Edith Stein entre Husserl et Thomas d’Aquin

Abstract

Edith Stein was first one of Husserl’s disciples and adopted her method of “eidetic reduction” (as a way to reach the essence of things). She then discovered Thomas of Aquinas’ metaphysics, a realism which Husserl’s later work seemed to betray. However Edith Stein’s Thomism is not a literal return to the thinking of Aquinas: indeed, her fidelity to Husserl’s essentialism drove her to a conception of being withought which the me-subject plays an essential role in the way to the knowledge of the truth. On can then wonder if the philosophical work of Edith Stein leads to a genuine synthesis between the two sources of her thinking. Our hypothesis is that saint Augustine’s metaphysics enables her to articulate the theocentrical vision of the world, coming from Thomism, and a philosophy of mind taken from Husserl, for which the truth cannot only be discovered in the interiority of her consciousness. Thus can we characterize Edith Stein’s thinking as the expression of “Augustinian Thomism”.