Microsoft Word Jurnal 1 13 ed doc

Fəlsəfə və sosial-siyasi elmlər – 2013, № 1
 
 
 
 
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intellectual attachment to God’s truth, but the experience of a living, 
concrete personal encounter. Edith Stein warns against a faith which, 
however rigorous with respect to the truths it believes in, does not impact on 
the existence of the believer. The exclamation ‘this is the truth’ that 
followed the reading of the autobiography of Saint Teresa marks a spiritual 
and intellectual turning point, tracing the originality of an itinerary in which 
the contemplation of the truth and testimony of life, dedicated to the point of 
martyrdom, converge: «A truth that does not hold the man until the moment 
of sacrifice – wrote Ricoeur – lacks proof»
1
. Prompted by her adhesion to 
Christianity, Stein also underwent a ‘philosophical conversion’ that led her 
to the roots of ‘Christian philosophy’ and thus to the most significant 
thinker of this orientation, Thomas Aquinas, to whom she dedicated her 
German translation of the “Quaestiones disputatae de veritate” and a long 
essay, published in 1929, “Husserls Phänomenologie und die Philosophie 
des heiligen Thomas von Aquino. Versuch einer Gegenüberstellung”
2
. 
The phenomenological method represents the philosophical forma 
mentis she acquired during the years of university study: the reading of 
Husserl’s  Logische Untersuchungen had prompted her interest in this 
thinker, who defended the idea of an objective truth and taught the method 
for reaching it. Won over by Husserl’s motto of the ‘return to things’, she 
dedicated herself to the systematic study of phenomenology, prompting the 
wonder and admiration of the master. Edith Stein assimilated three 
fundamental aspects of phenomenology: the method, the criticism of 
psychology and the conception of philosophy as a rigorous science. In her 
opinion, the fact that phenomenology was put forward as a method by 
Husserl meant that it did not constitute a complete philosophical system in 
itself, but rather an opening up towards reality as such, a ‘return to things 
themselves’, freeing them of the prejudices of common and scientific 
                                                 
1
 P.  R
ICOEUR
,  Testimonianza, Parola e rivelazione, EDB, Rome 1997, p. 102. (our 
translation) 
2
 E.  S
TEIN
,  Husserls Phänomenologie und die Philosophie des heiligen Thomas von 
Aquino. Versuch einer Gegenüberstellung, in Festschrift Edmund Husserl zum 70. 
Geburtstag gewidmet  (Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenologische Forschung, 
Ergänzungsheft), Max Niemeyer Verlag, Tübingen 11 (1929), pp. 315-338. 

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perception so that they can be seen for what they really are. Phenomenology 
thus urged philosophy to grasp reality as it offers itself to consciousness as 
raw data, before any philosophical or scientific reflection. For 
phenomenology, the world we are conscious of does not constitute a mass of 
objective data, nor is it the product of an absolute subject that constitutes it: 
the object is something meaningful for human beings insofar as it is grasped 
within an experienced relationship; as such, it is a ‘phenomenon’ that 
manifests itself to consciousness. For its part, consciousness is radical 
‘intentionality’ – contact with the world
1
. From Husserl’s phenomenology, 
Stein also absorbed the critique of psychology, which claimed to justify 
human activity via psychic and physical laws, revealing itself to be 
incapable of taking account of spiritual phenomena, which are not subject to 
any causal determinism. She also took up the notion of philosophy as a 
‘rigorous’ and ‘apodeictic’ science, able to accede to the ‘absolute’ truth 
that transcends any contingency. However, in her reflections other interests 
progressively emerge, leading her to take an autonomous path with respect 
to that of Husserl, until the final break with the master, when the latter 
oriented his thought towards ‘transcendental phenomenology’, returning to 
the centrality of consciousness
2
. 
                                                 
1
 See Stein’s short essays on phenomenology collected by A. Ales Bello in the 
anthological section of La ricerca della verità. dalla fenomenologia alla filosofia cristiana, 
Città Nuova, Rome 1993, pp. 55-117. 
2
 For Stein, phenomenology would always remain her methodological habitus. Even 
after the break with Husserl, over the relationship between alterity and transcendence and 
the tension between idealism and transcendental realism, she would always recall, with 
esteem and profound gratitude, the formative ‘debt’ she owed to the master. See G. P
ULINA
, 
L’angelo di Husserl. Introduzione a Edith Stein, Editrice Zona, Arezzo 2008, p. 62. The 
origin of the theoretical disagreement actually dates back to the publication by Husserl of 
Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologische Philosophie,  Allgeimeine 
Einführung in die Phänomenologie [Erstes Buch, in Husserliana III/1, K. Schuhmann (ed.), 
Martinus Nijhoff, Den Haag 1976], which prompted much debate among his pupils. As 
Stein points out: «The Logische Untersuchungen had caused a sensation primarily because 
it appeared to be a radical departure from critical idealism which had a Kantian and neo-
Kantian stamp. It was considered a “new scholasticism” because it turned attention away 
from the “subject” and toward “things” themselves. Perception again appeared as reception, 
deriving its laws from objects not, as criticism has it, from determination which imposes its 
laws on the objects. All the young phenomenologists were confirmed realists. However, the 
Ideas included some expressions which sounded very much as though their Master wished 

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