Edith Stein’s Theory of the Person in Her Münster Years (1932–1933)

Abstract

The new critical edition of Stein's lectures on philosophical and theological anthropology makes it possible to research further her theory of the person as developed during her middle period in Miinster, that is, between 1932 and 1933. Her project revolves around the anthropological foundations of a Catholic pedagogy. This phase of her work is marked by various debates. On one hand, she attempts to bring the intellectual legacy of Husserl and phenomenology into dialogue with Thomas Aquinas and other Scholastic thinkers. On the other hand, she confronts the ideas and spirit of National Socialism with her Catholic faith. Stein's Miinster phenomenological method contrasts with Husserl's transcendental phenomenology; she develops an eidetic psychology within a universal ontology. In her somatological anthropology, the human being appears as a unity of lived body, soul, and mind. As a person, the human being is investigated as species, double species (man-woman), individual, as having a communal essence (outside the concept of race), and, ultimately, as a seeker of God. Stein examines the freedom of human beings, which lies between the givens of nature and grace, as well as the tension between knowledge and faith. In the final section of this paper, I discuss Stein's position over against contemporary deconstructivist feminism.