Mette Lebech – Författare

This work explores Edith Stein’s phenomenology of values as found in her early work—specifically, in her Contributions to a Philosophical Foundation for Psychology and the Humanities (1922).Mette Lebech makes a constructive exposition of its implications by discussing the experience of value and motivation (Part I), that which constitutes a value-response (Part II), and how certain later approximations to value-phenomenology can be clarified by means of Stein’s thought (Part III). Stein’s synthesis of Husserl’s founding of the sciences, along with Scheler’s phenomenological discussion of values, emotion, and sociality, carries Stein’s specific contributions, such as: the distinction between psychic causality and motivation—which allows for a clear interpretation of how emotion relates to values—(Part I) and the understanding of how the experience of value and preference constitutes the personal “I,” the basis for the value hierarchy, the psyche, the structure of intersubjectivity, and the world (Part II). Finally, Lebech examines the vestiges of value phenomenology found in Heidegger, Levinas, and de Beauvoir in the context of a Steinian discussion (Part III).

This anthology brings together texts of significance for the conceptualisation of human dignity as a constitutional principle in Europe from the earliest evidence until 1965. It divides into four parts, respectively presenting the ancient, the medieval, the early modern and the modern sources. As far as human dignity is a constitutional principle, its history follows closely that of the constitution of states. However, various traditions of human dignity, understanding it to rely on features unrelated to the state, combine in the background to reflect the substance of the idea. The introductions to texts, chapters and parts narrates this history in relation to the texts presented to reflect it. The aim is to provide for scholars and students of law, philosophy, political science and theology a collection of texts documenting the history of the concept of human dignity that is sufficiently comprehensive to contextualise the various understandings of it. A structured bibliography accompanies the work.

This book presents a collection of articles most of which stem from papers given at the conference Stein’s and Husserl’s Intertwined Itineraries 1916-25 with Focus on Ideas II, hosted online, during COVID at the Centre for the History of Women Philosophers and Scientists, University of Paderborn, 20-21 May 2021. The aim of the conference was to contribute towards clarifying the respective positions of Stein and Husserl concerning the relationship between person and intersubjectivity, with an emphasis on identifying the extent to which their respective positions inform Ideas II. This is discussed under four headings: 1. the text of Ideas II and the collaboration between Stein and Husserl; 2. intersubjectivity and social ontology; 3. the distinction between the adjacent positions of Husserl and Stein; and 4. the possibility of combining transcendental intersubjectivity with philosophical anthropology.