Edith Stein Studies – Serie

There are few topics more central to philosophical discussions than the meaning of being, and few thinkers offer a more compelling and original vision of that meaning than Edith Stein (1891–1942). Stein’s magnum opus, drawing from her decades working with the early phenomenologists and intense years as a student and translator of medieval texts, lays out a grand vision, bringing together phenomenological and scholastic insights into an integrated whole. The sheer scope of Stein’s project in Finite and Eternal Being is daunting, and the text can be challenging to navigate. In this book, Sarah Borden Sharkey provides a guide to Stein’s great final philosophical work and intellectual vision. The opening essays give an overview of Stein’s method and argument, and they place Finite and Eternal Being both within its historical context and in relation to contemporary discussions. The author also provides clear, detailed summaries of each section of Stein’s opus, drawing from the latest scholarship on Stein’s manuscript. Edith Stein’s Finite and Eternal Being: A Companion offers a unique guide, opening up Stein’s grand cathedral-like vision of the meaning of being as the unfolding of meaning.

By examining the structure, argument, and historical and contemporary significance of Edith Stein’s work, this companion provides an accessible reading guide to Freedom and Grace.Edith Stein investigates the role of freedom in five facets of Christian life (in her terms, the life of grace). Freedom and Grace is her first extensive treatment of themes in both philosophy of religion and theology; she employs her previously developed phenomenological method and proceeds to accentuate the distinc¬tiveness of Christian life and experience vis-à-vis the life of “nature” (i.e. that of the unbeliever). Written in part as a way for Stein to reflect on her own life and conversion to Christianity, the text is notable for the significant autobiographical reference it contains to a period in her (inner) life about which little has previously been known.This companion opens with an exploration of the work’s historical context and the literature cited by Stein within. The volume then provides a synopsis of Freedom and Grace alongside a discussion of the work’s structure and argument. Finally, the companion concludes with a study of the work’s historical and contemporary significance. In addition to providing an accessible guide for reading Edith Stein’s work, this volume also includes the first full English translation of Freedom and Grace.

Edith Stein’s Life in a Jewish Family, 1891–1916 is a treasure trove for the study of Stein’s youth and early adulthood, her approach to writing autobiographically, and her intricate relationship with historical influences of her time and place. Through intellectual mining Stein’s narrative and conducting a comprehensive historical analysis of Stein’s achievement as a distinct type of autobiography, Joyce Avrech Berkman argues that a key axis of Stein’s consciousness, values, philosophical ideas, and life choices is a deep, tense, unresolved, philosophical, and spiritual struggle to both uphold traditional societal and cultural values and practices and also critiquing them to pioneer new patterns of thought. Berkman further probes the sharply controversial nature of Stein’s autobiography for her family members and Stein scholars in the decades after her death. Edith Stein’s Life in a Jewish Family, 1891–1916: A Companion serves as an important guide to scholars in autobiographical studies, history, philosophy, and theology, as well as to a broader readership interested in Stein’s life for religious and cultural reasons.

Although she never penned a text dedicated exclusively to ethics, Edith Stein’s work encompasses an implicit, but self-consciously developed, moral philosophy not yet sufficiently developed in the current English-language literature. However, comparison of Stein’s anthropological and metaphysical theories against the ethical philosophy of other early phenomenological thinkers, such as Max Scheler and Edmund Husserl, reveals lines of moral theory woven throughout her texts. In On the Ethical Philosophy of Edith Stein: Outlines of Morality, William E. Tullius endeavors to present a systematic account of Stein’s moral thought as it takes shape in conversation with neo-scholasticism and develops across her corpus in conversation with her philosophical anthropology, axiological theory, and metaphysics. The ethics which emerge from these sources is oriented around the moral project of the development of personality through the unfolding of one’s personal core and which entails a call to the development of an ethical community reflective of and oriented by its responsiveness to the highest values and to the communal destiny of all humanity in God

Empathy (Einfühlung)—as a crucial concept for understanding ourselves, others, and communities—was a central topic of interest in the first half of the twentieth century amongst philosophers and in the emerging sciences of psychology and sociology. Edith Stein’s dissertation and inaugural publication, On the Problem of Empathy, introduces her unique take on empathy, embodiment, phenomenology, and intersubjectivity. Her immersion in phenomenology and her intimate familiarity with the psychology and sociology of her day make it a challenge for contemporary readers to understand. This companion provides a guide to Stein’s first philosophical masterpiece. The opening essays, including a contribution from Íngrid Vendrell Ferran, indicate the most important influences on Stein’s thought circa 1917, the structure and method of her argument, the place of this work in her oeuvre, its historical significance, and its relevance for contemporary philosophical discussions. Timothy Burns then provides a clear and detailed summary of each section of Empathy, elucidating the argument that weaves through this classic of philosophical thought.

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 book offers tools for a deeper reading and understanding of Edith Stein’s Philosophy of Psychology and the HumanitiesEdith Stein’s Philosophy of Psychology and the Humanities is a pioneering exploration of the intersection between psychology, philosophy, and human sciences. Written in the aftermath of World War I, the book delves into the interplay between individual and collective experience, examining how empathy, motivation, and causality shape our understanding of human behaviour. Through a meticulous phenomenological approach, Stein analyses prevailing psychological theories and highlights the necessity of integrating the spiritual and material dimensions of human existence. In this timeless contribution to philosophy, psychology, and social thought, Stein challenges disciplinary boundaries and anticipates debates on interdisciplinary research, offering a unique framework for understanding the human person not only as an individual but also as a participant in societal structures. This companion emphasizes the ways in which Stein’s analysis persists as a call for a holistic approach to the complexities of human experience.

Cornelio Fabro’s writings on Edith Stein elucidate Fabro’s understanding of Stein’s contemporary relevance to philosophical debates about the relationship between Thomism and Phenomenology.For the first time in the English Language, Joshua Furnal brings together a selection of works that are representative of Cornelio Fabro’s perspective on Edith Stein, offering a distinctive yet overlooked contribution to Steinian literature. Furnal begins, in the introduction, by exploring the impact of Edith Stein’s writings on Fabro’s stance toward the phenomenological tradition. Fabro’s engagement with phenomenology first surfaced in 1941 when he published two books simultaneously: Perception and Thought and The Phenomenology of Perception. Subsequently, his engagement with Stein’s philosophical writings first appeared in publications from 1949 to 1951, and then again in 1969, 1978, and 1989 in relation to her canonization process. Fabro’s significance to Stein studies is due not only to his involvement in writing the dossier that facilitated her canonization process at the Vatican, but also to his appreciation for her existential approach to the relationship between faith and reason—which led her to martyrdom. As a Thomist and priest, Fabro viewed Stein as an important philosopher in her own right and saw an important link between his own Stigmatine background and Stein’s spirituality. This translation introduces Fabro’s understanding of Stein’s philosophy and sainthood and the broader issues that converge at the intersection of their thought.

This book offers a reconsideration and re-evaluation of the philosophical exchange between Edmund Husserl and Edith Stein by addressing their unique and differing positions in light of the thinkers’ shared phenomenological roots. Angela Ales Bello highlights the depth and breadth of the philosophers’ thinking on questions related to intersubjectivity, ethics, religion, ontology, gender, anthropology, method, personhood, and psychology.

The breadth of shared intellectual debts and interests in the work of Edith Stein and Max Scheler demand that they be placed in conversation. This volume brings together philosophers and theologians to explore the convergences and divergences in Stein and Scheler’s respective work. Both thinkers were early practitioners of the phenomenological method, drew from and reflected on theological resources in their philosophical explorations, and maintained a lifelong interest in the human person. It examines key themes such as the human person, spirit (Geist), education (Bildung), and social ontology, demonstrating their historical importance and contemporary relevance. The authors argue that reading these philosophers together is essential for understanding their historical significance and for illuminating contemporary concerns both within and beyond academia. The volume also features the first English translation of Edith Stein’s seminal essay, “The Meaning of Phenomenology as Worldview.”