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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