a perfected being”; in its fullness, it “goes out of itself … giving or surrendering its own self without, however, relinquishing or losing it.”37 I love that description of spirit. The abundance, the fullness, self-giving out of that abundance. Soul, insofar as it is matter-bound, actualizes itself in and through 36 37

FEB 368. FEB 369.

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its matter; but soul, insofar as it is spirit bound to matter, has the fullness, perfection, joyous self-giving characteristic of spirit. Her vision here is that soul is ultimately spirit, which then carries its matter, that is, that has potency to act within matter as part of how it unfolds itself as a human spirit. Thus, soul has a distinct meaning, but fully, adequately understanding soul requires a turn to the nature of spirit and appreciating the fullness characteristic of spirit. Stein sets up the discussion in Chap. VII by considering the doctrine of the Trinity, the nature of hypostasis and the divine Persons. She then writes in Chap. VII, Sect. 1: “This concept of the carrier of the essence [Wesensträger], it seems to me, is highly significant for the structure of all existents.”38 She applies this concept of the carrier and the carried in numerous ways throughout the text.39 In relation to Aristotelian potencies and act, I take her to be saying: Although there is that which becomes—that which moves from potency to act—it does so in the context of a carrier. The carried— that is, the becoming that is potency to act—is carried by a carrier that itself has fullness. This fits well with her favoring of images of discovery, unfolding, coming to know, rather than actualizing, coming to act, realization of potencies. Stein does not deny potencies, actualization, etc., but she clearly favors language of unfolding. As far as I can tell, she thinks that there is a fundamental problem with the dominant metaphor for the Aristotelian-Thomistic soul. Potency to act as the fundamental being of souls, as beautiful as it is in, for example, Thomas’s Compendium, fails to capture all that we need to say regarding soul. Potency to act is part of the story of being, but being in its fullness (which then carries the becoming) is more fundamental.40 We might summarize her critiques: First, Aristotelian language of potency to act begins with the lower in order to understand the higher. Stein, in contrast, begins with a notion of spirit and its fundamental nature in God and then asks about matter-bound spirits. Second, fullness characterizes God in God’s Being, in the fullness of God’s Personhood, in the relations of the Trinity, etc. Although potency to act can describe something of our orientation to God, Stein also thinks that there is also, even more deeply, an image—albeit distant—of God’s fullness in us. Although the context differs, Stein makes an analogous critique of Heidegger in her appendix on his work. After discussing Heidegger’s view of death and beingtoward-death, she complains about: his general tendency to overvalue the future and undervalue the present. This in turn is allied to the fact that he completely ignores the phenomenon of fulfilment, which is basic to all our experience.41 38

FEB 358/ESGA 306. She repeats a few of these in Chap. VII, §1, including the pure ego as the carrier of contents and finite persons as carriers of their individuality. 40 We might also keep in mind here Stein explicit arguments in Chap. III of Finite and Eternal Being, objecting to the Aristotelian notion of potency on the grounds that, to be potential requires a being, a fullness that is more than potency for. Part of the point of introducing essential being in Chap. III is to account for the notion of potency, i.e., something that is not yet actual and yet has character, a final cause, a directedness of a specific sort. See, for example, Finite and Eternal Being III, §6. 41 ESGA 473. 39

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Heidegger, she thinks, captures longing well, but he does less well at articulating our experiences of fullness that make sense of, account for, why we have such deep longing and restlessness. On Stein’s account, we do have glimmers of fullness. We know something of that for which we long—and not simply in the sense of a capacity that is not yet fulfilled or in a glimpse of the God for whom we long but, rather, as a true, albeit limited and distant, experience of fullness in this life, in this moment, within ourselves as created in the image of God. In Chap. II of Finite and Eternal Being, Stein talks of the fullness of the I in contrast to the changing nature of experiential contents, and she explicitly argues that one way that we have evidence of God is in the fullness we continually experience in the I itself. Chapter III’s discussion essential being can be seen as a variant of the carrier-carried metaphor. Certainly, the theme is central to Chap. IV, Sect. 3. And in Chap. VII, when discussing the Trinity in the very opening sections when she sets up the whole discussion, her focus is on the fullness of being a Person. Each of these discussions is, I take it, part of the larger argument that we need to incorporate a new more fundamental metaphor for our understanding of being.42 In the case of the human soul, although she is committed to images of potency and act as an important description of soul, the more fundamental metaphor is that of carrier and carried, fullness versus that which fills. I’m not ready to say precisely how these metaphors ought to be developed in relation to human souls. There is still much work to be done! But it is—I think—part of Stein’s distinctive contribution in Finite and Eternal Being. The Aristotelian-Thomistic model, as I’ve understood it, especially as interpreted by existential Thomists, is one that sees creation as a set of different types of potencies oriented toward, longing for, the fullness of the Creator. It echoes Aristotle’s notion of God as the final cause or that toward which we are drawn—or the Christian language of the created world groaning, restlessly longing, for the fullness of being with God. We long to become, but we must grow in the soil in which we have been planted, and we reach for that fullness by working through the matter given to us in this life, and by grace. In contrast, Stein accepts this model as part of the story, but not the core marker of finite life. We are groaning; we are longing; there is a redemption that has not yet come. But we are also already full in the image given to us by God. We must unfold that image, but it truly is an unfolding of an already existing fullness, not simply the actualizing of what is not yet. As spirit, we give ourselves to others out of the fullness of our spirit. The kingdom of God is truly among us. We are already participating in the fullness and being of the Logos, through whom we were created. We long but we long for that which is, in part and darkly, already also given. Her repeated use of the example of joy is particularly apt. Our fundamental attitude includes a groaning for completion, yet it should also by marked by joy, by the joy and the confidence of the fullness unfolding within us. 42

Consider the following passage: “The pure ego appeared to us as the carrier of experiential fullness. The (finite) person appeared to us as a carrier of its individuality. The thingly form appeared to us a carrier of the fullness of its contents. And in the most universal concept of the existent as such the ‘object’ or the ‘something’ appeared to us as the carrier of the quid and of being” (FEB 359/ESGA 306–307).

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8.6 Conclusion I have thus far come to the conclusions that: 1.

2.

3.

Stein is not fundamentally committed to a capacity model of the soul. She is folding that model into her own view, but it is not the fundamental meaning or model of soul. Core to her challenge to the capacity model is her claim that soul is, at core, spirit, and thus the core relation is one of spirit to matter, not soul to matter, as in the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition. She intends this critique to be understood both as a phenomenological critique, that is, a critique of the classic Aristotelian-Thomistic model as selling short our experience of ourselves, but also as a metaphysical critique, that is, that the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition has not adequately laid out all the structural dimensions of soul.

My deep Aristotelianism is having trouble accepting fully Stein’s position. I love the positivity of Stein’s account, the focus on fullness rather than lack, the argument that we have been created in a deeper way in the image of God. And I am caught short by how it appears to fit well with the descriptions of spiritual maturation given by the great giants of Saints Augustine, Teresa, and Stein herself. And her beautiful, beautiful vision of spirit as overflow, self-gift to another without losing oneself is surely right. I don’t quite know where to stand in the end. The aspect of Stein’s argument I find myself most convinced by is the clear correctness that we do, in fact, have experiences of fullness in this life, a type of continual fullness not easily amenable to the Aristotelian-Thomistic model. Perhaps the Thomist could argue that all actualization is a kind of fullness. But the fullness of the I in contrast to the contents experienced by the I does seem better modeled on carrier and carried, rather than varying types of potency to act. Thus, it seems to me that Stein has certainly, at minimum, shown that notions of fullness need to be deeply explored and incorporated into any sufficient model. But whether I need to leave Aristotle on the soul and become a Steinian, or if I may continue to be an Aristotelian studying at the feet of Stein, is still unclear to me.

References Clarke, N. (1994). Explorations in metaphysics: Being—God—Person. University of Notre Dame Press. Clarke, N. (2001). The one and the many: A contemporary Thomistic metaphysics. University of Notre Dame Press Maskulak, M. (2007). Edith Stein and the body-soul-spirit at the Center of Holistic Formation. Peter Lang. Stein, E. (2002). Finite and eternal being: An attempt at the ascent to the meaning of being (K. Reinhardt, trans.). ICS Publications.

Chapter 9

The Relationship Between Good and Being in Edith Stein’s Metaphysics Martina Galvani

Abstract Edith Stein’s investigations about the human spiritual dimension are synthesized through a relationship between phenomenology and metaphysicaltheological research. Stein describes the human being as “essentially spiritual,” meaning that the human being is a synthesis or integration of intellect and will. Such synthesis is required in order to comprehend reality in its full “meaning” [Sinn] and in order to act freely in it. The ethical implications of Stein’s reflections can best be described in terms reminiscent of St. Augustin’s understanding of “moral interiority.”

9.1 Introduction The ethics perspective which I shall focus on in this paper is founded on Stein’s investigations of the human spiritual dimension in which her phenomenological and metaphysical-theological research is synthesized. Stein describes the human being as “essentially spiritual,” namely, having an intellect and a will. In fact, the human being can comprehend reality in its meaning (Sinn) and act freely in it. The moral implications of Stein’s reflections on this subject will be examined through what I shall call “moral interiority.”

9.2 The Human Spiritual Dimension 9.2.1 Essentiality, Essence and Actual-Real Being My investigation begins with the study of a particularly delicate topic to which Stein devotes much time and energy: the issue of essence. It is a fundamental and mucharticulated topic that moves between phenomenology and scholastic philosophy, both M. Galvani (B) Northwestern Italian Consortium, Genoa, Italy © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. F. Andrews and A. Calcagno (eds.), Ethics and Metaphysics in the Philosophy of Edith Stein, Women in the History of Philosophy and Sciences 12, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91198-0_9

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of which are the focus of Stein’s study throughout her life. The purpose of Husserl’s phenomenology is the “return to essence,” an issue that dates back to Greek philosophy and is an important part of the Christian philosophical tradition; Stein perceives such continuity in the Greek term ειδoς [form or the look of something], used by Husserl himself, and synthetically elaborates on the problem, providing an original and personal interpretation.1 In Finite and Eternal Being, Stein specifically focuses on this, albeit avoiding the term idea—which from Plato onwards generates conflicts and ambiguities—preferring to use instead the German term Wesenheit.2 The starting point is always the life of the ego as it emerges from a phenomenological study. The experiential units (Erlebniseinheiten) resulting from the transcendental reduction— a flow of Erlebnisse—manifest continuously one after the other, but they have a stable foundation that, according to Stein, consists of essentialities [Wesenheiten]. She writes, Unless essentialities [Wesenheit] were realized in the life of the Ego, this latter would be a chaotic maze in which no formal structure whatever could be distinguished. It is the essentialities which impart to the life of the ego unity and multiplicity, organic articulate structure and order, meaning and intelligibility. Meaning [der Sinn] and intelligibility: actually we are face to face here with the primordial source of all meaning and intelligibility. For what is meaning (Sinn) [λoγoς]? What does this word signify? We are unable to define or explain it because it is itself the ultimate ground [Grund] or reason of all definitions and explications. All human speech rests on the certainty that words have a meaning, and every explanation and argument rests on the conviction that all our questioning and reasoning arrives in the end at an ultimate intelligible reason or ground. This ultimate ground is the meaning [der Sinn], intelligible in itself and through itself. Meaning and understanding belong together. Meaning is what can be understood, and understanding is the grasping of meaning [Sinnerfassen]. To understand [verstehen] what is intelligible [Verstehbare] is the precise nature or being of the human spirit [eigentlichste Sein des Geistes] which for this reason is also called intellectus.3

So the human’s intellectual-spiritual dimension does not create a meaning (Logos) for what is real, but, on the contrary, it grasps meaning in the reality, which is therefore intelligible for it. Here Stein reclaims the Christian metaphysical tradition and the classic distinction between ratio and intellectus. The former is a logical or rational connective procedure, while the latter rests “in the understanding of the ultimate 1

See Husserl (1976). In this work, Husserl speaks about “Wesenswissenschaft.” In a departure from Logische Untersuchungen, and to avoid misunderstandings, he does not use the term “idea,” but rather uses the German word Wesen or the Greek word eidos: “Vielleicht nicht ganz so schlimm hinsichtlich beirrender Vieldeutigkeiten steht es mit den Ausdrücken Idee und Ideal, aber im ganzen doch schlimm genug, wie mir die häufigen Mißdeutungen meiner “Logischen Untersuchungen” empfindlich genug gemacht haben. Zu einer Änderung der Terminologie bestimmt mich auch das Bedürfnis, den höchst wichtigen Kantischen Begriff der Idee von dem allgemeinen Begriffe des (formalen oder materialen) Wesens reinlich geschieden zu erhalten. Ich benutze daher als Fremdwort das terminologisch unverbrauchte Eidos, als deutsches Wort das mit ungefährlichen, gelegentlich allerdings ärgerlichen Äquivokationen behaftete “Wesen.”” (Ibid., 6). Cf. Ales Bello (1993), 14. 2 Cf. Stein (2002), 65. I will use the term “essence” for Wesen and “essentiality” for Wesenheit instead of the terms used in this translation. 3 Ibid., 65. The philosopher specifies the difference between intellectus and ratio.

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meaning.”4 Thus, the essentialities play a key role: simple, and independent of time and change, they represent the ultimate meaning, the intelligible itself. They are not real-actual, but without them the real world would not be. The becoming real, in fact, is understandable to us only because, due to its essence, it participates in the immutability of the essentialities. Essentialities are neither concepts— the result of abstraction—nor essences.5 Human beings cannot know the pure simplicity of essentialities, but can grasp them when, by giving a name to things, they know them. Through names, in fact, the essence of things is manifested. And the essence is the mediate place between essentiality and the real-actual world.6 Stein writes, According to what we have learned so far about essentialities, it appears certain that their essential being [wesenhaftes Sein] is the only kind of being they possess. On the other hand as far as the essences are concerned they may possess an additional actuality in their respective objects, and a relationship to those objects whose quid they determine is already implied in their pre-actual being. This duality in the being of the essences corresponds to the mediating function which they exercise with respect to the essentialities, on the one hand, and the “real-actual world” on the other.7

According to a first definition, following Thomas Aquinas and also Husserl’s investigations, essence “is that which determines the ‘quid’ or ‘what’ of the object (τ o τ ι εη ειηαι). An ‘essence-less’ [Wesen-los] object is therefore inconceivable; without an essence it would no longer be an object, but only the empty form of an object.”8 A re-elaboration of this classic issue is fundamental to a study of the human spiritual dimension. The double being of essence, Stein writes, corresponding to the mediate place between essentialities and the actual-real world, can be better understood through the distinction between full quid and essential (pure) quid. The latter represents the essential possibility [Wesensmöglichkeit], which is immutable and at the same time can only be expressed in the actual-real being. The full quid can be caught, however, considering the whole becoming process to which every temporal reality is subject. Stein uses joy as an example: The essence and the essential quid [Wesens was] of this (my) joy is actual as a whole at every moment of the joy’s (actual-real) duration. . . . There is no doubt that the essence of this (my) joy is actual only as long as the joy itself is actual (full quid). Prior to the actuality, the essence of my joy has no being in the “real world . . . . Nevertheless, it cannot be said that the essence of my joy is not prior to this actuality. Since we are able to grasp its essential quid independent of its actualisation in its object.”9 4

Ibid., 65. Cf. Ibid., 66: “The danger of mistaking the essence of a concept is even greater. We form concepts by bringing into relief certain characteristic marks of an object. We thus have a certain amount of freedom in the formation of concepts. Essentialities, on the other hand, are not formed by us but rather found discovered.” 6 Cf. Ibid., 79–80. Here, Stein’s metaphysical research is correlated with theological perspective: before the fall, human beings knew things in their essence and could give them an appropriate name. The Biblical reference is Gn. 2, 19. 7 Ibid., 84. 8 Ibid., 70–71. 9 Ibid., 82–83. 5

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Essence thus depends on essentiality, through its essential quid—referred to as universal in the Medieval tradition—but also on the object it needs to complete itself through the full quid.10 According to Stein, a discourse on essentialities is intended as a reinterpretation of Plato’s world of ideas and the universals of Scholasticism, opening the way to a comparison with the classic doctrine of exemplarism, from which Stein elaborates her own version.11

9.2.2 Essence and Singularity We have said that the human spirit can grasp the meaning of the real only through essence, as essence participates in the simplicity of the essentialities. We must now ask ourselves if these essentialities are copies of real entities. Stein’s ontology describes the reality of the world as independent of the spiritualintellectual subject (realism). However, the reality can assume a meaning when it is known by the spiritual subject because of the essence of known things and to the essence of the knowing spirit.12 This perspective remains faithful to the noeticnoematic description proposed by phenomenology, and it is enriched by the adhesion to Christian metaphysics. The universal, according to Stein, coincides with the essential quid—as discussed above—which is neither mere name, nor mere concept. It is not an arbitrary result of abstraction, but can be found in objects, even independent of their being actual-real. Human beings, in fact, know things as such because, as spiritual beings, individually connotated, they can find their own meanings in them. The material world is thus intentionally grasped and understood according to a specific scale of values. It is not rational knowing (ratio), but thinking: the work of the intellect.13 The known world is independent of the knower, but the latter, operating intentionally on the world, provides meaning. The human knowing process cannot however be described as autonomous, because receiving the essence in the meaning of things is not the same as perceiving it in its purity and simplicity, namely, in its essentialities; the human being does not see things as they are themselves but can understand their meaning.14 These observations lead to the recognition of an eternal foundation outside time, belonging to the field of essentiality. The Greek expression tò tì en einai can be translated as “to be that which was” in its essence. “Whatever essentiality is immutably what it was,” writes Stein. “Said more precisely, the difference between present, past, and future is suspended here. Whatever is essentially 10

Cf. Ibid., 84 footnote 43: Stein comments on the Husserlian Wesensanschauung (Husserl, Idee I, pp. 8 ss.). She argues that Husserl has not considered this double nature of Wesen. 11 Mauro (2015). 12 Stein, Finite and Eternal Being, 85–90. 13 This difference is typical of Christian metaphysical thought (for example, Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure and Nicholas of Cusa), and it is shared by Stein. In contemporary philosophy the theme is also studied by Heidegger, who uses the terms “Wissen” and “Denken.” Also, Barzaghi (2003), 96ff. 14 Stein, Finite and Eternal Being, 70–71.

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does not enter into existence; it is, not as from moment to moment wrested from the naught, it is not temporal. But because it is independent of time, it is also in every instant.”15 It is apparent that Stein adheres to a tradition which, through Plato, Augustine, and Thomas,16 deals with the topic of exemplarism, avoiding hypostatization and so, duplicity between archetype and things. The archetype (or essentiality) is not something different from real-actual being: it is its most authentic actuation; it is what it ought (was destined) to be.17 Later, this gnoseological and ontological argument will assume a moral meaning.

9.3 Theory of Being [Seinslehre] 9.3.1 Essence, Existence, Creation As we have shown, the topic of essences and essentialities leads Stein to refuse the dualistic interpretation of Plato’s doctrine of ideas.18 To clarify this point and avoid criticism such as Aristotle’s of Plato’s is not an easy task. However, Stein repeatedly emphasizes that she is not sure Aristotle correctly understood his master. Ideas are not things, but they are truer than any entity (μαλλoη oητα). Stein writes, “Ideas cannot be anything but ‘true.’... Ideas are what they are, and they are manifest to the divine spirit.... Ideas are nothing but the divine spirit itself, which as such is completely manifest or intelligible to itself.19 Here it is clear that Stein’s philosophical perspective is related to Revelation. In this light, in fact, Stein’s elaboration of the problem of essence is particularly interesting. This theme is not used merely in a gnoseological context to explain the dynamic of human knowledge, but it constitutes the ontological framework within which it is possible to comprehend Stein’s anthropological and moral perspective. The question about the “meaning of reality” is the framework within which the doctrine of the Wesenheiten should be placed. It is not enough to describe how it is possible to know something; the question becomes twofold: Why is that thing? and What is its origin? From here, philosophical necessity encompasses the issue of an analogy with human beings and their Principle. Plato’s ideas remain an important reference point. However, the idea of creation is still foreign to Plato. Stein’s metaphysics, on the contrary, does discuss the problem of unity-multiplicity within the context of

15

Ibid., 93. Stein refers to De Potentia, q. 3, a. 5 ad 2 m and De Veritate, q. III, a. 1 corp. 17 Stein, Finite and Eternal Being, 303–304. 18 Like Thomas, Stein is thoroughly convinced that there are real intelligible structures, and Plato’s doctrine of ideas supports this perspective. Ibid., Chap. IV, §4, 3. 19 Ibid., 306. 16

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creationism.20 The philosophical reason for drawing from the Holy Scriptures can also be found in the metaphysical question that Heidegger brings to the attention of his contemporaries: “Why being and not nothing?”21 However, Stein’s response differs completely from Heidegger’s. In fact, a phenomenological investigation of the ego leads her to seek perspectives of meaning capable of explaining its origin. The actual life of the pure ego flows from one lived experience to the other and it cannot be independent, she writes; it needs a foundation.22 Thus, it is through a phenomenological analysis that Stein recognizes the Eternal Being, the Creator, as the measure of being of each and every ego. So, Husserl’s discourse on essence is synthetically connected to that on existence and to the question about origin. In this context, Stein’s doctrine of essentiality provides a philosophical contribution to the theological problem of creation.

9.3.2 From Essence to Existence Among the different meanings of ens, which Stein analyzes in detail from the Aristotelian and Thomistic traditions,23 the most important is the one used to indicate “something which is.” We thus reach the question of existence [Existenz].24 The need for completeness in Stein’s investigation on being allows her to point out the mutual dependence between essential dimension and existential dimension. The essential quid of everything is before the real-actual being,25 but such quid can be determined only in synthesis with the real being (from potency to act).26 Thus, an investigation of existence cannot be avoided. The main purpose of research is, in fact, to reach an understanding of the world of experience in its real multiplicity. According to Stein, the need to understand this fullness of being begins with the experience of the real, but it refers back to essentialities, which, as we have seen, are not an arbitrary result of abstraction. Stein writes: “Being is one, and all that which is shares in it. Its full meaning corresponds to the fullness of all existents. And when we speak of being, we mean this total fullness. No finite intellect, however, is ever capable of enclosing 20

Ibid., 308: “The attempt to harmonize the simplicity of the divine being with the manifold of the ideas bears the marks of the reason illumined by faith, a reason which—impelled by? the words of revealed truth—seeks to grasp mysteries which defy and confound all human concepts.” 21 Ibid., 325–331: “We can conceptually conceive of the nought, but it is not a “structure” [Gebilde]. It is without content and thus without an essence. It cannot even be called an empty form, but merely the annulment, negation, or crossing out of an empty form, namely, of the form of a something. The nought evinces the incapability of thought to generate by itself “something that does not rest on an already given reality.” 22 Stein (2005), 14: “Es ist für das fließende Leben etwas da, was ihm “zu Grunde liegt,” was es trägt—eine Substanz.” 23 Stein, Finite and Eternal Being, Chap. IV, §2, 11. 24 Ibid., 354 and 417. 25 Ibid., 325–331. 26 Ibid., 333.

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this fullness in the unity of a fulfilled apperception. To approximate the apperception of this fullness is the infinite task and goal of human knowledge.”27 Using the analogy of proportionality (analogia proportionis)28 —like Thomas—being can be said analogically, albeit in different way. We shall not discuss in detail here Stein’s arguments on analogy, but this perspective allows us to understand a nodal point. Stein reflects on the passage from the Bible in which God says, “I am who I am.”29 The very name of God, I am, expresses His total fullness of being with no need of further attributes. It allows us to understand that unity beyond time in which there is no difference between name, meaning, and reality. The name of God is fullness of meaning, and can be expressed only as a verb: I am (sum). “God’s ‘I am’ is an eternally living presence,” says Stein, “without beginning and without end, without any voids and without any darkness.”30 As an analogy: it is possible for human spiritual beings to define themselves each as I. Only human beings, in fact, can think of themselves as single individuals and describe themselves using this term, which, however, needs to be specified through a number of predicates as it becomes in time. The word I in this case is a sign of conscious and spiritual life, although it does not coincide with the real fullness of its being. The life of the I is in fact present in every moment, but it is filled with contents which differ from moment to moment, forming a multiplicity of becoming lived experiences. “And thus we see that while the being of the I is separated from divine being by an infinite distance, it nevertheless—owing to the fact that it is an I, i.e., a person—bears a closer resemblance to divine being than anything else that lies within the reach of our experience.”31

9.4 “Moral Interiority” 9.4.1 The Human Spirit as Self-knowledge How can we interpret this analogical relationship? I would like to focus on what I shall call “moral interiority,” having Christ at its apex. In fact, the Augustinian view of interiority seems to be the best way to describe the individual’s ability to access an inner self and know it. Such inward “opening” is what characterizes the spiritual dimension of human beings32 and seems to be the most important similarity [similitude] with the Creator. If the human soul is spirit according to its most intimate essence, it is by examining its spiritual determination that we can discover its analogy with God, or 27

Ibid., 332. Ibid., 335: Here Stein distinguishes between the Aristoteliananalogia entis and the Thomistic analogia proportionis. 29 Stein, Finite and Eternal Being, 14. 30 Ibid., 344. 31 Ibid., 344. 32 Cf. Stein (2004), 78: “Wir sagen dafür auch: eine freie geistige Person. Person sein heißt, ein freies und geistiges Wesen sein. Daß der Mensch Person ist, das unterscheidet ihn von allen Naturwesen.” 28

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pure Spirit.33 Human beings, as we have said, are spiritual because they are capable of comprehending reality and of knowing themselves (memory),34 and can act freely (will). The phenomenological investigation is enriched with Augustine’s description of the spirit (mens in Latin) as memory, intellect, and will. Phenomenology defines spiritual life as an “intentional movement” by which the subject looks at an object35 and considers it, through the essentialities, according to a specific meaning content (Sinnesgehalt).36 According to Stein, this human spiritual knowledge moves from the external world to the inner world. Because of his spiritual being, man can also look inward—in interioritate—and know himself. It is not psychic consciousness (reflective), but rather spiritual self-knowledge; it is a pre-reflective original consciousness. Stein writes: We shall confine our inquiry to the inner world of the ego. And this means in the present context not only the conscious ego-life—the present ego-life of past and future, to the extent that they are accessible by reaching backward and forward in memory and anticipation (i.e., the unity of the stream of experiences [Erlebnisstrom])— but also that which is not immediately conscious, that out of which conscious life arises.37

This access that the human spirit has to its own interiority is not always actual and is of the same nature as Husserl’s internal perception. Unlike the consciousness that accompanies the pure ego,38 it is pre-reflective and not always immediately present. Stored in memory, it forms a collection of experiences that allows for selfknowledge.39 This capacity for spiritual self-knowledge is, however, limited, as it is not clearly evident to the self. Indeed, the spiritual soul is characterized by interior light and darkness similar to “a lighted surface over a dark abyss.”40

9.4.2 The Human Spirit as Will Spiritual life, as we have seen, is intellectual knowledge through essence and essentialities; it is self-knowledge, namely, interiority and, finally, it is free will.41 The subject, who can freely choose how to act and thus pronounce his or her own fiat, 33

Stein, Finite and Eternal Being, 460. Ibid., 362. 35 Stein (2010), cit., 64ff. 36 Phenomenologically, the spiritual capacity to grasp an object intentionally is the result of motivation. Cf. Finite and Eternal Being, Chap. IV, §3, 20 e §4, 8. 37 Ibid., 388. 38 For more on “interior perception,” see Finite and Eternal Being, 374–376. 39 Ibid., 500–501. 40 Stein, Finite and Eternal Being, 365. 41 Ibid., 372: “The realm of spiritual life is the authentic realm of freedom. Here the I can be genuinely creative out of the depth of its own self. What we call free acts—a firm resolve, the voluntary inception and execution of some action, the explicit turning toward a ‘rising’ thought, the conscious termination of a succession of idea as well as all questioning, demanding, granting, promising, commanding, obeying—are ‘deeds’ of the I, manifold in their meaning and inner structure, but 34

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can be defined as a person.42 The issue of ethics concerning choice and the appetitive faculty,43 discussed by Stein in her anthropological description, can be defined as phenomenological-metaphysical. According to Stein, this faculty is oriented towards the good. Her explanation of the desire for good that is characteristic of the spiritual dimension, begins with the Thomistic discussion of transcendentals, especially the transcendental bonum. Willing the good implies knowledge; what is willed is known and therefore true.44 Bonum and verum are closely related and, as in Thomism, they impart perfection to the existent (ens).45 As we have seen, the spirit can understand reality because it grasps its essence, and thus essentiality. We are back to the topic of archetypes, to be understood not as something different from the real-actual being, but rather as the existent in its actualization: “the existent as it should be.”46 The cognitive and appetitive faculties are seen in their mutual determination, and the classic theory of transcendentals is integrated with the contemporary moral value theory. What we call value, writes Stein, “belongs to the realm of essential being. It is pre-designed from eternity not only what an existent (ens) is, considered in itself, but also what significance, i.e., what value, attaches to it in the total context of all existents.”47 Here we can see clearly the metaphysical origin of Stein’s moral perspective, which we have discussed synthetically with her anthropological investigation of the human spiritual dimension. The question behind Stein’s work—What is the meaning of being?—is not disconnected from her reflection on moral acting. The human being, because of an appetitive faculty, tends toward improvement, and acting is part of being. “The effects (i.e., the resultant quid of the efficacious activity), however, depend on what the existents are,” says Stein.48 Human beings, as real-actual existents, are subject to becoming and, acting freely, can tend to the realization of what they are essentially. Being and acting do not coincide in them, as they do in the pure Act, but there are potentialities in interioritate that can be realized in time.49 We use the term “moral interiority” in this sense: to indicate that human beings are capable of seeing and realizing what they are essentially. A subject can be defined as a person only when that subject is free to create a personal life. This freedom of

uniform in one respect. In all of these deeds the I determines the content or direction of its own being […]. This does not mean, of course, that in these deeds the I becomes […] the creator of its own self. The I has received the freedom of self-determination as a gift.” 42 Stein, Finite and Eternal Being, 366–367. 43 Ales Bello (2007), 15: “Il regno dello spirito è il regno degli atti liberi, quegli atti caratterizzati dal fiat, che implicano una decisione e una presa di posizione. Si entra nella sfera del volere e dell’agire, lontana da ogni determinismo, nella quale si può “agire” o “tralasciare,” ed è qui che si innesta la vita etica e la scelta morale.”. 44 Ibid., 312. 45 Thomas Aquinas, Quaestiones de Veritate, cit., q. 21, a. 1 e a. 3. 46 About this theme, Stein describes the difference between the human being and the angelic creature. Stein, Finite and Eternal Being, Chap. VII, §5. 47 Ibid, 316. 48 Ibid, 316. 49 Ibid, 376.

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self-determination is, however, a gift to the individual and it can be developed in any freely chosen direction.

9.5 Deus Trinitas as the Apex of Moral Love We have seen that the human being is an actual-real person: his/her essence can be freely actuated in existence, in a temporal process. However, what is actuated in this process is eternal. We have finally explained this apparent contradiction. With Stein, we can say that the meaning, completed through this becoming process, is fully contained in the Logos, beginning and origin of this fullness of meaning. A contingent entity cannot exist outside the absolute and eternal Being; its existence there would be a logical contradiction. The temporal becoming of the real being, and therefore of human existence, is based upon what Stein calls the realm of meaning, to which every meaningful unit belongs. These units, however, receive meaning as a gift in the creative act, which is not temporal. Since being and acting coincide in God, there is no beginning in the act of creation; it cannot be conceived within the temporal categories that characterize human production. Created beings are called into existence in time, but according to their essentiality they exist in their meaningfulness eternally. From this point of view, Stein interprets the first verse of the Prologue to St. John’s Gospel as: “In the beginning was the meaning [Im Anfang war der Sinn].”50 And then: “Through him all things came into being.”51 The generation of the Word through the Father expresses His real-actual being. In fact, Logos is a real person. However, His existing is not separated from His essential being, since in Him there is no beginning. This generating act, which is eternal and in God Himself, already contains the whole creation; there is no before or after. We see here again the problem of archetype. How can we solve it? What role should this topic play in the moral perspective I have outlined? This passage in the Scriptures, says Stein, prompts us to return to Augustine’s theory of ideas as creative essentialities in the spirit of God: How is the con-stare of things, their subsisting or being alive in the Logos, to be understood? It has been pointed out that it cannot be understood as their actual being. . . . The name Logos seems to indicate that what is meant might be the essential being of things, that the meaning of things (which we have previously characterized as “not-become” [ungeworden]) might have its habitat in the divine Logos. That which from eternity subsists a component part [Glied] of the divine plan of Creation is “imparted” to things as their meaning and is actualized in them.52

The creative essentialities are in Him, because “through him all things came into being.” (John 1:3) The interpretation of the above passages, however, should not lead us to posit that essentialities in the Logos are previous to their realization hic et nunc. Essentialities are in fact already real-actual in Him, ab eterno. In this sense, they 50

Der Sinn is often translated as “meaningful existence.” (Stein, Finite and Eternal Being, 106). John 1–18. 52 Ibid., 114. 51

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are defined by Stein as creative archetypes. “The being of the finite in the eternal,” she writes, “carries a twofold meaning: (1) a being-encompassed of all finite things by the divine spirit and (2) a causal being-founded on all finite things in the divine essence.”53 These considerations lead to the problem of individuation, which I cannot examine here as it would carry us beyond the topic of moral interiority. However, I would like to note that, if the individual essence has a twofold aspect—essential quid and full quid—it could be a good starting point to try and solve the apparent contradiction between unity and multiplicity. Essence is the quid of each actualreal entity (full quid), and and is contained in the Logos at the same time; since it participates in essentiality, essence is both a specific individual being and not separate from Him in the Logos. According to Stein, from this point it is possible to enter the mystery of the twofold Revelation of the Logos: in the incarnate Word and in the created world.54 The Word, (i.e. Christ), becomes therefore the only possible archetype, for each acting is already being. He is the medium who solves the seeming contradiction between One and many. If the creative archetype is the actual-real being “as it should be,” since it is its origin and thus its most authentic being; and if such an archetype is present for eternity in the Logos made flesh in Christ, the model of each acting can then only be the living God made human. No ethical argument is therefore possible outside the imitatio Christi as a moral model. What we have called moral interiority is the way individuals try to realize best their essential quid. This is possible only through self-actualization, and because of the love which originates in the Word made human. What can be realized morally is in the individual’s interiority—what Augustine calls the place of eternal truths. The path to impart perfection to oneself—the natural pining of the appetitive faculty for good—is in free human action preceded by knowledge and expressed with love. This ethics perspective, metaphysically and theologically founded, finds its explanation in the mystery of the Trinity. Only with the Trinity as a model can we understand ethical life as the realization of love, says Stein.55 Indeed, the relation between a finite I and a finite you can only be imperfect, since in the we there is an irresolvable difference of essential and existential. It is not so in the Trinity, three persons are linked by a perfect identity of essence. The we in the Trinity is a relation between People and, at the same time, full unity.56 Here the relation is a gift of complete love in which the I gives itself fully to the you in the act through which the Father generates the Son and breathes with Him the Holy Spirit. It is a mutual gift of a single eternal infinite essence between Divine People. Stein writes: “This essence and being the Father gives from eternity to the Son by generating him, and from this gift proceeds, as the fruit of mutual love, the Holy Spirit.”57

53

Ibid., 116 (my translation). Ibid., Chap. III, §12. 55 Ibid., Chap. IV, §4, 5. 56 The Holy Trinity is a full spirit, namely the gift of complete love. Analogously, the human spiritual dimension is the capacity to give itself. Cf. Ibid., Chap. VII, §2. 57 Ibid., 351. 54

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In conclusion, we can say that since human beings are spiritual creatures and are able to open themselves to themselves, they can can intellectually grasp the meaning of reality and act in it.58 Following Augustine, Stein perceives this original consciousness of oneself as “an inner place, not a place” (interiore loco, non loco), the starting point for an explanation of intellective knowledge, but also, and especially, free action and consequently ethics. Action is not only expressed outwardly: it is first of all self-actuation. Acting and being are mutually implied. The direction of moral actions—the will for perfection— is thus already present in the essence of each individual, and this essence, due to the creative essentiality, is ab aeterno in the Logos.

References Ales Bello, A. (1993). Introduzione a Edith Stein, La ricerca della verità. Dalla fenomenologia alla filosofia cristiana, a cura di Angela Ales Bello. Città Nuova Editrice. Ales Bello, A. (2006). Ontology, metaphysics and life in Edith Stein. In J. A. Berkman (Ed.), Contemplating Edith Stein (pp. 271–282). University of Notre Dame Press. Ales Bello, A. (2007). Edith Stein: lo spirito umano in cammino verso la santità, in AA. VV., Edith Stein. Lo spirito e la santità, a cura di Michele D’Ambra, Edizioni OCD. Ales Bello, A. (2010). Ontology and phenomenology. In R. Poli & J. Seibt (Eds.), Theory and application of ontology: Philosophical perspectives. Springer. Barzaghi, G. (2003). Lo sguardo di Dio. Saggi di teologia anagogica. Edizione Cantagalli. Basti, G. (2011). Ontologia formale: Tommaso d’Aquino ed Edith Stein in Edith Stein, Hedwig Conrad-Martius, Gerda Walther: fenomenologia della persona, della vita e della comunità, a cura di Angela Ales Bello, Francesco Alfieri e Mobeen Shahid, Laterza, 107–385. Borden Sharkey, S. (2008). Edith Stein and Thomas Aquinas on being and essence. American Catholic Quarterly 82, 1, 87–103. Husserl, E. (1976). Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und einer phänomenologischen Philosophie. In K. Schuman (Ed.), Husserliana (Vol. 3/1). Martinus Nijhoff. Mauro, L. (2015). “In principio era il senso.” L’ordine del mondo in Edith Stein in “Minima metaphisica,” Il divino e l’ordine del mondo, a cura di M. Marassi e R. Radice, Vita e Pensiero, 199–208. Stein, E. (2004). Der Aufbau der menschlichen Person. Vorlesungen zur philosophischen Anthropologie. In Gesamtausgaben (Vol. 14). Verlag Herder. Stein, E. (2005). Potenz und Akt: Studien zu einer Philosophie des Seins. In Gesamtausgaben (Vol. 10). Verlag Herder. Stein, E. (2002). Endliches und ewiges Sein: Versuch eines Aufstiegs zum Sinn des Seins. In Gesamtausgaben (Vol. 11/12). Verlag Herder, 2006. Tr. en Finite and Eternal Being. Institute of Carmelite Studies. Stein, E. (2010). Beiträge zur philosophischen Begründung der Psychologie und der Geisteswissenschaften. In Gesamtausgaben (Vol. 6). Verlag Herder.

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Chapter 10

“Is” and “Ought” Reconciled The Contribution of Stein’s Essentialism and Existentialism to Postmodern Ethics Mariéle Wulf Abstract The “is-ought”—conclusion is—according to David Hume—forbidden. But the is-ought-question rises at each moment when thinking is transferred into action: an “is” is set into being, it is preserved or destroyed. This is where ethics is needed. The good action depends on how one understands the “is”. Thomas of Aquinas considered it as the essence—and so does Edith Stein. In St. Thomas, the “ought” is given by creation; Stein gains it by taking into account the value which she reveals by an existential approach. By revealing the essence, the truth of this thing, and its existential relevance, the value, Stein justifies two major aspects which need to be regained in postmodern ethics.

“Is” and “Ought”—A Problematization “Since David Hume we know … that it is logically impossible to pass directly from an ‘is’-statement to a statement with the predicate: ‘ought’”,1 declares the moral theologian Peter Fonk. But this so-called knowledge is not discussed, nor are Hume’s presumptions.2 The is-ought-conclusion Hume forbade, and the natural fallacy proclaimed by George Edward Moore, mainly express the same problem: we may know about the being, the fact, but from this, we cannot conclude that this being, this fact, should exist; one cannot move from a description to a prescription. This supposition is right, assuming we deal with accidental being. If the being is 1 See

Peter Fonk, Glauben, handeln und begründen. Theologische und anthropologische Bedingungen ethischer Argumentation. (Freiburg/Basel/Wien: Herder; Freiburg i. Ue.: Universitätsverlag, 1992), 101: “Seit David Hume wissen wir aber, dass es eine logische Unmöglichkeit bedeutet, von einer ‘ist’-Aussage unvermittelt zu einer Aussage mit dem Prädikat ‘sollte’ überzugehen.” Translation mine. 2 John R. Searle deals with the is-ought-conclusion in: Sprechakte (Frankfurt: Meiner, 1983); (Speech Acts. Cambridge 1969), 200ff. and 261ff. See Klaus Demmer, Moraltheologische Methodenlehre. (Freiburg/Basel/Wien: Herder/Freiburg i. Ue. Universitätsverlag 1989), 41. M. Wulf (B) Tilburg University, Tilburg, Netherlands e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. F. Andrews and A. Calcagno (eds.), Ethics and Metaphysics in the Philosophy of Edith Stein, Women in the History of Philosophy and Sciences 12, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91198-0_10

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qualified as an essence, it is different. For example, whether the rose is yellow or red, it is still a rose. If by genetic engineering the rose can be changed into a different kind of flower, the rose as such, its essence, disappears. May we do this? If we want something to exist, we must guarantee its essence. By proclaiming that we want something to exist, we attribute a “value” to the being. This claim includes the demand to respect the essence. This is why the phenomenological research for the essence can play an important role in ethics, especially in the eidetic phenomenology Edith Stein practiced.3

10.1 Epistemology, Ontology, and Ethics—The “Is” The epistemological background of the is-ought-conclusion consists of three questions: – Can we know whether something exists? The ontic question stimulates teleological ethics as something already or possibly existing and forces the subject to act. – Can we understand the essence of what exists? Only the essence evokes fundamental ethical questions; accidental features can only stimulate ethics in a specific, contingent context (I want to offer a red rose as a symbol of my love, while a yellow rose would express only friendship). – Can we conclude that the essence is absolutely linked to existence such that the essence might be existentially questioned, if it is not respected? The existential question evokes in the person the experience of “to be or not to be”; thus, existentiality is a quality we cannot deny in ethics. In short, the question becomes: How should we understand the “is” in a way that it might become morally relevant?

10.1.1 The Epistemological Background In the scholastic context, the existing being was clearly defined by creation. It was ethically relevant as the creator called it “good.”4 Modern relativism can no longer 3

This article is mainly based on my Habilitation-thesis: Was ist gut? Eidetische Phänomenologie als Impuls zur moraltheologischen Erkenntnistheorie. (Vallendar: Patris-Verlag, 2010), that is to say on the Sect. 2.2 in Chap. 2, 3, Sects. 4.1–4.3 in Chap. 4, Sects. 5.4–5.6 in Chap. 5 and 6. 4 See Demmer: Methodenlehre, 44: “Das Sollen gründet im Sein. Die Geltung dieses Axioms steht außer Frage; das Sollen fällt nicht aus dem Vollzug des Seins im Medium des Selbstvollzugs heraus. Und es bleibt gleichzeitig der Hintergrund der scholastischen Transzendentalienlehre wie der Lehre von der Analogie des Seins in Erinnerung zu rufen. Der Satz ‚ens et bonum convertuntur’ ist auch in der transzendentalphilosophischen Variante scholastischen Denkens anerkannt. Dieser Bezug von Sein und Sollen setzt allerdings einen Seinsbegriff voraus, der Idealität und Faktizität gleicherweise

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refer to God’s wish, therefore, objective values are suspended. Immanuel Kant ‘s transcendental philosophy excludes in a certain way real existence, the ontic reality.5 He maintains that no concrete value may motivate my acting, whether I gain or lose something does not matter. Even more, each rewarding or punishing instance and all so called “driving forces” (“Triebfedern”)6 have to be excluded.7 For this reason the highest good that motivates our acting, has to be free and rational: it must not be at our disposal.8 This kind of thinking leads to a “radical division of theoretical and practical reason.”9 Ethical duty can no longer be obtained from the essence of the concretely existing being (teleological ethics); rather, it comes from the duty I impose on my mind: to obey the inner law (deontological ethics).10 In the context of deontological ethics, the step from “is” to “ought”, from a fact to a norm is regarded as a natural fallacy.11 One cannot conclude from arbitrary experience what should always be done, nor can one learn in a personal situation what is everyone’s duty.12 Referring to an essence is suspicious and judged as another kind of natural fallacy.13 Moreover, analytic philosophy states that expressions of an “is” belong to a different “order of language” (“Sprachordnung”)14 than expressions of an “ought”; they cannot serve to find last-end safety reasons for ethics (“Letztbegründungen”).15 In postmodernity, the all-embracing notions of truth and validity

umspannt; eine immanente Teleologie ist für ihn kennzeichnend. Sein wird also nicht auf empirische Vorgegebenheit reduziert; die moderne Problematik des ‚is’ und ‚ought’ sperrt sich gegenüber einer Integration in den Strom scholastischer Tradition”. 5 See Wulf, Was ist gut? 94ff, and 164ff. 6 See Immanuel Kant, Grundlegung der Metaphysik der Sitten, in: idem: Grundlegung der Metaphysik der Sitten. Kritik der praktischen Vernunft. Die Metaphysik der Sitten. In: idem: Werke in sechs Bänden. Wilhelm Weischedel (ed.). Bd. IV. 3rd ed. (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1983): BA 63: They are the “subjektive Grund des Begehrens”. 7 See Konrad Ott, Moralbegründungen: Zur Einführung. (Hamburg: Junius 2001), 89. 8 Kant: Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, A225f. 9 Wilhelm Korff, Wege empirischer Argumentation. In: Anselm Hertz/ Wilhelm Korff/ Trutz Rendtorff/ Hermann Ringeling (ed.): Handbuch der Christlichen Ethik. Vol. 1. (Freiburg/Basel/Wien: Herder 1993, 83–107), 86. 10 See Franz Böckle, Rückblick und Ausblick. In: idem. Das Naturrecht im Disput. (Düsseldorf: Patmos 1966, 121–150), 128. See Immanuel Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft. In: idem: Werke in sechs Bänden. Vol. II. 3rd ed. Wilhelm Weischedel, ed. (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft 1983), B575f./A547f.: “Das Sollen drückt eine Art von Notwendigkeit und Verknüpfung mit Gründen aus, die in der ganzen Natur sonst nicht vorkommt”. 11 See Dietmar Mieth, Moral und Erfahrung I: Grundlagen einer theologisch-ethischen Hermeneutik. Studien zur theologischen Ethik. 4th ed. (Freiburg/Basel/Wien: Herder/Freiburg i. Ue. Universitätsverlag 1999), 36ff. 12 See Böckle: Naturrecht. Rückblick und Ausblick, 132. 13 See Mieth, Moral und Erfahrung I, 178: “Dieser Schluss vom Menschenbild, oder von der Natur bzw. vom Wesen des Menschen auf das Sollen steht im Verdacht des naturalistischen Fehlschlusses”. 14 Mieth, Moral und Erfahrung I, 178. 15 See Klaus Demmer, Gottes Anspruch denken: Die Gottesfrage in der Moraltheologie. (Freiburg i. Ue.: Universitätsverlag 1993), 22.

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are lost; in postmodern constructivism the essence is nothing but a (social) construction.16 This is why philosophy can no longer refer to an ultimate instance17 or to an all-embracing consent. Even Hans Jonas’ “principle of responsibility”18 does not solve the problem: responsibility already presupposes the dichotomy of “is” and “ought.”19 According to Jonas and Kant, the last point of reference is anthropology: both authors refer to the human being by using the notion of “holiness.”20 It seems that in modernity this ideal could still serve as a point of reference, an ideal point, which has since been lost.21 Max Scheler tries to find some orientation by pointing to the high value of the person; but to postmodern philosophers, this thinking borders on ideology22 and is too idealistic. Ethics, however, always refers to a certain ideal: regarding the possibly unfolded essence, we can conclude what should be done; from the possibly unfolded rose we can conclude that we should plant it into the right soil and nourish it with water. Indeed, an “is” can be understood as an “ought,” if it is an essential being and if someone wants it to exist.

10.1.2 The Necessity of Arguing Ontologically The relation between being and value may be questioned. However, the very moment a thought transfers into an action, a theory into a reality, the concrete being has to be taken into account. Therefore, the autonomous person needs values in order to be able to decide what to do freely while being guided by ethics.23 The fact that we need orientation in order to be able to act in the right way gives rise to some new modern suggestions on ethics:

16

See Wulf, Was ist gut? 209ff. See Wulf, Was ist gut? 135ff. 18 See Hans Jonas, Das Prinzip Verantwortung: Versuch einer Ethik für die technologische Zivilisation. 7th ed. (Frankfurt am Main: Insel Verlag 1987). 19 See Jonas, Verantwortung, 234: “Denn die heutige Crux der Theorie ist ja die angebliche Kluft von Sein und Sollen, die nur durch ein, sei es göttliches, sei es menschliches fiat überbrückt werden könne—beides höchst problematische Quellen der Gültigkeit, die eine wegen bestrittener Existenz bei hypothetisch zugestandener Autorität, die andere wegen fehlender Autorität bei faktisch vorliegender Existenz”. 20 See Jonas, Verantwortung, 63. See Kant, Grundlegung, BA 78f. 21 See Wulf, Was ist gut? 399ff. 22 See Max Scheler, Der Formalismus in der Ethik und die materiale Wertethik. Gesammelte Werke vol. 2. 4th ed. (Bern/München: Francke 1954). See Claudia Mariéle Wulf, Begegnung, die befreit: Christliche Erlösung als Beziehungsgeschehen. (Vallendar: Patris-Verlag 2009), 33ff. See Mieth, Moral und Erfahrung I, 36ff. 23 See Klaus Arntz, Sind Christen die besseren Menschen? Moral anders verkünden. (Regensburg: Pustet 2003), 14ff. 17

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– Hans Jonas tries to show that humankind should exist; this claim evokes the “ontological responsibility for the idea of the human being.” Here, “axiology” is a constitutive “part of ontology.”24 – David Hume evokes a natural altruism or compassion, which serves as a natural concept of what is good and bad.25 – Emmanuel Levinas takes into account the weakness and suffering of the possible victim; this is why he calls ethics “first philosophy.”26 These ontological concepts lead to an “ontopraxeology”27 : respecting natural rights and the concept of the nature of something (“Sachgesetzlichkeit”),28 through which you will be able to act in the right way. Acting morally means ‘realizing the good.’ But this way of thinking is no longer accepted. If “nature” is nothing but a constructed concept, the is-ought-question has to be solved in a new way, which may be acceptable for postmodern orientation-seekers.

10.1.3 The Is-Ought-Conclusion in Acting In theory, we can suspend the is-ought-conclusion; while acting, we cannot. We realize something and have to make sure that the essence is brought into being. The phenomenological approach suggests: the “is” is the existence, the “Dasein”; the “ought” is the essence, the “Sosein” that should be realized. This “should” expresses the value we contribute to the essence.29 Modern and postmodern thinkers are not barred from referring to concrete acting. They would admit this, though they often do not reflect on whether or not they obtain their “values” in a responsible way. The very first duty of ethics is the duty to reflect upon one’s own thinking patterns. An ontological argumentation cannot be replaced by postulating values or by fixing them by authority (which fundamentalism does). Values must be based on a valid isought-conclusion, which stresses all dimensions of truth: practical, axiological, and

24

See Jonas, Verantwortung, 186f.: “Existenz der Menschheit heißt einfach: dass Menschen leben; dass sie gut leben, ist das nächste Gebot. Das nackte ontische Faktum, dass es sie überhaupt gibt, wird für die darin vorher nicht Befragten zum ontologischen Gebot: dass es sie weiter geben soll.” Ibid., 91, 150 and 153. See also Arno Anzenbacher, Einführung in die Ethik. (Düsseldorf: Patmos 1992), 257. 25 See Anzenbacher, Einführung, 26. 26 See Emmanuel Levinas, Die Philosophie und die Idee des Unendlichen (1957), in: SpA 197, 202ff. See Antje Kapust, Berührung ohne Berührung. Ethik und Ontologie bei Merleau-Ponty und Levinas. (München: Wilhelm Fink 1999), 15. 27 See Mieth, Moral und Erfahrung I, 222. 28 See Alfons Auer, Autonome Moral und christlicher Glaube. (Düsseldorf: Patmos 1971), 27. 29 See Dietmar Mieth, Moral und Erfahrung II: Entfaltung einer theologisch-ethischen Hermeneutik. (Freiburg i. Ue.: Universitätsverlag; Freiburg/Basel/Wien: Herder, 1998), 55.

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doxic truth in their empirical, rational, and metaphysical modes.30 Phenomenology can provide a way to accomplish this.

10.2 Regaining the Existence and the Essence 10.2.1 Regaining the Existence Though Stein methodically starts with the “cogito “ and the triple epoché, like Scheler, she focuses more on the “Lebenswelt”, the world we live in, and on ethics.31 She adopts Scheler’s epistemological realism32 : the existence of the object is warranted. But the way back from idealism to ontology is not possible through the object.33 Stein finally overcomes the epistemological gap by analyzing the personal subject.34 Regarding epistemology she states: At one point this theory must collapse: the being of consciousness itself and furthermore the existence of the laws of acting, which regulate consciousness. [This existence] has to be acknowledged as independent from consciousness, which brings it into being. It is as if you would say that those laws of functioning do not exist in an absolute manner but the belief in them is brought back to the fact that consciousness always proceeds them in a certain lawful way. Hence, you end up with a never ending regress. With ‘truth’ and validity as such, the truth and validity of the referred theories would fail. However, as we presume that this regress can be avoided, that consciousness and its essential laws, according to which it operates, can be set as

30

See Mieth: Moral und Erfahrung I, 161. These are the three dimensions Husserl evokes. See Edmund Husserl, Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie I. Husserliana vol. III. (Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1950), 343. 31 See Edith Stein, Die weltanschauliche Bedeutung der Phänomenologie. In: idem. “Freiheit und Gnade” und weitere Beiträge zu Phänomenologie und Ontologie (1917 bis 1937) ESGA 9. (Freiburg/Basel/Wien: Herder 2004, 143–161). See Edith Stein, Individuum und Gemeinschaft. In: idem. Beiträge zur philosophischen Begründung der Psychologie und der Geisteswissenschaften. Eine Untersuchung über den Staat. ESGA 6. (Freiburg/Basel/Wien: Herder, 2010), 143–158, 147ff. See Edith Stein, Diskussionsbeiträge Juvisy. In: idem, “Freiheit und Gnade” und weitere Beiträge zu Phänomenologie und Ontologie (1917 bis 1937) ESGA 9. (Freiburg/Basel/Wien: Herder, 2004, 162–167), 163: “Historisch stand … die eidetische Reduktion an 1. Stelle, die transzendentale an 2.” Die adaequatio der “Logischen Untersuchungen” geht also dem transzendentalen Ausgangspunkt der “Ideen” voraus. 32 See Claudia Mariéle Wulf, Freiheit und Grenze. Edith Steins Anthropologie und ihre erkenntnistheore-tischen Implikationen. 2nd ed. (Patris-Verlag: Vallendar, 2005), 97ff. and 160ff. 33 See Edith Stein, Einführung in die Philosophie. ESGA 8. (Freiburg/Basel/Wien: Herder 2004), 69: ‘Das metaphysische Problem liegt in der Frage” ob die Gegenstände unserer Erfahrung eine von allem Bewusstsein unabhängige Existenz haben’. 34 See Edith Stein, Potenz und Akt: Studien zu einer Philosophie des Seins. ESGA 10. (Freiburg/Basel/Wien: Herder 2005), 86.

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an absolute, the real knowledge can be acknowledged for these entities, as they are themselves real things in the real sense.35 The knowledge of one’s own conscience lies beyond the polarity of ontology and idealism.36 If the personal subject meets him/herself, s/he becomes aware of his/her quality: he/she finds in him/herself reflection, freedom, spirit and “Gemüt”, that is, deeper feelings. Stein departs from the cogito, but her idealistic analysis of the personal I finally targets the only “ens,” the only being you can find by this kind of introspection. It is the existing subject revealed by “original consciousness.”37 Her tactic of overcoming the epistemological hiatus in the subject is easily forgotten, but it nevertheless remains very important.38

10.2.2 Regaining the Essence What is this “being” that we have found? The personal subject has a multidimensional access to reality: it can witness the existence of the thing and communicate with others about this experience. We call this ‘intersubjectivity,’ which is the condition for the analysis of the essence. The essence makes that this thing is this thing. It is a complexity of several essential traits: if one is missing, the thing is deprived of its essence. This observation is concluded by each kind of phenomenology. The eidetic phenomenology, which Stein practiced, takes on a realistic viewpoint. Stein’s definition of essence is therefore ontological: “We shall call the coincidence of a being with the related pure form a truth of the essence. It is different than the ontological

35

Stein, Einführung in die Philosophie, 88: “An einem Punkte muss diese Theorie … sich selbst durchbrechen: das Sein des Bewusstseins selbst und ferner das Bestehen der Funktionsgesetze, die den Verlauf des Bewusstseins regeln, muss als unabhängig von dem Bewusstsein anerkannt werden, das ihr Sein setzt. Denn wollte man wiederum sagen: die Funktionsgesetze bestehen in Wahrheit nicht absolut, sondern der Glaube an sie ist darauf zurückzuführen, dass das Bewusstsein in bestimmter gesetzlicher Weise verläuft, so geriete man offenbar in einen unendlichen Regress. Mit ‚Wahrheit ‘und Geltung überhaupt wäre darum auch die Wahrheit und Geltung der dargelegten Theorien hinfällig. Nehmen wir dagegen an, dass dieser Regress vermieden wird, dass das Bewusstsein und die Wesensgesetze, nach denen es verläuft, absolut gesetzt werden, dann ist für diese Entitäten eine Erkenntnis im echten Sinne anerkannt, wie sie selbst Gegenstände im echten Sinne sind.” Translation mine. 36 See Stein, Einführung in die Philosophie, 105. See Edith Stein: Selbstbildnis in Briefen III: Briefe an Roman Ingarden. ESGA 4. (Freiburg/Basel/Wien: Herder 2001), 163 (91/28.9.25): “Erkenntnistheorie ist darum m. E. […] zugleich Metaphysik und Ontologie der Erkenntnis.” See Jean-Pierre Wils, Handlungen und Bedeutungen. Reflexionen über eine hermeneutische Ethik. (Freiburg i. Ue.: Universitätsverlag; Freiburg/Basel/Wien: Herder 2001), 54: “Im Selbstbewusstsein sind Bewusstheit und Leiblichkeit, Denken und Sein ursprünglich eins”. 37 Stein, Einführung in die Philosophie, 176. See Edith Stein, Psychische Kausalität, in Beiträge zur philosophischen Begründung der Psychologie und der Geisteswissenschaften. Eine Untersuchung über den Staat. ESGA 6. (Freiburg/Basel/Wien: Herder 2010), 5–109, 11. 38 See Wulf, Freiheit und Grenze, 175ff. and 149ff.

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truth (in the sense of genuineness) but the presupposition for the ontological truth as a thing can just be something ‘in truth’ insofar as it coincides with the pure form.”39

10.2.3 The Relevance of the Eidetic Analysis for Ethics In the being and its essence, the ethical relevance becomes concrete. This is how phenomenology, understood as the analysis of essence, becomes relevant in the context of ethics. The facts do not initiate the “ought,” but the essence is directly relevant for acting40 ; it testifies to the “inner correctness of a thing,”41 as Franz Böckle states. In the postmodern context, the essence, that is, among others, the essence of the human being, must be proven phenomenologically, without referring to metaphysical premises, historical plausibility, or religious manifestation.42 Such sober analysis bears the weight of the proof. To deal with it in the right way is also an ethical demand. Under these conditions, the essence can become a ground for non-philosophical sciences and for ethics.43

10.3 The Moral Conclusion: The “Ought” Teleological ethics focusses on duty by (objective) values; deontological ethics focusses on one’s own duty. Both kinds of ethics know this double directedness: the object and the subject of ethics. Therefore, each ethics incorporates “is,” the object, and an “ought” as an appeal to the subject.44

39

See Edith Stein, Endliches und ewiges Sein. Versuch eines Aufstiegs zum Sinn des Seins. ESGA 11/12. (Freiburg/Basel/ Wien: Herder 2006), 256. 40 See Hans Jonas, Materie, Geist und Schöpfung: Kosmologischer Befund und kosmogonische Vermutung. In: idem. Gedanken über Gott: Drei Versuche. (Frankfurt am Main: Insel Verlag, 1994), 53–104, 95. “Bekanntlich, so lehrt uns alle moderne Logik und Philosophie, sagt es [das Seiende] uns gar nichts darüber, aus keinem Ist folgt ein Soll. Nun, es kommt auf das ‘Ist’ an.” See Anzenbacher, Einführung, 284. See Mieth, Moral und Erfahrung II, 55: “Menschen lügen alle, also kann es kein Verbot des Lügens geben. Das wäre ein typischer Ist-Soll-Fehlschluss”. 41 Franz Böckle, Fundamentalmoral. 3rd ed. (München: Kösel, 1981), 243. 42 See Josef Ratzinger, Werte in Zeiten des Umbruchs: Die Herausforderungen der Zukunft bestehen. (Freiburg/Basel/Wien: Herder, 2005), 33. 43 See Böckle, Naturrecht. Rückblick und Ausblick, 128. 44 See Wulf, Was ist gut? 396ff. See Viktor E. Frankl, Ärztliche Seelsorge: Grundlagen der Logotherapie und Existenzanalyse. 10th ed. (Wien: Franz Deuticke 1982), 14f.: “Wir müssen” fragen, ob mit den beiden angeführten Kategorien der Bereich möglicher kategorialer Gesichtspunkte bereits erschöpft sei oder ob nicht vielmehr zum ‚Müssen ‘(aus der Kausalität heraus) und zum ‘Wollen’ (gemäß einer seelischen Finalität) die neue Kategorie des ‘Sollens’ hinzuzutreten habe”.

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10.3.1 The Duty of the Self—Autonomy A believer assumes a duty to find in him- or herself inner freedom in relation to God.45 The enlightened individual, however, wants to dispose of the truth; the solipsistic self decides in an inner monologue about his or her own ethics and supposes that s/he is able to find it without error.46 The duty of the self (Selbstverpflichtung) reappears in modernity and postmodernity under the name of autonomy. A critical reflection of the self-imposed (auto-) duty (nomos) is often missing. The decision, whether to strive for an accidental aim (quality of life) or for an essential end (life as such) is up to the individual (euthanasia shows this clearly!). What seems to be rational and responsible may be fundamentalist and ideological in its very end. A fundamental orientation is lacking. Self-duty and the duty by virtue of self-created values must be evaluated in a critical way. Here, phenomenology can also play an important role.

10.3.2 Lost Values, Lost Meaning A predominant problem is that we no longer know about communicable values. Fundamental values are no longer offered by creation, as the theological view pointed out47 ; the objective inner law is no longer available, which according to Kant was a point of reference given by human nature. Therefore, we have lost objectivity and the guarantee that ethics will still lead to meaning, or, in biblical terms, a fullness of life48 : – Transcendental idealism permits a retreat to the monadic I, which is not subjected to any ethics;

45

See Bruno Schüller, Gesetz und Freiheit: Eine moraltheologische Untersuchung. (Düsseldorf: Patmos, 1966), 16: “Die ethische Reflexion muss also auch eine Antwort auf die Frage geben: Als wen muss sich der Mensch selbst begriffen haben, damit er sich in seiner Entscheidungsfreiheit vom unbedingten Sollen des Gesetzes betroffen erfahren könne.” See Böckle, Fundamentalmoral, 84: “Im Verständnis des Schöpfungsglaubens ist ja der unbedingte Sollensanspruch nichts anderes als die Abhängigkeit eines personal-freien Selbst, das in dieser seiner Freiheit total beansprucht ist, über sich in Freiheit zu verfügen”. 46 See Ott, Moralbegründungen, 10, 143 and 147. See Wulf, Was ist gut?, 45ff. 47 See Böckle, Fundamentalmoral, 88. See Schüller, Gesetz und Freiheit, 38: “Das Verstehen des Wertgehaltes aus dem Sinn der Situation ist der konkrete Vollzug der abstrakt formulierten Einsicht: omne ens (qua ens, unum et verum) est bonum.” Daraus erwächst ein “Sollensanspruch”. 48 See John 10, 10. See Schüller, Gesetz und Freiheit, 167. For the following see: Wulf, Was ist gut?, 183ff.

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– Analytical philosophy reduces reality to the reality of language (language-games) and puts ethics between brackets.49 The ethics of discourse is an ethic of the discourse itself; beyond, no objectivity can be found. – Constructivism consists in one fundamental question: “Did we discover the astonishing fact that everything we judged as objective, is in reality subjective—or did we invent it?”50 Beyond this question there is no space for truth. This is why constructivism renounces a universal ethics.51 Deconstruction has not yet defined its specific ethics; it might be a never-ending challenge.52 – Ethics in the empirical sciences must not refer to values; it is mainly utilitarian. The ethical question ultimately remains open.53 – The emotions that emotivism or hedonism refer to cannot present objective values. All emotions motivate action, but in order to act ethically we need the deep “value feeling.”54 All postmodern ethical attempts cannot provide an end, an all-embracing aim, a meaning. The lack of meaning is one of the most important features of postmodernity55 : ontic constructions of meaning are not accepted, ideological aims cannot be accepted and the biblical background is lost. In the context of ethics, however, the question of meaning is indispensable,56 as values only reveal themselves in 49

See Sascha Bischof, Gerechtigkeit – Verantwortung – Gastfreundschaft: Ethik-Ansätze nach Jacques Derrida. (Freiburg i. Ue.: Academic Press, 2004), 147; Bischof quotes Searle: “Denn, wenn die Sprechakttheorie eine gewisse, der Sprache eingeschriebene Ethizität analysiere, verfahre sie zunächst einfach beschreibend. Wenn sie aber darauf verzichtet, sich die Ethizität kritisch anzueignen, dann wiederholt sie Derrida zufolge unkritisch eine bestehende, gegebene Ethik und mit ihr eine Metaphysik. Sie vernachlässigt dabei andere, nicht sprachliche Bedingungen der Ethik”. 50 Kersten Reich, Interaktionistisch-konstruktive Kritik einer universalistischen Begründung von Ethik und Moral. In: Holger Burckhart, Kersten Reich (ed.), Begründung von Moral: Diskursethik versus Konstruktivismus. Eine Streitschrift. (Würzburg: Könighausen und Neumann, 2000, 88–192), 126. Translation mine. 51 See Reich, Kritik, 119ff. 52 See Bischof, Gerechtigkeit, 54. 53 See Korff, Empirische Argumentation, 87: “Die praxisrelevante Frage nach dem Wahrheits- und Gültigkeitsanspruch menschlicher Normierungen und Wertsetzungen liegt jenseits der Zuständigkeit von [empirischer] Wissenschaft.” See Anzenbacher, Einleitung, 31ff. and 126. See Jean-Pierre Wils, Versuche über Ethik. (Freiburg/Basel/Wien: Herder, 2004; Freiburg i. Ue.: Academic Press, 2004), 33. 54 See Wils, Ethik, 86. If the brain is injured in a certain way, feelings and motivation by feelings are no longer possible. See Michael Koenigs, Liane Young, Ralph Adolphs, Daniel Tranel, Fiery Cushman, Marc Hauser, Antonio Damasio, Damage to the prefrontal cortex increases utilitarian moral judgements. In: Nature 446, p. 908–911 (19 April 2007). 55 See Wils, Handlungen, 27: “Auf den ersten Blick wird ‘Sinn’ eine knappe Ressource, denn die ‘Sinnappetenz’ steigt. Die Explizität der Sinnfrage ist somit eine typisch moderne Gegebenheit. […] Sie erhält eine geradezu existentielle Signatur”. 56 See Anselm Hertz, Wilhelm Korff, Trutz Rendtorff, Hermann Ringeling, Einleitung. In: idem (edd.): Handbuch der Christlichen Ethik. Vol. 1. (Freiburg/Basel/Wien: Herder, 1993, 3–4), 3: “Es “ist” doch die ethische Frage nach der Lebensführung des Menschen unaufhebbar mit der Frage nach dem Sinn menschlichen Daseins verbunden. Als solche lässt sich die ethische Frage in der Tat nicht suspendieren, solange den Menschen die Hoffnung trägt, dass es sinnvoll ist, dass er sei”.

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the horizon of the wider, all-embracing meaning. If this horizon is lost, values are lost. They are reduced to economical means or a “reasonable”57 solution in a certain situation. These relative and situational values do not stimulate an “ought.”

10.3.3 The Meaning as a Person The concept of “meaning” must be further developed. We saw that in Kant’s ethics that ‘meaning’ is the highest good; it must be free and rational. In other words, it must be a person.58 A horizon of meaning that stimulates ethical actions must be congruent with human nature. Its culminating point, the all-embracing meaning, must be a person as only a person can provide a ground for a meaningful human existence. Hence, we obtain a certain notion of God: There must be someone who holds humankind in His hand; there must be re-ligio, the binding back (re-ligare) to a supporting person. This coincides with the conditio humana; the religio reveals its entire meaning.

10.4 Regaining the Value The “ought” is focused on a value. In Scheler’s value-ethics, feelings have certain cognitive quality and can therefore testify to objective values.59 Values are the reason that justify a duty, the “ought.” Stein describes the phenomenon of value by following Scheler and Thomas Aquinas and by analyzing existential experience.

10.4.1 Stein following Thomas Aquinas and Max Scheler According to Scholastic theologians like Thomas Aquinas, the subject has direct access to the existence of the being: truth is an “adaequatio intellectus ad rem.”60 The being is a “bonum”, a “good”, as it is given by the absolute Good, by God.61 As lex 57

Rainer Hertel, Was kann die Entwicklungsbiologie zur Diskussion in der Ethik beitragen? In: JeanPierre Wils (ed.), Anthropologie und Ethik. Biologische, sozialwissenschaftliche und philosophische Überlegungen. (Tübingen/Basel: Francke 1997, 148–175), 151. See Mieth, Moral und Erfahrung I, 91. 58 See Sect 10.1.1. 59 See Wils, Ethik, 91: “Wils betont, dass „Emotionen kognitive Elemente enthalten und verfügen kognitive Einstellungen und Überzeugungen über ein emotionales Fundament”. 60 Wulf, Was ist gut? 377ff. 61 See Böckle, Grundbegriffe, 48: “In diesem Sinne ist die ganze Seinsordnung vom Ewigen Gesetz geprägt, sie ist der verobjektivierte und sozusagen eigenständig gewordene Ausdruck des Gesetzes”.

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naturalis is part of lex aeterna, the essence must be realized.62 The real bears in itself the potential to be the best; the is-ought-conclusion is valid for sure.63 These foregoing statements are the foundations of Max Scheler’s “Wertfühlen” or “value-feeling.”64 In value-feeling, values are brought to mind in an objective way. Nevertheless, the knowledge of values is less clear than intellectual knowledge because our arbitrary moods have a greater influence on us.65 Edith Stein makes it clear that this inner knowledge of values corresponds to the structure of the soul: the higher the value, the deeper the feeling corresponding to it.66 She states that there is an essential correspondence between the range of values and the layers of the soul; by feeling the values, the inner order of the person is revealed.67

10.4.2 The Existential Human Existence By constituting values, the human being constitutes himself. This is not a phenomenological “constitution” in mind, but a constitution in existence; it is lived truth.68 The truth itself includes three aspects: the doxical or intellectual truth; the axiological or value-based truths; and finally, the practical truth, which has to be realized. The axiological and the practical truth become evident in existential relations, which I characterize as a relation that confronts us with the experience of being fully or losing existence. In this regard, values are revealed in a definite manner.69 The existential relation is the relation between the essential trait and its corresponding object. This can be illustrated through some striking examples: – Our intellect essentially needs a relation to truth otherwise it cannot function. – Individuality needs access to one’s own quality otherwise it cannot develop.

62

See Anzenbacher, Einleitung, 87. Anzenbacher refers to Thomas of Aquinas: STH I.II. 93,1. See Auer, Moral, 18. 64 For the following see: Wulf, Freiheit und Grenze, 184ff. See Stein, Endliches und ewiges Sein, 421: Feeling is a “Zugangsweg” to the values, “ein geistiges Wahrnehmen”. 65 See Stein, Zum Problem der Einfühlung, 11: “Alles Fühlen bedarf. zu seinem Aufbau theoretischer Akte. So steht mir in der Freude an einer guten Tat die Güte dieser Tat, ihr positiver Wert, gegenüber; um mich an der Tat zu freuen, muss ich aber zunächst darum wissen, das Wissen fundiert die Freude.” See Stein, Einführung in die Philosophie, 137: Basic moods are this kind, “wie die Seele die ihr zugängliche Wertewelt in sich aufnimmt”. 66 See Edith Stein, Der Aufbau der menschlichen Person: Vorlesung zur philosophischen Anthropologie. ESGA 14. (Freiburg/Basel/Wien: Herder 2004), 82. 67 See Stein, Einführung in die Philosophie, 137. See Stein, Zum Problem der Einfühlung, 119f. and 122. 68 See Wulf, Freiheit und Grenze, 340ff. 69 For the following see Wulf, Was ist gut? 268ff. See Böckle, Fundamentalmoral, 238f.: “Zu sich selbst, zu seiner Natur steht er [der Mensch] in einem ursprünglich existentiellen Verhältnis”. 63

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– Sociality needs a relation to other human beings otherwise it would not become visible and die.70 The aforementioned claims apply to each essential human trait and to each existential relationship. Without this very essential relationship, the essence demands to be realized, it cannot exist. Therefore, this relationship is qualified as existential.71 Stein’s example is the essential relation of the human being to “being “ as such: if it is in relation to being, it experiences abundance; if it cannot find a relation to being as such, it experiences emptiness.72 Thus, essential relationships must exist, must be made possible, as they have an absolute, existential value for the essence, which tends to realize itself. Stein shows this is the case and she asserts the moral duty to make essential relationships possible.

10.4.3 Phenomenology as Access to Existential Truth Stein’s most striking example is being as such. Each particular being cannot hold itself; it is related to another being that holds it in existence.73 Stein states as a fact that we are held in being by someone! In this essential and existential relationship the dignity of the personal subject becomes visible for the first time. This is the existential “truth from which the human being can live and by which he/she can even hope that he/she will be able to die”74 in a meaningful way. This truth is what Stein calls the “ascendance to the meaning of being.”75 If we can realize our essential relationships, we experience meaning.76 In Stein’s example, if the human being can realize his/her relationship to being as such, he/she experiences the meaning of life. Stein stands in opposition to Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit: the relationship to being as such is secondary in Heidegger’s world; the first experience one has of one’s being is that of “being thrown into the world” from the nothing, and not-being-in-the-world-anymore, a “being unto death”, means attaining the nothing again.77 But the frightening “non eris,” that is, “you will not 70

See the corresponding chapters in: Claudia Mariéle Wulf, Der Mensch—ein Phänomen. Eine phänomenologische, ethische und theologische Anthropologie (Vallendar: Patris-Verlag, 2011). 71 This term differs from the term existentialism uses. 72 See Stein, Freiheit und Gnade, 13ff. 73 See Stein, Endliches und ewiges Sein, 60: “Ich stoße […] in meinem Sein auf ein anderes, das nicht meines ist, sondern Halt und Grund meines in sich haltlosen und grundlosen Seins”. 74 Josef Stallmach, Edith Stein—von Husserl zu Thomas von Aquin. In: Herbstrith, Waltraud (ed.), Denken im Dialog: Zur Philosophie Edith Steins. (Tübingen: Attempto, 1991, 42–56), 42. 75 Subtitle of Stein’s Endliches und ewiges Sein. 76 See Wulf, Der Mensch, ein Phänomen, 393ff; Wulf, Was ist gut? 392ff, and 281: “Das gelingende Sich-Ausrichten in den wesenhaften Beziehungen nennen wir eine Sinnerfahrung. Vom Gelingen kann dann gesprochen werden, wenn die Wesensmomente sich in dieser Beziehung entfalten können”. 77 See Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit. 17th ed. (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer 1993), 334ff, 237ff, and 305.

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exist anymore,” does not provide any meaning. First, as Stein says, human being experience that they are; they long for the abundance of being and cannot deal with emptiness.78 Human beings experience that they live by the grace of another, a higher being. This higher being is the base and the hold of our poor existence, which cannot provide its own foundation.79 This higher being offers a stable ground to our unstable existence: in this relationship, we experience meaning, abundance. Without this relationship we would sink into nothingness, an experience that for Stein seems to be autobiographical.80 We do not want a never-ending existence; we long for the abundance of life, to be held by the higher being.81 This is the existential truth, the “real and effective truth”,82 which grounds life. This all-embracing truth is the “meaning.” This particular meaning, visible in a certain situation, is called “value.”83 The way by which the all-embracing meaning is given is hope.84 Meaning is the basic disposition to act, the concrete motivation is the value that should be realized in the concrete situation. As a concrete action, realizing a particular meaning contributes to meaning as a whole; realizing the value imposes a certain duty on us.85 An individual’s main values are related to the essence, and they have to be realized: the duty is absolute.86 In Stein’s work, meaning is related to an objectivity of experiencing values in the soul.87 The all-embracing meaning is revealed in the deepest layer of the soul where the human being meets God.88 Stein herself experienced this when she suffered from an existential breakdown: suddenly, peace and a deep security in God occurred in the relation to God, the religio.89 The religio can also be experienced as religious ecstasy. In these experiences, the meaning 78

See Edith Stein, Martin Heideggers Existenzphilosophi, in Endliches und ewiges Sein: Versuch eines Aufstiegs zum Sinn des Seins. ESGA 11/12. (Freiburg/Basel/Wien: Herder, 2006, 445–499), 465. 79 Stein, Endliches und ewiges Sein, 60f. 80 See Edith Stein, Freiheit und Gnade. In: idem, “Freiheit und Gnade” und weitere Beiträge zu Phänomenologie und Ontologie (1917 bis 1937) ESGA 9. (Freiburg/Basel/Wien: Herder, 2004, 8– 72), 11ff. See Edith Stein, Individuum und Gemeinschaft, in Beiträge zur philosophischen Begründung der Psychologie und der Geisteswissenschaften: Eine Untersuchung über den Staat. ESGA 6. (Freiburg/Basel/Wien: Herder, 2010, 110–262), 196. 81 See Stein, Endliches und ewiges Sein, 58. 82 Edith Stein, Kreuzeswissenschaft: Studie über Johannes a Cruce. ESGA 18. (Freiburg/Basel/Wien: Herder, 2003), 5. Theologically spoken, the truth is a person. 83 Jonas, Materie, 103. 84 See Demmer, Gottes Anspruch, 60. 85 See Mieth, Moral und Erfahrung II, 129. 86 See Mieth, Moral und Erfahrung II, 125 and 123: “In einer spekulativen Naturrechtsmetaphysik sind Wertorientierungen immer schon in einer Wesensaussage begründet, die z. B. den Menschen auf die ‘natura humana’ verpflichtet” See Böckle, Fundamentalmoral, 258. 87 See Stein, Endliches und ewiges Sein, 421f. 88 See Claudia Mariéle Wulf, Hinführung: Bedeutung und Werkgestalt von Edith Steins. In: Edith Stein, Einführung in die Philosophie. ESGA 8. 2nd ed. (Freiburg/Basel/Wien: Herder 2005), IXXLIV. 89 See Stein, Psychische Kausalität, 73. See Stein, Einführung in die Philosophie, 171f.

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of life is sure and safe.90 The relevance of the foregoing claims for ethics becomes clear: if the human being strives after being in abundance, if this abundance is safe in God and experienced when the value in the concrete situation is realized. Value accompanies duty: it has to be realized. This is how ethics comes forth from the existential truth.

10.5 Relevance of Stein’s Phenomenology in Ethics 10.5.1 The Impact of the Analysis of Essence on Ethics The necessity of arguing ontologically was questioned by postmodern philosophy in a triple manner, as we have seen: (1) (2)

(3)

The relevance of the existence, of the being as such, was questioned by Kant’s transcendental point of view. The relevance of duty that a person freely wills loses its objectivity. In Kant, this objectivity was preserved by the “inner law.” Now, duty is discussed in an open discourse. It is split off by analytical philosophy, which maintains that description and prescription belong to different language games. The existential dimension is excluded as meaning is nothing but an arbitrary construction, deconstructed in comparison with other constructions. Stein’s eidetic phenomenology offers three possible answers:

(1)

(2)

90 91

An epistemological answer: The ontic, in the concrete existing thing, cannot be denied. It might be denied in the possible ethical object, but it cannot be denied in the subject. Thus, the existence, the fact is indeed something that exists; this cannot be denied. Its pure existence gives rise to ethics91 under the condition that we want the being to exist. A methodological answer: The ontic consists in two aspects, namely, the essence and the accident. Only the essential aspect can lead to an obliging “ought.” The essence can be found in intersubjective exchange on the subject, but once it is found, is cannot be dissolved into a random discourse. The discourse is obliged by the essence and so is language: the essence is expressed in concepts, which oblige us to act according to the essential traits. According to the essence, description turns out to be prescription. In a pedagogical example: knowing that a child is a free human being (essence), this freedom has to be respected and to be developed in order for the child to not feel threatened as this would hinder the child to articulate this essential trait and its being human (existential experience).

See Stein, Einführung in die Philosophie, 176. See Stein, Psychische Kausalität, 43f. See Böckle, Grundbegriffe, 40.

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(3)

An ethical answer: duty comes forth from the essence at the very moment when it is brought into existence. The essence is relevant for acting. If it is not respected, something or someone may be destroyed. In our example, this would destroy the person’s possibility to live a meaningful life. An arbitrary construction must not deconstruct essence!

This is the moment when eidetic phenomenology, the analysis of essences (doxical truth), and existential phenomenology that teaches us about values (axiological truth), become fruitful in acting (practical truth).92 Practical phenomenology is the direction to which a valid naturalistic conclusion leads. The essence of the act is determined by the essence of the thing, which is the object of the act. This is how the is-oughtconclusion becomes valid.

10.5.2 The Ethics of Thinking Stein ‘s thinking is multidimensional, and this multidimensionality is important in ethics. Her eidetic, existential, and practical phenomenology provides a possible point of departure for a valid is-ought conclusion. Stein herself mainly offers eidetic analysis, but the existential dimension is already visible. Her practical phenomenology is mainly evident in her letters and in those texts that deal with practical subjects such as education. Stein even provides an ethics of thinking: the research of essences must be very honest and has to deal with all dimensions of the truth. The truth, called essence, is visible in the evidence, consistency, coherence, intersubjectivity, and persistence of truth as such.93 Moreover, practical, rational and metaphysical truth have to be taken into account. Stein opens this possibility by discussing the existential relevance and a theological dimension. Truth has to be complete otherwise it cannot be called the truth. This truth can motivate right action: it motivates ethics. Stein ‘s phenomenology can give valuable and important insight into the postmodern context in which truth, essence, and value are forgotten.

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Stallmach, J. (1991). Edith Stein—von Husserl zu Thomas von Aquin. In W. Herbstrith (ed.) Denken im Dialog: Zur Philosophie Edith Steins (pp. 42–56). Tübingen: Attempto. Stein, E. (2001). Selbstbildnis in Briefen III: Briefe an Roman Ingarden. ESGA 4. Freiburg/Basel/Wien: Herder. Stein, E. (2010). Psychische Kausalität. In idem. Beiträge zur philosophischen Begründung der Psychologie und der Geisteswissenschaften. Eine Untersuchung über den Staat. ESGA 6 (pp. 5– 109). Freiburg/Basel/Wien: Herder. Stein, Edith. Individuum und Gemeinschaft. In: idem: Beiträge zur philosophischen Begründung der Psychologie und der Geisteswissenschaften. Eine Untersuchung über den Staat. ESGA 6. Freiburg/Basel/Wien: Herder, 2010, 143–158. Stein, E. (2004). Einführung in die Philosophie. ESGA 8. Freiburg/Basel/Wien: Herder. Stein, E. (2004). Freiheit und Gnade. In idem. “Freiheit und Gnade” und weitere Beiträge zu Phänomenologie und Ontologie (1917 bis 1937) ESGA 9 (pp. 8–72). Freiburg/Basel/Wien: Herder. Stein, E. (2004). Die weltanschauliche Bedeutung der Phänomenologie. In idem: “Freiheit und Gnade” und weitere Beiträge zu Phänomenologie und Ontologie (1917 bis 1937) ESGA 9 (pp. 143–161). Freiburg/Basel/Wien: Herder. Stein, E. (2004). Diskussionsbeiträge Juvisy. In: idem: “Freiheit und Gnade” und weitere Beiträge zu Phänomenologie und Ontologie (1917 bis 1937) ESGA 9 (pp. 162–167). Freiburg/Basel/Wien: Herder. Stein, E. (2005). Potenz und Akt. Studien zu einer Philosophie des Seins. ESGA 10. Freiburg/Basel/Wien: Herder. Stein, E. (2006). Endliches und ewiges Sein: Versuch eines Aufstiegs zum Sinn des Seins. ESGA 11/12. Freiburg/Basel/Wien: Herder. Stein, E. (2004). Der Aufbau der menschlichen Person: Vorlesung zur philosophischen Anthropologie. ESGA 14. Freiburg/Basel/Wien: Herder. Stein, E. (2003). Kreuzeswissenschaft. Studie über Johannes a Cruce. ESGA 18. Freiburg/Basel/Wien: Herder. Wils, J.-P. (2001). Handlungen und Bedeutungen. Reflexionen über eine hermeneutische Ethik. Freiburg i. Ue.: Universitätsverlag; Freiburg/Basel/Wien: Herder. Wils, J.-P. (2004). Versuche über Ethik. Freiburg/Basel/Wien: Herder 2004; Freiburg i. Ue.: Academic Press. Wulf, C. M. (2005). Freiheit und Grenze: Edith Steins Anthropologie und ihre erkenntnistheoretischen Implikationen. 2nd ed. Patris-Verlag: Vallendar. Wulf, C. M. (2005). Hinführung: Bedeutung und Werkgestalt von Edith Steins. In S. Edith (ed.) Einführung in die Philosophie. ESGA 8 (2nd ed.). Freiburg/Basel/Wien: Herder. Wulf, C. M. (2009). Begegnung, die befreit: Christliche Erlösung als Beziehungsgeschehen. Vallendar: Patris-Verlag. Wulf, C. M. (2010). Was ist gut? Eidetische Phänomenologie als Impuls zur moraltheologischen Erkenntnistheorie. Vallendar: Patris-Verlag. Wulf, C. M. (2011). Der Mensch—ein Phänomen: Eine phänomenologische, ethische und theologische Anthropologie. Vallendar: Patris-Verlag. Wulf, C. M. (2013). Morele denkpatronen: Wetten—waarheid—waardigheid. Geschiedenis en methoden van de moraaltheologie. Parthenon: Almere.

Chapter 11

The Problem of Evil in the Political Philosophy, Ethics, and Metaphysics of Edith Stein Angela Ales Bello

Abstract Analyzing the genesis, structure, and dissolution of the State within western modernity, Edith Stein is very well aware that she is referring to a particular thing or matter [Sache], which belongs more to the realm of culture than to that of nature. She seeks to grasp the essential aspects or senses [connotazioni] that make the “State” a State in and of itself, a form of sociality, beyond its historical and factual determinations. For Stein, historical and factual elements, for example, geography and economics, may condition the historical nature of the State. That these elements may be more or less present, in no way varies our understanding of what the State is. The State, according to Stein, is a social formation that is distinct from other forms of sociality, including the mass, society, and community, which Stein investigates in her exhaustive study, “Philosophy of Psychology and the Humanities” [Beiträge zur philosophischen Begründung der Psychologie und der Geisteswissenschaften]. This work establishes an interesting parallel between the individual and intersubjective forms of sociality. Having described with great acuity the different types of lived experiences proper to the lived-body, psyche, and spirit in her text On the Problem of Empathy, Edith Stein proceeds to investigate the sociality of the mass, which is described in purely psychic terms, as well as the sociality of society, which is directed by specific objective ends or goals, and the community, with its deep psycho-spiritual structure.

It would be difficult to find a specific and sustained treatment of the problem of evil in Edith Stein’s philosophical writings, especially given that they focus on positive aspects of reality. This does not mean, however, that Stein ignores negative aspects; rather, she simply does not concentrate on moments that manifest limits or deficiency. She simply accepts them with serenity and with the hope that they may one day be overcome. For example, in the lived experience of intropathy of another’s feelings, 1 Stein

(1989).

A. A. Bello (B) Lateran Pontifical University, Rome, Italy © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. F. Andrews and A. Calcagno (eds.), Ethics and Metaphysics in the Philosophy of Edith Stein, Women in the History of Philosophy and Sciences 12, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91198-0_11

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Stein often considers more positive feelings like joy.1 She knows full well that human beings experience joy and suffering, love and hate, but Stein prefers to reflect on more positive experiences than sad ones. Human beings are very aware of the negative aspects of reality: in the various aspects of our personal and communal lives, we are deeply affected not only by our unfulfilled desires and our psychic drives, but also by what is “unjust” or by what we perceive to not correspond to the possible full or true realization of what is proper to our humanity and nature. More importantly, in our social relationships, judgements of “injustice” are manifestly evident, and they demonstrate that human beings know how to distinguish between good and evil, even if sometimes they do not wish to admit it, choosing instead to privilege the sphere of personal desires over rational judgement. Hence, it is important to analyze sociality and politics in light of Stein’s philosophy, for her insights are relevant today, given her emphasis on the role and participation of persons in public life and administration.

11.1 The Genesis and Disintegration of Forms of Human Sociality Because the focus of this paper is the concept of political evil, I intend to focus my discussion on Edith Stein’s An Investigation Concerning the State,2 which may be understood as a theory of the State. Though this text is central for my argument, I will also draw upon other relevant works from her corpus, especially those that focus on sociality. It is impossible, however, within the limits of this paper, to discuss in detail the entire development of Stein’s thought on the question of evil from her early phenomenological work to her later metaphysical thought. Analyzing the genesis, structure and dissolution of the state within western modernity, Edith Stein is very well aware that she is referring to a particular thing or matter [Sache], which belongs more to the realm of culture than to that of nature. She seeks to grasp the essential aspects or senses [connotazioni] that make the “State” a State in and of itself, a form of sociality, beyond its historical and factual determinations. For Stein, historical and factual elements, for example, geography and economics, may condition the historical nature of the State, but that these elements may be more or less present, in no way varies our understanding of what the State is. The State, according to Stein, is a social formation that is distinct from other forms of sociality, including the mass, society and community, which Stein investigates in her exhaustive study, Philosophy of Psychology and the Humanities [Beiträge zur philosophischen Begründung der Psychologie und der Geisteswissenschaften].3 This work establishes an interesting parallel between the individual and intersubjective forms of sociality. Having described with great acuity the different types of lived 2

Stein (2006); now in EGSA, vol. 7, ed. I. Riedel-Spangenberger (Freiburg: Herder 2006). Stein (2000). New German critical edition: in ESGA, vol. 6, ed. Beate-Beckmann-Zöller (Freiburg: Herder, 2010).

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experiences proper to the lived-body, psyche, and spirit in her text On the Problem of Empathy, she proceeds to investigate the sociality of the mass, which is described in purely psychic terms, as well as the sociality of society, which is directed by specific objective ends or goals, and the community, with its deep psycho-spiritual structure. Stein privileges community as a locus of the ethical and social formation of the individual, the locus of solidarity and mutual responsibility. Stein observes, “Where the individuals are “open” to one another, where the attitudes of one don’t bounce off of the other but rather penetrate him and deploy their efficacy, there a communal life subsists, there the two are members of one whole; and without such a reciprocal relationship community isn’t possible.4 It is important to note that the State is founded in a State-community. Even though the State is a legal entity, it does not exist, if it is not sustained by a consensus that comes from the community. This is why one can speak of the State as a juridical person who is characterised by sovereignty, which is to be understood in the personal sense of freedom. Free acts are always free and individual, which means that every State act must be accomplished by a single person. The impersonal nature of the structure of law, which is the preserve of the State, is founded on both the life of the community as well as the individual. The individual and her personhood, that is, her free acts, which manifest the spiritual dimension of persons, constitute the ultimate and foundational aspects of humanity, but the plurality of human beings is not simply reducible to a sum of individuals. The study of intersubjectivity reveals that in order to develop the individual, the life of sociality must also develop a unified whole that configures itself in a personality of differing grades, namely, the community and the State. A continuity is established between these two moments of sociality. The community can come to express itself in the family, within the communion of friendship, religious communities and even in the community that is a people. Undoubtedly, the community of a people can be actualized in the State, but its sociality is largely characterized by ethnic bonds and, above all, by spiritual bonds, which persist even if the state no longer exists. Stein gives the example of the Polish people, who have kept their particular characteristics even under great moments of oppression. In Der Aufbau der menschlichen Person5 , she gives the further example of the Jewish people, who, though spread out throughout the world, maintain a profound unity. Another example that Stein deploys in order to explain the difference between the State-community and the community of a people focuses on the Prussian State, to which Breslau, Stein’s native city, belongs as it is in Silesia, a Prussian territory. The Prussian state was defined neither by an ethnic identity nor a territorial unity. A State that does not have as its base a community of people, then, can be of great value for ensuring the free development of persons and communities that live in the State, and may even contribute to making them a people. This community is constituted by individuals who directly or indirectly accept to become part of the State. 4 5

Edith Stein, Philosophy of Psychology and the Humanities, 213–214. In ESGA, vol. 14, ed. Beate Beckmann-Zöller (Freiburg: Herder, 2004).

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This last point is central for understanding Stein’s interpretation of the State. She maintains that such an acceptance must not be confused with contractarian theories that hold an explicit voluntary act of acceptance of belonging upon which the State is built. The Steinian state is founded on a structure of community that includes institutions, customs and habitual comportments of a spiritual nature that the will freely sanctions, but which it does not create. The State is fundamentally connected to political functions, including the creation of certain structures vital for the state’s existence, especially governance. Stein writes, “The function of the civil authority is the management of the State, which includes arranging for State actions, law-making (= setting up norms for social life within its sphere of sovereignty), and seeing to it that the regulations and commands of the State are carried out.”6 Such functions are not simply accessories; rather, they are strictly linked to the life of the State. In fact, if such structures are not exercised or respected, there is the risk of the internal dissolution of the State. Here, we find a negative aspect that can destroy the life of the State or, more precisely, its authority. “The active or passive resistance of the citizens need not to extend to all functions of the State. It is conceivable that, to a great extent, they make broad use of available civil institutions like schools, libraries, insurance, and the like; that in their legal dealings they have recourse to the civil courts, and evade the state’s authoritative decisions only where their private interests appear to be jeopardized. Where the punishment of such a continual denial of authority of the State is no longer possible, in our view the State is to be considered dissolved.”7 I maintain that we can find in the foregoing discourse of dissolution something that can help us understand the negative or evil. In Stein’s analysis, the dissolution of the State is never impersonal; rather, because the structure of the State is communal and, therefore personal, one is aware of the consequences of not supporting the State community; one is also aware of the commitment on the part of individuals and the community to sustain the life of the State. If there is no community support, then the State disintegrates and dies. The root of political evil that emerges here must be localized within the sphere of human behavior, hence, within the ethical sphere.8 That objective responsibilities of human beings exist, especially concerning negative choices that result in political evil, can be seen is three potential dangers within the life of the State. First, there is the excessive claim of individual rights to the damage of the integrity of the public sphere. Second, the failure of those that govern to respect the legal structure and exigencies of the State. Third, there exists possibility of the take-over of powerful offices by ruling, incompetent officials,. These dangers can be understood within the relation between public life and values. Contra the idealist position, especially that of Hegel, Stein underlines that in principle the State cannot guarantee the development of the spiritual life, nor is it an indispensable condition for justice: “The value of the legal system is measured not according to the idea of justice, but according to the development of the community life, which the 6

Ibid., 123. Ibid., 125. 8 Ibid., Part I, Sect. 2, f): the State is a legal entity. 7

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system serves. Community as such has a value all its own; and the ethnic community as culturally productive personality has inherent value above and beyond that.”9 The State, then, does not produce the value of justice; rather, the state contributes to its formation. Stein affirms the importance of ethical values and their personal structure when she states: “The values at stake here are “personality values.” 10 It is clear that moral rectitude has nothing to do with law. In fact, the latter is founded on just cause, which derives from the act of promising, property (which can be obtained through expropriation), and guilt (which is connected to criminal action and requires punishment). The ethical and the legal spheres must not be confused with one another, Yet, the two realms are interconnected: legislative State acts can possess an ethical value in relation to what is actualized though such acts. Acts of endorsement, forbidding or permission exist, but it is the person that creates them or it is persons that are used as actors of the State in that such persons have a duty to complete such acts ordered by the State; they may also refuse to carry out their duty. In this sense, then, the State may be understood as making ethical demands. Even though Stein rejects the claim of German Idealism that holds that the State is the means through which ethical laws can come to operate in the world, she also recognizes that such laws can be deployed to achieve an ethical, educational act through the law’s juridical instruments, which are necessary for the formation of character and the will. Such actions must fundamentally refer to values that are foundational for the constitution of any kind of community, including the State community. The foregoing insight has historical implications. If history is the creation of culture and if the people are a creative personality of culture, the spiritual dimension of the individual and the community come to be implicated in the creation of such culture. The creation of a culture permits us to understand the genesis and decline of States. The dissolution of States can be attributed to the destruction of the cultural realm. Evil, then, is identified with dissolution, and it is connected, therefore, with the diminishment of spirituality, with dis-value.

11.2 What is the Origin of Evil? Moral and Metaphysical Evil Political evil is one form of evil. Its roots lie within the spiritual realm, which implies a theological connection. We see this connection in Stein’s lectures given in the 1930s to Catholic Teachers, as collected in the volume Die Frau or Woman.11 In particular, we see it in the essay “Freedom and Grace”12 and essays dedicated to formation and 9

Ibid., 152. Ibid., 153. 11 Stein (1996). 12 Stein (2014). According to a recent revision of dating Stein manuscripts, this text is thought to have been written in 1921. 10

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education.13 Stein is of the view that we need to know evil in order to fight against it. “Evil would not be able to affect human beings unless it had originally dwelled in them. They freely choose evil when they yield to temptation. But this choice, which is not a purely spiritual apprehension, but a yielding of the soul, is only possible when what has been already chosen has some precedence in the soul.”14 The presence of evil in the soul shows the possibility of what Stein calls a belonging to two realms ruled by two Lords, namely, the realms of good and grace, and that of evil. The two realms are mediated by a third realm, which Stein calls freedom. Stein remarks, “As soon as the person dissociates herself from the life of the soul, she embraces one thing or another without any rules that can help guide the person’s choice of one thing over another. The person collapses into state that is lower than that of animals: her life becomes chaotic. Because of one’s personal freedom, one is able to use reason in order to see more clearly, but the abuse of freedom can lead one into a state of great irrationality.”15 One may also suffer from the great illusion, which also affected Faust, of dominating nature, but in order to exercise such dominance one must establish an alliance with the Lord of a sphere that deceives human beings and that makes them believe that they actually control something. In fact, the illusion of dominance points to the individual being in a state of servitude, which really is the mark of the realm of evil. In this state, the soul does not find peace; rather, it is dragged outside of itself and plunged into despair and anguish, which are intimately connected with sin. Anguish or angst is not a structure that fundamentally marks all of humanity’s existence, as Heidegger maintains in Being and Time; rather, one can say that angst exists because of original sin. But it is important to not forget that original sin has been redeemed in Christ, who took on our sins in order to free us from sin. In and through Christ’s redemption and though grace, the human being can overcome angst and sin, ultimately combatting evil and thereby intervening to help others, other animals, and inanimate things achieve the good. Christ’s redemption of the world helps us overcome sin, but not automatically so. A great effort must also be made by human beings to cooperate with Christ. Human begins may help their own situation through education that opens up a knowledge of both sexes while being mindful of concrete situations. It is urgent, therefore, to ask what the origin of evil and the negative is. Certainly, we cannot consider the sense of evil without studying its connection to the good. Stein grapples with the foregoing relation in her Finite and Eternal Being,16 in particular, in her discussion of the interrelation between metaphysical and moral evil, especially in Manicheism, which holds that good and evil are distinct but equal divine forces. For metaphysics to show that evil is not a self-subsisting entity it must demonstrate that evil is a non-entity; therefore, metaphysics cannot maintain “the distinction between a purely natural want or privation—as, for example, an innate debility of 13

Stein (2001). Edith Stein, Freiheit und Gnade, 22 (Translation mine). 15 Ibid., 19. 16 Stein (2002). 14

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reason—and that which is evil in a genuine sense—such as the misuse of a “good” or sound reason for evil purposes.”17 If, however, one upholds the theological distinction between sin and punishment, one can see how malevolence is not linked to a lacking nature, but to a negative use of a good nature that deeply implies the presence of freedom.

11.3 Evil and the Dimension of Politics Let us return to the question that launched our investigation, namely, evil understood from a political perspective. Politics, understood as the administration and projection of a public dimension, presupposes at its base, then, a communal life experienced in reciprocal exchange and, more specifically, in mutual responsibility. This means that politics must help foster the lives of individuals within the framework of the complexity of the structure of the human person, which is marked by a body-psyche-spirit unity. Evil, the negative, or disintegration oppose the realization of the development of the life of the individual. But to understand why such evil exists, one must seek its deeper roots with the framework of Steinian metaphysics and theology. On one hand, Stein’s analyses allow us to understand that there is a connection between her earlier phenomenological work and her later metaphysical and theological works. On the other hand, her insights allow us to investigate more deeply the lived experience of the political, political evil, and their “essential” senses; she pushes us to consider the full and profound significance of experiences that are immediate and most important for our lives. Western culture seems to have distanced itself from a view of human life that is connected to value and dis-value, and it appears to have lost the ability to recognize the origin of good and evil. In fact, the very distinction between good and evil is inscribed within the human being itself, even though she or he may not recognize such a distinction in the first place. In order to recognize the origin of and the distinction between good and evil, one requires a sound process of judgement along with valid criteria that can guide judgement. Stein’s affirmation in this regard makes her thought relevant today, even though her approach to the question of political evil may be indirect.

References Stein, E. (1989). On the Problem of Empathy (W. Stein, Trans.). ICS Publications. Stein, E. (1996). Woman (F. M. Oben, Trans.). ICS Publications. Stein, E. (2000). Philosophy of Psychology and the Humanities (M.-C. Baseheart, & M. Sawicki, Trans.). ICS Publications. 17

Ibid., 404.

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Stein, E. (2001). Bildung und Entfaltung der Individualität. Beiträge zum christlichen Erziehungsauftrag. In M. A. Nyer OCD, & B. Beckmann-Zöller (Eds.), ESGA, vol. 16. Herder. Stein, E. (2002). Finite and eternal Being: An Attempt at an Ascent to the Meaning of Being (K. Reinhardt, Trans.). ICS Publications. Stein, E. (2006). An investigation concerning the State (M. Sawicki, Trans.). ICS Publications. Originally published as: Eine Untersuchung über den Staat, in Jahrbuch für Philosophie und Phänomenologische Forschung 7 (1925), pp. 1–123. Stein, E. (2014). “Freiheit und Gnade” und weitere Beiträge zu Phänomenologie und Ontologie (1917-1937). In B. Beckmann-Zöller, & H. R. Sepp (Eds.), ESGA, vol. 9. Herder.

Chapter 12

Personal Identity: The Formation of Person in Edith Stein’s Thought Anna Maria Pezzella

Abstract How might “personal identity” be understood on two levels: a philosophical level and a psycologic-pedagogical level? This chapter will review Edith Stein understanding of the structure that establishes personal identity as a result of a complex process of interpersonal relationships, cultural, and social relationships. The question of personal identity is part of a broader anthropological reflection, deepened by phenomenology. Max Scheler, for example, is very interested in anthropology and some scholars consider him as the founder of philosophical anthropology, in particular, the science of essence and eidetic structure of man, of his relationship with the kingdoms of nature (inorganic, plant, animal), and with the psychophysical problem of the relationship between the soul and the body. Husserl is interested in anthropology too, especially in the second book of Ideas, largely elaborated and revised by Stein. Husserl gives a very precise and broad anthropological vision; nevertheless, he is critical towards the scientific anthropology of his time because it considered the human being as an animal species and described how the functions and constitution of the human being differed from those of the animals. This type of anthropology, which was closer to biology and zoology, was based solely on a morphological description and causal explanation that did not meet the complexity of the human being. For this reason, it was necessary for Edith Stein to seek and even found a new anthropology that would take into consideration the whole human being: living body, soul and spirit.

12.1 Phenomenology and Anthropology The question of identity is part of a broader anthropological reflection deepened by phenomenology. Max Scheler, considered by some scholars1 to be the founder of 1 Gehlen

(1983).

A. M. Pezzella (B) Pontifical Lateran University, Rome, Italy e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. F. Andrews and A. Calcagno (eds.), Ethics and Metaphysics in the Philosophy of Edith Stein, Women in the History of Philosophy and Sciences 12, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91198-0_12

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philosophical anthropology, outlines the philosophical foundations of anthropology in Die Stellung des Menschen im Kosmos, identifying the spirit as the human being’s distinctive element. Moreover, in Mensch und Geschichte, he offers a clear picture of philosophical anthropology as the science of essence and the eidetic structure of man, of his relationship with the kingdoms of nature (inorganic, plant, animal), and with the principle of everything: God. It also includes the psychophysical problem of the relationship between the soul and the body. Only such an anthropology, according to Scheler, can give to all the sciences that claim the human being as object of study a philosophical foundation.2 Husserl, whose interest in anthropology is especially evident in the second book of Ideas—largely elaborated on and revised by Stein—offers a very precise and comprehensive anthropological vision; nevertheless, he is critical of the scientific anthropology of his time, which considered humans a species of animal. Closer to biology and zoology, this type of anthropology was based solely on a morphological description and causal explanation. For Husserl, who pointed out the differences in function and constitution between humans and animals, it was necessary to seek and even to initiate a new anthropology that would be able to take into consideration the complexity of the whole human being, living body and soul. At a conference on June 1, 1931, at the Kantgesellschaft in Berlin, titled Phänomenologie und Antropologie, Husserl criticized, however, both Wilhelm Dilthey’s philosophy of life and a new philosophical anthropology which was generating considerable interest, especially within the phenomenological movement. This new anthropology, born under the pressure of Scheler’s earlier studies, found the true foundation of philosophy to be an essential theory of the existence of the worldly human being (Dasein).3 Although he had reflected on anthropological questions concerning the body, the psyche, the spirit, the ego, consciousness, and motivation, Husserl was critical; his aim was was not to examine how the human being is an individual subject, but rather to examine the fundamental correlation between subject and world. In this way anthropology would no longer be a natural objective science, but a universal science of the spirit. For Husserl, philosophical anthropology sees the ego as object, the transcendental ego, on the basis of which every reality is constituted. Edith Stein is also interested in anthropology; she uses the tools that phenomenology itself provides. Stein agrees with Husserl’s first epoché that allows the natural attitude to be put between brackets, by neutralizing any prejudice that compromises the effectiveness of the search to find the essence of the phenomenon. In fact, Stein does not give up the eidetic reduction through which it is possible to find the essence of the phenomenon, but she does not radicalize its reflection on subjectivity by giving the same weight to both subjectivity and the object.4 2

Scheler (1975, 120). Husserl (1999, 189). 4 In Einführung in die Philosophie Edith Stein writes: “The phenomenological method is required as a philosophical method par excellence, as a way to solve all the fundamental philosophical problems. If we keep in mind that... to every noesis corresponds a noema, more concretely: that a perceived necessarily belongs to every perception, that a wanted belongs to every wish and so on 3

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Stein is interested in philosophical anthropology for several reasons. The first of these is her interest in the person; the anthropological investigation is then helpful as she addresses educational issues. Before any reflection on formation and any formative intervention it is necessary, according to Stein, to know the structure of the human being: “Formation and education must grasp the human being in his totality of living body and soul; it is important for the educator to know the structure, functions and laws of development of the human body, to know what may be useful or harmful for a development that conforms to its nature. At the same time, it is important to know the general laws of the human soul to take them into account in the educational work.”5 Finally, there is Stein’s need to show that the person cannot be understood solely as a natural being, as advocated in Positivism, but must also be investigated as a corporeal-psychic-spiritual being. Stein intended to find, in the wake of Scheler,6 an anthropology, understood as a science of the spirit. In other words, she wanted to study the structure of the human being and the forms of being to which it belongs: nature and spirit.

12.2 The Structure of the Human Person Once the anthropological question has been contextualized within the phenomenological movement, we can approach the question of identity for Stein. In order to understand what personal identity is for Stein, we have to ask ourselves other questions: What is a person? What is the structure of a human being? How we can find a personal identity? According to Stein, identity is not a construction of memory; it is not founded on a psychological mechanism, as Locke and Hume thought; rather, it is a complex process that needs time and the contributions of other human beings, that is to say, it requires interpersonal relationships and cultural relations. Such contributions interact with the deepest core of the human being and, if they are positive and there is an active will, they allow the full realization of the subject, and the formation of a conscious, balanced, autonomous, and free personal identity. As we must proceed step-by-step

and in general that a world is necessarily opposed to conscience. Then we realize that an essential description of consciousness can be made only if the description of the structure of the world, of the essential constitution of all kinds of objects, is carried out at the same time.... Phenomenology must gather in itself the results of every ontology and while clarifying, in all its forms, the relationship between conscience and objects, must simultaneously solve the problems concerning the theory of knowledge and therefore those of the critique of the reason.” Stein (2004a, 22). 5 Stein (2004b, 19). 6 Edith Stein met Scheler several times in Göttingen, and although she thought that his thinking was not as strict as Husserl’s, she was influenced by it. Furthermore, Scheler quotes Stein’s text, Das Problem der Einfühlung, in the second preface of Der Formalismus in der Ethik und die materiale Wertethik, the 1921 edition.

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in our discussion, we need to analyse the identity and the structure of the human person.

12.2.1 The Core In Potency and Act Stein writes: The personal I is not a self without selfhood nor a beginning without content but a be-ing already materially fulfilled in itself, a be-ing having a core. Nor is it, in the way it is, placed into existence all by itself; it is rather put into a world from which it can gain content and life owing to the opennes that belongs to its very own being. So the I is set outside original being in an analogous sense, just as any created thing. However it differs from all nonpersonal be-ings in that even what it is lies in its power. … What it is is in part something of nature or of matter which it can and ought to shape, and it is in part something belonging to its personally spiritual being which does not lie in its power to shape but is rather given to it as the form through which it can and ought to shape its matter.7

If we examine the individual aspects of this quotation we find that the personal I has a core; it is in part something belonging to nature, which we can and ought to shape, and in part Spirit (Geist), which is given to it as the shape through which it can and ought to shape its matter. The personal I, when it enters into existence, is not empty; it is not a tabula rasa, but it has a core that “prescribes beforehand how his life can and should be lived and what he can and should became. What the person is in himself is to be actualized and retained as habitual…. When this happens, it is gained for eternity. What could have been actualized but was not is lost for eternity.”8 The core is the deepest part of a person; it contains our deepest essence: the soul of the soul (die Seele der Seele). In fact, it is what makes us this person and not another one: each of us has a core that distinguishes us from the other. So human beings become themselves when they actualize their individual possibilities—the possibilities of their own cores. Humans cannot become what is not present in their cores. A person cannot become what he/she hasn’t the potential to become in his/her core. For example, I cannot become a good musician if I do not have a predisposition, a capability in me: if it is not in my core. I can learn to play an instrument, and I will acquire a good technique through practice and exercises, but I will never play in the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. At most, I will be able to play among friends or teach music, but I will never have that particular quality that makes the difference between a decent musician and an excellent one. For Stein, “..... there are no real pieces that can be separated as parts of a material body. What becomes actual does not get detached from what remains potential. A whole always lies behind anything that is actual at any one time.... Something belonging to the whole enters the mode of actuality without withdrawing from the

7 8

Stein (2009, 408). Ibid., 202.

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wholeness, as something relatively self-sufficient yet connected with the wholeness.”9 The core is simple and unchangeable, but it needs to pass from potentiality to actuality, but in this passage there is a change. Stein offers an example to explain this apparent contradiction: “A ray of light strikes a small spot on a surface; the bright spot stands out from the surrounding dark area, but it is not cut off from the rest of surface.”10 What is actualized in a person’s core does not detach from what is still potent and potential. In order to be realized as a person, constant work on the self is needed, and this work must take into account all the peculiarities of the core. The personal ego must work on itself in order to achieve the possibilities implied in the core.

12.2.2 The Ego At this point it is necessary to dwell upon the ego and its peculiarities to understand how it takes control of itself and how it can be realized. It is well known that phenomenology and Husserl have worked extensively on the ego. “The Ego,” says Husserl, “is the identical subject functioning in all acts of the same stream of consciousness: it is the center whence all conscious life emits rays and receives them; it is the center of all affects and actions, of all attention, grasping, relating and connecting, of all theoretical, valuing, and practical position-taking, of all enjoyment and distress, of all hope and fear, of all doing and suffering. In other words, all the multi-formed particularities of intentional relatedness to Objects, which here are called acts, have their necessary terminus a quo, the Egopoint, from which they irradiate.”11 The ego is the unity that holds together the stream of consciousness and gives unity to personal life, which lies behind the lived experience. When I say I, I say everything about myself: what I am, what I have been, how I have lived and live, and what I get ready to live. The ego to which Stein refers is always a concrete ego. Even though she speaks in her work of a pure ego, she does not fully or continuously share Husserl’s view. Husserl writes, “Each man carries in himself a transcendental I,”12 but he thinks this should not be understood in the sense that the transcendental ego is a real part or layer of the soul (which would be a contradiction), but in the sense that man, through a phenomenological consideration of himself, becomes an objectivation of the transcendental ego.13 Stein never fully embraces this view of the transcendental ego because she believes that human existence is not grounded on the reflective awareness of what one experiences. On the other hand, however, Stein cannot deny that behind every act there is 9

Ibid., 193. Ibid. 11 Husserl (1989, 112). 12 Husserl (1954, 190). 13 Ibid. 10

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an ego through which it is possible to affirm that a world exists, and that this ego can be grasped in its functionality. She does not support the excessive weight Husserl assigns to the ego, to the absolute ego, to the ego as the ultimate functional center of any constitution. For Stein the ego is always mine, which Husserl also affirms, and even if, for Husserl, the ego can never renounce its peculiarity and its personal indeclinability, for Stein it is necessary to investigate this personal indeclinability without eradicating it from the world in which the ego lives, and without renouncing the description of its structure and its mode of operation. We know that Husserl differentiates the real ego from the pure ego, which is the last correlated of all acts and lived experiences. The pure ego does not possess its own qualities and states; these are characteristics of the psyche. The pure ego, according to Stein, without quality, punctiform, is not able to explain what lies in the depths of the soul which, instead, has extension and depth. In fact, if the ego is understood “as ‘pure I,’ it cannot feel at home. Only an ego that has the soul can feel at home and, starting from this view, we can say that it feels at home when it is in itself.”14

12.2.3 Body, Soul and Spirit The ego always has a body. The person is a complex unity of body, soul, and spirit. According to Stein, human being is a composite of body, soul and spirit. Insofar as human beings—according to their essence—are spirit, their spiritual life is an outgoing life that enters into a world which discoloses itself to them, while they yet retain a firm hold on their own selves. … The human soul as spirit rises in its spiritual life beyond itself. But the human spirit is conditioned both from above and from below. It is immersed in a material structure which it be-souls and molds into a bodily form. The human person carries and encloses its body and its soul, but it is at the same time carried and enclosed by both.15

The person, for Stein, is a bodily, animate-spiritual unity; it is an abstraction to speak about individual aspects of the person, because the body cannot be separated from the soul, the psyche from the body and the spirit. But this separation is necessary to understand analytically all aspects of the human person. Stein’s investigation now moves away from the Husserlian one. The human being has a living body, the Leib, which is different from Körper [the physical body]. It has a well-defined figure and sensory fields; it is also the center around which the whole spatial world is ordered, the “zero point of orientation,” from which it is possible to identify the near, the far, the above, and the below. The body is one’s innate home, from which one cannot move away, and in which one feels and perceives everything that happens inside and outside. Stein, even before Husserl, re-evaluates the role of the body, because it allows the human being to meet others, and to enter into a 14 15

Stein (2004b, 86). Stein (2002, 363–364).

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relationship with them. Furthermore, it is the place of manifestation (Schauplatz) of the soul—its mirror. The living body has a soul (Seele) and a psyche (Psyche). These two aspects are used interchangeably within the phenomenological school. Stein also uses them interchangeably at first, but as her work becomes more deeply influenced by the Christian tradition, each term assumes a different nuance. The soul, the center of being of every person, knows itself not through an intellective act but through feeling; it is a space comprised of multiple rooms—an interior castle—that must be moved through to reach a union with God. Stein deepens this concept by reading the experiences of the great mystics: St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross. In the 1930s, Stein more clearly defined the concept of soul. The soul has two faces: one turned towards nature, which is the psyche, and the other, the spirit, turned towards the spiritual world. In Der Aufbau der menschlichen Person and in Endliches und Ewiges Sein the soul is “the space in the center of the body-soul-spirit totality. As sentient soul it abides in the body, in all its members and parts, receiving impulses and influences from it and working upon it formatively and with a view to its preservation. As spiritual soul it rises above itself, gaining insight into a world that lies beyond its own self—a world of things, persons, and events—communicating with this world and receiving its influences. As soul, in the strictest sense, however, it abides in its own self, since in the soul the personal I is in its very home.”16 Therefore the soul is the center of being; it possesses the depths into which all that we live sinks, and to where all that escapes from consciousness falls. It is a source of spiritual life, and it is the abode of the ego. So, the soul, although it is partly psyche, does not fully identify with it, because the psyche is incarnated in the real ego with its qualities: character, instinct, etc. The psyche and its qualities are subject to changes that depend on current circumstances and are subject to the category of causality. The soul, as Seele, is the center of an animated-bodily-spiritual being that is not subjected to any formation or transformation because it can only grow and mature. All that concerns the soul is rooted in the core, as we have seen. The soul is not closed in itself, but open to the outside; it receives all that is offered to it by the world in which the subject lives. In this acceptance of the world, in this being open to the world, the soul is spirit. For many phenomenologists, Geist or spirit represents the world of meaning, the realm of what has a value, of intersubjectivity. The spiritual subject is the I that has the possibility of moving out of itself without ever leaving itself, opening itself to others, penetrating and understanding the world in which it lives. The I does not identify itself completely with body and soul, but embraces them, enclosing them in a personal way. For Stein, person, therefore, means the conscious and free Ego. The person is free as the master of the self and the self’s own actions, and because the person’s own course is consciously and deliberately determined through free acts. This capacity for free will and acting represents for Stein the first sphere of the person’s dominion.17

16 17

Ibid., 373. Cf. Edith Stein, Finite and Eternal Being, 363–364, 375–376.

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12.3 The Formation of Human Being In Der Aufbau der menschlichen Person, Stein states that the human being is responsible for itself, and as such, it can and must form itself. At this point we have to examine the question of the self. Let us follow briefly Stein’s argument. When we say he or she we refer to someone, to a person who can tell us about himself or herself. This person is an “I” and “I” can be said only by a human being. “I look into the eyes of an animal,” writes Stein, “and something from there looks back at me. I penetrate into an interiority, inside a soul, that feels my look and my presence. But it is a silent soul, a prisoner.... I look into the eyes of a human being and his look answers me. He allows me to penetrate into his interiority or he rejects me. He is lord of his soul and can close or open his doors.”18 A human being is master of himself, a free person. To be free means that one can resist impulsive reactions; one is free, and moral duty is born of this freedom. Since the I is free, it can and must form itself. The question, at this point, is: Whether the I and the self are the same? Stein says both yes and no. The self has a chance to reflect on itself, but what forms and what is being formed are not the same—they do not coincide completely. “The human being, with all his psychic and bodily capabilities, is the self that the I must form.”19 So the self, for Stein, is not without a form, not something shapeless; it is instead a set of potentialities which must be realized through the work of the I. The self is something that must be formed and this can be done only by the conscious and free I. Only the I can and must work on the self and its potentialities. The ego has enormous strength and it is capable of shaping the soul. But the soul cannot reach into its depths unless the ego is free to restrain pleasant or unpleasant feelings that might compromise any activity in progress. Where the I lives from time to time is very important for the shaping of the soul. If it lives only on the surface, the deeper layers are present but not actualized as they might or should be.20 But the I lives in the soul—there it has its place. It is not possible to think of an I without a soul; the I finds a home only in the soul. Searching for oneself, going down into one’s depth, comprehending as a whole, and owning in the sense of having oneself in the hand is, however, a matter of freedom. Therefore, the person is responsible for the soul reaching the fullness of its being and its form.21 The ego can also act on the body and train it through practice; it can nourish it correctly. The more perfectly the organism is developed as such, the more perfectly it becomes the foundation, expression, and instrument of the spiritual-personal human soul.22 “If the living human body, through a free action of a human being itself, is subject to a correct treatment, if it is nourished and kept properly practising, this free formation is at the same time its spontaneous formation. The aim of the 18

Edith Stein, Der Aufbau der menschlichen Person, 78. Ibid., 83. 20 Ibid., 86–87. 21 Ibid. 22 Ibid., 123. 19

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intentional treatment serves first of all to contribute to the most complete and organic development of the living body: to provide it with the materials it needs and to give to its strengths the possibility to realize.”23 This is possible, Stein says, because: “I am not my body; I have got my body and I dominate it. I can also say: I am my body. With the thought I can get away from it and examine it from the outside. In reality I am bound to it.”24 The I dominates the body and can control it. The free action of the person must be able to shape the self. The ego must realize what is present in potency within the person and, more precisely, must put into action what is in the core (Kern), the soul of the soul. The human being, however, cannot be realized without the support of others and the community. One cannot realize oneself. Adults have a responsibility to support young people so they can realize their own potentialities and be authentically fulfilled. “The human beings in statu viae are pupils and educators,”25 writes Stein. Furthermore, [i]t is undeniable that the human being—at least as long as it cannot work alone, freely, on its own formation—is entrusted with the action of the others, human educators, who can and must provide him with the necessary material for formation. Since the formation of a human being depends on the free activity of those around him, on their actions and omissions, they have a duty and a responsibility towards him/her. Their intervention into the educational process can, however, consist only in providing materials to the object of their formative activity; these materials will have to be as suitable as possible and must be offered in such a way that they can be received in the most useful way. But if they will be truly received, this depends no longer on the human educator: Paul has planted, Apollo has irrigated—the one who lets it grow is God.26

The human being brings to the world the possibilities of human nature in general, but also the individual capabilities that must be developed during the course of life, and they can only be developed with the guidance of adults—those who are already formed. Stein believes the guide does not have an educational plan organized in all of its aspects; children participate in what the adults do and act according to what the adults require of them. And often the adults’ actions toward the children, or their expectations of them, have no pedagogical awareness; the adults do not reflect on whether the actions to which—consciously or unconsciously—they lead the children are suitable for their individual or social development. Nevertheless, the community is fundamental for the success of an educational project. In fact, it is the community that must take care of those within it and those who are in the process of formation, because the more the members of a community are prepared, aware, and fully realized, the more the community and the State will grow, progress, and develop. Stein emphasizes that if one tries to realize all of one’s abilities and fails “despite the inner effort, for external impediments, this is a damage to the objective spiritual world to which something escapes through which it could 23

Ibid., 122–123. Edith Stein, Der Aufbau der menschlichen Person, 84. 25 Stein (2004c, 74). 26 Ibid., 47. 24

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be enriched.”27 The community that is not able to accept and realize the potentialities of its members is destined to decline. It will die. On the contrary, a community that supports its members, and helps them to be fully realized will grow and become stronger.

12.4 Conclusion Stein articulates her vision of the formation of personal identity broadly. Her early work is not concerned with education, but after her experience teaching German language and literature at the Speyer Women’s Institute from 1923 to 1930, she begins to connect educational issues with the anthropological issues to which she has already devoted much study. It is clear to Stein that one cannot speak of education and the formation of personal identity without an adequate anthropological vision. One cannot educate without knowing the subject of the educational proposal. An educator or a teacher must not lose sight of the individuality and characteristics of a person and, therefore, the practical aspects, but, at the same time, must not underrate the theoretical aspects. Stein is aware of the importance of both the reflexive moment and the empirical one, and she combines them perfectly. This also emerges from her texts, as she has no difficulty moving from didactic reflections to more theoretical ones. These two aspects never present a caesura for Stein; the passage from one to the other is never forced, but always immediate and natural. Moreover, Stein never neglects the issue of educators who play a fundamental role in the formative process. The pedagogical act is always a spiritual act between educator and pupil; in this relation the educator must leave ample space to allow for the pupil’s achievement of personal fulfilment and complete autonomy. The first educators are mothers, and they are soon joined by the community: the school, the church, and all those realities that have an important role in the formation. All of them must contribute in a responsible way to the effective realization of the person entrusted to them. For Stein, it is necessary to provide adequate linguistic education to future mothers as it is precisely through language that the first teachings pass. But future educators must also be formed; they, apart from guiding through teaching and words, will have to witness with their own lives as nothing is more convincing than personal testimony. “If the children,” Stein writes, “must learn that envy is something reprehensible, the easiest way to make this happens is to provide concrete cases, before their eyes, of envious people and people free from envy. … The teacher must take this into account and when the practical conduct does not conform with the content of the teaching, it is inevitable that the children come to the conclusion that teacher does not believe what s/he says or that s/he cannot or does not want to do what s/he indicates as mandatory. This behavior will make them skeptical of what s/he says.”28 27 28

Edith Stein, Potency and Act, 202. Ibid., 221.

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The testimony of an adult through action, therefore, is formative and more incisive than a thousand words. The adult who is a responsible, formed, and an authentic person, will be an example for the young to follow in order to fully realize themselves and achieve their own authenticity.

References Gehlen, A. (1983). Philosophische Anthropologie und Handlungslehre. Vittorio Klostermann. Husserl, E. (1954). Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaft und die transzendentale Phänomenologie. Martinus Nijhoff. Husserl, E. (1959). Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie. Martinus Nijhoff. Husserl, E. (1989). Ideas pertaining to a pure phenomenology and to a phenomenological philosophy (R. Rojcewicz & A. Schuwer, Trans.). Kluver Academic Publishers. Husserl, E. (1999). Fenomenologia e antropologia. In Fenomenologia. E. Husserl—M. Heidegger. Edizioni Unicopli. Scheler, M. (1975). Mensch und Geschichte, Vol. 1 of Gesammelte Werke (Vol. 9). Francke. Stein, E. (2002). Finite and eternal being. An attempt at an ascent to the meaning of being (K. F. Reinhardt, Trans.). ICS Publications. Stein, E. (2004a). Einführung in die Philosophie, Edith Stein Gesamtausgabe 8. Verlag Herder. Stein, E. (2004b). Der Aufbau der menschlichen Person. Vorlesung zur philosophischen Anthropologie, Edith Stein Gesamtausgabe 14. Verlag Herder. Stein, E. (2004c). Bildung und Entfaltung der Individualität. Beiträge zum christlischen Erziehungsauftrag, Edith Stein Gesamtausgabe 16. Verlag Herder. Stein, E. (2009). Potency and act (W. Redmond, Trans.). ICS Publication.

Part III

Applications and Implications

Chapter 13

People and the State Community: Two Conflicting Forms of Sociality in Edith Stein’s Conception of A Priori Law Antonio Calcagno

Abstract In Edith Stein’s later philosophy, the state becomes an expression of a people, an idea of its culture. This latter development in Stein’s philosophy creates a problem, for it diminishes the role of a priori law and all that it seeks to preserve in Stein’s social ontology, including the universal and necessary value of persons as persons, the preservation of life, and the concept of universal human rights. “The people” is an idea, which finds it maximum expression in culture, but culture unfolds in the time and space of human history, with all of its vicissitudes and changes. The advantage of an a priori theory of law defended and lived by the state community is that it preserves a realm of personal existence that transcends the shifting desires, needs, and shortcomings of the human history of a people. Perhaps the only way to reinsert what a priori state law achieves is through the idea of a people that is also a universal human community, an idea that Stein develops in her Münster anthropology.

Edith Stein understood herself as belonging to different peoples. The people (das Volk), understood as particular social formation, has always occupied an important place in Stein’s philosophy, from her earliest writings on community and the state1 to her later writings produced while a Lecturer at Münster.2 Both the state and the people are described as communities, and though sometimes a state can consist of a people, Stein never maintains that the sociality of a people is the conditio sine qua non of the state. In fact, she has always denied this possibility and no more so than during the rise of National Socialism. In her early phenomenological period, the state is distinguished from a people by its constituent sovereignty: a people may live their lives and remain a people even without the sovereignty of the state. Stein gives the example of the Polish (under the Austro-Hungarian Empire and partition) and 1 Stein 2 Stein

(2006, 32–38). (1994, 116).

A. Calcagno (B) King’s University College, Western University, London, ON, Canada e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. F. Andrews and A. Calcagno (eds.), Ethics and Metaphysics in the Philosophy of Edith Stein, Women in the History of Philosophy and Sciences 12, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91198-0_13

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Jewish peoples, who continue to exist and to have a unique culture even though they do not live in a sovereign state.3 In her early phenomenological social ontology, the state is conceived of as an important community of law-givers and -followers. But by the time Stein is teaching in the 1930s in Münster, her philosophical anthropology pays scant attention to the sociality of the state. In fact, the people becomes one of the highest and largest forms of sociality. Indeed, God is seen to relate to the human collective as a people.4 One could easily conjecture that the near disappearance of the state in Stein’s later writings may be read as a critique of Hitler’s National Socialist German state, with its violent exclusionary anti-Semitism, chauvinism, and state-of-exception-, following the idea of Carl Schmitt, legal origin. Stein’s shift in thinking may also be read as a critique against political theology, as seen in her decision to dismiss Augustine’s possibility of a City of God,5 a heavenly as opposed to earthly city, ultimately preferring the idea of a people of God as better form of sociality because it is more personal than legal and political. In Stein’s later philosophy, the state becomes an expression of a people, the idea of its culture. I argue that this latter development in Stein’s philosophy creates a problem, for it diminishes the role of a priori law and all that it seeks to preserve in Stein’s social ontology, including the universal and necessary value of persons as persons, the preservation of life, and the concept of universal human rights. The people is an idea, which finds it maximum expression in culture, but culture unfolds in the time and space of human history, with all of its vicissitudes and changes. The advantage of an a priori theory of law defended and lived by the state community is that it preserves a realm of personal existence that transcends the shifting desires, needs, and shortcomings of the human history of a people. Perhaps the only way to reinsert what a priori state law achieves is through the idea of a people that is also a universal human community, an idea that Stein develops in her Münster anthropology. I will explore this possibility at the end of the chapter.

13.1 Stein’s Early Phenomenology: The Sociality of a People and the State Edith Stein conceives of the state as a community, and its sociality is experienced and comes to be known as one of the highest, most intense forms of social bonds. Stein defines community as a Gemeinschaftserlebnis or lived experience of community in which one lives in the life of others in solidarity. The members of a community experience together the deep sense or meaning of what it is to undergo a collective experience. In empathy, one individual person can enter into and come to know the mind of another by analogically comparing or “bringing into relief” one’s own 3

Edith Stein, An Investigation Concerning the State, 17. Edith Stein, Der Aufbau der menschlichen Person, 126. 5 Ibid., 15. 4

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experience with another’s. Empathy draws on one’s own inner and outer perceptions to make sense of what another may be experiencing: the other manifests the sense of his or her own experience in his or her body, language, expressions, gestures, etc. In empathising, I can read and understand what the other manifests, and I can make sense of what the other makes appear to me by comparing it to my own experience. In empathy, the ego comes to know the alter ego and vice versa. In a lived experience of community, a we is formed and it is experienced as collective. Stein gives the example of the collective experience of sadness and mourning: The army unit in which I’m serving is grieving over the loss of its leader. If we compare with that the grief that I feel over the loss of a personal friend, then we see that the two cases differ in several respects: (1) the subject of the experiencing is different; (2) there’s another composition to the experience; (3) there’s a different kind of experiential current that the experience fits into. As to the first point, in place of the individual ego we’ve got a subject in our case that encompasses a plurality of individual egos. Certainly, I the individual ego am filled up with grief. But I feel myself to be not alone with it. Rather, I feel it as our grief. The experience is essentially colored by the fact that others are taking part in it, or even more, by the fact that I take part in it only as a member of a community. We are affected by the loss, and we grieve over it. And this “we” embraces not only all those who feel the grief as I do, but all those who are included in the unity of the group: even the ones who perhaps do not know of the event, and even the members of the group who lived earlier or will live later. We, the we who feel the grief, do it in the name of the total group and of all who belong to it. We feel this subject affected within ourselves when we have an experience of community. I grieve as a member of the unit, and the unit grieves within me.6

In a community, one grasps the life of the other and lives in it: solidarity emerges between members and a collective we forms. Stein describes the state as a unique social formation in which a community of members collectively lives a particular sense or content of the social formation, namely, community members are communal insofar as they live and experience the state as structured by a community of law-givers and law-followers. The legal community typifies the sociality of the state, even though the state may have different kinds of communities dwelling within it. For Stein, the essence of the state is constituted by its sovereignty, its right to self-determine itself. The state can only freely define itself though its subjects, who ultimately determine the state through law, both a priori and positive. A priori law consists of laws that are unconditioned by time, circumstance or place: they are conceived as universal and necessary self-evident truths. One does not justify such laws though logics of deduction and inference; rather, much like mathematics or logic, the laws are intuited and brought to greater clarity through refection and thinking. There are few a priori laws, but today they form the basis of many human rights discourses. Examples of a priori laws include such rights as the right to life, mobility, protection from harm, and the right to food and shelter. A priori laws establish and protect a realm of being that applies to all humans while aiming to ensure that the basic conditions for human existence and flourishing are articulated and preserved. Positive laws are directly conditioned by temporal necessity, history, specific occurrences, culture, etc. They are usually 6

Stein (2000, 133–134).

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specific and local to the state creating and enforcing them. Both forms of law, by definition, have force, which is exercised by the state community. All members of the state community are recognised as persons in the Steinian sense of the term, but the state itself is not a person, though its actions and being are similar to those of a person. For the state-community to exist, members must live the legal life of the state in solidarity, but not every member of the state need do this. The state can appoint representatives to act on its behalf and representatives can perform state acts “on behalf of” or “in the name of” the state. At some level however, members of a state community, insofar as they freely choose to live with others under a rule of law can be said to belong, at a basic level, to the state. Stein distinguishes a people from the state. She says the two social objectivities differ in two significant ways. First, the state is not necessarily built on a people, though it may sometimes be the case that people and state coincide. Second, the people have a particular relation to one another as persons, whereas in the state people relate to the essential structure of the state as a sovereign legal community and entity. Stein observes: Furthermore, the equivalence of state and sovereignty entails the detachability of civil community and ethnic community, which often are taken to be necessarily bound to each other, if not held to be completely identical. They become separable first in the sense that the ethnic community [Volk, people] can survive if sovereignty, and with it statehood, is destroyed. The people can remain unaffected, in the distinctiveness of its community life, if it is deprived by an outside force of the possibility of living according to its own laws… [T]he existential possibility of the state is not bound to the ethnic unit. The national state or ethnic state is one special variety of state, but not state as such. It is very well possible for a series of different ethnic communities to become united by one force representing a civic unit embracing them all, a force that manages their life along certain lines homogeneously or even heterogeneously, without interfering with their ethnic preferences…. Some kind of community or other is going to encompass all the individuals belonging to a state as a whole, even an ethnically disunited one. However, this is not to be regarded as something constituting the state as such; that is, it’s not necessarily required by the state’s ontic fabric. The latter demands only a range of persons as belonging to the substance of the state and a particular kind of relation of those persons to the state as a whole (which is about to be discussed). The ontic composition of the state leaves open the issue of how the persons might stand to one another. Not from the composition of the state, but rather from the composition of minded persons, is it to be made intelligible that—as we already indicated—[1] a concrete civic pattern develops on the basis of a[n already] subsisting community; or to put it another way, a ribbon of community winds around the persons involved in that civic pattern; and furthermore [2] that these ties of community are required in order for the existence of a state to be secured. The civil community requires—that’s the main point—no ethnic community in order to be.7

Furthermore, a people is not to be confused with more intimate forms of community like families or friendship.8 If the state and the people are distinct social and 7

Edith Stein, An Investigation Concerning the State, 16–20. “A people differs from the closer communities that we considered earlier—family and friendship circle—in this: [1] that with those, the foundation of the community was formed by altogether particular individuals; [2] that those individuals entered into the life of the community with their entire personal substance; and [3] that they all came in contact personally with each other.” Ibid., 21.

8

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political concepts, which may, in certain cases become intimately related, and if the state is defined by its notion of sovereignty, how, then, is a people constituted? Stein says that a people can partake of a communal sociality, but it differs from the state in that it has a unique mentality and cultural cosmos behind it, as opposed to a state legal structure. She writes, On all these points, the ethnic community [Volk] is arranged otherwise. It comprises an open multiplicity of individuals, so that personal contact for all those who belong to it is impossible in practice. The ethnic community can pick up new individuals without regard to their personal distinctiveness (at least to a great extent; limits obtain unilaterally inasmuch as not every individual personality allows itself to assimilate to every ethnic community). And the ethnic community never makes the demand that the whole personal life of individuals is to be assumed into itself. But even if greater leeway is allowed here for individual personal life, still the tethers that tie that life to the people are scarcely less secure than the more tightly stretched ones of the closer community. Now a people, in contrast to other communities, has one more essential concrete way of being itself. A community having the breadth and scope of a people still cannot claim to be an ethnic community unless and until there emerges from its mentality a distinctive culture particularized by the community’s special character. A culture is a cosmos, homogeneous unto itself and outwardly circumscribed, of mental goods (be they self-sufficient objects like the works of art and science, or be they routinized modes of life concretized by persons in the act of living their lives). Each culture points back to a mental center to which it owes its origin. And this center is a creative community whose special distinctive soul50 shows up and is mirrored in all the community’s productions. The community that stands behind a cultural cosmos can in principle be more extensive than an ethnic community. A “culture group” can encompass a variety of peoples—at any given time and over the course of time. Similarly, smaller communities—like a caste or an extended family—form their own cultural “microcosm.” But only for an ethnic community is it essential to be culturally creative. The community of the culture group can perhaps be depleted, in that the peoples belonging to it share their cultural goods (or, hand them down to others in the course of time) and collectively feed on them without being productive as a coherent unit. Likewise, the smaller community won’t be touched in its substance if it merely partakes of the cultural goods of the encompassing community without enriching that community, or if it cooperates therein only as a component of the greater whole and not as a self-sufficient unit. Peoplehood dies only with its spiritual creativity.9

Stein notes that there is a profound parallel, indeed connection, between state sovereignty and the sovereignty of a people. The culture of a people is the free, unique, personal expression of its inner life. The people, in and through its own determinations, produces a culture that expresses these very determinations, and collectively so. And this self-determination is conceived by Stein as a kind of inner authority (Existenzberechtigung], which ultimately may bring life to the formalism and uniqueness of state sovereignty.10 9

Ibid., 21–24. Stein remarks, “In this “cultural autonomy,” as a specific characteristic of the ethnic community, we find a remarkable reflection of sovereignty as that which is specific to the state, and [so we find] something like a material basis for that formal [right of] self-regulation. This casts light upon the connection of people [i.e., ethnic group] and state: the people, as a “personality” with creative distinctiveness, begs for an organization that secures for it a life according to its own lawfulness. The state, as a social pattern that organizes itself on its own authority, calls for a creative power that lends content and direction to its organizing potential and confers an inner authenticity [upon

10

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The building of a collective culture of a people is viewed by Stein as a kind of existential justification of freedom, understood in terms of sovereignty itself. The state is understood as being marked by an external formalism of law, whereas the people are inwardly determined by their cultural formations, which ultimately express its personality or personal core, but always in a collective, communal fashion. One could almost venture that culture, as it is presented in Stein’s treatise on the state, may be understood not as the Kantian quid facti?, but as the Kantian quid iuris? Before closing this section on the relation between the people and the state, it should be remarked that nation (understood in the sense of natio, that is, a political sense of belonging determined by blood or birth) is no way identical with the communal sense of the people developed by Stein, though there are historical cases in which people and nation have coincided.11 Stein’s distinction between people and nation is a deliberate attempt to free the concept of the people from the politics of national identity, which wreaked havoc throughout the 19th and the beginning of the twentieth centuries. Indeed, the ugly and violent side of national imperialisms came to a head in World War I. In fact, Stein notes that historically a people comes to be though a mix of various people to form a new people. She gives the examples of Germany and the United States as founded on a mix of peoples.12

it]. The question that sent us off on the last reflection—whether the state needs to have an ethnic community for its foundation—is one that we’re now ready to answer. The issue is resolved by the fact that, while it’s entirely conceivable to have a state that lacks this basis, a state where the only bond among those who belong to it is “loyalty” (in Kjellén’s sense), i.e., the mutuality of laws and duties in regard to the state as a whole, a state modeled in that way would [have some deficiencies. It would have no inner existential [authority], so to speak. It would always have clinging to it the character of something hollow and ephemeral. It might perhaps hold together for a time by authoritarian control, but not by any inner gravity of its own. Earlier we accepted the possibility of a unification of several peoples into one state whole. Nothing about that possibility is canceled by the fact that each of the different ethnic communities has its own unique personality. None of the ethnic communities necessarily requires a mode of statehood appropriate to itself alone. All they [really] need is a civic organization that takes their intrinsic lawfulness into account. It’s only when civil law and ethnic personality are directly opposed to each other that the survival of one of them, or even both of them, is imperiled. That is no less possible with unitary peoplehood than with several peoples, one of which is favored at the expense of the others.” Ibid., 24–25. 11 Stein herself showed enthusiastic support for the German Reich in World War I, but this changed as the War advanced. See MacIntyre (2006, 93). 12 “Was die Geschichte vorfindet, sind meist Völker in einem bereits vorgeschrittenen Entwicklungsstadium, weil Besinnung auf die eigene Geschichte erst bei einer gewissen Kulturhöhe einsetzt, die Aufmerksamkeit fremder Völker aber meist erst von Völkern erregt wird, die schon als geschlossene Einheiten auftreten. Immerhin haben wir doch einige Beispiele greifbar vor Augen: so die Entstehung der germanisch-romanischen Völker Westeuropas aus der Mischung germanischer, römischer und keltischer Volksteile, d. h. das Erwachsen neuen Volkstums aus den Trümmern untergehender Völker; die Entstehung eines neuen Volkstums aus Splittern fremder Völker in den Vereinigten Staaten Nordamerikas.” Edith Stein, Der Aufbau der menschlichen Person, 119.

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13.2 Stein’s Münster Lectures In Der Aufbau der menschlichen Person [The Structure of the Human Person], Stein takes up one again the discussion of the people within the framework of a broader discussion of the social world. The lectures are designed to help teachers ground their pedagogy in a robust philosophical, holistic, and personal anthropology. Part of being human, according to Stein, is to be a member of a social world, which includes being part of a people. Stein begins her treatment of the people by addressing the topic of race, and she immediately dismisses the identification of people and race, pointing to the confused sense of race that were circulating in her day.13 Following her earlier discussion on the state, she conceives of a people being a large social structure, which is distinguished from more intimate forms of sociality like friendship and family. A people is not a universal, all-encompassing social structure. A people is a community, as we saw in Stein’s treatment of the state. Furthermore, a people is not a superstructure that absorbs individuals, and like any community, the sociality of the people is to be located in the lives of the community that structures the relations between the people.14 Notably absent in Stein’s treatment of the person and sociality is the role of the state. This is not an accident, as the lectures coincide with the rise of Hitler to power and the then soon-to-be promulgated anti-Jewish laws. In the Lectures, Stein discusses the notion of the state in two distinct ways. First, she maintains that the study of the state belongs to the Geisteswissenschaften or Human sciences.15 Second, she affirms her earlier contention that a people is constituted in and through its culture, internally and externally. Externally, a people is formed by its interrelation with other peoples, whereas internally a state freely determines itself and through its culture and traditions. The inner life of a people is marked by its self-formation, -preservation, and -expression. Both the internal and external life of a people are marked by the consciousness of belonging to a specific type of community.16 The people is an idea that animates the life of the community, and the idea helps shape the practices and habits of the people’s everyday life. Stein notes that a people’s culture also helps shape its respective practices of law and religious practices.17 A 13

Ibid., 116. Stein observes, “Das Volk vollbringt Taten und hat Schicksale. Hier ist das ganze soziale Gebilde Subjekt der Taten und des Erlebens, nicht ein Einzelmensch. Aber es ist nicht möglich, daß dies geschieht, ohne daß Einzelmenschen daran beteiligt sind. Das Volk ist nicht außerhalb oder über seinen Gliedern, sondern in ihnen real. Es ist aber nicht nötig, daß an allem, was das Volk tut und erfährt, alle Menschen beteiligt sind, die zu ihm gehören.” Ibid., 117. 15 Ibid., 24. 16 Ibid., 177. 17 “Unter dem»äußeren« Leben des Volkes verstehe ich sein Verhalten zu andern Völkern: friedliches Zusammenwirken in Güteraustausch und gemeinsamen Unternehmungen, feindliche Auseinandersetzungen in Konkurrenzkampf oder offenem Krieg, auch die gegenseitige Einschätzung und Gesinnung. Als inneres Leben kann mandemgegenüber alles bezeichnen, was Selbstgestaltung, Selbsterhaltung, Selbstausdruck ist: Selbstgestaltung – dazu gehört Wachstum an Zahl, körperlicher und geistiger Leistungsfähigkeit und innerer Verbundenheit der Glieder; Fortschreiten in 14

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people, Stein goes on to say, is a kind of order or cosmos regulated by its cultural self-determination. And while she affirms that there are specific types of peoples that have specific kinds of cultural traditions and behaviors, she reminds her students and readers that a people is not merely a cultural expression. A people defines a community through time, and as such generations of people are connected by this very humanity and through their life. Humanity and life itself may be read as grounds or even conditions for the possibility for a people coming to be.18 The Münster Lectures discussion of the people is remarkably different than that found in Stein’s earlier investigation of the state. Human being’s relation to God and the claim of the existence of a deep, universal human community come to ground all peoples and communities. The highest form of sociality is community, and this form bespeaks a unified structure where both relations and acts converge. The form comes to express itself as a social objectivity where a “we” abides. Communities, however, are not persons, but are analogous to them. Stein remarks, “One can speak of community in a larger sense where there exist not only reciprocal relations between persons, but also where these persons present themselves as a we-unity…I speak of unity in the strict sense of the word, where one finds a permanent life community among persons that is both deep and marked by duration; the community is not simply fleeting in that it is momentary and tied to the present. It is also marked by supra-personal ties, which have their own laws of formation, according to which the community realizes itself and develops similar to an individual human person.”19 It is within the preceding discussion of the form of community that Stein interjects an important addition to her philosophy: she claims that at the basis of all communities, from smaller

der Erkenntnis, im Glaubensleben und in der praktischen Tüchtigkeit; Ausprägung eines eigenen Stils in der Lebensgestaltung (Brauch und Sitte), staatliche und rechtliche Organisation (politisches Leben). Selbsterhaltung – dazu gehört materielle Gütererzeugung für den eigenen Bedarf und zweckmäßige Regelung des Güteraustausches (Wirtschaft); Sorge für Gesundheit, öffentliche Sicherheit und Wohlfahrt (»Polizei«); Jugend- und Volkserziehung zur Volksverbundenheit und Lebenstüchtigkeit. Selbstausdruck – dahin gehört die Sprache, gehört alles Schaffen gewerblicher, künstlerischer, wissenschaftlicher Art, gehört aber auch der Stil der Selbstgestaltung in Brauch und Sitte, in den Formen des Rechts- und Staatslebens, im religiösen Leben. (Selbstgestaltung und Selbstausdruck gehören untrennbar zusammen, wie überhaupt alle Lebensfunktionen ineinandergreifen.) Die Gesamtheit dessen, was unter Selbstausdruck zusammengefaßt ist, kann man als Kultur bezeichnen. Die innere Einheit und Geschlossenheit der Kultur entspricht der Einheit des Volkes. Die Ideen»Volk« und»Kultur« scheinen mir aufeinander bezogen.” Ibid., 118. 18 Stein writes, “Als »eine Kultur« kann man eine Schöpfung des Menschengeistes bezeichnen, in der alle wesentlichen menschlichen Lebensfunktionen (Wirtschaft, Recht und Staat, Sitte, Wissenschaft, Technik, Kunst, Religion) einen Ausdruck gefunden haben. Und ein Volk ist eine Gemeinschaft, die einen solchen»Kosmos« hervorbringen kann. Weder ein Einzelner noch eine engere Gemeinschaft ist dazu imstande. Es gehört zwar zum Menschen, an all diesen Gebieten einen gewissen Anteil haben zu können, aber kein Einzelner und kein engerer Verband kann auf all diesen Gebieten produktiv sein. So verstehen wir jetzt, warum zum Volk eine gewisse Größe gehört. Wir verstehen auch, daß Völker Lebensgemeinschaften sind, in denen das Gemeinschaftsleben sich auf alle Lebensfunktionen erstreckt, die wesentlich schöpferisch sind und deren Dauer sich über eine Reihe von Generationen in der Folge der Zeit ausdehnt.” Ibid., 118. 19 Ibid., 168.

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to larger ones, there exists a “universal community” that our philosopher calls “humanity.”20 For Stein, humanity is not simply a genus, a classification of the mind, in which the collectivity implied in the essence human being is contained; rather, she makes the claim that humanity is to be understood as “concrete individual.”21 Humanity coincides with every individual human person; it embraces all the individual members. In speaking this way, Stein wishes to claim that a universal human community or humanity exists in se. Stein observes, “One cannot even say, however, that the whole exists before the parts; rather, existence of humanity begins with the first human being. This existence is present in each single human being: humanity belongs to each one of them right from the start of his or her existence. This is certainly theologically grounded.”22 Philosophically speaking, Stein maintains that consciousness immediately gives or presents, understood in the phenomenological sense, humans as existing in community insofar as individuals recognize and understand that they live as a member of humanity: “Every human being, through her or his origin and relation to the lineage from which he or she descends, refers back to the origin of community. The genetic connection alone, however, could not act as the ground of community, if humanity did not imply a commonality of life.”23

13.3 Justifying the Concept of Humanity When Stein described humanity as a community, she is attaching to it a deeper meaning than simply something shared or something common to subjectivity. What, then, precisely is it that we share and experience solidarity with? Presumably, humanity understood as a community would bespeak a lived experience of solidarity, and a universal sense of it as well. Again, I think it would be mistaken to understand solidarity in its more intimate, restrictive sense, the sense that belongs to more restricted communities like families and friends. Neither do I think it is like the experience of the solidarity of a state community. We have to understand the solidarity of humanity is broader sense of community: we share something together that makes us all human, and in this respect, we can collectively influence and affect ourselves, and we do so as a we, we do so together. Stein reminds us of the concreteness of what is there, before us, and what manifests before us, the things themselves, including the realities of human personhood and humanity. It is humanity that forms a community, a humanity that affects not only individuals but our collectivity as well, our shared we.24 At the time Stein was giving her lectures in Münster, she had fully embraced Roman Catholicism. Her understanding of humanity would not be complete, if we did

20

Ibid. Ibid., 169. 22 Ibid. 23 Ibid. 24 I take up Stein’s justification of the possibility of a universal human community in my essay, “On the Possibility of a Universal Human Community in an Age of the Post-Human: Edith Stein’s Philosophical Defense”, in Toronto Journal of Theology, vol. 31, no. 2, Fall 2015, 209–221. I only present a portion of my argument here. 21

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not secure its foundation in God. The last part of the lectures moves from the discussion of social reality to more encompassing and foundational questions concerning theology and God. As in Finite and Eternal Being, we see that creation and creatureliness are the ultimate grounds of our humanity. As creations of God, human beings share a common creatureliness that bears the stamp of the Creator God. We are called to share in the life of the divine community of the Trinity and we also are made in the image and likeness of this divine community. Our humanity is made in the image and likeness of a triune community and it bears the stamp and effects of this creation. “I wish to recall here that only the truths of faith, which we have drawn upon through the course of our philosophical investigations, can verify the results obtained or make certain that which remains uncertain from the philosophical point of view. These truths consist in believing that the human being was created by God, and with the first human being, all of humanity was created as a unity on account of humanity’s very origin and its potential community. Every human soul is created by God. The human being is created in the image of God. S/he is free and responsible for that which s/he becomes. The human being must conform her or his will to God’s will.”25 Though the community that is humanity is created by God, Stein also admits that it is also subject to human freedom and will: we must choose to view and live our universal human community according to what God intends. The descriptor “potential” is a firm recognition that we sometimes fail to do this. In Stein’s later Christian work, human freedom takes on greater poignancy: a community of humanity is not a secure foundation unless we choose to cooperate with what is given and what we can understand to be present as real and operating in our world. Within this faith context, this cooperation requires grace, as both Augustine and Stein remind us. At the same time, this cooperation can occur within a belief system that does not assume grace.

13.4 Implications of Eliminating A Priori Right and the State The disappearance of the state as a social formation in Stein’s later work is revelatory, both on historical and philosophical levels. As Stein was writing and delivering her Münster lectures, she was mindful of the growing racism and anti-Jewish sentiment present in German life. We know that at that at the Münster pedagogical institute where Stein worked she faced anti-Jewish comments and insults from one of her colleagues. Moreover, Stein is aware of the rise of Hitler and what his political, state project entails. It was also during this time that Stein was terminated from her position for being Jewish on account of Hitler’s anti-Jewish laws promulgated in 1933: Nazi policy toward the Jews was made clear already in 1920 with party platforms. Historically speaking, perhaps one can read Stein’s later elimination of the state as a social formation as a critique of the National Socialist state, which had its own laws, community, values, albeit they were often violent and hateful. Perhaps, 25

Edith Stein, Der Aufbau der menschlichen Person, 172.

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one could venture, that because the National Socialist State, especially in its early forms, may be read as fulfilling Stein’s idea of the state as a law community, Stein saw the need to distance herself from her earlier idea of the state. The state no longer could function as she had conceived, and she draws more inspiration in a pluralist, non-blood-based idea of a people, with its culture, that could bring forward an ideal and flourishing idea of political rule. On a philosophical level, Stein’s subordination of the state to the expression of the cultural cosmos of a people and the elimination of the state as having a unique form of sociality rooted in the law raises two important questions. First, is the concept of the people, as Stein conceives it, the cultural ground that gives rise to the state or can the state exist as a unique but related (to the people) form of sociality, as Stein maintains in her early work? Second, are there any consequences to the subordination of the state to the cultural work or expression of a people, especially when it comes a priori right? My response to the first question, history aside, is that Stein has two deep viable insights. On one hand, states do exist and what makes them unique is their sovereign right to self-determination, which is formally expressed in the law, and, on the other hand, one cannot deny the force of a material culture (especially its language, history, economics, political aspirations, art, religion, etc.) in shaping law and our sensibilities to and practices of it. Culture, broadly conceived, is defined as the traditional realm of spirit. Geist, in the form of human freedom and rationality, produces certain spiritual creations or objects, including art, politics, and religion. Human culture may be understood as comprising these three forms of expression. In her later work, Stein views the people as the unique form of sociality proper to culture, and politics is imply reduced to a cultural phenomenon. As Hegel reminds us, however, the state is an important moment in the development of a culture, and it possesses a unique structure, both in terms of the law and ethics. The law establishes and formalizes how we are to be and dwell with one another, in koinonia, as Aristotle says. As such, one must see the establishment and life of the state as a singular constituting moment of sociality that is distinct from other forms of culture and sociality, including the people. Moreover, the law, understood as the principle that grounds sovereignty and rule, by definition, must articulate and safeguard general principles that apply to all of its citizens, which sometimes conflict and contravene cultural practices. Every society has examples in which the law contravened cultural practices, for example, the right of women to vote and participate in politics: in most cases, the change in the law brought about a massive cultural shift in how we view women’s roles in society. In the end, to reduce the question of political rule merely to the cultural expression of a people totalizes cultural practices: there is nothing outside of culture that can challenge and even limit potential excesses of the culture, especially when it comes to violent practices of oppression and exclusion. The foregoing point about limits brings me to my response to the second question raised earlier. With the elimination of the state as a unique form of sociality, Stein also forfeits the powerful notion of a priori right, which she saw as constitutive of the state community. As we saw earlier, a priori right establishes a realm of justice or law that is not subject to time, history, culturally specific practices or circumstances on the ground: what is right is universally and necessarily so, and what is right is

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immediately and clearly grasped. The realm of a priori right makes possible the articulation and defense of few but foundational human rights, including the right to life, freedom from harm, mobility, expression, work, and the right to shelter and basic necessities of life. These are seen to be evident and universal truths, necessary for human life to exist in its most basic, general form. It is the obligation of the state to ensure that these rights are guaranteed. A priori right does not belong to the cultural cosmos constitutive of a people. It is a realm that lies outside culture, but which applies to all human beings. Without a priori right and without the unique Steinian state community to preserve and maintain it, we run the risk of relying on cultural norms and practices, which are always specific and historically contingent, to safeguard the most basic conditions of living and dwelling together as human beings. And history teaches how fragile or weak state communities can be when they form themselves as the absolute, end result of a series of historical and cultural practices. One might object to the foregoing argument by rightfully pointing to Stein’s later notion of the human community rooted in God. Here, one could see the demands of a priori right being more explicitly transferred to God and divine obligation, to which all humans are bound. In the Münster lectures, as creatures of God, we belong to a universal human community that has as its unique end union with God. As such, we must follow God’s laws, which fundamentally and wholly cover the precepts of most a priori laws. There exists one important limitation to this view of the universal human community, namely, it presupposes that we all acknowledge that a divine being exists and, more importantly, that God is the same for all humans. History provides us with a plethora of examples showing the different responses to the question of the existence and nature of God. I do not wish to enter into the nettling discussions about the existence and nature of God; rather, I wish to point out the challenge that rises when seriously confronting Stein’s later position. I should also point out that, if we take Stein at her word, one of the implications of her subordination of the state law to divine law is a shift in the force of law: the divine law becomes more binding and is, in Stein’s logic, more powerful, thereby securing a greater force that may prevent needless violence, oppression, and death, all of which, sadly, did not obtain after Stein’s dismissal from her position in 1933. In the end, Stein maintains that as a human community we are God’s people. This relationship forms a new sociality between the human and the divine. Even if this new form of sociality of the people were to be accepted as true, I believe that we still need a unique state form of this relationship, which can be articulated and expressed in the a priori sense of state law lived by a state community. To reduce the state and state law to the unique cultural formation of a people is frightening, even if it coincides with the possibility of a universal human community that is in relation with a divine being, because, even if minimally, one needs checks and balances to curb the often violent and unjust excesses of human greed and aggression, excesses which Augustine, Locke, Rousseau, Hobbes so eloquently sketch for us. The articulation of state community that has folded within it a realm of a priori law can serve as an

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additional check that aims at protecting and ensuring the existence and value of all human life and even perhaps its relation to the divine.26

References MacIntyre, A. (2006). Edith Stein: A philosophical prologue 1913–1922. Rowman and Littlefield. Stein, E. (1994). Der Aufbau der menschlichen Person. In L. Gelber & M. Linssen, O.C.D. (Eds.), Edith Steins Werke (Vol. 16). Freiburg. Stein, E. (2000). Philosophy of psychology and the humanities (M. C. Baseheart & M. Sawicki, Trans.). In The collected works of Edition Stein (Vol. 7). ICS Publications (Kindle Edition). Stein, E. (2006). An investigation concerning the state (M. Sawicki, Trans.). ICS Publications (Kindle Edition)

26

Parts of this chapter were developed from an earlier talk published as an article: Antonio Calcagno, “Edith Stein’s Understanding of a People and Its Implication for Community and A Priori Law”, in STEINIANA: Revista de Estudios Interdisciplinarios, vol. 3, no. 1, 2019, 92–106.

Chapter 14

Beyond Ethics: Edith Stein on Suffering, Sacrifice, and Death Mary J. Gennuso

Abstract While Edith Stein did not write a formal work of ethics, her philosophical and theological writings, as well as her life, highlight particular ethical ideas. It is an ethic that can be situated in the existential tradition that emerged out of phenomenology, and even further in a Catholic response to existentialism, and deeper still, particularly later in her life, in a Carmelite way of life, one that ultimately reveals itself in the life and martyrdom of Edith Stein herself, from her particular life. Stein’s later writings concentrate on the themes of suffering, sacrifice, and death. Edith Stein responds by placing particular points of Heidegger’s existentialism into conversation with themes drawn from Carmelite spirituality, including such key concepts as authenticity, the soul, and free will.

The title of this paper warrants some explanation. While Edith Stein did not write a formal work of ethics, her philosophical and theological writings, as well as her life, howoever, do highlight particular ethical ideas. It is an ethic that can be situated in the existential tradition that emerged out of phenomenology, and even further in a Catholic response to existentialism, and deeper still, particularly later in her life, in a Carmelite way of life, one that ultimately reveals itself in the life of martyrdom of a saint: this particular saint in her particular life. In a religious sense, Stein could be said to move beyond ethics as we would normally consider it, yet her life and thinking nonetheless springboard from it. Furthermore, in her later works Stein speaks the language of cross and sacrifice. Here again, we move beyond ethics as a distinct field of thought and practice. Both in her life and in her works, Edith Stein traversed and indeed bridged both the disciplines of philosophy and theology. Even after her conversion to Catholicism, she always remained faithful to the rigor demanded of philosophical inquiry. Yet, it became a rigor imbued with the depths of Catholic thought and doctrine. Throughout the works that span her writings, her laser clear dissection of ideas and M. J. Gennuso (B) New York City College of Technology, Brooklyn, NY, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. F. Andrews and A. Calcagno (eds.), Ethics and Metaphysics in the Philosophy of Edith Stein, Women in the History of Philosophy and Sciences 12, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91198-0_14

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explanations, scholarly research, and precise language remain steady. The writings that are most pertinent for this analysis are: A lesser known appendix to Finite and Eternal Being regarding her review of Heidegger’s version of existentialism, her essays and meditations as found in The Hidden Life, her work on John of the Cross, namely, the Science of the Cross, as well as her letters and notes from her biographers. These works form bookends that frame the later part of her life and writings, which particularly concentrate on the themes of suffering, sacrifice, and death. This study is divided into two main parts. The first part deals primarily with Stein’s response to particular points of Heidegger’s existentialism, and the second part with her other writings, most notably the essays written in the Carmelite convent. In this analysis several key concepts come into play, such as authenticity, the role of the soul, free will, and Carmelite ideals. The conclusion provides hints at some possible ethical and theological applications to be drawn from her life and work.

14.1 Stein on Heidegger This study begins with the task of understanding some of Stein’s disagreement with Heidegger. The purpose here is not to dispute Heidegger or Stein’s understanding of his thought, but to better understand Edith Stein’s thoughts on the matter, which are, of course, by the time of her writing, clearly saturated in the life of faith and written in the convent of Carmel. In her analysis, Stein takes issue with two general themes of Heidegger, namely, his views of community and that of dasein as a being towards death. She finds his analysis here faulty and incomplete, especially regarding phenomenological insights about death and dying. Their differences in existential views particularly affects their varied views on authentic and inauthentic living and being. For instance, for Heidegger, the individual often flees the weight and responsibility of authenticity by hiding in community. For Stein, however, community is important in assisting one to grow and develop, towards hearing the call of authentic being. ...Then it is no longer possible to see ‘the they’, as a form of deterioration of the self and nothing else… Responsibility begins with the awakening of the individual to its own life (Lebech “Martin Heidegger’s Existential Philosophy”.1

Acknowledging that there can be inauthenticity, Stein fine tunes the distinction further. Deterioration does not consist in communal life as such, nor in the letting oneself be guided, but in undiscerning collaboration and in ignoring the ‘call of conscience’ at the cost of the authentic life to which one is called. When Dasein deteriorates neither its individual, nor its community life is genuine.2

1 2

MHEP 73. MHEP 73–74.

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Thus the difference between authentic and inauthentic ways of being, both as an individual and in community, lies in discerning and responding to a call or hiding from it. The other concept that plays predominately in our analysis is that of death and how one faces one’s death. In Heidegger’s brand of existentialism the human being is a being towards death. But what is death? Heidegger answers: the end of Dasein. He immediately adds that with this no decision should be favoured as to the possibility of life after death. The analysis of death remains purely of this world.3

Stein takes issue. If by Heidegger’s logic ultimate meaning is found in being a being towards death, then the meaning of death should be clarified. However, this is impossible if the only thing that can be said of death is that it is the end. She asks rather rhetorically, “Is this not a completely fruitless circularity?”. Heidegger’s fault, as she sees it, is that he quickly closes the door on the possibility of life after death. Rather, she argues, it should be possible to say that “being-in-the-world of human beings ends”, yet another type of life might still be possible. It is not that she thinks Heidegger is not onto something important, but that he has taken a left turn somewhere, and she seeks to correct the course. She emphasizes that seeing others die informs us of our own future death, as does illnesses in our own lives, especially life threatening illnesses, and being near death. With illness, especially severe illness, ordinary cares and concerns about the world recede into the background and care of the body, of basic survival, preoccupies us. “Then there is finally only one important question: being or not-being?”. What Stein emphasizes is that when one reaches this point, ‘being-in-the-world’ also recedes, even ends, she thinks, since “one actually sees death eye to eye”.4 Beyond that, however, is a large, dark gate: one must pass through it—but what then? This ‘what then?’ is the real question of death that is experienced in dying. Is there an answer to this question even before one passes through the gate?

Stein asks questions that Heidegger ignores, namely, on the destiny of the soul. Witnessing a difficult death especially impresses us with “the powerful sundering of a natural unity”. In such a case when we witness that the human being who fought for life is no longer there, we wonder what happened. Where is what made her into this living human being? If we cannot give an answer to this question, the full meaning of death is not clear to us. Faith knows an answer. But does there exist, within the realm of our experience, something that affirms it? In fact there does … many a dead person lies there, after the fight, like a victor: in majestic calmness and deep peace…Could the simple cessation of life, the transition from being to not being, bring forth such an impression? And could it be thought that the spirit, which has impressed this seal on the body, does not exist anymore?5

3

MHEP 75. MHEP 77. 5 MHEP 78. 4

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In this analysis or meditation on death and dying, Stein offers first the religious explanation of faith in an afterlife, coupled with philosophical insights, one of them being a body/soul distinction, albeit in close unity, that separates at death. In addition she offers a phenomenological view with explanation that some deaths are harder than others, others very peaceful. In the calm peaceful cases she argues that if death were truly the end, then this peacefulness would not be; she deduces that the spirit continues. While this is by no means proof, she offers it as a viable interpretation. To add support to this view, she adds that sometimes the struggle disappears and peace sets in even before death actually sets in. Further, she implies that the person glimpses something of another world. Here the dying person is illumined by another life in a manner visible to all those who surround him. He is illuminated as his eyes see into a light out of reach for us: Its glory still lingers in the body whose soul has been wrenched away. Anyone who had not heard of a higher life, or who had lost belief in such a life, would in this sight meet the likelihood of its existence. The meaning of death as a transition from life in this world and in this body to another life, from one mode of being to another, is revealed to him. Then, however, Dasein—as being toward death—is not being toward the end, but towards a new [kind of] being….6

In such situations, not only does the person dying seem to pierce the earthly veil into a life to come, but she implies that those witnessing the event would experience a resurgence of the possibility of life after death. Further, she redefines what being towards death is, and contrary to Heidegger, she finds that it is not the end, but an end of one existence towards a different kind of being. While Stein’s analysis might seem naïve to many in a modern audience, and one might wonder if she has strayed form a philosophical position, she obviously meant it to be some type of existential/phenomenological investigation. It also appears that she might have had some firsthand experiences of such deaths, perhaps through her earlier time spent as a nurse, or perhaps even in the convent. Whether such “good” deaths imply or can be correlated with a holy death is yet another matter. Of course, she is also speaking from a faith stance, one of faith seeking understanding. Strictly speaking, however, there appears to be a gap if one starts from philosophy, especially a modern day philosophy. Edith takes a leap of faith. This investigation into death and dying points to, or is directly linked to, authentic being. Thus, it appears she accepts the basic existential connection and emphasis on death informing life. However, she redefines it in Christian, even Catholic terms. Authentic being reveals itself as a being to which the human being tunes himself by reference to a different being, and loosens himself from everyday being… Living ‘authentically’ means to realize one’s ownmost possibilities and to meet the challenges of the ‘moment’, which always expresses the given life-conditions.7

Therefore, from the vantage point of faith, living a life of faith with grace results in a different life, one that leads to glory after death. Stein’s view accepts the foregoing 6 7

MHEP 78. MHEP 78.

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possibility instead of the more atheistic view of merely going from being into nonbeing. Authentic living here implies some sort of truthful living to one’s own situation and selfhood in a given time and place, indeed even in the moment. From a faith perspective authenticity would involve this tuning and recognition of Other Being or Higher Being, which grounds our being. What else can the concepts of the ‘moment’ and the ‘situation’ mean apart from an understanding of an order or a plan, which the human being has not herself projected, but in which she nevertheless is included and plays a role? All this means a bond between Dasein and a being which is not its own, but which is the foundation and goal for its own being. It also means a breaking open of temporality.8

Without delving into all that the ‘moment’ and its fullness implies, two interrelated points are made by Stein. One is that the breaking open of temporality suggests that we are not merely temporal and that we somehow reach for eternity. The other point is that lest we get caught up in lofty ideas of our own authenticity and possibility, Stein reminds us that in addition to choices made in our finitude that curtail our possibilities, there also exists willful sinful denial of obligation and involuntary errors, all of which point to our own fallibility and hence curtail authentic living. Generally speaking, Stein thinks that we have an “inability to fully unfold our essence,” and thus even the very best of our temporal authentic selves, “is still not our final authentic being”.9 On this point, she adds a dictum of Nietzsche: ‘Woe to the one who says: end! For all desire wills eternity, wills deep, deep eternity’.

14.2 Life and Other Writings The existential theme of authenticity can be restated as Edith’s quest during her entire life as one of pursuing truth. Even in her agnostic days, she said of herself that “the thirst for truth was my only prayer”.10 For her, the journey continued with her academic pursuits and a slow gradual pondering of what she experienced in people like Scheler, Reinach, and especially Husserl. It was this phenomenological investigative style that led her to see the world differently. She admits that this did not lead her directly to a life of faith. Rather, what it opened was, “a vast new realm of phenomena” —one that she said she could no longer ignore. What was discovered, she continues, was that: [t]he fetters of the rationalism of which I had been brought up without realizing it shook loose and I suddenly found the world of faith … I thought it at least deserved some investigation.11

Another thoughtful moment in her life regarded Adolf Reinach’s death and a request from his wife Anna Reinach for Edith to help arrange his philosophical 8

MHEP 78–79. MHEP 79. 10 de Fabregues 22. 11 de Fabregues 23. 9

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papers. At first she was apprehensive to go, afraid that Anna would be consumed with grief. What she found instead was that Anna had “unshakable faith in the living God”, and reflecting back on this Edith writes: It was my first encounter with the cross. And with the divine strength it inspires in those who carry it. For the first time, I saw the Church born out of the passion of Christ and victorious over death. At that moment my unbelief was utterly crushed, the light of Christ poured into my heart—the light of Christ in the mystery of the cross. Because of this light, I desired to take the habit of the Carmel that I might be called into the Order of the Cross.12

During the summer of 1921 a visit with friends provided the framework for another ‘moment’ in her life’s path. On one occasion when her friends were out, she picked up The Life of St Teresa of Avila and did not stop until she finished reading it at which point she exclaimed “there is truth”.13 It was this fortuitous and momentous event that specifically prompted her to become a Roman Catholic. The following morning she bought a catechism and missal, and another stage of her journey began. After her conversion, Stein continued to apply for academic positions at various universities while also attempting to habilitate at various German universities. All of her applications were denied. These were the external constraints under which she lived. She did not, however, take these constraints lying down. She fought for justice as best she could. Josephine Koeppel recounts: It was soon painfully clear that Husserl and his peers in Freiburg and in Gottingen were not ready to admit women to professorship, even in the lesser degree as a privatdocent. Her application was ignored; the thesis she prepared in order to qualify was not even read by the committee which reviewed all applications 14

Not one to easily give up, Stein gave lessons in her home while she repeatedly tried to obtain a position. She also began a written dialogue to various education ministers in Germany stating her case. She reminded them of a female mathematician who was given an exception, but unfortunately the reply back implied that her situation did not meet the same extraordinary need.15 She did, however, evoke a response from the Minister of Education in Berlin that offered some encouragement, at least in principal, which read: “I support the opinion you represent … that belonging to the female sex may not be seen as any hindrance to obtaining habilitation…”.16 Unfortunately, in reality it did. This coupled with the rise of Nazism eventually ended any hope of her obtaining a university position in philosophy. Until then, however, she did not give up on teaching and writing. She found her way to various other positions. She taught at the Dominican School for girls and lived in the convent with the sisters. Later she would accept a lectureship at the Institute of Educational Theory at Munster.

12

de Fabregues 26-27. de Fabregues 32. 14 Edith Stein: Philosopher and Mystic, 56. 15 ESPM 57 16 ESPM 59. 13

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Gradually her interior life formed. Graef tells us that “at Munster her days consisted quite literally of nothing but prayer and work”.17 She wrote of a call and response way of being during communion. I am permitted to offer myself and all my actions and sufferings together with the spotless victim on the altar. And when the Lord comes to me in Holy Communion, I may ask him like St. Teresa, what do you want of me Lord? … and after this silent dialogue I shall know what he bids me … Because my soul will have gone out of itself, it will be able to penetrate into the divine life … The soul will clearly see the next stretch of road ahead … but when it has traveled that distance, a whole new horizon will open up before it.18

The foregoing citation intimates something of her Carmelite vocation and with it a specific vocation within a vocation, and especially how she understood and lived this idea of sacrifice in her life. It was the culmination of authentic being as it unraveled in her life. Stein did not directly enter the Carmelite life when she first felt the call. Rather, there transpired a careful and lengthy discernment process with her spiritual director. Taking his advice, she continued to teach as long as she was able. Meanwhile, she learned more about Catholic thought, even translating Aquinas and some of Caridnal Newman’s works as she continued to write her own works. It was only with the Nazi anti-Jewish decrees, when she lost her teaching position, that her spiritual director, and she, knew it was finally time to enter Carmel. Thus it was only after exhausting all possible work and use in the world that permission was finally granted to enter the convent. She understood her Carmelite vocation in a way that might be difficult for a modern, and post-Vatican Councils audience, to understand, but this understanding actually penetrates into a particular understanding of the mystical body of Christ. There is a vocation that consists of suffering with Christ and thus in his redemptive work. If we are united to the Lord, we are members of his Mystical Body. Christ continues to live and suffer in his members, and suffering endured in union with him becomes his, made efficacious and united to his redemptive work. The essence of the religious life, especially the Carmelite life, is to intercede for sinners and cooperate in the redemption of the world by voluntary and joyous suffering.19

The step by step process of discernment revealed itself even further to her as a necessary response to what was going on in the world, to what Hitler was doing. Once, while on her way to the Benedictine Abbey at Beuron she stopped at Cologne and prayed in the chapel of Carmel. She relates what transpired. I spoke interiorly to our Lord … telling him that I knew it was his cross weighing down upon our people … was it not the lot of those who did not know him to bear his cross? That is what I want to do. I asked him only to show me how. And when the ceremony in the chapel finished … I became certain that he had answered my prayer. I did not know then what his cross would be for me….20 17

HG 91. de Fabregues 59. 19 de Fabregues 62. 20 de Fabregues 63-64. 18

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Thus Edith moved from a general awakening and forming of her own life of academics into a general Christian and then Catholic call, which then led to a specific Carmelite vocation and eventually to, more specifically, a sacrificial offering or oblation that would culminate in her martyrdom at Auschwitz. While at the Carmel in Cologne she was fortunate that she was permitted to continue to write and it was there that she wrote Finite and Eternal Being. In it we find, for example, her explanation of the general state and vocation of the soul, as well as a hint of its more personal shaping. She writes: The innermost being of the soul—is the abode of God … this innermost being is capable of receiving into itself the Spirit of God … The vocation to union with God is a vocation to eternal life … the soul is capable of supernatural augmentation and elevation of its life, and faith tells us that [he] wills to give the soul eternal life, i.e. an eternal participation in his life … the soul is destined for eternal being and this destination explains why the soul is called upon to be an image of God in a wholly personal manner.21 The innermost and most authentic nature of human being remains hidden most of the time … Whatever we know or divine of this deeply hidden nature in ourselves and in others remains dark, mysterious, and ineffable. But when our earthly life ends and everything transitory falls away, then every soul will know itself as it is known …22

Here again we return to the idea of authenticity, and with it, the incapability of total authenticity in this life. She continues: Even the individual human being is incapable of unfolding in its life all the possibilities which have their ground or foundation in its essence or nature … We may therefore assume that the perfection of the individual human being in the state of glory will not only free each human being from the impurities of its corrupt nature but also unfold it’s as yet unfulfilled possibilities23 .

Thus her view of the life to come includes further unfolding of possibilities, one that hints at a dynamic rather than static, afterlife. Whether this is meant to be an instantaneous unfoldment, or a more gradual one, is not known, as Stein did not develop a full eschatology, though there are hints at it in statements such as these. After writing this book she went on to write on pseudo Dionysius and then to her final book Science of the Cross, which was written during her time in the Carmel at Echt. She was still finishing it at the time the SS officers came to the convent to take her and her sister Rosa away. Looking at her writings, especially her later ones, it is evident that they not only took on a more theological tone, but also a more mystical one, especially on the writings and mysticism John of the Cross. The mysticism was therefore not only Christocentric but centered on the cross with its deep mystical theological insights contained therein. These works attest to her penetrating analysis, perhaps also to a depth and state of her own soul. One finds general themes of mystical theology such as that of the union and transformation of the soul in God. This occurs only “when the will of the soul and the will of God are 21

FEB 504. FEB 505. 23 FEB 507 22

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merged into one, so that there is nothing in the one that would resist the other”.24 Yet, this union retains the distinction of God and the soul. “It is God by participation” but despite the transformation it retains “its natural being that is so totally different from the divine being”. There is also the caution against seeking mystical phenomena and other spiritual gifts. If the soul were to hoard [even spiritual gifts of visions etc.] like treasures, these impressions, images etc. would clutter up its interior and be an obstacle in its way to God that leads through renunciation of all created things.25 Hence the soul must also detach itself from all supernatural gifts of God in order to gain the Giver rather than his gifts.26

We see here the emphasis on detachment and renunciation so typical of Carmelite mysticism. An important point for ethics can be gleaned regarding the will and the soul. Since the inmost region of the soul is where God abides, there is a paradoxical correlation that when the will is freely surrendered as a necessary condition for entering the highest stages, it is also purified, and united to the divine, so that it thus becomes “the sphere of the most perfect freedom”.27 The paradoxical question/result is that while previously the soul boasted of, and relished in, its own free will, it is only later when it abandons its will to the divine will that it become truly free. All this comes full circle to the end point of such a union and such a vocation. That which is the business of the Eternal Father can be understood only of the redemption of the world, above all of the salvation of souls…so great is the fire and strength of their love that those who possess God are not satisfied and content with their own gain … they strive …to take many to heaven with them. This comes from their great love of God. Here the zeal for souls is taken to be a fruit of union … the preaching of the cross would be in vain if it were not the expression of a life of union with Christ crucified.28

So the fruit of union is love of souls and an ardent desire for their salvation. It is here that sacrificial living and giving, and the mystical body of Christ have their roots. To understand this further it is appropriate to turn to her essays and meditations found in The Hidden Life. In the essay “Some Thoughts for the Feast of John of the Cross”, she delves further into the root of the Carmelite spirit of suffering and sacrifice and tries to explain it lest it be misunderstood as a morbid desire for suffering. We hear repeatedly that St John of the Cross desired nothing for himself but to suffer and be despised. We want to know the reason for this love of suffering. …Has he [Christ] not transported us into a kingdom of light and called us to be happy children of our heavenly father? … but … the abyss of human malice, again and again dampens jubilation over the victory of light. The world is still deluged by mire … The entire sum of human malice … 24

SC XIX. SC 48. 26 SC 88. 27 SC 120–125. 28 SC 215–216. 25

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must be blotted out by a corresponding measure of expiation. The way of the cross is this expiation … Christ the head effects expiation in these members of his Mystical Body who put themselves, body and soul, at his disposal for carrying out his work of salvation…The lovers of the cross whom he has awakened and will always continue to awaken anew in the changeable history of the struggling church, these are his allies at the end of time... Voluntary expiation comes from an already existing relationship with Christ. … Only someone whose spiritual eyes have been opened to the supernatural correlation of world events can desire suffering in expiation … the love of the cross in no way contradicts being a joyful child of god. Helping Christ carry his cross fills one with a strong and pure joy, and those who may and can do so, the builders of God’s kingdom, are the most authentic children of God. And so those who have a predilection for the way of the cross by no means deny that Good Friday is past and that the work of salvation has been accomplished…Only in union with the divine Head does human suffering take on expiatory power …29

Edith explains that carrying the cross in life is not, or should not, be a morbid endeavor, but rather a joyous one. She speaks of understanding the correlation of world events in carrying that cross. Further, she clarifies that the efficaciousness of human suffering can only be accomplished when it is united with that of Christ. Once again she uses the term authenticity to describe a way of life of the Christian who understands what it means to build the kingdom of God. Also found in the same collection of essays are several meditations pertaining to the Feast of the Elevation of the Cross, Sept 14, a day when Carmelites traditionally renew their vows. One of the most prominent ones is “Ave Crux Spes Unica!” [Hail Cross, Our Only Hope]. The savior today looks at us, solemnly probing us, and asks each one of us: Will you remain faithful to the Crucified? Consider carefully! The world is in flames… If you decide for Christ, it could cost you your life … The world is in flames…But high above all flames towers the cross. They cannot consume it. It is the path from earth to heaven. … The eyes of the Crucified look down on you- asking, probing…What will you answer him? “Lord, where shall we go? You have the words of eternal life” Ave Crux, Spes Unica!.30

In this meditation she alludes to both the world situation and the martyrdom that the fidelity to Christ might cost. Most important here is the existential question cast in specific Christian terms. Another meditation titled “Exaltation of the Cross”, takes a deeper dive into what it means to follow Christ. Anyone who would follow me must take up his[her] cross..! To take up one’s cross means to go the way of penance and renunciation… Your will be done! …The created will is not destined to be free to exalt itself. It is called to come into unison with the divine will to participate in the perfection of creation… The human will continues to retain the possibility of choice, but it is constrained by creatures that pull and pressure it in directions straying from the development of the nature desired by God, and so away from the goal toward which it itself was directed by its original freedom. With the loss of this original freedom, it also loses security in making decisions. It becomes unsteady and wavering, buffeted by doubt and scruples or obdurate in its error. There is no other remedy for this than the following of Christ. …He could only incorporate the persons who wanted to give themselves to him into 29 30

HL 91–93. HL 94–96

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the unity of his incarnate divine person as members of his mystical body and in this way bring them to the father. This is why he came into the world. …he can give souls supernatural life…in union with the divine Head, and to pass it on to other souls, so awakening new members for the Head…31

The themes of penance and renunciation resurge. What is added here is a further explanation of the function and problem of human free will. Stein examines both the problem and the solution. It is a divinely created will, and as such it is meant to come into accord with the divine will. Thus, the goal of free will is actually to freely acquiesce to the divine will. In another seemingly paradoxical move, the fall disfigured human will so that when it thinks it is acting freely in going against the divine, it is actually more enslaved, that is, not truly acting freely. Further, a byproduct is that there is often a lack of steadfastness, or lack of resoluteness in will, since it is easily torn in many directions. A weakness of will ensues. The way back includes obedience to the divine, an alignment of will, and eventually uniting with Christ which also means becoming part of the mystical body. The last line ends with continuing the work of salvation by awakening new members and thereby adding to the body of Christ. Stein’s essays seem to explain not only her general philosophical and theological position, but they also speak to the unfolding of her particular path, as she understood it, amid the unfolding of events in the world. When the Cologne Synagogue was burned she said, “The shadow of the cross has fallen over my people”.32 She agreed to move to the Carmel at Echt in Holland, with the stipulation that her sister Rosa also be allowed to come. It was on Passion Sunday in 1939 that she wrote to her superiors to ask for permission to “offer herself to the Sacred Heart of Jesus as a sacrifice … and for the peace of the world”. This oblation of self is a very serious matter for Carmelites. It is undertaken only with permission, of spiritual director and her superior, and is undertaken by a soul advanced in the spiritual life. The convent of Echt also proved unable to ensure safety in the long run. When the Dutch Catholic hierarchy protested against the Jewish persecutions, all Catholic non Aryans in Holland were arrested. Attempts were made, perhaps a little too late, to secure her and her sister passports with the intent of moving to a Swiss Carmel. There were also suggestions that she should try to illegally escape, which she refused in order not to jeopardize the other sisters. Her simple response was “I shall accept everything God wills”.33 At one point she had sent a message to the prioress that “one can only learn the scientia cruces if one truly suffers under the weight of the cross. I was entirely convinced of this from the very first and I had said with all my heart Hail Cross, our only hope”.34

31

HL 102–104. de Fabregues 88. 33 de Fabregues 90-91. 34 de Fabregues 95. 32

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Messengers and witnesses attested to Stein’s comportment in the camp. She appeared calm and serene, and often gave consolation to others. “She prayed almost all day long, except when she had to gather food. She never spoke one word of complaint”.35

14.3 Conclusion: Hints for an Applied Existential Ethic Edith Stein’s life as well as her writings bridged philosophy and theology. She met her death as she met her life, authentically moving from one stage to another in a consistent unfolding and deepening of her life. The Church honors her as a martyr. Yet we also celebrate her great corpus of writings, her fine mind as a scholar and the overwhelming example she left behind. While it is difficult to bridge her extraordinary life and virtue with that of an ordinary ethical life, there are some hints that we may take with us. For example, the basic existential tenet of authentically facing life decisions as they unfold in the circumstances of one’s particular time and place remain constant. To Edith Stein, the message is one of attuning one’s will to the divine, of rooting our lives in the cross, not evading the cost and sacrifice of following Christ, no matter the cost. Also important is the indispensable role of discernment in a step by step process. Here, a few cautionary words are in order. As Stein’s meditation on John of the Cross counsels, suffering and sacrifice is not meant to be a morbid enterprise. Further, very few are called to that level of heroic virtue, and even martyrdom. A caution may also be given against false or inauthentic martyrs, such as terrorists. In such a case the cell or group is steeped in a mis-calling or inauthentic martyrdom. What distinguishes the authentic from the inauthentic martyr is the orientation of each. The authentic martyr is guided by love and an outpouring of self for the good of the other. In the case of Stein, it is an outpouring of Christ’s love through his sacrifice on the cross, and being grafted in unison to that supreme sacrifice, that her oblation of self is made, for a higher good. In the case of the suicide terrorist, it is an orientation of hate for the other, perhaps even of self, which seeks the annihilation of the other, coupled with a misguided solution to the problem of finding meaning in life. Simply put, the fruits of the spirit are evident in the one and lacking in the other. While few will undergo a martyr’s death, there are still the day to day sacrifices and sufferings offered in conformity with the cross of Christ and as members of his body. This applies to both religious and lay, as life presents itself with situations, great and small, where we are called to make sacrifices, often different than what we would otherwise aspire to, whether it be caring for aged parents, attending to a sick child, or numerous other life situations. The great moments may be rare, although there are epiphany moments that form one and propel us forward in a particular direction. The great majority of moments, however, are smaller, step by step quiet moments, that gradually build one’s character and provide the opportunity to be formed into the image and likeness of Christ. They all form part of the soul-making process. 35

de Fabregues 93-94.

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Also, sacrifice is not to be viewed simply from the standpoint of purgation of an inflated ego or of only doing for the other. We also make sacrifices for ourselves. It takes discipline and sacrifice to actualize some potentialities at the expense of others, whether that be long training in a particular profession, or even saving our pennies for a needed vacation. Further, there is in each one of us areas that are perhaps overinflated as well as areas that are underdeveloped and wounded, areas that need building up. This would also apply to the disenfranchised and the forgotten who are certainly not suffering from super egos. Whether it be in the areas of too much or too little ego, in either case some aspects of a false self veils the true authenticity we are called to in our lives. This work too is part of discernment and healthy growth. The truer we are to our own being, the more available we become for others. Therefore, authenticity is not only the gift of self (to self), but it is the gift of self for and to others. Edith’s answer to evil and world problems is a conformity to the will of God and the way of the cross. In her particular life she offered her life as a peace offering so that hating and war might cease. We may also ponder the existential question she asked, “What will you answer”? The choice for Christ may indeed still come at the cost of life. Again, while it is difficult for us to understand the idea of how the economy of grace operates in the mystical body, we believe that the intercession of the saints can assist us, and that prayers and sacrifices made one for the other, are somehow efficacious. At least that is our hope. In reflecting on this theme and on these examples, it seems that perhaps prayer and sacrifice have to do, on a more mundane existential level, with our being able to basically coexist with one another in the world, with our basic being-in-the world and with each other. Perhaps this going out of self towards the other, in its small and grand scale cases, are ways of keeping peace in the world, keeping peace with our neighbors, keeping peace in our families, keeping peace in ourselves, of making holy our lives and the world. To this end, it seems that a basic revitalization or revisioning of the concept of sacrifice is in order, in spite of, or maybe because of the fact that, the modern world seems to have such a distaste for its very idea. Yet, Christianity is a religion rooted in the cross, that is, of the sacrifice of Christ. In conclusion, this study has shown how, in her response to Heidegger, Stein gave us a different version of existentialism, one situated in a religious perspective of authenticity, one that elaborates the importance of aligning the will with the divine and redirects the soul toward its intended goal, as preparation for the life divine. In her Carmelite life she gave us a concrete expression, a practical ethics of sacrifice, one that orients towards the holy. Let us hope that our lives too, might aspire like Stein’s, in our own unique way, to authenticity and a future life of glory.

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References De Fabregues, J. (1993). Edith Stein: Philosopher, Carmelite Nun, Holocaust Martyr. Boston: St. Paul Books and Media. Graef, H. (1955). The Scholar and the Cross: The life and Work of Edith Stein. The Newman Press. Hereafter cited as HG. Koeppel, J. (2007). Edith Stein: Philosopher and Mystic. University of Scranton Press. Stein, E., edited by L. Gelber and O. C. D. Romaeus Leven, Translated by H. Graef (1960). The Science of the Cross. Chicago: The Library of Living Catholic Thought. Hereafter cited as SC. Stein, E., editors, L. Gelber and O. C. D. Michael Linssen, Translated by Waltraut. (2014). Stein The Hidden Life, The Collected Works of Edith Stein, (Vol. 4), Washington D.C.: Institute of Carmelite Studies, 1992, 2014. Hereafter cited as HL. Stein, E., Translated by Reinhardt. (2002). Finite and Eternal Being, The Collected Works of Edith Stein (Vol. 9). Washington D.C.: Institute of Carmelite Studies. Hereafter cited as FEB Stein, E., Translated by Lebech M. (2006). “Martin Heidegger’s Existential Philosophy” in Maynooth Philosophical Papers, Issue 4, 2007, pp. 55–98. (note—from “Martin Heidegger’s Existenialphilosophie” in Edith Stein, Endliches und Ewiges Sein. Freiburg: Herder 2006 pp. 445–500). Hereafter cited as MHEP.

Chapter 15

Ontology and Relational Ethics in Edith Stein’s Thought Paulina Monjaraz Fuentes

Abstract Edith Stein’s view on empathy allows us to understand how the encounter with the “other” is about experiencing the other as an origin, that is, one is aware that the other is living in the present tense as a first person. This does not mean that the act of empathy merely consists in “feeling what the other feels,” nor is it a certain substitution from my “self” to the other. Rather, the empathic act implies an acknowledgement that the other is the origin of his or her own experiencing. This recognition of the other allows for a common world. For Stein, the perceived world and the world given through empathy are the same world seen differently. What is held in “common” is that the world that appears to me is the same world that the other encounters independent from me and the limitations of my own subjectivity. For Stein, this synthesis between “I” and “other” generates genuine community. The ontic structure of the human person encounters other persons as other subjects able to act in a world that is socially constituted. This dynamism—this “coming out from oneself” and “getting inside oneself”—implies that the human person is “intentional” on an ontic level.

15.1 Introduction In his Lectures on Ethics and Value Theory that were presented from 1908 to 1914, Edmund Husserl proposes a formal ethics using a model combining ethics and formal sciences. His model develops ethics from the ideal of a “formal axiology” that accounts for the general laws of action. This first conception of Husserl’s ethics was influenced by Brentano’s rationalist conception of psychic acts.1 The general guidelines of such a doctrine are formulated by Brentano mainly in his lecture, “On 1 Brentano’s influence on Husserl is not limited to the general formulation of his concept of intentionality; for he also takes up the general program of his teacher, which consists of developing out an ethics based on the consolidation of a formal axiology or general doctrine of values.

P. Monjaraz Fuentes (B) Universidad Autónoma de San Luis Potosí, San Luis Potosí, Mexico © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. F. Andrews and A. Calcagno (eds.), Ethics and Metaphysics in the Philosophy of Edith Stein, Women in the History of Philosophy and Sciences 12, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91198-0_15

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the Origin of Moral Knowledge,” in which he presents a classification of the acts of psychic life.2 For this classification, Brentano uses a scheme in which basic acts, such as representations, perceptions, and judgements, are at the base of other psychic acts, such as valuations and volitions; thus, basic acts are required for the performance of the other psychic acts. Husserl reclaims the general meaning of Brentano’s proposal for the development of ethics; he also assumes Brentano’s scheme, which proposes a primacy of basic or founding acts (also called theoretical) over founded or practical acts, such as valuations, volitions, and acts in general.3 However, Husserl’s appropriation of this scheme is by no means uncritical, since he dedicates the Fifth Logical Investigation to a reformulation of the classification of psychic acts. Husserl accepts Brentano’s thesis by considering representations as the base of psychic acts. Nevertheless, Husserl does not agree with the way representations are interpreted in the foregoing thesis, since Brentano considers psychic acts as either a representation or have a representation as a basis. Husserl, on the other hand, maintains the primacy of the objectifying acts, that is, those acts that allow the positing (Setzung) of the meaning of the intended object’s being. The objectifying acts are therefore prioritized over the non-objectifying acts, since the former are a condition for the execution of the latter. However, the non-objectifying acts fulfill an important function for the communication of the feelings of the subjective sphere. If these acts are determined by a doxic position on the being of the objects, such a position would imply the formalization of their logical structure. This formalization would then allow access to the general ethical laws that determine action. Under these assumptions, Husserl completes Brentano’s program by proposing the basis for the development of ethics founded on an axiology and a formal practice, which are intended to determine action. Husserl postulates a kind of “categorical” formal imperative: “Among all the possible options, always choose the best one.” However, this imperative must be completed with the law of absorption, which states that between two goods, one major and one minor, the better choice includes the minor good or, stated in its negative formulation, choosing the minor good is always reprehensible. Nevertheless, such laws have a purely formal character, and they are intended to determine valuations in a general manner. For Husserl, both axiology and formal practice are part of the “lobby” of philosophy, since philosophy by itself is empty. Thereby, ethics can only have criteria for the evaluation of action only if it is effectively governed by the intuition of the respective value. This procedure is analogous to that of the logical-formal sciences: just as it is not enough to do a mathematical operation without the understanding of its logical necessity, so it is not enough to perform an action without taking into account the value that motivates it.4 From this perspective, Husserl continuously refers to the logic of preferring and, consequently, to the clear awareness of the fact that each individual action moves us in a real plot. Hence, the choice is not exhausted in the gesture to privilege one 2

Brentano (1969), 174. Bejarano (2007). 4 See Husserl (2009), 5–7. 3

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value over another, but it translates into weighing attentively the consequences of our actions, ultimately formulating a calculation that leads us to choose the value’s goal due to the universe of consequences and events that are intertwined with it. This stance implies that Husserl tries to embrace an objectivist-style perspective in order to find the reasons for subjectivity, and it highlights the direction of his attention to the relationship that unites the universe of values with the perspective of choice. He subsequently overstates the importance of the relationship that links subjectivity with values, and connects us with each other in a web of complex relationships. Moreover, Husserl emphasizes the relationship between the mediation of values5 and the nexus that these values hold with the motivational situation in which they occur.6 From 1917 to 1919, Husserl began the process of reworking the formal perspective of his ethics. This shift in stance is readily apparent beginning with his lectures on Fichte (particularly on Fichte’s Speeches to the German Nation), which are addressed to the young soldiers fighting on the front. The basic character of this new stance resides in the concept that subjectivity must be referred absolutely to the supreme value of love. In this second stage, in contrast to his first version of ethics centered in formal and universal value theory, Husserl uses a new language, which is reflected in the way he describes the acts of consciousness and reformulates the concept of action. Likewise, the concept of person plays a central role in these approaches. Thus, three phases of phenomenological ethics can be identified in Husserl’s work: in the first phase, he postulates a general doctrine of values (conceived especially in the prewar years); in the second phase,7 the doctrine is centered in the concept of person and love8 ; and in the third phase, developed in the 1930s, the philosopher proposes the ethos’ thesis of the community of those who share the ideal of autonomy, self-understanding, and responsibility.9 Edith Stein’s ethical approach is especially related to, or in concordance with, the last two phases of Husserl’s ethics. Stein, when she delves into the concept of the human person, does not only establish the meaning of the subject’s structures. On the contrary, she extends her approach and takes a special interest in the human person’s relations and intersubjective links. Thereby, Stein provides an analysis of human experience in relation to the knowledge of the other and, subsequently, establishes a relational ontology.

5

Since values belong to a sphere of reality, they constitute an objective region in which the constitutive elements can be apprehended in an analogous way to perception. Hence, Husserl coined a concept to account for these acts: Wertnehmung. In this context, values are conceived as objective realities of a universal character that can be apprehended with the corresponding act of consciousness. See Bejarano (2007). 6 See Husserl (2005), 16–17. 7 The articles “Renovation” (one title?) that are published in the Japanese magazine Kaizo correspond to this period. 8 Scholars of Husserl, such as Ulrich Melle and Angela Ales Bello, among others, consider that Husserl, at this time, focuses ethics on the concept of person and on love. 9 See Guillermo Hoyos’s Introduction, in de Haro (2002).

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15.2 Edith Stein on Relational Ontology In order to discuss Stein’s relational ontology from the phenomenological perspective, we need to clarify that phenomenology does not deal with “being as it is.” In other words, the approach of phenomenology to ontos is not metaphysical, which does not imply that the opposite is true. Stein argues that Husserl may speak about ontology,10 but not metaphysics in the traditional sense: “Husserl claimed to have founded a science of essence that [had] no need for empirical determinations; those that he indicated as formal or material ontology, that is, those disciplines that are presupposed by each positive-scientific procedure, pure logic, pure mathematics, the pure science of nature. On the contrary, metaphysics in the traditional sense seems to be, in contrast to those, the essential science of this world, even more so for Thomas, this is the difference between essence and fact, eidetic and empirical; however, [the metaphysical approach] is not methodically guided with the acuity required by principle in phenomenology.”11 From this view, the difference between metaphysics and phenomenology certainly does not depend on whether philosophy has the task of knowing the essence of things, but on how it knows this essence. Thus, Stein points out that the difference between Thomas Aquinas’s philosophy and Husserl’s phenomenology does not lie in the possibility or impossibility of knowing things in themselves, their essence; but in how the essence of a thing is known and, mainly, in how this essential knowledge is achieved. Stein goes so far as to specify that the aspect that underlines the difference between these two philosophical stances lies in the possibility of the intuition of essence or in the vision of the essence (Wesenschau). According to Stein, therefore, when phenomenology discusses ontology, it refers to the knowledge of the essence from consciousness. Thereby, ontology is not the science of the being as a being, but rather a phenomenology of the being as it is constituted in her consciousness, that is, as it is given to consciousness. Human persons are not ontically intentional because they think (this is not their only intentional act), but because they are essentially intentional dynamic structures. Therefore, the person’s reference to another person or to the other is not only at an abstractive or conceptual level, but it is at a constitutive level and in the person’s dynamism. From their interiority, due to their constitutive intentional character, persons are referred from themselves to the other in order to be what they are and to become what they can be: “The empathic act makes the understanding of the other possible and, this being the bearer of superior values, opens before us a world that is unknown to us; so that, before the values of the other, we become aware of our 10

“Die positive Wissenschaft ist ihrem Hauptbestande nach Erforschung dieser Beiziehungen. Der Gegenstand ist für sie ein Schnittpunkt zahlloser Beziehungen. In Wahrheit ist er aber damit nicht erschöpft. Er ist nicht nur das, was er unter diesen oder jenen Umständen ist, er hat nicht nur zufällige Beschaffenheiten, sondern er hat ein Wesen, Eigenschaften, die ihm notwendig zukommen und ohne die er nicht sein könnte. Dieses Wesen der Dinge, ihr eigentliches Sein, ihr ontos on (wie es Plato genannt hat) ist es, auf das es die Philosophie abgesehen hat.” Stein (2004a), 8–9 [6]. 11 Stein (2008), 76.

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own personality and our own limits. Interpersonal communication transforms the subject-object relationship into community, in which they “recognize themselves” and treat each other as subjects.”12 The human person, as a self, has an inside (a self) and an outside (a non-self). These components constitute the person’s founding structure, which determines how the person acts, exists, and relates to others. Throughout her phenomenological development of the person, Stein highlights this structure to the point of defining the person as an open structure. According to Stein, the understanding of the person based on action is largely an opening, as she explains in the following text: “The human existence is open to the inside, it is an existence open to itself; but, precisely for that reason, the human existence is also open to the outside and can receive a world in itself.”13

15.3 Steinian Relational Ethics In her work, Introduction to Philosophy, Stein clarifies that, in addition to the consciousness of knowing, there are other forms of consciousness: “Reason also has other functions, which are no less capable or in need of philosophical clarification: feeling, wanting, acting. There is a discipline that is oriented towards these three fundamental functions in their cooperation: ethics.”14 So, for Stein, ethics is not a norm that emanates from customs or social conventions, nor from a static nature; it stems from the motivated acts of the subject, which in turn form the subject’s identity from the otherness it encounters. According to the anthropology Stein proposes, the ethos of the human person can only be explained from her alterity; for the “I,” who must necessarily give meaning to her existence, is only constituted in reference to the “you.” This reciprocity between the “I-you” is founded on the empathic act, without which the identity of the psychophysical subject cannot be formed, that is, the psychophysical self cannot be constituted. Specifically, Stein establishes that empathy is a sui generis knowledge, since the empathic experience is always originary as present experience, while it is not originary as content. Without a deep understanding of the empathic act,15 that is, without the distinction between originary and non-originary, the other would not 12

Costantini (1987). Menschendasein ist nach innen aufgebrochenes, für sich selbst erschlossenes Dasein, eben damit aber auch nach außen aufgebrochen und erschlossenes Dasein das eine Welt in sich aufnehmen kann.” Stein (2004b), 32 [39]. 14 Stein (2004a), 12–13 [12]. 15 “It is noteworthy that Stein dealt with the Einfühlung from the beginning, before dealing with the person, because she seeks the foundations of the human sciences, to clarify the theoretical foundations of science, not only of the human but also of the human community.” Cf. Losacco (1990). 13

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present herself as “another I.” Therefore, recognition would not be possible; that is, to know the other in oneself and oneself in the other. The possibility of knowing oneself in the other and knowing the other is inseparable, as Stein establishes in the possibility of empathy, since it is through empathy that the individual, human person (psychophysical individual), becomes constructed as such. This essential relationship between empathy and the constitution of the psychophysical individual indicates that the action that perfects the person, that is, that responds to what the person is, to the person’s truth, is necessarily an action referred to the other at a constitutive level (ontic). However, given the primacy of the self, the reference to the other is always from the I. Such primacy is inescapable, since the person is always a self, and all of the self’s actions are carried out from within, that is, this starting point always supposes this polarity of the self. Nonetheless, this polarity does not mean autonomy or solipsism; on the contrary, it is through empathy that the psychophysical individual is constituted. In other words, an I cannot be formed without a you. Ontically (at the constitutive level), we can say that one cannot be oneself, build oneself as a self, or form one’s own identity, without the reference of the other. Thereby, identity and otherness are the basis of Steinian ethics. One of the great theoretical problems of ethics is how to understand the good not only as one’s own but also as a common good. From Stein’s relational ontology, it is impossible to propose individualistic ethics, which tends to understand human perfection as a simple acquisition of “things” or qualities. From the understanding of the ontologically relational human being, the other is not an obstacle to acquiring things nor a means to obtain them. Rather, in the ethics derived from this relational perspective, the other, the good of the other, is not only something tolerable or acceptable, but it is indispensable for the same comprehension and realization of one’s own good. The other is a condition without whom one’s own good cannot be achieved; so, the notion of good, which derives from the ontic structure of the human person and that person’s perfective relational dynamism, allows us to understand that one’s own good cannot be carried out without the other’s own good and vice versa. Consequently, we come to consider the human ethos as essentially relational. Due precisely to the primacy that phenomenology gives to the self, the ethos of the human person is understood only within the consideration of human action carried out by a conscious being, a being that is self-owned. In addition, from the same phenomenological approach, human action is understood from its constitutive intentionality, and not only as proper to some peculiar actions (such as intellectual) performed by the human. Stein reinforces this dynamic understanding of the ontic structure of the human person with the notion of “core of persona” (Kern der Person),16 which is the center 16

“Die ursprüngliche Anlage des Charakters zeichnet sich vor allen anderen Anlagen der Persona dadurch aus, daß ihr ein letztes unauflösbares qualitatives Moments innewohnt, das die ganz durchtränkst, das dem Charakter innere Einheit gibt und seine Unterschiedenheit von allen anderen ausmacht. Sie ist das Wesen der Person, das sich nicht entwickelt, sondern nur im Laufe der Charakterentwicklung entfaltet, in die einzelnen Eigenschaften auseinanderlegt und je nach der Gunst oder Ungunst der Verhältnisse ganz oder nur teilweise aufblüht, der identische Kern, der

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in which one makes oneself and is oneself at the same time. Thus, the ethos is not something external, but rather something internal that lies within the human person; and at the same time, it is a within that comes out for the encounter and refers to the other. In this regard, the ethos for Edith Stein is mainly a meaning, an end, something to reach for, something to achieve, something beyond what has already been given. The ethos unifies and gives direction to all the human person’s living. Therefore, the ethos of the human life is not something external, or an aim to be achieved as a goal, since the ethos is rather dynamic: it is configured in the same “inside-outside” dynamism, which is characteristic of the human person’s ontic structure. From this perspective, Stein justifiably describes free action (or free act) as the motivated act, and within the motivated acts the core of the free action resides in the “purpose.”17 The human does not move so much towards an objectively good end in itself— although this behaviour is also included in the intentionality of the motivation due to its rationality—as the meaning is not something merely objective. Consciousness, as a constitutive structure that allows the person to take a position in the world, grants things; hence, the ethos of the human life, the definition of the human action towards the person’s good, cannot be founded only under the determination of what things are in themselves and, consequently, what the good is in itself. From the Steinian perspective of human action, considering the ontic structure of the person, the understanding of the constitutive intersubjective dimension of the person is essential in order to speak of the good of the person. In other words, to be able to speak of what is good for me, speaking of the good in itself is not enough; it is necessary to speak of who gives meaning to the action, of who performs the action as a being “in herself.” Simply put, referring to what motivates the action is essential in order to refer to the good of a person. However, following the ontic structure of the person in her constitution, the “good for me” is also necessarily intersubjective; that is, just as the self cannot be constituted without the you, neither can the good of the self be constituted or given to the consciousness without being referred to the good of the other. So, even the “good for me” is not locked into my subjectivity; thus, it is impossible to speak of an ethical subjectivism or relativism in the phenomenological approach. The objectivity is given by the same requisite of the intersubjective intentionality of the consciousness, that is, by its communicability. Placed in a constitutive intersubjective dimension, the communicability of the good is based on the fact that a good for me does not occur without a good for you; namely, the subjectivity of the good does not occur sich in allen ineren—durch die äußeren Verhältnisse bedingten—möglichen Entwicklungsgängen un (und?) Entwicklungsergebnissen findet und den Bereich dieser Möglichkeiten abgrenzt.” Stein (2004a), 134. 17 “Der Wille ist in einem doppelten Sinne ‘abhängig’: Er setzt eine gewisse Lebendigkeit voraus, und er setzt eine gegenständliche Grundlage nebst richtunggebenden Motiven voraus. In einem Bewusstsein, das unabhängig von einer sein Strömen regulierenden Kraft ‘aufnahmefähig’ wäre, würde die erste Abhängigkeit—die kausale—fortfallen, und nur die zweite würdebleiben. Unbeschadet seiner Abhängigkeit ist der Wille (als Vorsatz verstanden) in dreifachem positiven Sinne frei: 1. als aus eigenem Impuls entstehend; 2. als der Lebenssphäre spontan Kräfte entziehend; 3. Als aus sich heraus Kräfte entfaltend.” Stein (2010), 78 [81].

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without the consideration of the subjectivity of the other. For this reason, we can affirm that the centrality that Edith Stein gives to empathy in the constitution of the psychophysical individual is key to the articulation of an ethics that understands the human being as a “being a person,” that is, as a relational being at a constitutive level, not at an external level. Considering the human person from a phenomenological approach, Stein establishes guidelines for a rigorous philosophical analysis. These guidelines open important horizons for the development of ethics that can consider the peculiarity of the human person, that is, the person’s strictly unique and unrepeatable being and the person’s essential being-with-others. As Edith Stein states: The human being is responsible for herself, which means that what she is depends on her, and that she is concerned with making something specific of herself: she can and must form herself. What does “she”, “herself”, “can”, “must”, and “form” mean? She is a being that refers to herself as an “I.” When I look at a human being in her eyes, she responds to me. She lets me penetrate her interiority or rejects me. She is the master of her soul, and she can close or open the doors. She can come out of herself and penetrate things. When two human beings look at each other, a self is in front of another self. This can be an encounter that takes place from the door or in the interiority. The human being’s gaze speaks. A vigilant self-possessed “I” looks at me. We also say: a free spiritual person. Being a person means being free and spiritual. The human being is a person, this is the difference compared to all natural beings.18

Just as the psychophysical individual is not constituted without the other, in an analogous way and under the same principle, my good cannot be considered without the good of the other, for the moment the other appears on the horizon of one’s existence, one realizes that there are others like oneself. Ethics arises at this very moment. Ethics as ethos (as a sense of my own existence) cannot be considered only from the perspective of the first person since the first person (the self) is not constituted as I without the other—more specifically—without another like the self. To consider the meaning of things implies constituting a world; this world is exactly everything that is not me, even if it refers to my own self. The primacy, the I, should not be considered as a solipsism nor as a human anatomy that creates reality and ends up enclosing the human being in itself but rather as a pole that requires the other. Attending to the ontic structure, the peculiar vital dynamism of the human person is necessarily centered on and unified by the self and, at the same time, by the constitution of the self in reference to the other. Likewise, the dynamism of the human person is an alternate dynamism, in which the outside and the inside are the structures within which all human action unfolds. For this reason, Stein denominates the human person’s dynamism as openness: being spiritual is being in an open relationship with others, in which openness moves from inside to outside, and from outside to inside. From her understanding of the person as a relational ontic structure, Edith Stein establishes that the ethos of the person is not an external goal, much less something individual or isolated. On the contrary, this ethos refers to the other, since the self 18

“Was heißt es, daß der Mensch für sich verantwortlich sei? Es heißt, daß es an ihm liegt, was er ist, und daß von ihm verlangt wird, etwas Bestimmtes aus sich zu machen.”: Er kann und soll sich selbst formen. Der Aufbau die menschlichen Person, ESGA 14, (Freiburg: Herder, 2004), 78.

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can only be constituted as an I from the you. Therefore, recognizing others who also act from themselves is necessary to be able to constitute oneself as a person and, therefore, act from oneself. From this perspective, we can comprehend that an ethics that responds to the true ethos of the human person can only be formulated in the recognition of the other.

References Bejarano, J. C. V. (2007). La ética fenomenológica de Edmund Husserl como ética de la “renovación” y ética personal. Estudios de Filosofía (Universidad de Antioquia, Cali Colombia), 36, 63–66. Brentano, F. (1969). Vom Ursprung sittlicher Erkenntnis. Felix Meiner. Costantini, E. (1987). Note sull’empatia nell’approccio interpersonale. Aquinas, 3(140). de Haro, A. S. (2002). E. Husserl, Renovación del hombre y de la cultura. Cinco ensayos (Vol. ixff). Anthropos. Husserl, E. (2005). Lineamenti di etica formale (P. Basso & P. Spinicci, Trans.). Le Lettere. Husserl, E. (2009). Introduzione alla Etica. Lezione del semestre estivo 1920/1924 (N. Zippel, Trans.). Losacco, L. (1990). Rosmini e Stein: Einfühlung e inoggettivazione. Rivista Rosmaniana, 84, 355. Stein, E. (2004a). Einführung in die Philosophie, ESGA 8. Herder. Stein, E. (2004b). Der Aufbau der menschlichen Person. Herder. Stein, E. (2008). Husserl Phänomenologie und die Philosophie des hl. Thomas von Aquin. In Gesamt Ausgabe, ESGA 28. Herder. Stein, E. (2010). Beiträge zur philosophischen Begründung der Psychologie und der Geisteswissenschaften, ESGA 6. Herder.

Chapter 16

Crucible of Empathy: Nursing Service in World War I John Sullivan

Abstract In 1915, Edith Stein was still drafting the foundational work, On the Problem of Empathy, as her doctoral dissertation written under Edmund Husserl. The First World War interrupted her studies, and Stein volunteered as a nurse’s aide for five months, serving at a military hospital in Moravia. The experience made a tremendous impact on her personal and professional life, as a medical training course, the actual nursing, and later reflection and follow-up afterwards enriched Edith Stein’s personal development and provided insights into the many contracts in human behavior stirred up by the suffering that war can unleash. Through her autobiographical account, Life in a Jewish Family, Stein explains how she engaged directly in the “Great War” by delving into its mayhem scenario through fascinating eyewitness vignettes. For example, in Chap. 8 of her autobiography, Stein describes fully the service of “Nursing Soldiers in the Lazaretto at Mährisch-Weisskirchen.” Her nursing collaboration exercised a distinct formative influence and would stay imprinted in her memory to the very final days of her regrettably abbreviated life, in effect showing how much these turbulent experiences in fact marked her entire outlook.

16.1 Introduction “Now at least each person begins to realize that he is co-sufferer as a member of the vast national body. But the thinking person must also realize that in addition he is a jointly responsible member of the whole nation.” Edith Stein expressed this thought in an article she published in 1932.1 Being the kind of “thinking person” she alluded to, she was intimating how much she also held herself “jointly responsible” for the fate of “the whole nation” she belonged to. She did not hide from problems afoot in Germany then. She addressed a letter to Pope Pius XI the next year calling for 1 See

Stein (1996), 153.

J. Sullivan (B) Washington Province of Discalced Carmelites, Washington, DC, USA © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. F. Andrews and A. Calcagno (eds.), Ethics and Metaphysics in the Philosophy of Edith Stein, Women in the History of Philosophy and Sciences 12, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91198-0_16

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a show of concern from the Vatican against the misdeeds of the Nazis. This paper will try to gauge how she invested both time and energy earlier in World War I as a doctoral candidate to act ethically in solidarity with other citizens in the face of all the confusion such wide-ranging armed conflicts unleash. In part, it will also trace some echoes of her wartime nursing service years later during World War II as she engaged in ethical commitment to peace-making in word (by delivery of an exhortation to the nuns she lived with) and deed (through compassionate assistance to other Jews on the way to their deaths in Auschwitz).

16.2 Setting the Scene A tendency in those who follow the destiny of Edith Stein is to place the high point of her life at its very end in the infamous Auschwitz/Birkenau Nazi death camp and thus identify her as a victim of World War II’s tragic conflagration. They might also try to recall that another significant point on her life’s arc occurred during the First World War, some 27 years earlier. Regardless of where we center our attention, we ought to keep in mind that Edith lived during the two immensely cataclysmic and catastrophic events we now term “World War” I and II. The way she engaged in the two conflicts varied considerably, obviously since she survived without harm the one and perished in the other. Through her autobiographical account Life in a Jewish Family, she was able to tell how she engaged directly in the “Great War”; and her book allows us to delve into its mayhem scenario through fascinating eyewitness vignettes.2 One description that shows her sharing constructive participation in efforts to relieve the suffering stands out above the rest of her references to the wartime Central Europe she knew. She let Chap. 8 of the autobiography describe fully the service of “Nursing Soldiers in the Lazaretto at Mährisch-Weisskirchen.”3 Along with other selfless and well-educated women of her time4 —one thinks especially of Vera Brittan, an English student of Oxford University who left her studies, shipped out to France as a nurse’s aide and later wrote a poignant account of it called Testament of Youth5 — Edith Stein left (doctoral) studies behind, trained quickly and intensively to be a nurse’s aide, and spent nearly a half-year dispensing medical treatment for hospitalized sick and wounded soldiers.6 Thanks to Edith’s formation by the phenomenological method Chap. 8 displays penetrating views of the misery she encountered 2

Stein (1986), in Collected Works of Edith Stein (CWES), 1. Hereafter “Life”. Stein, Life, Chap. 8 “Nursing Soldiers in the Lazaretto at Märisch-Weisskirchen, 1915”, 318–367. 4 Berkman (1997). 5 See Brittain (1933). 6 Upon examination of Stein’s text one can determine the time spent on this commitment over two calendar years: a preparatory course lasted “four weeks”; then she did practical work in a Breslau hospital joined to half-a-month of “volunteer activity,” all in 1914; then came 4.5 months at the lazaretto in Moravia in 1915; finally, another 2 weeks getting ready for an “auxiliary nurses’” examination back in Breslau. See Life, passim. 3

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first-hand and the darkness of human character that sometimes appeared in those who treated the sick.7 Her nursing collaboration exercised a distinct formative influence and would stay imprinted in her memory to the very final days of her regrettably abbreviated life. The aim here is to cull from Chap. 8’s rich set of 49 pages a summary picture of her nursing experience in 1915. A first segment is a kind of background piece to set the context of her wartime service. Next come several postings she filled while on duty. Finally, references to several events in WWI after she left the hospital to resume her doctoral work and two other scenes years later will show how much those turbulent experiences marked her outlook.

16.3 Why Volunteer at All? Edith’s book situates matters at the outbreak of World War I (early in August 1914), some weeks after the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir apparent to the emperor’s throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Free of acute apprehension over its foreseeable effects on her own personal plans, she penned the following prophetic mise en scène of what that assassination would provoke far and wide in the world she knew: […]Our placid student life was blown to bits by the Serbian assassination of royalty. July was dominated by the question: Will war break out in Europe? Everything seemed to indicate that a terrible storm was brewing. But we found it inconceivable that it would really come to that. No one growing up during or since the war can possibly imagine the security in which we assumed ourselves to be living before 1914. Our life was built on an indestructible foundation of peace, stability of ownership of property, and on the permanence of circumstances to which we were accustomed. When one finally noticed that the storm was inevitably approaching, one attempted to get a clear idea of what was likely to happen. One thing was certain. It would differ from previous wars. The destruction would be so terrible that it could not possibly last long. It would all be over in a few months.8

Up against the macrocosm of the European continent, placed on the verge of drastic change from open warfare, there stood Edith’s own life’s experience during 7

Alisdair Macintyre, in Chap. 8 “1915–1916: From Nursing to a Doctorate,” (2006), 71 pointed to what Edith gained from her nursing for her ongoing reflections as a young doctoral student: “Edith Stein’s time as a nurse was important to her in a variety of ways. She encountered a far wider range of types of human being, drawn from different social classes than she had met before, either in the circle of her family’s acquaintances, or at school at Breslau, or while a student at Göttingen.” In the same sense the words of the editor to the contemporary German edition of On the Problem of Empathy confirm, in her Introduction, the insight of Prof. Macintyre: Edith Stein schweigt darüber, was sie in den vielen Begegnungen mit den einzelnen Verwundeten erfahren hat—bis einige Ausnahmen. Aber man darf wohl annehmen, dass diese Konfrontation mit den Leidenden für sie auch zu einer Schule der inneren Reifung and Entwicklung geworden ist. Sie konnte ihre Gedanken zur Einfühlung innerlich überdenken und im Alltag überprüfen. Vieles deutet darauf hin, dass sich in diesen fünf Monaten im Lazarett in ihr eine Wandlung vollzogen hat.” See Sondermann (2008), in Edith Stein Gesamtausgabe (ESGA), 5, XV. 8 Life, 293.

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its first twenty-three years. She lucidly expressed her feelings about the destiny that might await her on the eve of Germany’s declaration of war: […]Though feverishly tense, I faced the future with great clarity and determination “I have no private life anymore,” I told myself, “All my energy must be devoted to this great happening. Only when the war is over, if I’m alive then, will I be permitted to think of my private affairs once more.” The next day [August 2, 1914] was the Sunday on which [we learned that] war was declared….9

Out of an intense and unsparing sense of self-sacrifice, then, she would suspend her philosophy studies already involving the drafting of a doctoral dissertation10 and go join others volunteering to support their homeland mobilized against its adversaries. True, she would successfully defend her doctoral thesis two summers later,11 but it could well have been completed earlier had she not generously taken a place among the medical personnel assisting the troops.12 Implementing a plan for a nurse’s aide’s intense preparatory course did not prove easy: she encountered opposition from her mother13 and from a much-admired and distinguished elder teacher. This oftentimes less cited instance of opposition encountered by Edith came from Privy Councillor Thalheim whom she approached to officially suspend her studies at 9

Life, 297. Compare her phrasing of these sentiments with the similar remarks about those days that she shared with Roman Ingarden later during WWI in Letter 7, 9 February 1917, Stein (2014), 44. CWES, 12, 12: “...when I arrived home on the day of our mobilization after a twenty-fourhour trip, I withdrew from the family circle because I could not bear to hear discussion of trivial (personal) concerns. Then, it suddenly became quite clear to me: today my individual life ceased and everything I am belongs to the state; if I survive the war, then I want to begin my life anew based on that conviction.” 10 Life, 345. 11 Life, 412–414. She even had pages of handwritten notes for the thesis delivered to her at the lazaretto when her brother Arno “in his medical corps uniform,” visited her there—see Life, 345; also 376. Publication of her dissertation’s Chaps. 2, 3 and 4 came in 1917 as the work Zum Problem der Einfühlung (Halle: Buchdruckerei des Waisenhauses, 1917). One interesting reference to wartime experiences appears in the published thesis—see On the Problem of Empathy, trans. Waltraut Stein (Washington/Dordrecht: ICS Publications/M.Nijhof, 1989), in CWES, 3, 33: “[…]For example, suppose that I go into the military service as a volunteer under the impression that I am doing so out of pure patriotism and do not notice that a longing for adventure, vanity, or a dissatisfaction with my present situation also play a part.” Possibly, one other allusion to war-time death (as she prepared her text for publication still during WWI) could be housed in the example given on p. 6 of the act of empathy: “A friend tells me that he has lost his brother and I become aware of his pain.” (italics mine). 12 An eyewitness account of German Red Cross activities in WWI was published in the book Lessons from the Enemy—How Germany Cares for her War Disabled by McDill, John R., Major, Medical Reserve Corps, U.S. Army, (Philadelphia and New York: Lea and Febiger, 1918). The material in the book was based on a visit to Germany, before America entered the war in April 1917, by an American Physicians’ Expeditions Committee of New York. This was organized to send independent hospital units to the war zone. Source: http://www.vib.us/medical/grc1418.htm retrieved 20 April 2016. 13 See Sullivan, Chap. 4 (2006): 80–82.

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school.14 Their exchange, reported by Edith, provides a useful hint about the nursing service institution, the so-called lazaretto, and Edith’s resolute choice of it as a place best suited to apply her desires to offer help: […]Before I started my wartime service, I had to visit the district board of education to withdraw my registration for the Graecum, [final exam segment] or, rather, to tell them I would have to postpone the date indefinitely. Privy Councilor Thalheim, the chief administrative officer of the humanistic Gymnasium, was a formidable gentleman, serious as well as strict. When he heard the reason for the postponement he showed his dissatisfaction but said nothing at first. However, as I was on my way out he called me back. “Have your parents agreed to this?” “My father died long ago. My mother does not like it at all.” He became quite agitated at that. (He himself had a daughter my own age. I knew her from school.) “Of course she does not like it! As things are, I have no right to express an opinion. But since you no longer have a father, I do feel obliged to warn you. Do you know what goes on in a Lazaretto?” I did not know; but if, as he indicated, one was in moral danger and the nurses had a bad reputation, then that was indeed dreadfully sad; but then I found it even more essential that persons with a serious attitude should go to work there.15

She became a nurse’s aide with a double mission from that point on: to be an agent of healing for the soldier patients, also an exemplar of sterling character bringing light to dark surroundings. A brief description of a lazaretto in those times is useful, including some features of the Moravian one she served in, before examining the main focuses of her activities and some influences on her.

16.4 What Was a WWI Lazaretto? A brief, though adequate, definition of a “lazaretto” hospital found in the Micropaedia states it is a “confinement-house or hospital for people with communicable diseases” and it adds that a “quarantine station establishment [was founded] in Venice.”16 In the case of WWI, many sicknesses were contagious disease disorders, due to the stagnant mode of trench warfare. Belligerents were confined very often to one and the same place, then they caught and passed on breathing disorders, as well as other illnesses like typhoid, cholera, and smallpox carried by lice and rodents.17 (One could sum it up through nicknames: WWII brought “Blitzkrieg” or fast-moving tank-driven mobile offenses all over the map, while WWI served up a “Sitzkrieg” of long-term, static combat lines that confined the soldiers to the trenches of their same pieces of martial real estate.) 14

She was preparing at that time to take an examination in Greek, as a supplement to her successful exams in “philosophical propaedeutics, history and German” for accreditation as a teacher. See “Personal Biography” drafted for her doctoral thesis in Empathy, 119. 15 Life, 320. Further on in her autobiography (p. 328) she tells how, once established in the lazaretto, she recalled that really caring advice he offered to her: “I thought of the kindly Councilor Thalheim; was there, then, generally, open season regarding the nurses?” 16 Encyclopaedia Brittanica, VI (1974), 96. 17 Life, 345.

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Edith’s description of it says the lazaretto she served in was functioning in a requisitioned complex of military buildings of considerable size. And complex it was.18 She writes that it “took 10 min to walk along the entire frontage”19 and it also contained “an endless expanse of buildings.”20 Its background and then current use appears in the lines: […]In peacetime it had been an academy for the cavalry, with a residence for the officers and a high school for the cadets. At the back, two riding academies were attached, one was large and the other small. In addition, new barracks to serve as a lazaretto had been built. (I do not remember exactly how many, whether ten or twenty). Each of these barracks housed two wards of fifty beds apiece.21

She did not give a numerical break-down of all the patients on site during her time there. While stating it had 4,000 beds available,22 she does mention that not long before her arrival early in April 1915 the personnel gave a lugubrious party for themselves to celebrate the “thousandth typhoid patient.”23 She introduces the personnel assigned to the place with her typical acute sense of observation. The principal nurse was “Matron” or Schwester/Sister Margarete (in the European usage for nurses in general) and she had “a flock of 150 nurses and aides to supervise.”24 “[…]Each[typhoid] ward had its own doctor, two registered nurses, and two aides; besides that 2 maids (local girls), and an orderly handled the domestic chores.”25 Such lazarettos were not field hospitals at the front, rather facilities placed behind the lines and safely free from danger of attack.

16.5 Edith’s Postings/Assignments Edith indicates she was assigned to two major areas in the overall contagious disease hospital, namely, the Typhoid Ward and the Surgery Ward. So as not to overload this presentation with many technical details, otherwise interesting in themselves, here are the areas that show Edith exercising significant doses of talent and humanity in the face of difficult cases encountered.

18

For a photo of the buildings see Neyer (1999), 23. Life, 321. 20 Life, 325. 21 Life, 321. 22 Life, 319. Photo no. 8 shows recuperating soldiers in a ward of the lazaretto in Müller and Neyer (1998), 100. 23 Life, 327. 24 Life, 322. 25 Life, 323. 19

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16.6 Typhoid Ward Work Her first three weeks were spent caring for typhoid patients in different parts of the lazaretto reserved for that and related diseases. Fascinating aspects of her description tell of the treatment one patient received, based on injections of camphor, thus saving him from death.26 Two personal qualities that enabled her to exert a positive influence through her office of nurse’s aide were skilled versatility in human relations, and a warm collaborative attitude. The latter was demanded of her since the lazaretto served soldiers of the Central Powers, in contingents from Germany, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and Italy. Each quality shows through in the following case. Simply to communicate with the patients a German like her could not rely on their ability to speak her language. She, instead, took a different tack and learned off many an expression in foreign tongues, so she could bridge the gap intensified by pain and anxiety and really reach the sick person. An exchange she had with a Hungarian included a sensitive reference to the range of different ethnic groups helped by the nurses: […]One soon learned to distinguish the differences between nationalities. At the time not a single one of the patients was from the German Reich. Later I had a few. When we discovered one of our compatriots in a transport, we German nurses were jubilant. But once we had had him for a few days, we usually became very subdued. These countrymen of ours were demanding and critical; they could upset the entire ward if anything did not suit them. Those from the “barbaric nations” were humble and grateful. I pitied them so, these poor Slovaks and Ruthenians, dragged out of their quiet villages and sent into battle. What did they know about the history of the German Reich and of the Hapsburg monarchy? Now they lay there suffering without knowing what for. The Hungarians, so famed for their valor on the battlefield and so charmingly gallant toward us, made the most woebegone patients. If one of the newly arrived wailed aloud the first time his bandages were changed in the operating room one called to him: ‘Nem sabot, Magyar!’ (“That’s not allowed, Magyar!”)27

An ability to act as a catalyst for and educe collaborative cooperation from persons normally adverse to helping others they did not know or disliked (not belonging to their own ethnic group) is also evident in Edith’s work. She was not at all embarrassed 26

Life, 330. A simple list drawn up in no particular order of appearance from her text demonstrates the scope and extent of all the medical procedures Edith was able to give during her months in Moravia—see Chap. 8 passim: injections; assist at doctors’ procedures; take temperature and pulse; serve meals; spoon-feeding; administer snacks; write letters; remove and apply bandages; bathe patients; adjust traction equipment; massages; rub and powder wounds; tie restless patients to their bed; translate messages; dispose of personal effects of the deceased; search for supplies; protect supplies; move beds; lift/place patients in beds; and banter to keep hopes up. The work proved to be intense, but in the middle of her stay she declined the chance for a regularly scheduled fifteen-day furlough and instead went on continuing her rounds. See p. 345. 27 Life, 334. See her reference to a manual of linguistic expressions from which she learned off the key phrases that helped her be of such good use to her patients on p. 333: “To facilitate communication between the doctors and patients, a small manual, in nine languages, gave the most essential questions and answers in daily use. I made myself thoroughly familiar with them.”

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to underscore tension points between different cohorts in a description of her first day at the lazaretto: […]The people in the area could not be counted on for any support. Almost exclusively, they were Czech and anti-German. If we spoke German when asking anyone directions on the street we got no answer. Because German nurses were attached to it, the lazaretto seldom received any donations. We had to depend on whatever was sent us from home. While we cared for their wounded, the Weisskirchen girls sat, all dolled up, in the resort park listening to a concert.28

But the following anecdote shows well her ability to outbalance with equanimity the anti-foreigner bias of others and assure proper attention to the sick: […]One day I had a private talk with my little miner. I asked him whether the bandaging really hurt so terribly. Well, no, it really was not all that bad. All right, then he ought to clench his teeth and not scream. Almost all those around him were Poles and Czechs, and the doctor himself was Polish. He ought to show them that a German soldier was capable of putting up with something. Was that so? Were they really all Poles and Czechs? He had not noticed that at all, he said. Good, he would be brave. Before the next change of bandages was due, I asked once more: “How about the doctor’s visit today?” “Not a peep!” was the firm reply, and he kept his word… .29

It was in typhoid Ward III that Edith first experienced the death of another person. Her account of what happened reads: […]Finally she [Matron] put me in charge of the isolation room as well; a patient from our ward had been transferred there when it was discovered he had diphtheria. A gypsy, he had caused us a great deal of anxiety by his refusal of nourishment of any kind. He was dreadfully emaciated, and his brown face had turned ashen. The diphtheria finished him. However, he was not to die during my night duty. Instead, the little Polish girl came for me, on that very first night, terrified because one of her patients was dying. The poor fellow could not even make himself understood in his agony. He was German, and she knew no German. I sent her rushing for the doctor on night duty and meanwhile prepared an injection. The doctor came quickly, but there was nothing he could do to help. He could only await the end and certify the death. That was the first time I ever saw anyone die. The second instance of death came in our own ward. When I reported for work a few days after assuming night duty, the nurses greeted me with the news that a dying man had been admitted and that they had saved him for me to have that night….30

16.7 Surgical Ward Work She was sent to an operating room after the initial three weeks of service spent in the Typhoid Ward. 28

Life, 322–323. Life, 353. Stein identified this soldier as a miner from Westphalia on p. 351. The ICS translation inaccurately translates Stein’s word “Bergmann” as “mountaineer” here, on pp. 351 and 352. Compare the original in Stein (2002), ESGA, 1, 290–291. 30 Life, 337–38. 29

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As Edith indicated, “The small operating room was located in what had been the Cadets’ Riding Academy.”31 She gives an inventory of its set-up: “[…]the surgery and its three operating tables, its instrument cabinet, and another table; the adjoining sterilizing room; and a small, dark ante-room leading to the corridor.”32 In the midst of her poignant assessment of her colleagues she included the following stark reason why she interrupted her doctoral work in order to join them caring for the sick: […]I explained to him [Dr. Schärf, Austrian] that all my fellow students, were in the service and I could not see why I should be better off than they. That seemed to impress him. However, he could not generate any enthusiasm over my suggestion that he sign up to serve at the front where he would then be able to find me a job in a field hospital as well.33

She showed courage to abandon the relative safety of this behind-the-front-lines hospital complex for medical installations functioning in combat areas.

16.8 Surgical Ward One The longest stretch of time in the surgical ward came in August, her last month on duty. She qualifies it as the “hardest” of all her nursing service.34 Contributing to its difficulties were long hours into the evening looking after persons in traction. One of them is quoted as generously affirming “Sister has more work with us than a mother with nine children.”35 Perhaps, though, the intensity of the work was just what suited Stein, since she was glad to note that “[...]The difficulty was of an entirely different nature than the one I had experienced when working in Barracks Six. Now I was caring for people, doing what I liked to do.”36 The most striking proof of this comes from her care for a Polish cavalry officer whom she introduces to her narrative as a bitter-sweet proof of the sadness her ministrations must have caused her: […]On one occasion the arrival of a fresh transport kept us busy until late in the evening getting the new arrivals properly adjusted in traction. The officers’ room which so far housed only two occupants was now filled to capacity. Going down the corridor very late, I encountered a most remarkable transport: a gigantic figure lay stark naked on the gurney; a rimless pence-nez perched on the sharply aquiline nose; the head was resting on a red silk pillow. A Polish cavalry-captain was being transferred from the operating room to the officers’ room. He had refused to allow them to put a hospital gown on him but had positively insisted that he retain those two items. …I was informed that the cavalry-captain required private nursing throughout the night… He was wide awake and gave orders in ringing tones which prevented the other officers from sleeping. They were half amused, half despairing. 31

Life, 346. Ibid. 33 Life, 348. 34 Life, 357. 35 Life, 358. 36 Ibid. 32

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…Repeatedly, my patient asked me to cool his hands and arms with water. Since I had no one else to care for during the night, I was able to perform for him any service he fancied… “Good morning, little sister,” he called out to me. Evidently what he recalled of my services during the night was pleasant. After we had left the room, the maid said to me in respectful awe: “He likes you, Sister. He called you ‘Little Sister.’”37

The officer’s wounds got the best of him and he eventually died in the ward. The passage underscores the empathic attitude of Stein; it also brings into focus again the reality-check she was given about human suffering that she would bring with her into the later phases of her life.

16.9 Deepening Solidarity Someone as sensitive as doctoral candidate Edith took from her Red Cross service numerous lessons for the rest of her life. Just a few ought to demonstrate how the empathic solidarity she showed lingered on and even grew as she moved through the first half of the twentieth century. Among them the first occurs within a year of completion of her stint in Moravia; further on she realistically exhorts her contemporaries to concern over WWII’s disturbing, wide-ranging hostilities.

16.10 Frau Gronwerweg’s Intuition In the next chapter of Life in a Jewish Family (Chap. 9), Edith took note of how the sobering effects of her nursing activities became evident to others in this description she gave of a dinner party for Christmas 1915: […] So I was back in Göttingen after being away for nearly a year. As in former times, Liane Weigelt sat opposite me at the dinner table. “You haven’t changed a bit, Fräulein Stein,” she remarked. Frau Gronerweg [owner of the boarding house for students] declared, “I don’t agree. One can tell just by looking at her that Fräulein Stein has experienced the serious side of life.”38

The “serious side of life,” indeed. And why else would Edith have included this exchange in her autobiographical account unless she wanted to indicate to the reader that she had been marked by it—appearing, as it did, during an event intended to be more conducive of festive and happier thoughts?

37 38

Life, 360–362. Life, 378.

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16.11 Calming Reassurance During Bombardment Close to her doctoral exam on August 3, 1916 (still several years before WWI ended) Edith welcomed her friend Erika Goth to Freiburg for a brief visit. The narrative included outings they both enjoyed, but a turn to darker considerations arose one night when there was an air raid on the city. Edith writes: […] But we came away with more than memories of happy outings, for impressions of a more serious nature were made, also. The first or second night after Erika’s arrival there, we were awakened by an air raid. I was accustomed to that by the time and made little of it. Erika slept in another room; her bed was against the wall adjoining the room occupied by the landlady’s elderly in-laws. During the night, suddenly, the man knocked at my door and told me in his Baden dialect that my companion was weeping. I dressed immediately and went over to her. She was, indeed, shedding tears but not for herself. She had been told that from Freiburg one could hear the artillery fire from the Vosges Mountains and her brother Hans, a lieutenant, was stationed there. Now she had heard shells exploding and said, “If it sounds so terrible here, what a hell it must be there!” I knelt beside her bed and comforted her. What we were hearing were the anti-aircraft guns from the Schlossberg which protected the entire city. All one could hear from the Vosges mountains was a very dull rumbling. Thereupon the tears stopped at once. Erika was completely comforted. She even noticed the dress I had thrown on so rapidly. “You have found the style that suits you,” she said.39

Nothing more need be added, except to note that, for movement, the narrative shows Edith going to assist her friend, not her friend knocking on her door to rely on her. She seized the initiative and did not wait to be invited to help.

16.12 Reminiscence-Filled Challenge to Offer Help Several decades later, during WWII, Edith the nun was asked to supply meditations on feast day themes celebrated by her Carmelite community. She reflected on things like the Epiphany plus the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. On the day the Cross was celebrated in 1939, just two weeks after the Nazi invasion of Poland that started the outbreak of hostilities, she pronounced the following poignant words as part of a ceremony that included the semi-annual renewal of vows by the sisters: […]The world is in flames. The conflagration can also reach our house. But high above all flames towers the cross. They cannot consume it. It is the path from earth to heaven. It will lift one who embraces it in faith, love, and hope into the bosom of the Trinity. The world is in flames. Are you impelled to put them out? Look at the cross. From the open heart gushes the blood of the Savior. This extinguishes the flames of hell. Make your heart free by the faithful fulfillment of your vows; then the flood of divine love will be poured into your heart until it overflows and becomes fruitful to all the ends of the earth. Do you hear the groans of the wounded on the battlefields in the west and the east? You are not a physician and not a nurse and cannot bind up the wounds. You are enclosed in a cell and 39

Life, 407.

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cannot get to them. Do you hear the anguish of the dying? You would like to be a priest and comfort them. Does the lament of the widows and orphans distress you? You would like to be an angel of mercy and help them. Look at the Crucified. If you are nuptially bound to him by the faithful observance of your holy vows, your being is precious blood. Bound to him, you are omnipresent as he is. You cannot help here or there like the physician, the nurse, the priest. You can be at all fronts, wherever there is grief, in the power of the cross. Your compassionate love takes you everywhere, this love from the divine heart. Its precious blood is poured everywhere soothing, healing, saving. The eyes of the Crucified look down on you asking, probing. Will you make your covenant with the Crucified anew in all seriousness? What will you answer him? “Lord, where shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” Ave Crux, Spes unica! [Hail, O Cross, our only hope!]40

Underlying the terminology she chooses lies a mine of experience she offers to the nuns—through her Christian vision of vicarious shared suffering with Christ—a chance to replicate on another level some of the compassion she showed in her nurse’s uniform many hundreds of miles away at Märisch-Weisskirchen, for a different but surely related group of suffering human beings. “You are not a physician, not a nurse...”, “...you cannot help here or there like the physician, the nurse...”, but “...you can be at all fronts, wherever there is grief...Your compassionate love takes you everywhere...” Edith Stein would be ready, then: ready for the new conflagration which had begun the first day of that September 1939, and be prepared for the final instance of solidarity with her suffering contemporaries after her arrest and deportation to Auschwitz/Birkenau—her selfless intervention in WWI had paved the way to a new theatre of vigilant empathy.41

16.13 New “Sister” for the Suffering Oftentimes one reads coverage of Edith Stein that designates her a victim of Nazi hatred during the Holocaust. She died alongside other Jewish people unjustly and persecuted by agents of her own government. Only, the qualifier “victim” tends to underestimate how much she avoided passive acceptance of what was imposed on her. And, to the extent she would not let herself be merely erased from her surroundings and transported anonymously across national borders from the Netherlands to Auschwitz/Birkenau death camp, she managed to help others along the way. The story of her way of the cross included five major stations. From one of them, the transit camp stop-over at Westerbork, came a fortuitous eyewitness account by a fellow prisoner who managed to escape death. His narrative suffices to prove to us that, even perilously close to her own demise, she went on assisting others, sympathizing with others, comforting others with her generous care.

40

See “Elevation of the Cross, September 14, 1939: Ave Crux, Spes Unica! [Hail Cross, Only Hope]” in Stein (1992), CWES, 4, 95–96. Italics added here. 41 See Sullivan (2007), 236–49 for Edith Stein’s last days’ journey to Auschwitz-Birkenau.

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Enroute to her death she was able to send out a note to her monastery with the telling affirmation, “[…]we place our trust in your prayers. There are so many persons here in need of a little comfort, and they expect it from the sisters.”42 Proof that she offered practical relief and showed positive solidarity for the companions on her journey under arrest comes from Julius Markan, a Jewish businessman from Cologne who survived. That makes it all the more cogent. An account of the words he left to describe her runs this way: “[…]Among the prisoners who were brought in on 5 August, Sr. Benedicta stood out on account of her great calmness and composure. The distress in the barracks, and the stir caused by the new arrivals, was indescribable. Sr. Benedicta was just like an angel, going around among the women, comforting them, helping them and calming them. Many of the mothers were near to distraction; they had not bothered about their children the whole day long, but just sat brooding in dumb despair. Sr. Benedicta took care of the little children, washed them and combed them, looked after feeding and their other needs. During the whole of her stay there, she was so busy washing and cleaning as acts of lovingkindness that everyone was astonished…. Mr. Markan reports one conversation with Sr.Benedicta that, of course he is no longer able to recall in exact detail. He asked her: “What are you going to do now?” And she answered: “So far I prayed and worked, from now on I will work and pray.”43

Highly reminiscent of the motto of the Benedictines whom Edith Stein knew and appreciated so well, their “pray and work”, her words can serve as a fitting conclusion to this account of her WWI nursing service. Prayer had its place; as for work, it ought to be taken in terms of what she also said in her Life in a Jewish Family autobiography, namely, that “we are in the world to serve humanity.”44 Inspired now by Jesus of Nazareth who came “not to be served, but to serve,” she acted as a generous source of service to others, an elegant channel/mentor of empathetic compassion in a century troubled two times over by those maelstroms one calls world wars.

References Berkman, J. A. (1997). ‘I am myself it’: Comparative national identity formation in the lives of Vera Brittain and Edith Stein. Women’s History Review, 6(1), 47–73. Brittain, V. (1933). Testament of youth. Victor Gollancz. Macintyre, A. (2006). Edith Stein: A philosophical prologue, 1913–1922. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. McDill, J. R. (1918). Lessons from the enemy—How Germany cares for her war disabled. Lea and Febiger. Müller, A. U., & Neyer, M. A. (1998). Edith Stein, Das Leben einer ungewöhnlichen Frau. Benziger. Neyer, M. A. (1999). Edith Stein: Her life in photos and documents (W. Stein, Trans.). ICS Publications. 42

Stein (1993), Letter 341 to Mother Ambrosia Antonia Engelmann, 5 August 1942, CWES, 5, 352. 43 Posselt (2005), 217 and 218. 44 Life, 177.

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Posselt, T. R. (2005). Edith Stein: The life of a philosopher and carmelite (S. Batzdorff, J. Koeppel, & J. Sullivan, Trans. Eds.). ICS Publications. Sondermann, M. A. (2008). Zum Problem der Einfühlung. Herder Verlag. Stein, E. (1986). Life in a Jewish Family (J. Koeppel, Trans.). ICS Publications. Stein, E. (1989). On the problem of empathy (W. Stein, Trans.). ICS Publications/M.Nijhof. Stein, E. (1992). The hidden life: Essays, meditations, spiritual texts (W. Stein, Trans.). ICS Publications. Stein, E. (1993). Self-portrait in letters, 1916–1942 (J. Koeppel, Trans.). ICS Publications. Stein, E. (1996). Essays on woman (F. M. Oben, Trans.). In Collected works of Edith Stein (Vol. 2, rev. ed.). ICS Publications. Stein, E. (2002). Aus dem Leben einer jüdischen Familie. In M. A. Neyer (Ed.). Herder. Stein, E. (2007). Two concentration Camp Carmelites: St. Edith Stein and Père Jacques Bunel. Carmelite Studies, 10, 231–277. Stein, E. (2014). Self portrait in letters: Letters to Roman Ingarden (H. Hunt, Trans.). ICS Publications. Sullivan, J. (2006). Some instances of humor in Edith Stein. In A. Joyce Berkman (Eds.), Contemplating Edith Stein (pp. 76–92). ND Press.

Notes Stein, E. (1992). The hidden life: Essays, meditations, spiritual texts (W. Stein, Trans.). ICS Publications. Stein, E. (2014) Self-portrait in letters: Letters to Roman Ingarden (H. Hunt, Trans.). ICS Publications. Sullivan, J. (2006). Some instances of humor in Edith Stein. In A. Joyce Berkman (Eds.), Contemplating Edith Stein (pp. 76–92). ND Press. Sullivan, J. (2007). Two concentration Camp Carmelites: St. Edith Stein and Père Jacques Bunel. Carmelite Studies, 10, 231–277.

Chapter 17

Edith Stein’s Understanding of the Personal Attitude: Applications and Implications for a New Ethics Michael F. Andrews

Abstract An important implication of Edith Stein’s notion of empathy is that it provides an opportunity to engage new paradigms to explore ethical and metaphysical themes as a result of the phenomenological method. How can we speak meaningfully about the Other—mystery, transcendence, the Infinite, the Absolute, God, my neighbor, the stranger—outside traditional metaphysical structures that equate “presence” with power? In other words, how might Edith Stein’s critique of Husserl’s transcendental idealism—itself a critique of strictly rational, propositional, representational discourse—challenge the legacy of Enlightenment ethics and Greek and medieval metaphysics? How might Edith Stein help us think outside the paradigm of Being?

17.1 Introduction Too often, ethics can be misunderstood in an entirely superficial way. When that happens, ethics fails to surprise us. Masquerading either as the mere reduction to feelings of kindness and affability on the one hand or to the attainment of rules and regulations on the other hand, ethics begins to lose its inner strength, its ability to respond, its distinctive transforming capacity. Understood in a superficial way, ethics takes in only those who are closest to me—friends, family, tribe, nation, race. By tacitly excluding those estranged from view, we conveniently forget those who are somehow “different” or “other,” those who are not like us, those who may suffer on account of difference and are therefore most in need, those who have no voice and no face: the poor, homeless, destitute, the stranger, the mentally and physically ill. For Edith Stein, a more radical or critical understanding of ethics is required, an understanding based on the phenomenology of empathy. This more radical kind of M. F. Andrews (B) Department of Philosophy, Loyola University Chicago, Chicago, USA e-mail: [email protected] Loyola University Chicago, Chicago, USA © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. F. Andrews and A. Calcagno (eds.), Ethics and Metaphysics in the Philosophy of Edith Stein, Women in the History of Philosophy and Sciences 12, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91198-0_17

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empathic praxis is based on the human experience of value, what Edith Stein called the personal attitude: “The personal attitude is objectively justified and valuable because actually the human person is more precious than all objective values. All truth is discerned by persons; all beauty is beheld and measured by persons. All objective values exist in this sense of persons.”1 Edith Stein’s phenomenological description of the human person is a lacuna that invites further reflection. As a re-imagining of Enlightenment ethics, Edith Stein’s understanding of the personal attitude attests to a fundamental critique of the underlying principles of metaphysics, namely, what has been called by Martin Heidegger as the onto-theological “metaphysics of presence.” By Enlightenment ethics, is meant the presupposition that proper moral behavior is based on self-evident truths and universal principles common to all human beings, including reason, the capacity for pleasure and pain, utility, and a commitment to freedom as a categorical imperative. Properly speaking, the project of Enlightenment ethics was to uproot and de-historicize both the subject and the methodological search of inquiry related to ontological issues. The goal of the Enlightenment was to ground ethics on a priori, universal principles. Consequently, Edith Stein’s “personal attitude” challenges the onto-metaphysical assumptions upon which Enlightenment ethics has rested for centuries. The demise of the isolated epistemological subject points to no less a fiction than “the notion of an isolated moral subject” who “looks helplessly about with the eyes of pure reason for rules of conduct and ethical criteria.”2 In a similar vein, Edmund Husserl’s “transcendental ego” has suffered a similar fate. Rejected by his most loyal students, including Edith Stein, Roman Ingarden, Max Scheler, Martin Heidegger, Adolf Reinach, and others, Husserl’s transcendental idealism sought a presuppositionless ground upon which the constitution of objective reality could be described without prejudice. Husserl’s transcendental turn sought to ground phenomenology on the notion of a presuppositionless foundation. It belongs to a strong current in Western philosophy that exemplifies Enlightenment metaphysics and runs from Plato to Kant, and beyond. By seeking “ontological neutrality,” Husserl’s transcendental epoché insists on a presuppositionless or nonprejudicial attitude that manifests a particular kind of hidden hyper-essentialism. Husserl’s dream of neutrality seeks an Archimedian point, an “origin” for all objective knowledge. Following Kant, Husserl “takes the Being of consciousness to be such that it can neutralize itself or purify itself of worldly contamination.“3 As Edith Stein adhered, Husserl’s attempt to bracket existence in order to arrive at the original level of pure thought in effect betrayed his earlier realist ontology that underpinned the givenness of the world in terms of returning to the things themselves. We stand at the crux of the issue. On the one hand is the de-historicization of the human subject through Enlightenment ethics; and on the other hand, is the turn to subjectivity as the sine qua non for all forms of knowing. My argument is that a deconstructive tension lies within Edith Stein’s notion of the “personal attitude” 1

Stein (1996). Caputo (1987, 247). 3 Caputo (1987, 54). 2

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that has far-reaching implications for contemporary ethics. This takes the form of a critique against Enlightenment ethics vis-a-vis a wider repudiation of essentialist metaphysics based on principles drawn from transcendental idealism. Edith Stein herself hints at this subtle, yet immense metaphysical challenge to Enlightenment ethics in her February 3, 1917 letter to Roman lngarden. In this letter, Stein turns her attention to the issue of constitution, or givenness. She writes to Ingarden from Feiburg regarding a “philosophical walk” she had had with Husserl earlier in the day: “By the way, after the walk I had a sudden breakthrough. I think I now have a reasonably clear understanding of ‘constitution’—but outside the context of idealism. Prerequisites for an intuitive nature to constitute itself are: an absolutely existing physical nature and a subjectivity of a precise structure. So far, I have not gotten around to confessing this heresy to the Master.”4 What is Edith Stein’s “heresy?” How successful is Stein in attributing such heresy to a profound appreciation of the inter-relationality between ethics and metaphysics? To what extent does Stein’s heresy point to a need to “go beyond” Being in response to what Heidegger described as the emerging decline of a post-metaphysical West? These are three important questions that will help guide our discussion.

17.2 Stein’s Notion of the “Personal Attitude” For Edith Stein, ethics prescribes both a personal calling and an objective response. It is personal in that “it is the whole person about whom we are speaking: that human being in whom God’s image is developed most purely… and in whom the faculties are balanced in conformity with God’s image and God’s will.”5 And it is objective insofar as “each human being is called naturally to this total humanity, and the desire for it lives in each one of us.”6 Ethics challenges us to reject unjust social and economic structures. It calls attention to abuses of power that are oftentimes imposed on the weak and vulnerable, and which therefore degrade and lessen the human personality. Ethics cannot be satisfied merely measuring how much I feel into an other’s misery. Empathy addresses the claims that every other qua Other makes upon me by taking into account other centers of meaning and value. For Edith Stein, ethics thereby constitutes and transforms individuals along with the social, economic, and political structures that contribute to the raising or degrading of all human communities. Clearly, such a structure of reciprocal givenness would present an occasion to think ethics and metaphysics anew, that is, to think in terms of thinking ethics and metaphysics beyond Being, outside the constraints of Enlightenment rationality. It may be of more than passing interest to note that nowhere in her writings does Edith Stein offer a detailed commentary on the subject of ethics. Rather, she sees ethics organically and inter-subjectively, that is, as an element of constitution that 4

Stein (2014). Stein (1996). 6 Stein (1996). 5

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grounds the foundational experience of human being-in-the-world. For Edith Stein, ethics is what gets fleshed-out non-thematically through the everyday give-and-take between two subjects, between I and Other, between me and you. For Stein, the human person is primarily understood as an embodied “I” or primary ego with a unique and irrepeatable historical identity. Human personhood is thus innately constituted through I–Thou relationships that engage reciprocity and inter-communicability. The “I” of primary ego is never conceived solus ipse, cut-off from others in the world. For Stein, Descartes’ famous cogito is merely a constituted phantom; before I ever appear on the scene, there is always and already a “with-world” that calls me into being and solidarity with and amongst others who are like me, only different. The truth of experience is never the isolated subject of a lonely, world-deprived and self-sufficient monad: cogitamus, ergo sum. In this respect, the “I” is never grasped as completely foreign or alien, either to itself or to others. This is precisely why, for Stein, there is no need for a transcendental ego to reduce the field of sense or cognitive perception to a state of neutrality or epoché. Edith Stein holds tight to Husserl’s earlier realist phenomenology, such as found in the first volume of Logical Investigations, even as the Master let go of such realist ontology in favor of transcendental phenomenology. It is through empathy, that is, through encounters with others, that the self becomes itself . Distancing herself from Descartes’ notion of the lonely cogito and Husserl’s rewriting of Descartes’ Fifth Meditation, Edith Stein argues that a primordial encounter with the other qua Other reveals to the “I” the presence of (at least) two existing egos. Furthermore, this primordial encounter between “I” and “Other” reveals that the ego-itself is reflective. Epistemologically speaking, the stream of lived-experience [Erlebnisse] flows as a unified stream of Now-points by which the “I” emerges, not as a mere res or res cogitans—that is, as a thing or a “thinking thing”—but as the very process of selfreflection reflecting upon itself already adrift in a sea of pre-determined values. In this regard, “I” and “Other”—community, the world—are equi-primordial and coconstitutive. The emerging or awakening ego is immediately experienced as an “I” amongst other I’s that are similar, yet different. In effect, the ego holds self-possession or “sway” over its domain through the internal flux of disparate Now-points. By recognizing that the Other is the same, yet different, the Other becomes recognizable as another I, as another flux of Now-points that is fundamentally similar to itself, yet out of my reach. The Other holds “sway” or “self-possession” over itself in an analogous fashion to the way by which I hold sway over my self. The embodied “I” of the Other lives within the same constitutive framework of body-soul unity (what Stein calls Einheit von Leib und Seele) as I do. Unlike Descartes’ lonely cogito, Edith Stein’s starting point is not the quest for absolute certitude, but rather the interrupting presence of the other qua Other. Empathy distinguishes two diverse subjects —“I” and a “Thou”—as co-constituting phenomena that ground the possibility of inter-subjective givenness. Stein is clearly opposed to a purely monadological solipsism that would maintain a physical and psychologically standoffish attitude to the world, an attitude that distances and alienates difference. Such objectification dehumanizes the other precisely as other. Stein holds that this impoverished way of acting or being-in-the-world significantly distorts

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the human capacity to love, which she describes as “to be led by God.” In a later meditation, she returns again to the theme of empathy in a profound and moving way. “As for what concerns our relations with our fellow men,” Stein notes, “the anguish in our neighbor’s soul must break all precept. All that we do is a means to an end, but love is an end in itself, because God is love.”7 Edith Stein’s critique is that ethics must be bound by love, rather than reason alone. One cannot act ethically without first being open to the possibility of love, that is, without first being open to being “led by God.” Such love requires that one must love the other, even if the other slaps one’s face seventy times seven times. Such love of the impossible! Such impossible love! This love is a kind of faith in the Impossible. It is not bound by reason or categorical imperatives. It demands that the individual, ethically speaking, is higher than the universal. Such unreasonable faith says to the mountain: “Move!” And the mountain moves. This unreasonable love of the other constitutes an impossible ethics, an ethics of the impossible. Such an impossible ethics loves the widow, cares for the stranger, embraces what is un-embraceable. It commands you to pray for your enemies and do good for your persecutors. Such ethics adheres a kind of madness, a “mad economy” in which the first are last and the last, first; where the hungry are filled and the rich sent away empty. Such an un-Enlightened ethics wreaks havoc on metaphysical principles. This, I submit, is the kind of radical ethics that lies hidden in Stein’s description of empathy. Edith Stein embraces radical difference at the heart of metaphysical undoing. She replaces Heidegger’s banal notion of Dasein as “care,” that is, the anonymous “we,” The They, Das Mann, in which Dasein is nobody and lives no where amidst no one—with the notion that the human person qua individual must remain open to the Impossible in the most radical sense (un)-imaginable. Stein’s notion of the personal attitude means that the human person is fundamentally a social and communal being, the self is never solus ipse, never an isolated cogito. The fully autonomous and self-sufficient Robinson Crusoe—which is a dream of Enlightenment ethics—is exposed as myth. According to Edith Stein, we are always and already in the world, born into an inter-connected web of relationships and expectation. The human person, therefore, is always and already a being-for-others in the most essential and fundamental sense. Embodied as a unitive of body and soul, Stein holds a similar position as Merleau-Ponty, namely, that the process of authentic self-actualization begins before egoic thematization and requires the reciprocity of the Other as a constitutive phenomenon. We are, in the order of knowledge, hearers of words and receivers of gifts long before we learn to speak. In significant ways, much of Stein’s analysis of empathy roils against Heidegger’s analysis of The They. In Being and Time, Heidegger explicitly argues that empathy is a founded mode, rather than a founding mode. Following Husserl and against Heidegger, Edith Stein attempts to describe empathy, not in terms of similarity between I and other, but in terms as to how I can be myself amongst others. Indeed, for Stein I can only be myself to the extent that I am in relation-with-others. In a move reminiscent of St. Augustine, Stein notes that the human person, the individual, 7

This quotation is from Edith Stein’s letter to her Carmelite community.

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the “I,” is singular and concrete. The personal attitude gives itself to the world, it mediates the world as a with-world, as a world by and for others. Unlike Heidegger’s notion of the common man, who is unknowingly defined by the rule of mediocrity and smothers the call of conscience by idleness and noisy chatter, authentic selfhood means to know oneself as factically grounded in a mutually reciprocal I-Thou relationship. Turning to Edith Stein’s analysis, we note that every act of genuine empathy begins in movement. The “I” comes to itself insofar as the ego is moved by love of an Other. Like Dante’s description of Love as that which moves the sun and the other stars, so too the Self is constituted by an act of genuine desire. The I seeks the Other; otherwise there could be no personal attitude. As a woman working in the strictly male academic environment of the 1920s German university system; as a Jew living in Nazi Europe; and as a convert to Roman Catholicism who remained deeply attached to her Jewish family and religious roots, Edith Stein knew well what it meant to be designated as “other.” It is little wonder, then, that Stein placed enormous emphasis on the value of respecting differences. For her, the personal attitude ensures that I encounter the Other as “experiencing a value as a person whose experiences interlock themselves into an intelligible, meaningful whole.”8 For Edith Stein, empathy deconstructs all hierarchies and deconstructs all categories that degrade being one-for-another. Empathy is a call or response to meet injustice with actions motivated from the heart, the gut, that area of “soul” which is most interior to our core sense of self. Through empathic constitution, “we become clear on what we are not, what we are more or less than others.”9 Stein’s notion of “empathy”—as opposed to Heidegger’s notion of “care”—offers an authentic kind of concern-for-the-other that extends beyond the safe boundaries of home and hearth, nation and state. For Stein, the personal attitude turns ethics on its head and puts the Other first by placing care of the Other ahead of my own personal concerns. Similarly, at the same time that we acquire new values, our older and unfamiliar values become more and more visible. Through empathy, we ruin ourselves by running into ranges of values formerly closed or unrecognizable to us. Through empathy we become conscious of our own deficiency and disvalue. Edith Stein notes that every comprehension of different persons can become the basis of a new and unexpected understanding of value.10 This is why for Stein empathy is a founding mode. Empathy constitutes, it is generative, it is an activity of value, of interpretation, of human self-interpretation. “Only he who experiences himself as a person, as a meaningful whole, can understand other persons…. The ‘self’ is the individual experiential structure.”11 For Edith Stein, ethics is a duty, a command: “Now, then, go and do the same.” Ethics cannot be reduced to being reserved only for those whom I judge to be worthy. If this were the case, that is, if “we take the self as the standard, we lock ourselves into the 8

Stein (1989, 115). Stein (1989). 10 Ibid. 11 Ibid. 9

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prison of our individuality. Others become riddles for us, or still worse, we remodel them into our image and so falsify historical truth.”12 Phenomenologically speaking, empathy constitutes who I am because I recognize myself as being-with-others. Empathy disrupts how I have been taught to see myself as a self-enclosed monad, a self-sufficient machine, a rugged individual. Challenging accepted stereotypes and moving beyond prejudicial restraint means that the world in which I encounter the Other is a social web of inter-relatability in which I am first encountered by the other. The world is always and already a “with-world,” it is never merely “mine;” nor is the world merely fallen amongst the anonymous They. The Other is my responsibility: how I respond to the needs and ethical commands of the Other determines who l am. For Edith Stein, empathy turns the world upside down; it seeks to let the meek inherit the earth, it traverses where Power and Presence and with them, Ethics and Metaphysics, can be trampled underfoot by the poor and lame, the blind and deaf. Speaking to her cloistered community a few weeks after Hitler’s army invaded Poland in 1939, Edith Stein wondered aloud how the restless suffering of so many innocent victims could be met with so little concern: “The world is in flames. Are you impelled to put them out? Look at the cross…. Do you hear the groans of the wounded on the battlefields in the west and the east? You are not a physician and not a nurse and cannot bind up the wounds. You are enclosed in a cell and cannot get to them. Do you hear the anguish of the dying? Does the lament of the widows and orphans distress you? Look at the Crucified…. The eyes of the Crucified look down on you—asking, probing.”13 Edith Stein’s haunting image of the “eyes of the Crucified looking down on us— asking, probing,” is not intended to turn ethics into metaphysics. Empathy listens for what the outer ear cannot hear, it looks to see what is invisible to the eye, embraces and comforts the unknown suffering of the invisible stranger who passes me on the road, seemingly unnoticed. The widow and orphan, the impoverished, the immigrant, the drug addict, the sad, the lonely, the displaced, the homeless, the refugee, the migrant, the hungry and destitute, even the neighbor who preys on my patience: all these “others” invade our comfortable spaces and turn our lives upside down. But also the unassuming immigrant who signs us in at the local gym; the young barista who fills our espresso and cappuccino cups in the morning; the quiet woman who works behind the cash register at a local market and is unrecognized by a customer. She too is a person and not a machine, a primordial “I” whose hidden inner life infinitely exceeds the menial role she has been asked to assume by the economics forced upon her. Empathy compels upon those who have least in the world a claim upon everyone, including me. What Stein seems to be pointing to is an attempt to think ethics beyond Being, that is, beyond the rules and contingencies imposed by a metaphysical hierarchy of Being. For St. Thomas Aquinas and the medieval tradition, a “person” is an irreducible center of intellection and volition, constituted by relations to other persons and to the whole of created, hierarchical reality. From Hegel onwards, modernity introduces the notion 12 13

Ibid. Stein (1992).

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of “subjectivity,” whereby the “I” becomes fully herself only when recognized by another “I.” Edith Stein tries to hold these two tensions in line, even as Heidegger attempts to rip them apart. For Edith Stein, ethics commands that we remember those who have been forgotten, it commands that we love those who have been judged to be unworthy of our love, it commands that we give without limit to those who are considered expendable and turn our cheek seventy times seven times when we have been wronged. It is to those who are lame and blind and who live outside the metaphysical structure of Power and Presence that the Kingdom of God belongs. In the end, Edith Stein’s critique of traditional “ethics” and a “metaphysics of presence” remains indirect and incomplete. How could it be otherwise, given the scope of her project, and also its formal indication? In the end, perhaps Edith Stein herself did not fully grasp what she, herself, had discovered, namely, the radicalness of empathy in terms of the dislocation between Enlightenment ethics and onto-metaphysics. The Greek and medieval principle of metaphysics, as stated by St. Thomas Aquinas, rests on the notion that dignity—dignus—was an attribute of kings and queens, a mark of royal excellence, a sign of ecclesial superiority upon which the celestial and hierarchical, social and political orders were based. It is through Kantian ethics that the irreducibility of subjectivity became foundational for the modern concept of “humanity” and the equally modern concept of a shared “common good.” It is the Enlightenment’s insistence upon the idea that human dignity is inalienable and therefore dialogical that grounds modern metaphysics within the boundary of a categorical ethics. Enlightenment ethics requires a situation of mutuality, whereas a post-Enlightenment ethics envisions a kind of command that compels us to do nothing less than what Jesus commanded the good Samaritan to do after he embraced the difference impelled by hospitality: “Now, then, go and do the same.“ But never the same as what is routinely expected. Edith Stein reminds us that the same must somehow entail difference.

17.3 Applications for New Paradigms of Empathy The implications to Edith Stein’s ethics based on personal attitude include five characteristics that I think are essential in describing the phenomenology of empathy. This list is meant to be neither exclusive nor exhaustive, but rather offers some observations concerning applications and implications of Edith Stein’s understanding of empathy as drawn from her larger metaphysical project. For Stein, empathy requires five conditions towards grounding the personal attitude: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Reciprocity and symmetry; A monadological center of orientation; An ethical asymmetry between I and Other; otherwise, I and Other would be indistinguishable; A common language presupposed as a condition of possibility of meaning; Being-for-Others, and not merely being “with” others.

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Each of the preceding conditions is drawn from Stein’s analysis and contributes to an overall understanding of empathy as an ethical phenomenon. Taken together, they assert the inherent dignity and alterity of other persons. For Stein, the Other is never reducible to abstraction, to what is required in the order of knowing as apodictic laws, logic, and reason. The Other is an a priori, pre-thematic condition of possibility of knowing. The Other calls me to respond and commit to the world by demanding that I engage an ethical existence with the Other insofar as the Other is delivered to me in language and commands me to speak. The Other comes to me from an infinitely distant source of alterity. Edith Stein’s notion of the constitution of the human person through the “personal attitude” offers a significant contribution towards fulfilling each of the conditions outlined above. If genuine empathic proclivity tends towards a unity of reflection, judgment, and emotion, then Stein’s emphasis on the central role of the lived body in every act of emotive and cognitive constitution offers a significant advancement of Husserl’s purely rationalist account of empathic constitution theory, for example, as described in Husserl’s Fifth Cartesian Meditation. By exploring connections between rational and embodied constitution, Edith Stein points to important implications within the “personal attitude” regarding the founding status of genuine community. Through Stein’s analysis, we may begin to see that the criteria of rationality is constitutive of the ethical sphere and vice versa. What does this mean in terms of our discussion on empathy? For one, Stein’s voice offers an important contribution to contemporary feminist ethics in terms of applications and implications. Edith Stein questions the privileged status of a purely rationalist model of moral epistemology based on a strictly cognitive analysis.14 In turning to the constitution of the human person in emotional experience, Stein anticipates to a large extent Carol Gilligan’s own “postmodern move of arguing that there are different patterns of moral reasoning… What she shows is that the rationalist, abstract, universalizing pattern of moral reasoning is one way of moral reasoning, but neither the only nor the superior way. She shows that the contextual, relational model that characterizes women’s moral reasoning is just as valid as the rationalist model.”15 The theoretical psychological view of the feminine gender, which traditionally sees the self as “oriented towards relationships and interdependence,”16 is greatly enriched by Stein’s analysis. In effect, Stein argues in favor of the dis-privileging of the abstract masculine model of epistemology grounded in Enlightenment ethics against the contextual feminine model that takes into account an emotive aspect of constitution. Edith Stein, of course, held that the solidarity and symmetry that exists in every I/Thou is not accidental, but primordial. In an ethical sense, Stein’s notion of solidarity runs counterpart to Levinas’s theory that the face of the Other impels me to become an ethical subject. An important caveat for Stein, however, is that she does not equate “subject” in the strict Cartesian sense of a “pure knower” who discovers truth through abstract rationality. Empathy constitutes 14

Hekman (1990, 54). Hekman (1990, 56–57). 16 Gilligan (1982). 15

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the absolute singularity of my own unique personhood—again, what Stein refers to as the “personal attitude”—and so pulls into the equation the care and concern I must show for all those who are like me, yet different.17 Without the Other, I am nothing, not in the sense that I would cease to exist, but in the more significant sense that “who” I am is constituted in an ethics of reciprocal givenness rather than within the confines a purely rationalist epistemology. Although the implications to metaphysics, and to Thomistic metaphysics in particular are vast, they unfortunately do not fall within the scope of this paper. Still, Stein’s analysis appears to point in a rather interesting direction. Was Edith Stein aware of the radical direction in which her own thinking about ethics could be taken? Such a question may be impossible to answer, but it appears to me that she remained too loyal a Husserlian to be able to pursue a Levinasian direction in which a more radical ethical analysis could be pushed. Levinas goes beyond Husserl in a more decisive way than Stein seems prepared to go, especially during the years 1913–1922, when she was most immediately under Husserl’s influence. Nevertheless, Stein’s contributions to the empathy project are profound. She attempts neither to synthesize the intricate ruminations of Husserl and Scheler into a “middle way,” nor to reduce the constituting/constituted subject into a passive dupe of social forces. It is my position that Stein in fact anticipates, though to a less radical degree, an analogous move made later by Heidegger, Levinas, and Derrida. In the order of experience, Stein describes human subjectivity in terms of social and emotional reciprocity. In this model, the intersubjective world is always already there as a condition of possibility by which the “I” becomes a constituting subject. All relations are mediated, in a sense, by the public sphere, as opposed to being mediated merely as a constituted monad. As with Levinas, so also for Stein there are some meanings of myself that simply cannot come from myself. This is what Stein means when she says that empathy opens-up truths and meanings beyond what is accessible to the constituting ego alone. Hence, the Other is a condition of possibility of ethical, religious, and existential meanings. The Other is not merely another “I” or center of subjectivity. As the place of encounter, the I-Thou relationship opens up whole worlds of previously unknown value in terms of creativity and fidelity to which “I” alone cannot have access. For Stein, the primordial ethical response entails an emotive co-constitutive element and not only a rational, reasoned, or even cognitive response based on purely epistemological grounds. Stein concludes: “I have no difficulty in considering it as innate. Indeed, I am claiming that the impulse to act on behalf of the present other is itself innate. [T]his strong desire to be moral is derived, reflectively, from the more fundamental and natural desire to be and to remain related. To reject the feeling when it arises is either to be in an internal state of imbalance or to contribute willfully to the diminution of the ethical ideal.”18

17

Nel Noddings helps us draw an important correlation between Stein and Levinas. Like Levinas’s notion of the elements, Noddings argues that the “one-caring” is engrossed: “the cared-for fills the firmament.” The “I must” arises directly and prior to what I might do. 18 Noddings (1986).

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Susan Bordo notes that the emergence and revaluation of epistemological and ethical perspectives underscores the fact that “different voices” describe constitutive elements of a social construction. Characteristic of certain (though not all) forms of gender organization, for example, point to reified dualities of an “eternal feminine” and “essential masculine” nature.19 In a similar fashion to Stein’s critique of Husserl’s strict rationalist description of the constitution of other persons, Bordo writes: “That voice, which classical as well as contemporary writers identify as feminine, claims a natural foundation for knowledge, not in detachment and distance, but… in closeness, connectedness, and empathy.”20 This last observation, of course, does not mean that Stein solved all the problems related to Husserl’s epistemological project, or that she foreshadowed the brilliant exegesis done on Husserl by Levinas. Stein’s description of empathy in terms of a personal attitude does not repudiate Husserl’s theory of monadology. Consequently, Stein is far less suspicious of “dialogue” and “community” than is the case with either Derrida or Levinas. In fact, I submit that Edith Stein’s emphasis on the community as a co-constitutive “partner” in terms of the constitution of other persons and the emergency of genuine values anticipates to a large extent certain aspects of the Catholic mystical tradition and the development of Catholic Social Thought, especially during the latter half of the twentieth century. We may thus note an important similarity between Edith Stein and Jean Paul Sartre (“the Look”), Gabriel Marcel (“creative fidelity”) and even Ignatius Loyola (the use of “colloquy” and imaginative variation in the Spiritual Exercises). For each of these authors, the Other is not simply cognitively constituted, but is rather constitutive of the world of values which the Other presents to me, and which I could not possibly obtain without her. The Other calls me into a reciprocal relationship of fidelity and insight that is simply impossible to obtain without the Other’s constituting it. Jonathan Spence, for example, captures the significance of empathy as a means used by Jesuit spiritual directors to impel retreatants to “feel-into” the sufferings of Christ in order to be transformed interiorly by this experience, and not just on a cognitive level. For Saint Ignatius Loyola, the notion of self-abandonment is not self-directed but Other-directed; hence the need for a knowledgeable spiritual director to help guide the retreatant towards a deeper sense of discernment and between different levels of authentic motivations. Describing how Matteo Ricci used the Spiritual Exercises to dialogue with leaders of the sixteenth century Ming Dynasty, Spence writes: “The scriptural context was reinforced by the acts of memory… Several exercises were designed to force the faithful back to presence at the acts of Christ’s life and passion, so that they felt and saw every blow that the soldiers landed on Christ’s body…”.21 Edith Stein’s analysis of the personal attitude points to ethical implications that anticipate, to a large extent, Levinas’s dramatic insight of Buber’s I-Thou project. For Buber, as Levinas notes, “the Thou that the I solicits is already heard as an I who says thou to me. The appeal to the Thou by the I would thus be, for the I, the institution of a reciprocity, an equality or equity from the start. Whence the understanding of the 19

Bordo (1987, 113). Bordo (1987, 112). 21 Spence (1984). 20

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I as I, and the possibility of an adequate thematization of the I. The idea of the I or of a Myself in general is immediately derived from that relation: a total reflection on myself would be impossible and thus the elevation of the Myself to the level of the concept, to Subjectivity above the lived centrality of the I…. In my own analyses, the approach to others is not originally in my speaking out to the other, but in my responsibility for him or her. That is the original ethical relation. That responsibility is elicited, brought about by the face of the other person, described as a breaking of the plastic forms of the phenomenality of appearance… Here, then, contrary to Buber’s I-Thou, there is no initial equality.”22 Levinas concludes: “(Is the use of the familiar I-Thou form justified?) Ethical inequality: subordination to the other, original diacony: the ‘first person accusative’ and not ‘nominative.’”23 Stein’s emphasis on dialogue and community may be as much an effect of a naive sense of cultural optimism shared by many phenomenologists in the 1910s and 1920s as it was an attempt to modify Husserl’s strict cognitive description with a sense of emotional co-constitution in terms of the personal attitude.24 What Stein failed to see, however, is similar to what Michael Murray acknowledges Gadamer failed to see in his critique of Truth and Method, namely, that the very concept of dialogue “depends upon dubious metaphysical postulates that are idealizing, reductive, and domineering.” Murray continues, “Contrary to the postulates of dialogue, in real conversation partners often speak at cross-purposes, about diverse objects with conflicting interests, in languages that divide up speakers into incompatible groups, pursuing multiple and happenstantial aims. At its philosophical core, dialogue is really monological, the same seeking the same, and this shows in its axiomatic reduction of the partners to two, a binary relation excluding thirds and manys and meant to climax in a victory of agreement.”25 What Edith Stein’s phenomenology of empathy needs is what Derrida calls the “field of the innumerable,” that is, a way to overcome the exclusion of other others, of “thirds and manys.” Such exclusion is an explicit assumption in every I-Thou relation, and I do not think Stein is an exception to this theory. Even Gadamer notes that the notion of dialogue automatically presupposes that the two speakers speak the same language: “Only when two people can make themselves understood through language by talking together can the problem of understanding and agreement even be raised.”26 Such I-Thou exclusivity remains largely unnoticed by Stein, though she does appear to at least point towards the problem when she says that empathy opens up worlds of meanings hitherto closed off to us: “Since the experience of value is basic to our own value, at the same time as new values are acquired by empathy, our own unfamiliar values become visible. When we empathically run into ranges of value closed to us, we become conscious of our own deficiency or 22

Levinas (1994, 47). Levinas (1994, 43–44). 24 By all accounts, Stein was noted as an excellent reader of Husserl, and was the invited “Husserl expert” at the Société Thomiste conference in Juvisy in September, 1932. Letters, 117. 25 Murray (1998). 26 Gadamer (1998). 23

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disvalue. Every comprehension of different persons can become the basis of an understanding of value.”27 We may thus conclude that, for Edith Stein, empathy opens-up worlds and meanings, it makes ethics possible by engaging values that are only accessible through the intersubjectivity of human persons. Such emotional and cognitive experience is what Stein means by the personal attitude. Phenomenologically speaking, the Other is an originary experience of a raw, non-phenomenality that constitutes a trace of a radical manifestation of absence. The Other remains wholly other, even as it is given through language, embodied encounter, and memory. Such encounter with transcendence points to a particular kind of un-knowing, to an experience of a non-experience, to a non-cognitive experience of alterity given beyond reason, beyond thought, beyond metaphysical propositions, even beyond Being. Such non-experience of the Other, I submit, requires a sacramental (rather than merely a “social”) imagining. Such a radical encounter with the other as Other would manifest alterity as a window opening onto transcendence itself, a kind of “icon.” Phenomenologically speaking, sentient reality and sense perception remain incomplete in every act of givenness. Meaning gets constituted through an apprehension of symbols and entities. Following Husserl, Stein reminds us that what is given by apperception is given always along with what is not given. Apperception includes what remains unseen, hidden, incomplete, transcendent, other. For St. Thomas Aquinas, such radical otherness constitutes the mystery and transcendence of the Holy. The quiddity of God is grasped by an act of intellection and thus retains an essential unknowability a se. As the guarantor of otherness, alterity remains an autonomous subject in every I-Though relationship. In homage to St. Thomas Aquinas, Erich Pryzawa—a Jesuit metaphysician who served as spiritual mentor to Stein in the 1920s—noted that for every similarity there is a greater dissimilarity. Hence, the I encounters every Thou as a similar yet different subject that holds sway over its egoic stream of conscious life the same way I hold sway over my own lived experience. Constituted as a self-constituting alter ego, the Other gets recognized precisely as an other I, meaning that “I” recognize a trace of the other’s nonphenomenality insofar as I constitute the Other as an alter ego. Following Husserl, Stein argues that there is no “inside” or “outside” of consciousness. All there is, is the world as it gives itself and as the “I” grasps or constitutes the givenness of a world through the apprehension of various adumbrations and perceptual manifestations.

17.4 Conclusion: Implications of Edith Stein’s Critique of Empathy Edith Stein describes empathy as an act of seeing “sui generis.” Empathy entails a form of blindness, a kind of blind seeing. In fact, such blindness is the only kind of 27

Stein (1989).

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seeing there is, for there is no Archimedean point, Greek and Enlightenment metaphysics be damned, that gives the object to me in a preeminent way. Historicity, as Karl Rahner described, means that seeing and perceiving and understanding require with a deepening awareness that one cannot stand outside oneself or apart from one’s finite and historical contingency. To see the world means always to interpret the world. As a kind of hermeneutic, empathy sees blindly, apperceptively. Empathy requires apprehension and never comprehension. Truth entails a kind of blindness that St. Paul, perhaps the most quintessential phenomenologist, noted so eloquently in his letter to the Corinthians, “we see as in a glass, darkly.” Every attempt to set-up a metaphysical structure to ground ethics in a purely rationalist or a priori system of metaphysical discourse is doomed to failure. To think beyond Being means to think outside every sufficient reason to do so. Radical ethics entails risks and misunderstandings. It requires an openness to a kind of “weak thinking” or “weak theology”—a kind of “blind seeing”—about the nature of identity itself.28 To speak about dogmatic truths does not require speaking dogmatically. What gets manifest by metaphysics is the analogical nature of imagination itself. Too often, advocates of the metaphysics of presence demand pre-determined or predefined assumptions of hyper-essentialist dogmatism. I submit that this is precisely the “heresy” to which Edith Stein alluded in her February 3, 1917 letter to Ingarden. Edith Stein’s elusive grasp of the significance of empathy invites us to think differently about thinking itself; that is to say, Edith Stein challenges us to think outside the structure of Liebnizean metaphysics, outside the constraints of Enlightenment ethics, outside the Principle of the Sufficiency of Reason and every dogmatic pronouncement. Edith Stein’s critique of Greek metaphysics reflects a particularly Jewish way of seeing, namely, a phenomenological gaze or way of looking at the world that, like the blind man by the pool at Jericho, remains inaccessible to those who have sight. For Edith Stein, the inaccessibility of the giveness of the Other is preserved by empathy. Phenomenologically speaking, ethics dares not utter the name of God, it merely points towards that which remains wholly unsayable and ineffable. Edith Stein apprehends the personal attitude as a transcendental conditional of possibility of every act of genuine knowing and loving. St. Paul, in his second letter to the Corinthians, shares Stein’s phenomenological insight about the blindness that lays hidden in every act of seeing. St. Paul addresses this unique reversal of power when he writes, “And the Lord said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.‘ Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses … for when I am weak, then I am strong." My point is this: In her understanding of empathy, Edith Stein insists that “I” and “Other” do not become inter-changeable. The other is not given to me; nor does consciousness subsume the Other qua Other within the sphere of ownness. Unlike sympathy, which constitutes a “shared emotion” or “shared perception” with one or many others, empathy affords no such simulacrum. Empathy, as opposed to sympathy, constitutes an experience of distinction between “I” and Other. Empathy 28

Although outside the limits of this paper, I refer the reader to the concept of “weak theology” as described in Caputo (2006).

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commands that I allow the Other to be itself , that is, to be different, rather than the Same, it commands that I engage the Other on his or her or its own terms. For Stein, empathy therefore is a constituting, rather than a constituted mode of being-in-theworld. It constitutes a kind of ethical hermeneutic, a way of interpreting the world. As a value constituted by the personal attitude, ethics makes possible an experience of the givenness of alterity sui generis. Such experience of alterity grasps transcendence as beyond Being, beyond metaphysics, beyond every cognitive attempt to define it. One of the implications of Edith Stein’s notion of empathy is the opportunity to raise new questions. How can we speak meaningfully about the Other—Mystery, transcendence, the Infinite, the Absolute, God, my neighbor, the stranger—outside traditional metaphysical paradigms that equate Power with Presence? In other words, how might Edith Stein’s critique of Husserl’s transcendental idealism—itself a critique of strictly rational, propositional, representational discourse—challenge the legacy of Enlightenment ethics and Greek metaphysics? How might we think ethics outside the paradigm of Being?

References Bordo S. R. (1987). The flight to objectivity: Essays on Cartesianism and culture, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Caputo, J. D. (2006). The weakness of god: A theology of the event. Indiana University Press. Caputo, J. C. (1987). Radical hermeneutics (p. 247). Indiana University Press. Gadamer, H.-G. (1998). Truth and method (pp. 383–388). New York, NY: Continuum Press. Gilligan, C. (1982). In a different voice: Psychological theory and women’s development (p. 22). Harvard University Press. Hekman, S. (1990). Gender and knowledge: Elements of a postmodern feminism. Boston. Northeastern University Press. Levinas, E. (1994). Apropos of Buber: Some notes from outside the subject (M. B. Smith, Trans.). Stanford CA: Stanford University Press. Murray, M. (1998). Against dialogue. In Langsdorf & Watson (Eds.), Reinterpreting the political: Continental philosophy and political theory (p. 183). Albany, NY: State University of New York. Noddings, N. (1986). Caring: A feminine approach to EthicsXE “ethics” and moral education (pp. 69–83). University of California Press. Stein, E. (1996). Woman’s value in national life, from essays on women: The collected works of Edith Stein (Vol. 11, p. 256). Washington, DC: ICS Publications. Stein, E. (2014). Self portrait in letters: Letters to Roman Lngarten. The collected works of Edith Stein (H. C. Hunt, Trans.). Washington, DC: ICS Publications (Vol. 12, pp. 39–40). Stein, E. (1989). On the problem of empathy: The collected works of Edith Stein (Vol. 111, p. 116). Washington, DC: ICS Publications. Stein, E. (1992). Ave crux, spes unica, from the hidden life: Essays, meditations, spiritual texts. The collected works of Edith Stein (Vol. IV, pp. 95–96). Washington, DC: ICS Publications. Spence, J. (1984). The memory palace of Matteo Ricci (p. 50). Penguine Books.

Index

A Act, 2, 7, 10, 17, 30, 33–36, 46, 52, 57, 58, 61, 67, 74, 77, 78, 80, 82, 83, 85, 95–97, 100, 103, 105, 107–109, 111, 115, 116, 118–121, 126, 128–134, 136, 137, 142, 146–148, 153–155, 162–168, 176, 177, 180, 181, 201–205, 207, 209, 212, 214, 217, 223, 229, 230, 233–235, 237, 238 Alterity, 41, 52, 73, 205, 233, 237, 239 Anthropology, 8, 9, 19, 73, 74, 86, 94, 136, 160, 161, 173, 174, 179, 205 A priori, 5, 8–10, 83, 84, 86, 173–175, 182–185, 226, 233, 238 Aquinas, St. Thomas, 1, 3, 5, 10, 24, 107, 108, 117, 123, 124, 129, 143, 144, 193, 204, 231, 232, 237

B Being, 4, 6–8, 10, 17–26, 31–41, 43, 49–51, 55–58, 60–68, 70, 71, 73, 74, 76–78, 82, 91, 92, 94, 96, 97, 100–102, 105–113, 115–119, 121–140, 143–147, 152–154, 156, 157, 160–162, 164–167, 175–182, 184, 188–191, 193–196, 198, 199, 202, 204, 206–208, 211, 213, 219, 220, 222, 225–232, 234, 237–239

C Carmelite, 3, 4, 6, 9, 11, 43, 44, 46, 47, 106, 187, 188, 193–197, 199, 211, 221, 229

Common good, 15, 19–21, 206, 232 Community, 5, 6, 8, 9, 15, 19–26, 30, 32, 33, 36, 40, 41, 46, 57, 61, 68, 71, 73, 74, 76–86, 91, 95, 97–103, 151–155, 167, 168, 173–185, 188, 189, 201, 203, 205, 221, 227–229, 231, 233, 235, 236

E Empathy, 2, 3, 5, 6, 8–10, 19, 29, 30, 33–38, 40, 41, 45, 46, 49, 56–60, 74, 75, 76, 81, 91, 95–97, 102, 103, 151, 174, 175, 201, 205, 206, 208, 211, 213–215, 222, 225, 227–239 Enlightenment, 9, 10, 38–40, 225–227, 229, 232, 233, 238, 239 Essentialism, 7, 133, 226 Eternal, 6, 7, 10, 19, 49, 50, 55, 56, 58, 60, 62, 63, 66, 70, 71, 105, 108, 109, 111, 118, 119, 122, 124, 126–128, 130, 131, 156, 165, 182, 188, 194–196, 222, 235 Ethics, 1–11, 15, 37, 39, 43, 44, 47, 49, 50, 55, 56, 65, 67, 71, 73, 74, 76, 84, 86, 107, 121, 129, 131–138, 140–143, 147, 148, 151, 183, 187, 195, 198, 199, 201–203, 205, 206, 208, 209, 225–234, 237–239 Evil, 7, 33, 39, 81, 151, 152, 154–157, 199 Existence, 2, 9, 10, 17, 18, 32, 44, 56, 63, 77, 86, 107, 125, 126, 130, 134, 135, 137–139, 143–148, 154, 156, 160, 162, 163, 173–176, 180, 181, 184, 185, 190, 205, 208, 226, 233

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. F. Andrews and A. Calcagno (eds.), Ethics and Metaphysics in the Philosophy of Edith Stein, Women in the History of Philosophy and Sciences 12, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91198-0

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Index

Existentialism, 7, 9, 133, 145, 187–189, 199

Moral life, 73, 76, 81, 83, 84, 86

F Finite, 7, 10, 19, 49, 50, 55, 58, 60, 62, 63, 66, 70, 83, 105, 107–110, 118, 119, 122, 126–128, 131, 156, 165, 182, 188, 194, 238 Freedom, 6, 10, 15, 23, 56, 57, 60–64, 66, 67, 68, 70, 73, 81, 82, 85, 100, 123, 128, 129, 139, 141, 147, 153, 155–157, 166, 178, 182–184, 195, 196, 226

O Ontology, 2, 6–10, 24, 58, 124, 134, 137–139, 161, 173, 174, 201, 203, 204, 206, 226, 228 Other, 2–4, 6, 8, 10, 15, 17–19, 21–23, 29–31, 33–37, 40, 41, 43–45, 48–52, 55, 56, 58–60, 65, 67–71, 77, 79–83, 85, 91, 94, 96–103, 106, 108–111, 117, 122, 123, 126, 143, 145, 147, 151–153, 156, 157, 161–163, 165, 168, 175–179, 183, 188, 189, 191, 192, 195–199, 201–209, 212–216, 219, 222, 223, 225–239

G Good, 7, 20, 21, 47, 48, 59, 64, 67, 68, 79, 81, 82, 114, 121, 129, 131, 134, 135, 137, 143, 152, 156, 157, 162, 177, 190, 196, 198, 202, 206–208, 217, 218, 220, 229, 232

H Husserl, Edmund, 2, 3, 62, 95, 122, 138, 201, 211, 226

I Individual, 2, 5, 6, 8, 15, 18–26, 30, 32, 34, 35, 39, 41, 50, 55–57, 59–63, 65, 68, 73–86, 95–98, 100, 101, 109, 127, 130–132, 141, 146, 151–157, 160, 162, 164, 167, 174–177, 179–181, 188, 189, 194, 202, 206, 208, 214, 227, 229–231 Infinite, 107, 127, 131, 225, 239 Intersubjectivity, 2, 19, 77, 139, 148, 153, 165, 237

L Law, 3–5, 8, 9, 15, 21, 56, 58, 84, 135, 138, 141, 147, 153–155, 161, 173–176, 178–180, 182–185, 201, 202, 221, 233 Lived body, 233

M Metaphysics, 1–3, 5, 7–11, 44, 74, 105, 107, 121, 124, 125, 151, 156, 157, 204, 225–227, 231, 232, 234, 238, 239

P Paradigm, 56, 225, 232, 239 Person, 2, 5–10, 15, 17–26, 30–33, 36–41, 43, 48, 51, 56, 59–66, 68–70, 73–78, 80–83, 85, 86, 91, 92, 94–103, 106, 113–115, 119, 127, 129–131, 134, 136, 143, 144, 146–148, 153, 155–157, 159, 161–169, 173, 174, 176–185, 189–191, 193, 197, 201, 203–209, 211, 215, 217–219, 222, 226–231, 233, 236 Phenomenology, 1, 3, 6–10, 30, 45, 47, 74, 77, 86, 91, 93, 95–98, 101, 103, 105, 112, 114, 121, 122, 124, 128, 134, 138–141, 145, 147, 148, 159–161, 163, 174, 187, 204, 206, 225, 226, 228, 232, 236 Political philosophy, 7, 151 Potency, 7, 58, 73, 105, 107–109, 111, 113, 115–120, 126, 162, 167, 168 Power, 16, 17, 31, 49, 56, 60, 63, 66, 77, 78, 80, 81, 93–95, 101–103, 108, 110, 111, 113–117, 162, 177, 179, 196, 217, 222, 225, 227, 231, 232, 238, 239 Presence, 2, 10, 18, 44, 71, 78, 94, 127, 156, 157, 166, 225, 226, 228, 231, 232, 235, 238, 239 Psyche, 8, 151, 153, 157, 160, 164, 165

R Rational, 17, 21, 24, 58, 117, 122, 124, 135, 138, 141, 143, 148, 152, 225, 233, 234, 239

Index Responsibility, 16, 17, 20, 21, 23, 26, 73, 74, 76, 77, 79–82, 85, 86, 95, 100, 136, 137, 153, 154, 157, 167, 188, 203, 231, 236

S Soul, 6–9, 18, 21, 43, 45, 46, 48–50, 56, 60–62, 64, 66–68, 75, 76, 80, 81, 83, 84, 96–98, 100, 101, 105–120, 127, 128, 144, 146, 156, 160–167, 182, 188–190, 193–199, 208, 228–230 State, 7–9, 15–17, 20, 22, 23, 25, 30, 32, 33, 37, 41, 46, 47, 64, 68, 76, 78, 82–85, 108, 135, 138, 140, 144, 145, 151–156, 164, 166, 167, 173–184,

243 194, 202, 208, 214, 215, 228, 230, 234 Stein, Edith, 1–11, 15–20, 22, 23, 29, 30, 37, 43, 45, 55, 62, 67, 68, 71, 76, 91, 93, 95–97, 105, 106, 109, 112, 121, 134, 138–140, 144–146, 151–153, 156, 159–161, 165–168, 173, 174, 176, 178, 181, 182, 185, 187, 188, 192, 198, 201, 203, 204, 207, 208, 211–214, 218, 222, 223, 225–239 Suffering, 5, 9, 51, 137, 152, 163, 187, 188, 193, 195, 196, 198, 199, 211, 212, 217, 220, 222, 231, 235

T Transcendence, 63, 225, 237, 239