Teresian Influence on the Work of Edith Stein

Abstract

Stein is honored today not only because of her sainthood but because of what is now seen as important and groundbreaking work in phenomenology done under especially arduous conditions. Thus it may be said with some accuracy that Stein is, among philosophers, in the comparatively rare category of being acknowledged both for her work and her exemplary life. Writing on Stein has standardly proceeded with an emphasis on the biographical factors that caused her to live and write as she did. One often reads that Stein was reared in a strongly Judaic tradition her family was more observant, for example, than the family of Simone Weil but that experiences she had as a young woman caused her to turn in the direction of Christianity and, ultimately, in the direction of the mystical thinkers.1 What has been more difficult to elucidate has been the influence on her thinking philosophically, and the merging of strands from Husserlian phenomenology and sixteenth-century Christian thought. Although it might naively be believed that these two areas have so little in common as to be completely incongruent, an argument can probably be made that the later Stein, with her emphasis on interiority and epistemic gradations, is simply articulating at least some points that were first worked on in conjunction with Husserl.2 It might prove intriguing, then, to try to be precise about the influence on Stein of Teresa of Avila, and the specific modes in which that influence was brought to bear both on her conceptualization patterns and on various incidents and decisions made in her life.3