Abstract
In previous chapters, Edith Stein has been seen as a philosopher of consciousness, reflecting on and analyzing the inner world as well as the outer world of human beings. It has been apparent that she broke out of the limiting confines of Husserlian phenomenology to explore the unlimited horizon of metaphysical inquiry —inquiry which was off-limits for Husserl’s “rigorous science.” Since Husserl, a number of philosophers of the phenomenological school have not rejected the problematic of God, and questions related to religious experience are engaging many other contemporary philosophers who show definite phenomenological trends.1
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See, for example: Henry Duméry The Problem of God in the Philosophy of Religion, translation by C. Courteney (Northwestern Press, 1964); Karl Rahner, Spirit in the World (Herder & Herder, N.Y., 1968 ); W. Norris Clarke, The Philosophical Approach to God (Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, N.C., 1979).
Journée, p. 70.
E.E.S., pp. 35–36; Augustine, De Trinitate, XV, 12: PL, XLII, col. 1073–1074.
Cf. Aquinas, De Ver., 10, 8: The consciousness of one’s acts causes one to perceive that he/she has a soul, lives, exists; also Aristotle, Ethics, IX, 9; and Régis Jolivet, “L’intuition intellectuelle et le problème de la métaphysique,” in Archives de philosophie, XI (1934), 19 ff.
E.E.S., p. 36.
Ibid., pp. 46–47. Cf. Husserl, Ideas, pp. 143–146.
E.E.S., pp. 51–52; also 318–319.
See Chapter VI above.
Her procedure will be followed in the present study. It would do violence to her thinking to reduce it simply to a summary of conclusions.
E.E.S., pp. 36–37.
Op. cit., pp. 181 ff. Rahner is interpreting and expanding a text from Aquinas, S. T., I, 84, 7 ad 3.
E.E.S., pp. 109–110.
Ibid., pp. 38–39.
Cf. Ideas, pp. 234–239; also The Phenomenology of Internal Time-Consciousness, translated by James S. Churchill (Indiana University Press, Bloomington, Ind., 1964 ), from the original German: Vorlesungungen zur Phänomenologie des inner Zeitbewusstseins, Sonderdruck aus Husserls Jahrbuch IX (Halle, 1928 ).
E.E.S., p. 43.
Ibid., pp. 40–41.
Ibid., pp. 42 ff. This is close to Husserl: Cf., for example, loc. cit., note 14, above. Stein is also influenced by Augustine. It is interesting to note that Husserl himself praises Augustine’s treatment of time and says that “Chapters 13–18 of Book XI of the Confessions must even today be thoroughly studied by everyone concerned with the problem of time.” Internal Time-consciousness, p. 21.
Stein interprets Heidegger’s phrase as referring to the fact that human beings find themselves in existence without knowing how they came there or what is the explanation of their existence. But, she adds, “being thrown” demands one who throws. Thus “being thrown” is revealed as creatureliness. E.E.S., p. 52, note 40.
Cf. Rudolf Allers, “On Darkness, Silence and the Nought,” in The Thomist, IX (1946), 571–572. “The experience of the Nought, if this expression is permissible, is not of something from without. It is, therefore, not the `Nought which annihilates,’ as Heidegger claims. The experience is...of the ‘Nought within,’ of the contingency of the mind, its dependence on objects not its own products or creations, its helplessness to provide fulfillment of its natural needs by itself.”
E.E.S., p. 53; also pp. 318–319.
Ibid., pp. 56–57.
S. T. I, 2, 3.
She notes that H. Conrad-Martius has formulated the proof in this sense: “wenn zeitliche Existenz..., dann auch notwendig ewige Existenz,” but without having the courage to take this rational step. E.E.S. p. 58, note 51.
E.E.S., pp. 58–59.
Ibid., pp. 60–61.
In different respects, of course: actual in respect to its existence in the “now”; potential in respect to what it can become or do.
Cf. S. T., 1, 10, 4, c.
E.E.S., p. 60.
Ibid., pp. 58–59; 317. From Exodus, 3, 14. Stein cites the various translations of the Hebrew words: “Ah jäh, aschér äh’ jäh” in the Hebrew context, but she takes them in the Augustinian sense. E.E.S., p. 317, note 21.
S. T. I, 10, 1; Cf. also C. G., I, 15. The definition given in the text is that of the Blackfriars translation (McGraw Hill) of the Summa, except for the rendering of the word interminabilis, which, in the Blackfriars edition, is translated unending. The etymology of the word and the context in which it is used suggest that without beginning or end may be closer to the thought.
Note Stein’s frequent use of words derived from Leben (life); e.g., Ichleben, Lebendigkeit, Erlebnis.
E.E.S., p. 54.
Cf. S. T., I, 10, c, and ad 1.
The Confessions of St. Augustine, translated by F. J. Sheed ( Sheed & Ward, N. Y., 1943 ), pp. 271–284.
E.E.S., p. 106, note 1.
Cf. S. T.,I,2, 1,candad2.
E.E.S., pp. 106–107.
Ibid. She does not say whether they played any part in her conversion from atheism.
Herbstrith, op. cit., p. 5. Actually it was only after a long struggle that Stein was baptized a Christian at age thirty. She herself said that from thirteen to twenty-one, she could not believe in a personal God.
Her article, “Ways to Know God,” translated by Rudolf Allers, in The Thomist, IX (1946), 379–420, is based on the Pseudo-Dionysius. The original article was reprinted later in booklet form by the Edith Stein Guild (N. Y.) in cooperation with the Edith Stein Center (Elysburg, Pa.), 1981.
E.E.S., pp. 311–327.
Ibid., p. 319.
Ibid., pp. 321–336.
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Baseheart, M.C. (1997). Finite and Eternal Being. In: Person in the World. Contributions to Phenomenology, vol 27. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-2566-8_8
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