Microsoft Word Jurnal 1 13 ed doc

 
 
137
Starting with Beiträge zur philosophischen Begründung der 
Psychologie und der Geisteswissenschaften, Stein indicates the foundation 
of this individuality and the ‘locus’ of each person with the expression 
“personal nucleus”, understood as something “individual as such, something 
indissoluble and unnameable”. In the final part of this work it is possible to 
discover parallels between Scotus' concept of “ultima solitudo” and what 
Stein calls “inalienable aloneness”. Indeed, she affirms that individuation 
lies beyond any possible psychic or material determination, to the point that 
the constitutive characteristics of this nucleus – immutability, consistency 
and permanence – impose a certain pattern on the development of the 
person: it is not the development of the person that moulds the nucleus – 
rather it is the latter that determines the person’s psychic and/or material 
evolution. The “ultima  solitudo” is seen by Stein as “a state of being in 
oneself, a state of being in contact with the depth of one’s I”. It is only by 
living in this ineffable depth, the basis of every personal act, that the person 
can discover himself or herself in the world
1
. Thus the metaphysical issues 
of medieval philosophy came to be intertwined with analyses and results 
obtained on a descriptive-phenomenological basis. 
In  Der Aufbau der menschlichen Person
2
, after observing that a 
philosophy is radical only if it is able to tackle the fundamental structures of 
the human being, Stein definitively excludes the possibility of an extrinsic 
principle for the determination of the person and identifies the foundation of 
individuation in the ‘empty form’ together with its ‘qualitative filling’
3
. The 
latter «makes the individual not only a static bearer of the characteristics of 
the species, but also a “singular I”, since the qualitative fullness confers “its 
own” singularity with respect to the other singularities of the same 
species»
4
. 
                                                 
1
 Ibid., pp. 136-140. 
2
 E.  S
TEIN
,  Der Aufbau der menschlichen Person. Vorlesung zur philosophischen 
Anthropologie, neu bearbeitet und eingeleitet von B. Beckmann-Zöller, ESGA 14, Herder, 
Freiburg-Basel-Wien 2004. 
3
 F. A
LFIERI
, La presenza di Duns Scoto nel pensiero di Edith Stein, p. 222. 
4
 Ibid., p. 181. 

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Fəlsəfə və sosial-siyasi elmlər – 2013, № 1
 
 
 
 
138
In Potenz und Akt
1
 Stein reworks the results of Husserl’s formal and 
material ontology in the light of medieval, Thomist and Aristotelian 
categories, and explores the concept of an individuation that is rooted in the 
personal ‘nucleus’ (kern). This is the ‘core’ or ‘centre’ of the personality, 
the source from which the individual draws its original life and the origin of 
the experiences that belong to the affective sphere. The ‘nucleus’ of the 
person confers unity and harmony on all actions; it is outwardly expressed 
in the character and constitutes the ‘original locus’ of the ‘living’
2
. Father 
Alfieri argues that the fundamental result of this analysis lies in the fact that 
«in this work Stein does not accept any determination of the principle of 
individuation that can, in the Thomist sense, be traced back to quantitative 
conditions of matter (materia signata quantitate, as formed matter)»
3
. 
Chapter VIII of Endliches und ewiges Sein reaffirms with great clarity 
that the ‘materia signata quantitate’ (of the Thomist tradition) cannot be the 
foundation of individuality, because, remaining on the general level of the 
matter-form relationship, it says nothing about the individual person. In 
contrast, argues Stein, the principle of individuation is “a positive existent 
[etwas positiv Seiendes]”, an intrinsic perfection that becomes visible in an 
entirely special and unique way for human beings
4
. The “positive existent” 
consists of the individual nature (the being “that”). However, it should not 
be seen as a second nature in addition to the common nature (species) but 
rather as the expression of the common nature “in” the individual nature 
(being ‘Socrates’ for example adds nothing to human beings but contains 
the human being). 
Stein's originality lies in her use of the expression ‘empty form’ to 
indicate an intrinsic formal property. This enables her to avoid any 
                                                 
1
 E.  S
TEIN
,  Potenz und Akt. Studien zu einer Philosophie des Seins, Eingeführt und 
bearbeitet von H. R. Sepp, ESGA 10, Herder, Freiburg-Basel-Wien, Herder 2005; English 
translation Potency and Act. Studies Toward a Philosophy of Being (The Collected Works 
of Edith Stein, XI), by W. Redmond, ICS Publications, Washington (DC) 2009. 
2
 F.  A
LFIERI
,  La presenza di Duns Scoto nel pensiero di Edith Stein, pp. 175-176; p. 
178. 
3
 Ibid., p. 223. 
4
 Ibid., p. 224. 

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139
misunderstandings arising from the idea that the principium individuationis 
could be thought of as something that is added to the being from the outside 
and determines beings in a universal way. This allows Stein to link her ideas 
explicitly to those of Duns Scotus, as she declares in chapter VIII of 
Endliches und ewiges Sein: «Duns Scotus does likewise, if I understand him 
correctly. He sees the principium individuationis as something that has the 
marks of a positive existent, as something that sets the individual form of 
the essence apart from the universal form of the essence»
1
. Although she 
does not use the Scotist expression ‘ultima realitas entis’ to indicate that it 
is ‘a positive existent [etwas positiv Seiendes]’, in Potenz und Akt she uses 
the term “haecceitas” to refer to the individuality of the Einzelsein
2
. The 
‘individual nature’ of which Stein speaks recalls Scotus' entitas positiva, in 
that it shows that singularity is a product neither of matter nor of form nor of 
the matter-form synolon; rather, «it is something which, being reality, is 
formally distinct from the common nature and serves to contract it, thereby 
making it individually existent»
3
. 
Participating in a debate – the foundation of individuality – the origin 
of which dates back to Plato, Edith Stein makes an original contribution, in 
that she succeeds in bringing together the scholastic tradition and 
phenomenological philosophy. Although the metaphysical structure of this 
approach is similar to that of Duns Scotus, the key to its interpretation lies in 
the Husserlian notion of “constitution”. By returning to the medieval 
tradition, Stein «takes up the challenge of founding, on the basis of a solid 
metaphysical structure, a new ontology of the person that is able to grasp the 
“full” meaning of its being, and thus finds the “way” to reach the foundation 
of the eternal being»
4
. The issue is particularly relevant to the current debate 
                                                 
1
 Edith S
TEIN
,
 
Endliches und ewiges Sein. Versuch eines Aufstiegs zum Sinn des Seins, 
pp. 408-409 [English translation, p. 610]; See Alfieri, La presenza di Duns Scoto nel 
pensiero di Edith Stein, p. 211. 
2
 F. A
LFIERI
, La presenza di Duns Scoto nel pensiero di Edith Stein, pp. 211-212. 
3
 Ibid., pp. 212. 
4
 Ibid., p. 213. In Stein's new reading of the medieval sources, she progresses from 
reflection on the individual to reflection on the person (two clearly distinct levels in Duns 
Scotus and other medieval philosophers) only gradually. This should not surprise us, given 

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