Was den Menschen zum Menschen macht

Edith Stein

4 Min. Lesezeit

🇩🇪 Deutsche Version: Edith Stein

Edith Stein — philosopher, student of Husserl, friend of Conrad-Martius, and Carmelite — joins phenomenological analysis with a profound insight into the interiority of the person. Her image of the “illuminated surface above a dark depth” is a key image for the book.

Key Contribution

Stein formulates the image: consciousness is only the “illuminated surface above a dark depth” (belichtete Oberfläche über dunkler Tiefe). With this she says: personal being reaches deeper than what is accessible to self-consciousness. The person is not identical with what she knows of herself. Beneath the conscious surface lies a depth of being that is the underlying ground of all conscious acts. Whoever simply equates person with consciousness — as Locke does — grasps only the surface (cf. Bexten 2017, pp. 165 ff.).

Empathy

In her dissertation Zum Problem der Einfühlung (1917; Engl.: On the Problem of Empathy), Stein presented the fundamental phenomenological analysis of empathy. Empathy is the immediate givenness of another subject as subject — no inference by analogy, no projection, but an intentional experience in its own right. It is the precondition of all interpersonality: without empathy there would be no encounter from person to person.

Central Ideas in the Book

Personal Being Deeper than Consciousness

Stein’s insight confirms from a phenomenological perspective what the substance-ontological tradition says: personhood precedes actual consciousness. It belongs to the First Dimension — the substantial being that persists even when consciousness is impaired or suspended (sleep, unconsciousness, dementia, the early embryonic stage). The Second Dimension (conscious, rational acting) presupposes the First, not the other way round.

Interiority

Stein describes the interiority of the person: a being-with-oneself that is more than self-consciousness. The person has a depth she herself never fully fathoms. This interiority is the space in which cognition, freedom, and love have their origin. It is at the same time the reason why the person is a someone — a being with an unmistakable “inside” that no outside can ever fully grasp.

Soul and Body

Stein understands the soul as the core of the person, which forms and animates the body. For her, the body-soul unity is no subsequent composition, but an original unity grounded in the form-matter structure. She thereby joins the phenomenological analysis of the body with the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition (Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas).

Place in the Book

Stein is drawn upon above all in the chapter Chapter 4: What Is Human Personhood? (German), especially in the unfolding of the First Dimension and of interiority. Her philosophy forms a bridge between the phenomenological method (Husserl) and the substance-ontological tradition (Thomas, Boethius) — a chief example of the Thomism-phenomenology synthesis.

Sources: Bexten 2017, pp. 165 ff. (Stein’s insight into the interiority of the person — personal being as deeper than consciousness).

Further sources:

  • Der Aufbau der menschlichen Person (1932/33, ed. 2004). ESGA 14. Herder (Engl.: The Structure of the Human Person; personal being as deeper than consciousness, interiority, and body-soul unity)
  • Endliches und ewiges Sein (1950/2006). ESGA 11/12. Herder (Engl.: Finite and Eternal Being, transl. K. F. Reinhardt, Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications 2002; bridge between phenomenology and Thomistic substance ontology)

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