Abstract
Both Hedwig Conrad-Martius and Edith Stein try to hold together with integrity their commitments to phenomenological rigor and to Christian faith, whether in an ontology of nature or in a phenomenological reading of Thomism. Beyond the explicit consideration of religious topics in their work, their more strictly phenomenological accounts might actually harbor even more interesting potential for a phenomenology of religious life and practice. The first part of the chapter provides an account of the major elements of Conrad-Martius’s work insofar as it is relevant to philosophy of religion: her account of the divine, of the human being, and of nature as creation. The second part of the contribution draws on Stein’s account of joy in the context of her phenomenological account of human finitude vis-à-vis eternal being and on Conrad-Martius’s discussions of human affect in order to suggest a different approach toward the phenomenological dimensions of human religiosity.
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Notes
- 1.
For example, in a note to a review essay of a German translation of Aquinas’s Summa, she calls it a great evil to become blind to being from overemphasizing “ideas and ideality.” In Conrad-Martius’s essay “Phänomenologie und Spekulation” (1965, 370–84), she distinguishes between three types of phenomenology: Husserl’s idealist and Heidegger’s existentialist versions, both of which she criticizes and against which she posits a phenomenology that takes seriously the independent existence of the world and comes out of the Göttingen movement of Husserl’s early disciples (see the essay “Die transzendentale und die ontologische Phänomenologie” (1965, 393–402)).
- 2.
One prominent example is her essay on nature and grace (1963, 427–458).
- 3.
She refers to both thinkers repeatedly. Although their influence cannot be traced here in any detail, it seems seminal to her expositions and calls for much fuller exploration.
- 4.
At the same time, she draws firm distinctions between the empirical research of the natural scientist and the more fundamental questions about the nature of things, which she deems philosophical and metaphysical. See Conrad-Martius (1965).
- 5.
In her lectures presented in the 1930s, she provides first a phenomenological and then a theological account of human anthropology. Although the philosophical discussion is explicitly and consciously phenomenological, it is guided by theological presuppositions, and she repeatedly remarks on the ways in which it accords with traditional doctrines. Obviously, my point here is not that philosophical work should disagree with theological dogma or must necessarily contradict it; rather, it is a question of whether such dogma predetermines the philosophical insights, thus turning the account essentially apologetic in the sense of employing philosophy to justify or support what is assumed to be true theologically or dogmatically. I am suggesting that Stein’s early ventures into religion do so, while her later work escapes, at least to some extent, such apologetic motives or procedures.
- 6.
- 7.
Although Conrad-Martius was Protestant, she served as Stein’s sponsor when the latter converted to Catholicism. Many of her most explicitly “theological” lectures were delivered to Catholic audiences or written for Catholic journals. Stein was killed in Auschwitz, Conrad-Martius died in 1966, so the work of both thinkers precedes the impact of Vatican II. Obviously, the more open attitude to contemporary intellectual culture brought about by the council affected not only Roman Catholicism.
- 8.
Edith Stein also discusses Heidegger at various points, for example in an appendix to her Endliches und ewiges Sein (2006, 443–499).
- 9.
The book is dedicated to Husserl on his sixtieth birthday.
- 10.
Especially in the final section of the text: 189–90, 238–41.
- 11.
One of the interlocutors objects repeatedly to the introduction of such topics; the other insists in response that the conversation is about ascertaining the essential qualities or characteristics of the natures in order to gain deeper insight into the particular nature of the human, not about proving the empirical existence of fairies, demons, angels, or the divine. For example: “Und wenn wir auch keine Religionsphilosophen sind, so ist doch kaum etwas instruktiver, als auf die wesenhaften Beziehungen hinzusehen, die diesen Anschauungen zugrunde liegen. Nirgends sind die wahrhaften Wesensgrenzen reiner erhalten als hier; deshalb kann man so unendlich viel aus ihnen lernen” (1921, 63–64).
- 12.
Thus, even a fallen angel is never fully separated from God or the “heavenly” sphere (1921, 69). The fullest distinctions between the different types of spirits are made in the second section of the third part (115–166). See the summary (160).
- 13.
The reference is to Baader and Boehme.
- 14.
Her description of angels also gives some inkling of what she means by the divine spirit: “Gestaltet und genährt von einem Geist und erfüllt von ihm, in dem alles Urleben in glorreicher Fülle, Selbstheit und Wesenhaftigkeit aufgegangen ist, nichts Dunkles, nichts Unerlöstes, nichts Unausgewirktes hinter ihnen, aus sich selbst herausgestellt und erwachsen zu vollkommener Gestalt, bar alles Unruhe heischenden Lebens, freie Besitzer und Verwalter ihres ganz und gar manifesten und gestaltmäßig befriedeten Seins, in eigener Fülle stehend, aus sich herausgewendet, ewig bereit zum Dienst und Hingabe mit süßer Sachlichtkeit und beschwingtem Ernst” (1921, 165).
- 15.
She calls such attempts “ungegründet, bestandlos, bloß pseudohaft” (groundless, baseless, merely pretense) thus “unhaltbar” (untenable) (1963, 257). The text is addressed to a Catholic audience and intended as a contribution to Protestant-Catholic dialogue. She contends that the two traditions share a “cosmological-ontological worldview” (257).
- 16.
The non-Christian reader may wonder how this is much of a justification.
- 17.
“In Wahrheit lässt sich primär nur ein wesenhaft grenzenloses, grundloses, anfangs- und endloses Sein begreifen!... Das Stehen im Nichts ist ein wesenhaft grundloses, ungegründetes und deshalb primär unbegründbares” (1963, 261).
- 18.
- 19.
See also Conrad-Martius (1965, 226–28).
- 20.
See also Conrad-Martius (1964, 85).
- 21.
In her view, anthroposophical and Christian notions of love are fundamentally different.
- 22.
She had one Jewish grandparent.
- 23.
See also several other essays in this volume (1964). She also argues extensively against the paleontologist Edgar Dacqué’s account of stone-age existence, which she considers mythical, Platonizing, and incoherent (1965, 163–83). See also her Utopien der Menschenzüchtung (1955), in which she argues most fully against the racism of social Darwinism.
- 24.
In a different context she speaks of a convergence between natural science and Christian philosophy, which together reveal the “one truth” (1964, 41).
- 25.
The latter text (1949a) is the second edition of a text originally published in 1938 under the title Ursprung und Aufbau des lebendigen Kosmos. She explicitly notes in the later text her modification of her earlier views, as she does in the lectures in Bios und Psyche (1949b).
- 26.
See also 1964, 74. Conrad-Martius works this out in far more detail in Abstammungslehre (1949a) and Der Selbstaufbau der Natur (1944).
- 27.
See also the first set of lectures in Bios und Psyche (1949b), which explore this in detail.
- 28.
She ends this particular piece by affirming creation as a “deed of God” (218).
- 29.
The conversation also repeatedly tries to develop a concept of evolution that acknowledges free and even accidental variation of species of animals and plants, but without crossing the fundamental lines from plant to animal or animal to human. The notion of the logos is used extensively as the basic nature or essence of beings—implying that it is given by God—which is then developed in a variety of ways and potencies.
- 30.
The same argument is made in more detail in Chap. 9 of Abstammungslehre (1949a, 343–361).
- 31.
The question of ex nihilo occupies her repeatedly, both for the ontological and the temporal dimensions of the question. She tries to resolve the question of whether God created time “before” or “outside” of time and what this means for the temporality of the divine (cf. Conrad-Martius 1954, 259–260; 1963, 145), and also raises the question of how there can be a relationship between God and the temporal world if God is outside of time (1954, 160). In that context, she also briefly touches on questions of providence.
- 32.
In fact, she wrote several essays on Aquinas, in which she reviews new translations while summarizing many of his ideas, generally very positively. See, for example, 1963, 245–56, 427–58.
- 33.
For example, see 1964, 299.
- 34.
Generally, she is highly critical of anything she considers too Platonic, especially when it comes to Christian notions. In fact, she often claims that she is trying to avoid both a naturalistic, evolutionist, vital approach and a scholastic, Platonizing one (1921, 187).
- 35.
These are worked out in detail in Metaphysische Gespräche, which also develops the elements of accident and variation within those broader categories.
- 36.
For a more nuanced and less polemic presentation of the distinctions that matter to Conrad-Martius, see her Die Geistseele des Menschen (1960), especially Sect. 2 (25–40). For example, in this context she argues against traducianism, i.e. against a particular theological interpretation of the inheritance of the soul, for a more biological account (33–40).
- 37.
She does acknowledge, however, as Stein also does, that nature mirrors the divine creator. See, for example, Conrad-Martius (1965, 307).
- 38.
- 39.
She also discusses the situation of the human before and after the fall and wonders whether Adam was naturally righteous (1963, 444). In this context, she suggests that redemption requires a sharpening of subjectivity rather than an abandonment of it (457).
- 40.
“Man schaue dieses Wunderbare an: Gott sieht sich nach Seinem eigenen Wesen durch die Welt und in ihr auf sich selber zurückkommen; nun aber nicht, wie im sachlichen Logos, in gegenständlicher Enthobenheit, sondern eingesenkt in geschöpfliche Seinsselberkeit, die diese Welt durch Gottes schöpferische Allmacht besitzt” (1965, 307).
- 41.
As does Stein in Endliches und ewiges Sein (2006, 303–394).
- 42.
She refers to Boehme repeatedly on this point (140, 144, 200, 240–41).
- 43.
“Das Ursprungsselbst gleicht dem Vater, die innerseelische Eigenentfaltung dem Sohn oder dem inneren Wort, die geistige Entfaltung dem Heiligen Geist. Der Leib dagegen sowie die selbsthafte Hineingestaltung der Seele in den Leib, das Leib-Seelische, besitzen naturgemäß innerhalb der göttlichen Dreifaltigkeit kein Analogon” (1965, 124).
- 44.
This is especially evident in her Utopien der Menschenzüchtung, in which she reviews in great detail many theories of social Darwinism, the eugenics movement (discussing representatives from several countries, including the US and Britain), and the racisms of National Socialism (with extensive citation from Hitler’s Mein Kampf) and Bolshevism. She condemns all of these theories and movements in the strongest terms, showing the ways in which they devalue the human, eliminate individual rights, and destroy the fabric of society. (She also considers all of them explicitly anti-Christian, suggesting that only Christianity can keep in balance the dignity of the individual human within community, rejecting, on the one hand, a utopian and unsustainable individualism and, on the other hand, various totalitarianisms erasing individuals for the sake of the group).
- 45.
See Stein (2003, especially 44–52).
- 46.
She explicitly refers to Heidegger’s Being and Time in a footnote (2006, 56, n. 43).
- 47.
“Darum sind wir genötigt, das Sein des Ich, diese beständig wechselnde lebendige Gegenwart, als ein empfangenes zu bezeichnen” (57; emphasis hers).
- 48.
There are clearly echoes of Thomas here, but it is significant that they are echoes, while in her early work they are the determining parameters that are forcefully asserted as truths rather than explored via a phenomenological analysis. There is a significant shift in tone here in comparison to her earlier work.
- 49.
It is telling that although she certainly takes up Heidegger’s analysis of Angst, her preferred existential phenomenological structure is joy (Freude).
- 50.
She merely mentions the proofs here, but does not summarize them or propose them as a solution in any detail.
- 51.
This is discussed most fully in the second part of Metaphysische Gespräche (Conrad-Martius 1921, 26–86). Conrad-Martius often returns to this topic in later publications, but this dialogue is the most explicitly phenomenological in that it derives the ontological claims entirely from an analysis of the phenomena in regard to the manifestation of their essential nature, and will thus be the focus of the present exploration.
- 52.
See also “Die Seele der Pflanze” (Conrad-Martius 1963, 276–62).
- 53.
She stresses repeatedly that this interior space, the movement within it, and the ability to own the self are common to animals and humans. See, for example, “Seele und Leib” (1965, 109).
- 54.
Animals do have spontaneity of self-directed movement, which is not to be confused with freedom in the proper sense, because it is entirely exhausted in the body, while human freedom can take a perspective on body and soul, even separate from them.
- 55.
The interlocutors stress again that this is a thought experiment and that no theological claims are made about the existence of angels, saints, or the human condition before the fall (62–63).
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Gschwandtner, C.M. (2022). Eternal Being and Creaturely Existence: Hedwig Conrad-Martius and Edith Stein on Divine-Human Ontology. In: Calcagno, A., Miron, R. (eds) Hedwig Conrad-Martius and Edith Stein: Philosophical Encounters and Divides. Women in the History of Philosophy and Sciences, vol 16. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14759-3_7
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