On the Problem of Empathy: The Collected Works of Edith Stein
(Edith Stein's doctoral dissertation under Husserl, with i...)
Edith Stein's doctoral dissertation under Husserl, with index. Early in Edith Stein's philosophical output stands her doctoral dissertation defended in 1916 at Freiburg-im-Breisgau. On the Problem of Empathy is the fruit of several years' work with the founder of phenomenology and the director of the dissertation itself, Edmund Husserl. Stein follows the reflections of Husserl in volume 2 of his Ideas, but in several respects adopts an independent stance of her own. Her work takes into consideration problems dealt with by philosophers of her period like Wilhelm Dilthey, Max Scheler, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. This book offers clear analyses as it delves into questions that continue to concern philosophers today. The translator is a grandniece of Edith Stein.
(Edith Stein comes alive through these warm, totally atten...)
Edith Stein comes alive through these warm, totally attentive letters. She joins a deeply sensitive heart with her keen intelligence, revealing herself to be a wise mentor and a caring friend available to anyone who approached her. Here we learn what was truly important to her: the total well-being of those who treasured her letters enough to preserve them even while suffering the havoc of war and oppression. This volume offers the first English translation of the majority of her surviving letters, with 4 photos and an index of recipients.
(To help celebrate the fourth centenary of the birth of St...)
To help celebrate the fourth centenary of the birth of St. John of the Cross in 1542, Edith Stein received the task of preparing a study of his writings. She uses her skill as a philosopher to enter into an illuminating reflection on the difference between the two symbols of cross and night. Pointing out how entering the night is synonymous with carrying the cross, she provides a condensed presentation of John's thought on the active and passive nights, as discussed in The Ascent of Mount Carmel and The Dark Night. All of this leads Edith to speak of the glory of resurrection that the soul shares, through a unitive contemplation described chiefly in The Living Flame of Love. In the summer of 1942, the Nazis without warrant took Edith away. The nuns found the manuscript of this profound study lying open in her room.
The Hidden Life: Essays, Meditations, Spiritual Texts
(This is an inspiring collection of Edith Stein's shorter ...)
This is an inspiring collection of Edith Stein's shorter spiritual writings, many available for the first time in English translation. They were composed during her final years, often at the request of her Carmelite superiors. Here the noted philosopher, Catholic feminist, and convert shares her reflections on prayer, liturgy, the lives of holy women, the spirit of Carmel, the mystery of the Christian vocation, and the meaning of the cross in our lives. These essays, poems, and dramatic pieces offer readers a unique glimpse into the hidden inner life of one of the twentieth century's most remarkable women.
(Essays on Woman is a compilation of seven self-contained ...)
Essays on Woman is a compilation of seven self-contained essays presented in various settings by Edith Stein during her years as a Catholic laywoman and academic. Arranged thematically rather than chronologically, they present a synthesis of her teachings on woman's nature, challenges, and opportunities, including female education and professional opportunities; spirituality; the church, woman and youth; and woman s value in national life. This second, revised edition includes textual corrections, important new supplementary data, and previously unavailable material on the spirituality of the lay and religious woman. Includes topical and place index and editors introductions for both editions.
Potency and Act: Studies Towards a Philosophy of Being
(Potency and Act is the second of three works in which Edi...)
Potency and Act is the second of three works in which Edith Stein said she endeavored to fulfill her proper mission in philosophy, her life s task: relating the phenomenology of her teacher Edmund Husserl and the scholasticism of St. Thomas Aquinas. But more than critically comparing the two ways of thinking, she wished to fuse them into her own philosophical system, searching for that perennial philosophy lying beyond ages and peoples, common to all who honestly seek the truth.
Life in a Jewish Family: Edith Stein - An Autobiography
(This book contains Edith Stein's autobiography, with map ...)
This book contains Edith Stein's autobiography, with map and 11 pages of photos. This initial volume of the Collected Works offers, for the first time in English, Edith Stein's unabridged autobiography depicting herself as a child and a young adult. Her text breaks abruptly because the Gestapo arrested and deported her to Auschwitz in 1942. Edith Stein is one of the most significant German women of our century. At the age of twenty-five, she became the first assistant to the founder of phenomenology, Edmund Husserl. She was much in demand as a writer-lecturer after her conversion from atheism to Catholicism. Later, as a Carmelite nun, she maintained her intellectual pursuits, until she died along with so many other Jewish people in the Holocaust. By making this story available in English, the Institute of Carmelite Studies provides an eye-witness account of persons and activities on the scene at the time when psychology and philosophy became separate disciplines.
(Edith Stein's analysis of the interplay between the philo...)
Edith Stein's analysis of the interplay between the philosophy of psychology and cultural studies, particularly psychoanalytic theory, and behaviorism.
Finite and Eternal Being: An Attempt at an Ascent to the Meaning of Being
(Finite and Eternal Being is Edith Stein's master work, th...)
Finite and Eternal Being is Edith Stein's master work, the culmination of her lifelong search for truth in all its philosophical, psychological, and spiritual dimensions. With her careful step-by-step analysis, she gradually shows how the being of all finite existents (especially the human I) finds its ultimate ground and destiny in the eternal Divine Being, the Creator whose trinitarian nature is reflected throughout creation.
(Any state exists only for the benefit of human beings. Th...)
Any state exists only for the benefit of human beings. This basic tenet of Edith Stein's political thought rests on her conviction that humanity is fundamentally one community, precious beyond measure. Differences of race, culture, and language offer us means to grasp the values of life uniquely so that we may share them universally, reaching across all such social boundaries. Stein wrote this treatise in the early days of the Weimar Republic, shortly after the First World War. It sets forth a philosophy of law, government, and administration that is at once idealistic and practical. What is right, Stein argues, does not arise from legislation or litigation or politics. Right relations, as such, are more basic than any institution. Here, too, are Stein's first serious discussions of religious issues such as quilt, expiation, and freedom of conscience. This is the philosophical work that immediately preceded her decision to be baptized on January 1, 1922. Whether ironically or predictably, Stein was put to death twenty years later by a state that brazenly defied nearly every principle that she had defended in this treatise. In death, she bore personal witness to the unity and dignity of the human race. She perished with her people, Jews and Christians alike, at Auschwitz in August 1942.
(The articles and notes in this new anthology come from th...)
The articles and notes in this new anthology come from the final twelve years of Edith Stein's life, and reveal her efforts to integrate the Christian faith she had embraced at the time of her baptism with her rigorous training as a phenomenologist. Included here for the first time are both versions of her famous comparison between the thought-systems of Edmund Husserl (her philosophical mentor) and Thomas Aquinas (representing the Catholic tradition), written first in dialogue form and then reworked as an essay in Husserl's honor. The final entry, "Ways to Know God," a study of the famed fifth or sixth century author who wrote under the name of Dionysius the Areopagite, was originally published in The Thomist and intended for an American audience. One of the last works that Edith Stein completed before her arrest and deportation to Auschwitz, it is presented here in a fresh new translation, amplified with previously deleted sections that deal with such important topics as atheism and the nature of symbols.
Edith Stein was a Roman Catholic convert from Judaism, Carmelite nun, philosopher, and spiritual writer who was executed by the Nazis because of her Jewish ancestry and who is regarded as a modern martyr. She was declared a saint by the Roman Catholic Church in 1998.
Background
Edith Stein was born on January 12, 1891, in Breslau, German Empire (now Wrocław, Poland) to the family of Siegfried Stein and Auguste Courant in a Jewish family on October 12, 1891, which also happened to be the day of Yom Kippur, that most important Jewish festival, the Feast of Atonement. Stein's father died when she was only a year old, leaving her mother, Auguste Stein, in charge of the debt-ridden business and the surviving children. Because her mother was required to devote most of her time to work outside the home, her oldest daughter, Else, took on much of the responsibility of raising the younger children.
As a child, Stein was known for her intelligence and sense of humor - she would often recite poetry and make clever remarks. But she disliked her reputation as "the smart one" of the family and began to develop a more quiet nature in her early school days.
Education
Edith Stein attended the Victoria School in Breslau, where she not only began classes early, but quickly became the top student in her grade. Her love of learning extended to her hours at home as well, where she spent much of her free time reading.
At the age of thirteen, Stein underwent a crisis of faith and decided to leave school. Although she no longer believed in God, she did not discuss her beliefs with her family and continued to attend religious services. Stein soon came to terms with her new ideas and decided to devote her life to teaching and the pursuit of the truth. She returned to Victoria School and completed her coursework in hopes of attending college.
Stein began her advanced education at the University of Breslau in 1911 where she was influenced by the works of Edmund Husserl who was a professor of philosophy (the study of knowledge) at Göttingen University and was the founder of the school of thought known as phenomenology, an examination of the development of human awareness. The work was an eye-opener to Stein, who decided that she wanted to study with Husserl at Göttingen. It was at Göttingen that Stein was first exposed to the Roman Catholic faith. When in 1916 Husserl took a professorship at the University of Freiburg, he requested that Stein join him as his graduate assistant. She was very successful at Freiburg and soon became known as a top philosopher at the university. In 1917, she was awarded her Doctorate with the highest honours, for her dissertation on ‘The Problem of Empathy.’
With the beginning of World War I in 1914, Stein volunteered her services at a hospital that treated soldiers suffering from cholera, typhus, and dysentery. The hospital closed a year later, and Stein returned to the university and completed her doctoral studies. She had selected the idea of empathy as the subject of her investigations in phenomenology, and Husserl was very impressed with her work. Although he had several distinguished students, including the philosopher Martin Heidegger, Husserl considered Stein to be the best student he had ever had. When in 1916 he took a professorship at the University of Freiburg, Husserl requested that Stein join him as his graduate assistant. That year she completed her doctoral dissertation, "The Problem of Empathy," and received her doctoral degree with honors. She was then hired as a faculty member at Freiburg, where she taught phenomenology and helped Husserl to edit his manuscripts. She was very successful at Freiburg and soon became known as a top philosopher at the university.
Stein's interest in Catholicism increased in 1917 with the death of her friend Reinach, who had been killed in battle at Flanders. She was approached by Reinach's widow, who asked her to organize her husband's academic papers. In Reinach's writings, she found many references to Jesus Christ, and this led her to read the New Testament. These experiences convinced Stein that she believed in God and the divinity of Jesus Christ, but she did not yet take steps to convert to organized religion. She returned to her work in philosophy, applying to Göttingen to work as a professor. But the school's longstanding ban on female professors was upheld, despite a glowing recommendation from Husserl. Stein returned to Breslau in 1919 to teach and continue her research. It was during this period, in 1921, that she finally was inspired to commit to the Catholic Church. While visiting friends in Bergzabern, Germany, that summer, she discovered the autobiography of St. Teresa of Avila. She found herself unable to put down the book, and after spending a whole night reading it, she was certain that she was ready for conversion. She attended her first Mass and requested that the priest baptize her, but she found that she had to complete a period of instruction first. She returned to her work in Breslau but came back to Bergzabern to be baptized on January 1, 1922.
Stein felt that her new religious life included a calling to serve in a religious order, but she did not do this immediately out of respect for her mother, who was quite disturbed by her daughter's conversion. Instead, she began working at a girl's school in Speyer, Germany, run by Dominican nuns. She followed the Dominican's practices closely, even though she was not one of them, accepting only enough money to cover basic living expenses. During her stay at Speyer, she was encouraged by the Jesuit priest and philosopher Erich Przywara not to abandon her academic work. At his urging, she began a German translation of a Latin work on truth by St. Thomas Aquinas. Through her study of Aquinas and her discussions with Przywara, she was convinced that she could serve God through a scholarly search for truth. Her writing and translations became popular and Stein was invited to lecture for a number of groups on religious and women's issues in Germany, Switzerland, and Austria. By 1931, these experiences had convinced her that she should leave Speyer and return to her philosophical work full-time.
The academic world in the 1930s, however, was growing increasingly anti-Semitic, and Stein found that she was not welcome at the schools at Freiburg and Breslau. She finally managed to obtain a lecture position at the Educational Institute in Münster in 1932. There she continued her work on Scholasticism and phenomenology, but she also felt the need to address the increasing hatred and violence that she witnessed around her. Attacks on Jews were becoming frequent and in 1933, the Nazi leader Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany. One result of the rise of Hitler was that Stein, along with other Jews in university positions, was fired from her job. She felt that she had a unique opportunity and responsibility, as a Jewish-born Catholic, to bridge the gap of understanding between Christians and Jews. To accomplish this, she penned the book Aus dem Leben einer Jüdischen Familie, or "Life in a Jewish Family," which tried to show the similar human experiences of Jews and Christians in their daily lives.
In 1933, Stein felt that she was ready to devote her life more completely to religious pursuits. She applied to the Carmelite convent in Cologne, and at the age of 42, was accepted as an initiate to the order. There she took the religious name Teresa Benedicta a Cruce, in honor of St. Benedict and St. Teresa of Avila as well as the Passion of Christ. She was encouraged by her superiors to continue her philosophical writings, which included an attempt to combine the thoughts of Husserl and Aquinas in her book Endliches und ewiges Sein ("Finite and Eternal Being"), completed in 1936. Under the anti-Jewish laws in effect then, however, the book was refused for publication and was not printed until 1950.
After the Kristallnacht, a night in which numerous Jewish businesses and synagogues were vandalized and burned in Germany, Stein realized that she was no longer safe in her native country. Also wishing to avoid bringing harm to her Carmelites sisters by her presence in their convent, she moved to a Carmelite convent in Echt in the Netherlands on December 31, 1938. In Echt, she was joined by her sister Rosa, who had also converted to Catholicism. Although still not completely out of danger, Stein attempted to return to a normal pattern of life, instructing younger women in Latin and training her sister Rosa as a Carmelite. She also continued her writing, completing a phenomenological work on the life of the mystic St. John of the Cross entitled Kreuzewissenschaft: Studie über Joannes a Cruce ("The Science of the Cross: A Study of Saint John of the Cross"), a book that also would not see publication until after the war.
In 1942, the Nazis began removing Jews from the Netherlands, and Stein urgently applied for a Swiss visa in order to transfer to a convent in Switzerland. Her sister was unable to arrange similar travel arrangements, however, and Stein refused to leave without her. On August 2, 1942, the sisters were removed from the convent at Echt by Nazi troops and transported to a concentration camp at Amersfoort for a few days before being sent on to the Auchwitz camp in Poland. While nothing is known about their last days or the exact circumstances of their deaths, it is assumed that the women were among the many people killed in the Nazi gas chambers, placed in mass graves on the site, and later cremated.
Edith Stein is remembered by many people for her untiring search for truth in both the philosophical and spiritual realms and her attempts to use this knowledge to promote peace and understanding in the face of hatred and war.
The Edith Stein Guild for aiding converts was founded (1955) in the United States, and the Archivum Carmelitanum Edith Stein was established at Leuven, Belgium, for the study and publication of her works. On May 1, 1987, she was beatified by Pope John Paul II. She was canonized on October 11, 1998. On June 6, 2014, the 70th anniversary of D-Day, Prince Charles dedicated a bell to her at Bayeux Cathedral.
(Any state exists only for the benefit of human beings. Th...)
2006
Religion
Born into an Orthodox Jewish family, Stein renounced her faith in 1904 and became an atheist. Stein's interest in Catholicism increased in 1917 which led her to read the New Testament, the second half of the Bible. These experiences convinced Stein that she believed in God and the divinity of Jesus Christ, but did not convert to Catholicism until 1921.
Politics
Stein wasn't a politically active person. Her main political concern was promoting peace. This basic tenet of Edith Stein's political thought rests on her conviction that humanity is fundamentally one community, precious beyond measure. Differences in race, culture, and language offer us means to grasp the values of life uniquely so that people may share them universally, reaching across all such social boundaries.
Views
Edith Stein was a leading proponent of the phenomenological school of thought led by Edmund Husserl in the first half of the twentieth century. In her writings, Stein attempted to reconcile phenomenology with her Catholic beliefs in works on Thomas Aquinas, St. John of the Cross, and the topic of women in the Church.
Quotations:
"And when night comes, and you look back over the day and see how fragmentary everything has been, and how much you planned that has gone undone, and all the reasons you have to be embarrassed and ashamed: just take everything exactly as it is, put it in God's hands and leave it with Him."
"Let go of your plans. The first hour of your morning belongs to God. Tackle the day's work that he charges you with, and he will give you the power to accomplish it."
"The woman's soul is fashioned as a shelter in which other souls may unfold."
"Woman naturally seeks to embrace that which is living, personal, and whole. To cherish, guard, protect, nourish, and advance growth is her natural, maternal yearning."
"Each woman who lives in the light of eternity can fulfill her vocation, no matter if it is in marriage, in a religious order, or in a worldly profession."
Membership
Edith Stein was a member of the Order of the Discalced Carmelites of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel.
Order of the Discalced Carmelites of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel
1933 - 1942
Personality
Though many felt that she had abandoned Judaism, Edith Stein, in her own opinion, remained loyal to her Jewish family and heritage to her death.
Interests
poetry
Philosophers & Thinkers
Edmund Husserl
Connections
There is no record of romantic liaison in the life of Edith Stein and she did not have any children. She had immersed herself in philosophical studies and continued to do so for a long as she lived.
