Loyola University Chicago

Loyola eCommons
Master's Theses Theses and Dissertations

1961

From Finite to Eternal Being: Edith Stein's

Philosophical Approach to God
Kathe Granderath
Loyola University Chicago

Recommended Citation
Granderath, Kathe, "From Finite to Eternal Being: Edith Stein's Philosophical Approach to God" (1961). Master's Theses. Paper 1581.
http://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_theses/1581

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Copyright © 1961 Kathe Granderath
 FROM FINITE TO ETERNAL BEING
EDITH STEIN'S PHILOSOPHICAL A2PROACH TO GOD

by
Kathe Granderath

A Thesis S~bmitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School

of Loyola University in Partial Fulfillment of

the Requirements for the Degree of
Ma.ar of Arts

tune
1961
 LIFE

teethe Gr$nder~th was born in Harff/ Bes. Koln, Germany, March 5,

1936.
She was graduated from Neusprachliches Gymnasium in Bergheiml~rft,
Germany, April 1956, and su.bsequently followed a year os missionary
training at the Center of the International Catholic Au.x11iaries in
Bru.ssels, Belgiu.m. From September 1957 to June 1959, she attended
S~llnt Xavier College in Chica.go, Illinois, and was graduated \11 th the
degree of Bachelor of Arts.
She began her graduate studies at Loyola university in Septem-

ber 1959.

iii
 PREFACE

This study does not give a. systematic exposition of Edith Stein t s

philosophy. Its aim is a presentation of Stein t S philosophizing on the
unfolding of the meaning of being, leading from limited beings of the
existential and essential realm to the fullness of infinite Bnd eternal
Being. The textual references have been selected in view of this pur-
pose. Of neoessity, the investigation must disregard many important
philosophioal problems which Edith Stein approached in a ~ay different
from her predeoessors in the history of philosophy. Yet the study on
her ascent to the meaning of being tries to grasp the central ideas of

her thinking and to present them in a limited relationship to traditio-

nal Catholic and to contemporary existential and phenomenological think-
ing.

iv
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter Page

I .. INTRODUCTION . .. . . .. .. .. .. . . . . .. .. . .. .. . . . . .. . . .. 1

A. Biogra.phice.l statement - Ju.da.1sm, atheism, phenomenolo-

gy, christianity
B. Philosophical background and pod tion. of E. Stein
Her relation to Edmund Husserl --
Thomas Aquinas -
translation and method
Martin Heidegger --
Clu~st for being
C. Stein t IS ontology as fusion between two ways of philoso-
phizing -- The search for truth and the way to God

II. TEMPORAl. LDttT.ATION 0J!' FINIT:B; BEING • .. • .. • .. .. .. .. . .. . • 16

A. Existential lmo111edge of one's own being as starting
point in the quest for being --
Augustine - Descartes - Husserl
B. Finite being and time.. .. • .. .. • .. .. .. .. .. .. .. • .. ... 21
Priori ty of the present - Punctual actu.ali ty and
the need for expansion - The existential movement
and the phases of time -- Heidegger's priority of
the future
C. Need for a dimension of duration .. .. .. .. .. .. .. • • ... 25
~{~jolOgy yerlijl phenomenology -- experience-
D. Revelation of Being through the present .. .. • • .. • •• 28
Englobing c8.pacity of )resent actuality - Height
of actuality in the present
III. LIMITATION OF THE EGO • . . . . .. . • • • • • • • • • • • • 31
A. Excellence of the Ego ae enduring and encompassing
Its vi. U:~ character -:- relation to world and
.o,~a"
B. Limitation of the Ego. • • • • • .. • .. • • • • • • • •• ~5
Transi torlness and throwness of man's being

v
 C. f.tWnment of Being by participation Eitld C!l11sal1 ty .. • •• 38
AmpliflcDtion of finite perfections --
Heception of being - Anxiety and nothingness
Reason e~d faith

IV" LIMITATION Of ESS£..NTV.L BlaNa " . . • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

A. '1'he n.ature of essentialities
Temporality and finiteness -- Meaning-structures
Their ontologtea.l status, compared to Avieenna, Duns
Scotus, Jean Hering -- Their relation to the spatio-
temporal. world
B. The knowledge of essentii::.lities • " • • • • • • .. • • •• 51
The phenomenological method of intuition -
Sense knowledge and eidetic Vision
C. The mode of essential being " • .. • .. • .. " • .. " .. .. •• 55
Constitution of essences --
Indep~ldence of time -- Limitation, no efficacy
and no actualizing capacity -- Archetypes within
the eterna~ Logos
F\JLL,.~ESS
V. THE OF B.t;ING . . . . • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 61
A. Communali t:r of essential and existential being -
The trl".llscenciElntf;ls as formal dimensions -
!liquid, n.L .1mY:m
B. Transcendence of fonnal ontology by relation to know-
ing spirit. • • .. • • • • • • .. • • • • • • .. .. .. ... 64
Essential and transcendental truth -- Revcaledness as
mark of all being - The trtm8cendentals as aspects
of fullness
C. Fullness of Being • • • • • • • • • • • • " • • • • • •• 68
Mul tiplici ty unified in Perfect Being - Et.em<ll
identi ty of essence and existence - No lim tFJtions --
Divine knowledge and ideas - NbJIle of God - Fullness
of Being in Person
VI. FXTROSPECT AND CONCLJSION • • • • . . .. . . ... .. . . . . 76
A. Unfolding of the UlfH1."!'ling of being 'Wi thin the essential
and the existential realm
The fullness of Being as the origin of the unfol-
cling -- Unfolding under the aspects of finiteness,
in timelessness and into space Md time
B. Stein's position. • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • ... 80
Combination of the essentialist and the existen-
tialist position - The role of God - Lim tation
versus fullness - The It fall" and the corresponding
distortion of things - Heidegger
 vii

c. Comparison of Stein's and If..eidegger's ontoloeic$ • •• 85

For IIeidegger, being depends on hU,l'URn existence,
is determi.ued by time - Horizontal fletl.rch for
being -
!i'or Stein, human existence depends on Being -
Being determines time, depends on man for know-
ledge - Vertical. search for being
D. St.ein t s synthesis • • • • • • • •• • • • • • • • •• 86
Her hierarchioal ontology - Inclu.sion of all
aspect~ of being -- Excellence of man possessing
existential awareness and comprehension of being
Stein's sdV&nce of phenomenology beyond Husserl
and Heidegger

BIBLIOGRAPHY • • • • • . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . .
., 90
 CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION
"
The greatness of & philosopher depends to 6. large extent on the coo-
~ctioo with which he lives his own philosophizing. The truly existential
dimension of philosophy is evident in his personal commitment to the search
for truth. This dimension is p&rticularly import8,nt If the philosophizing
concerns the most vi t.al problem of man's llfe: the relv.tionship to the In-
finite God. This problem trrmscends the specullitive order of philosophy,
since knowledge of the truth demands an existentitl.l engagement in the aer-
vice of Truth as the most radical consequence in one's person~l life.
For an understanding of the German-philosopher-Carmelite £aith Stein,
the interrelationship between her life and her philosophy seems ext.remely
importan t. Her short 11fe (1891-1942) was i teelf B. se8.rch for Trl! th.l She
hoped to find truth in the world of leeming, end ultimately foune God in
and through her work in phenomenology. The important steps in her life imply
the developmental progreSSion from her Jewish background through the piutses
of atheism, phenomenology, end christianity to the culminlltion of her search
for truth and the total giving of herself in the Carmel of Cologne. E~ch

of these phases deserves BODle conSideration, since much of Stein'e philoBo-

lInformation about the 11fe of Edith Stein is derived from:

Hilda C. Graef, lh2 Scholsr J:iru! ~ CrosI" The Llfe and work of Edith Stein
(New York, 1955); Sister Teresie 4e Bplritu Sancto~0CDJ Edith Stein, trans.
Ceeily Hastings and Donold Nicholl (New York, 1952).
1
phical endeavor will gain in clar~ty b1 &n understancing of her own life
situation.
The role of judaisM in !. Stein'. childhood an4 adolescence is less of
personal than of social importance. fhe Jewish religion represented to her
a system of customs and conventions, and this might be the res,SOn 'Why she
had to go through a period of atheism before finding God. Jude,ism entangled
her like a self-contained system the boundaries of which she had to penetrl'lte
even before she recognized the goal toward 'Which her search should lead. She
had to shake off everything that enclosed her in this oonventioanl 'World in
order to reach a standpOint from which she could exercise her freedom. Se-
veral hundred years earlier, Rene Descartes found himself in a parallel
ai tuation 'When he deoided upon the upheaval of all his former opinions an~

attachments in order to make a ne'W start in the search for truth. And her
contemporary, Henri Bergson emphasized the neces81i.ry transition from statio
to dynamic religion, from the traditional limiting system to the vital ex-

perience that leads to the encounter with Being.

Edith Stein left her Jewish world. Yet she had been e Jew, and accor-
ding to her close friend and phenomenologist Hedwig Conrad-Martius, this
implies something more than a mere religious affiliation. She possessed the
Jewish mentality which seems to produce a particular intellectual approach
to reality, one marked by objectivity and radicalism. Such an attitude pro-
vides a natural path into the world of phenomenology. For there, an abso-
lute readin~S8 to give oneself to the object under inquiry is necess&.ry.
This implies the exclUSion of all prejudice determined by traditional know-
leqge that hes not become truly one's own. 2
Besides the Jewish influence on Stein's intellectual development, ju-
dAism ahapeq her whole life and hastened its end. As a Carmelite nun, she
offered her life for the Jewish people. ano not much later shared ,the fate
of 80 many of her people when she died in the gas-chambers of AU8c~~tZ in
1942, victim to the racism of the Na.i persecution of the Jews in GermMY,
Victim to the world of violence, hatred, and untruth.
Between the abandonment of the Jewish religion and the active commit-
ment to truth -- between the stetic immobility and the dynamic force -- E.
Stein lived through a period of atheism. This phase was a short but vital
one in her 11fe, since it furnished her with the possibility of a transition
from Nothing to Being. It gives the existential imp~ct to her quest for the

meaning of being and makes her philosophizing extremely real for the contem-
porary world, since she speaks through the authenticity of her own life.
This might be one of the ressone why modern man can look to Edi th Stein as Ii

bridga between an atheistic and a Christian philosophy. Atheism, however, is

not by its very nature opposed to truth. For Stein it ,.,as a period of search,
of great intellectual activity, of her first steps into the world of philosop
In the School of Edmund Husserl, she found her philosophioal. home, and in the
5
language of the phenomenologists her philosophical mother tongue •

....,
~Hedw1g Conrad-Martiue. "Edith Stein", HQchlapd (Ku.nchen,195,3-59) ,L1,L.0.
31.di th Stein. Endlicljes.1m.Si EWiges Sain, Versuch aines Aufstiegs z'J.m
Sinn des Seins (Louvainl E. NauwelaertsJ Freiburg: Verlag Herder, 1950),
p. 12.
 4
Her enco!.lnter with Husserl and through him 'With phenomenology vas of
decisive influence on h~r life and thought. This meeting "vas doubtlessly
the one of most consequence, both intellectually and spiritually. Husserl's
philosophicf.l method vas the one method which could best prepare her to wel-
come the absolute fdld divine Other a.t the time of her conversion.. Hu.sserl's
exception~l influence seems to be due to the fact that he vas that very rare
philosopher who fully possessee the 'philosophic feith' and lives the philo-
sophical voe.tioD in all its fullness. u4
Iy is 8. striking fact that many of Husserl's students were led to ul-
timate decisions through their radical commitment to this vay of philoso-
phi zing. Conrad-Martius, herself one of these students, states tha.t in the
phenomenological circle the soil was prepared "for the knowledge of trans-
cendences, revelations, of divine things and of God himself, for ultimate
religious decisions ••• " The existence of the 'beyond' somehow influenced
all phenomenologists; they Buddenly realized the essence of thBt world,
as the essence of 80 many other things. 5 Phenomenology as a method of min-
ute descriptive analyses is IB8rk~ by an absolute objectivit1 and honesty.
These analyse. preps.re the way for the knollledge of things, the "intuition
of essences, II and consequen:bly for the knowledge of God. F'rom its very be-
ginning, this philosophical oriente.tion contnined a "longing to find 8 way
back to objectivity, to the sacredness of being, to the purity of things, to

4Jmdre Devaux, ttVocation in the Life and Thought of l'.:di th Stein, n

Philosophy TQday (1958), II, 173. .
5Conrad-Martius, p. 40.
 5
things themselves."6 Husserl, the master of phenomenology, did not himself
conquer subjectivism, but many of his students followed the original inten-
tion of the phenomenological school in its openness tow~rds objects, ulti-
mately leading to Being itself. The common search ot phenomenologists was
one for objective reality. Thus Hussed's withdrawal into subjectivism came
as a complete surprise and provoked unending discussion in the circle of his
students. Stein thinks that it was perhaps "this very opposition to the be-
ginnings of his new idealism, that pushed Husserl still further in the same
direction. n7 His students, however, had found in the phenomenological method
a kay to unlock reality and to penetrate to the essence of things.
The influence of Husserl is evident in the Whole of Edith Stein's phi-
l080phizing. Trying to elucidate the relationship of her ow investiga.tions
to Husserl's thinking, she admits that the extent of this influence can no
longer be delineated. Since Stein was his assistnnt in the preparation of
various publications, all his manuscripts were available to her. These manu-
scr~pta and the many conversations with Husserl offered a profound stimUlation
to Stein as a member of the phenomenological community, and she acknowledged
the decisive influence on her own works. 8
The only available information by Husserl about his assistant is his

6Franz 1:t11lig, "Edith Stein," Stimmen ~.Zd..t (Freiburg, 1949- cO ),

CXllXV, ~4.
7John M. Oesterreicher, 'WAAls At!. Crumbling (New York.1 The Devin-Adair
Company, 1952), p. 88.
gi · · ..
Edith Stein, "Beitrage zur Philosophischen Begrundung der Psychologie
unci der Gelsteswi8senschaften," J aQrbuch fUr Phllosophie tylJ phAAoIllenolo-
g~sche Forschung (Halle, 1922), V, 1-2.
a.ppreciation of her intellectual qualities and philosophical IDaturi ty, which
is evident in his recommendation of Stein for a teaching assignment to
Gottingen University. In that recommendation, he mentions the interest
roused among experts by Stein I s excellent doctoral dissertation on -empathy",
and the valuable cooperation she gave him in his work as academic teacher.
·For this purpose, she used to give philosophical courses which were atten-
ded not only by beginners, but ~~so by more advanced stuQents. The achieve-
ments of my LHusserl~ students in my own courses as well as their personal
testimony assured me of the excellent results of this cooperation. Dr.
Stein has gained a fa.r-reaohing as well as profounq. philosophical knowledge,
and is unquestionable well qualified for independent scholarly research and
teaching. n9 This statement of the master of phenomenology himself attests
the excellent philosophical qualities of Edith Stein, Which can be judged
and 4Ppreciated by her own writings.
As a phenomenologist, Stein discovered truth and found the fulfillment
of her search in the Catholic faith. It wae then that she entered the
world of Christian philosophy end was confronted with the problem of a pos-
sible synthlilsis between medieval and contemporary thinking. Her first con-
tact with the world of schole.sticism W8.S her reading of St. Thol'll~,s' GUlAestlg=-
.!l.U. D1souta,tae de Verlt§,te and the translation of this 'Work into the German
language. In her preface to the translation, Stein points out that this
.
direct confrontation with Thomistc thought was a necessary "Way for her to

9Husserl cited in Gra.ef, pp. ';.:6-2.7.

 7

penetrate into the world of Thomas. lo Grabmann su-tee in his introductory

comments that Stein possessee the qualities of a competent translator, who

can approach the study of scholastic thought from the perspective of modern

philosophy and thus contribute to the modern reader's understanding of St.

11
Thomss. This work is thus not an exact word by 'Word translation, but a

"transposition" into Stein's own way of thinking and the corresponding forms
12
of expreSSion after havingabsorbea and allim1b.ted the thought of Aquinas.

E.Przywara,S/J/ sees the value of such a transposition in the fact that it

intensifies the vi tali ty of Thomism, Thomistic thought must transcenc.t i t.8

traditional field of tension between Platonism-Augustinianism and Arlstote-

lianism in a confrontation wi tb contemporary thinking. Stein t s work enters

this path' "On every page it is Thomas ~nd only Thonllu" but in such a way

that he stands face to face with Husserl, Soheler, and Heidegger. The pbe-

nomenological vocabul&rly which E. Stein, as creative philosopher, can call

her own has nowhere taken the place of St. Thomas' langue-gea and yet, doors

open without effort between the two 'World.s. lll3 Also A. Koyrtt appreciates

the value of Stein's very original and yet very fai thtul transbtion as the

revelation of • 11nng Thomiems an enterprise which.i\ priQri he would have

lOThoma.s Aquinas, .Qu.1!J... Thomas ~ Aquino UnterBUC~f{en ~ i l i

YAhrheit, trans. Edith Stein (Louva1nl Fl. N6.uwelaerts, 1952, p. 7.

1~., pp. 5-6.

12
l..b1S.., p. 1",57.

15t1ThomAS von Aquien deutech", SUmmen ~~ (Freiburg, 1951), C.x.xr,

585-86.
 a
judged dangerous if not impossible, but which justifies it.self in its per-
fection and manifests such a thorough understanding of Thomism that the
Latin text becomes transpa.rent beneath the German. 14 Josef Pieper's evalu-
ation is somewhat more negative when he points out the difficulty "for a
mind trained in modern philosophy to grasp the fundamental ideas of an old
ontology."l5
For Edith Stein, these two philosophical worlds demanded a confronta-
tion. She made a first attempt to express their most obvious similarities
and differences in a comparison of the philosophies of Aqainas and Husserl. 16
Her greatest difficulty in understanding Thomas concerns his methods since
through her training in phenomenology she had been accustomed to attack
philosophical problems M..2m. she was •puzzled' before a procedure that
used the weight of authority to prove a point, namely passages from Scrip..
ture, quotations of the Fathers, or theses of ancient philosophers. But the
thorough study of St. Thomas convinced her that one SIn. arrive at the or-
ganon of Thomiatic basic concepts and theses by intercelating his various
works and thus discovering his world of thought, and especially by grasping
the reasons for his proceQure. Only to be conquered in such • way by Tho-
mae would mean to conquer him philosophically for oneself. 17

14nPhilosopbie Medi'vale", cited in UntereuqbunEen pp. 465-66.

11)
~Pieper cited in Graef, p. 52.

16Edi th Stein, "Husserl t s Pnanomenologie u.no die Phtlosophie des hl.

Thomas von Aquino", Festschrift, ~Husserl zum 8iebzigsten Geburtstag ge-
wid.met (Halle. Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1929).
l7stein, pp. 489-90. (References to "Stein" without further specifi-
cation concern her Endliches .l.Ul.d. EWiges ~ •
 9
This positive approach requires an openness to Truth, a ~llingnes8 to
rearch for truths wherever they can be found end to conquer them ~tep by

step. ~ith Stein is looking for a "transhistorical" truth, 88 opposed to

Przyvarats attempts to follow the innerhistorical laws of philosophical de-
velopment. Her training inclined her to a "direct rethinking of the matter
in its theoretical immediacy, with history playing a minor role." These
different approaches to the same problem manifest different attitudes of mind
all of which oan contribute to the gradual disoovery of tranehistorical
1S
truth. This also clarifies her understanding of ghil;gsOpbi' Qerennil 88

the spirit of philosophizing that lives in every true philosopher, one who
"is unresistably driven by an inner necessity to seek after the logos or
ratio of this world. ,,19
Edith Stein's approach requires the "return to things" that Heidegger
demanded ~s a foundation for philosophy. She entered soholasticism. through
phenomenology. Whim she came to know the metaphysics of St. Thomas, her
restless mind searched for a possible synthesiS between the modern intuition
of essences (Wesensschau) ana the old ontology (Seinslehre). Her major phi-
losophioal work, Endliohes.J.m.$l Enge,~, manifests her concern w1 th su.ch
a fusion. Long WAS the way from the atheist to the C4rme11te philosopher,
but it was this way to Being that gave meaning to her lite and to her think-
ing. E. Stein's life And death are a witness to the truth, and her thinking

lSJa.mes Collins, nRev~w of Fqdlicp,es ~ E1--riges~, Modern Sc4ool-

man (St. Louis, 1951-52), XlIX, l./.,Oj Stein, pp. 1-1I.
19Stein, "Husserl's Pbanomenologie", p. 516.
 10

gives testimony to the philosophical foundations of her approach to God.

This approach to God is an attempt to ascend to t.he meaning of being,
a commitment to a. search that ldll transcend the boWldarie.s of fini tenees
and thus attain the Infinite. The quest for being is as old as philosophy
itself, the most obvious and yet the most obscure philoeophi&al question.
Heidegger presents this problem as one that has been obscured by imposing
philosophical systems, but now must be restated and rediscovered by contem-
porary thinking. 20

The question of being seemed to Edith Stein the oentral problem th4t
could bring together the medieval system of thought, apparently closed upon
itself, and the modern way of thinking, open and living. Realizing the
tremendous gap between a Christian philosophy in the traditional senss as
related to revelation and faith, and the modern philosophy as becoming an
autonomous science, Stein considered the return to a conceln with being in
both of these apparently unreconcilable philosophical orientations as a sign
that the study of being alone could harmonize two such different ways of
philosophizing. In the beginning of the twentieth century, both thomistic
and modern philosophy were engaged in a vi tal renewal. Thomism began to be
considered 48 a living structure, promising to come to new life in contem-
por~ry Catholic thinking. Modern philosophy, on the other hanel, direeted
its renewed efforts towards that-whicb.is (Se~§Qges) in the philosophy of
essence of Husserl and Scheler, and the philosophy of existence of Heidegger

20 •• ( ••
Martin Heidegger, .§.W..l:!.illi lill., Achte unverenderte Aufiage Tubingena
Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1957), *1, pp. 2-15.
 11
and H. Conradr-Martiue. ll.d1 th Stein met the challenge of b possible fusion
by her o~ development of an ontology in which both directions of t~ing

should find a plaoel in which the phenomenological approach end especially

the language make it accessible to modem thinkers, but in which the fun-
damental principles of Thomistic philosophy are maintained and jU6tified t
This ontology presented in Endliche§ ..y.w! Ewiges ~ acquires i te full
impact only in comparison to Martin Heidegger's ontology -- • quest for
being which limits itself to such an extent to an analysis of human existence
that the Mlne.ss of being can never be attained. E. Stein received a strong
impression from Heideggerts early philosophy and treats the differences in
their respeotive ontologies in several comments which "foreshadow the very
problems that Heldegger bas been med! tat1ng upon in subseq\lent years ••• as
~)l

though his latest period were dictated by her searching questions."~

Nothing is known about a possible influence of Stein on Heidegger.

Stein, however, mentions their personal acquaintanoe, since Heideggerts
approach to phenomenology came about wbile she was the assistant of Husserl.
For her, this was the first encounter with Heidegger's world of thought.
She read ~ .l.m.9. ~ shortly after ita publication and. was deeply impressed
by it. without being able at that time "to come to tel'tllB" with his thought.
While working on her own ontology she became aware of the similarities be-
tween Heidegger's and her own approach to the l.l1ea."ling of being. The exten-
sive notes commenting on Heidegger's philosophy show her deep concern for

21Collins, p. 145.
a detailed comparison of these two attempts at clarifyins the meanini of
22
being. Only the comments on Heidegger make the reader realize -that there

is need for bringing about an underst.anding between Heidegger and Aquinas,

25
as well as between Hasserl and Aquinae.· For Stein, time is the distin-

guishing mark of finite being, and this approach is paraliel to Heideggert e

preoccupation. 'With the temporal character of finite DApein. Such $. par&l-

lelism can be drawn since Heidegge;rt $ Dapein and Stein f s Self or £go refer

to the same reality, namely to the finite human existence, to men considered
under the perspectives of two ways of philosophizing. Stein opposes Hei-

dagger's contention that t.ime provides the means to grasp being by the 8.sser-

tion that being rather gives significance to time. Stein thus offers a

fundamental challenge to Heidegger, which at the same t.ime is all challenge to

all philosophy without Goda can finite being remain closed upon itself or

22Stein, p.m.
E. Stein added t.n appendix on Heidegger's Exis!rentialphilosophie
to the manuscript of her work. Unfortunately, this Appendix has not yet

been published because of technic.al difficulties. It would have been help-

ful for this study, Since, <!}.ccording to ~ comment by the l)ublishers of l!..
Stein's Wet'" it summarizes in the form of quotations those thoughts of
Heidegger which Stein then discusses and evaluates in the light of her own
philosophizing. It must be noted, however, that Stein is only concerned with
the early vri tinge of Heidegger. Hence the development of his ontology De
evi4ent in .Qn. HuawD1 em is not oone1d.ered in tbis investigation.
Trying to get Information concerning the availability of the Heidegger
Appendix, the writer of this thesis received notice from Er. L. Gelber, Archi
viet at the Husserl Arcbi ves in Louvain and co-eel! tor of St,ein' as mdJ,lches
..1Yl.Q. Emge, ~1 TlliI.T Tllli M.l!.NTIONED Appendix on Heidegger's Existentie,lphi-
.QsoPh1e will be published in Vol. VI of Stein's Verke. now being prepared
for publication in the course of 1961. The work is being done by the "Arcbi-
TUm Carmelitanum Edith Stein" in Louvain, Belgium, Maria-Theresiastraat, 94.

25
Collins, p. 145.
 15
must it transcend its limitations and thus find its roots in Infinite and
Eternal Being?24 The whole philosoph1 of Edith Stein will be L~ ansver to
this problem. The question of the meaning of being is ultimately the ques-
tion of man's approach to. God, which in the case of Stein is answered posi-
tively, an~ in the c~se of Heidegger negatively or at least hesitatingly.
But this problem is the basic one for man's life, and it was chosen as the
topic for this study because Edith Stein's philosophical approach to G~

provides a vay that might be a bridge between contemporary phenomenological

and existentialist thinking and the traditional proofs for the existence of

God.
Edith Stein's total commitment to Being is obvious. In its personal
an~ philosophical aspects, such commitment may assist others in that search
which every man has to pursue and to solve in some form or other in his own
life. Thus any philosopher's search for being is an implicit search for God.
A quotation from a letter of Husserl to Edith Stein is illuminatingl ••••
man's life is nothing but a journey towards God. I have tried to attain the
end without the aid of theology, its proofs and methods. In other words,
I wanted to reach God without God. I had to eliminate God from my scienti-
fic thought, in order to open the way to those who do not know him as you do,
by the sure road of faith, passing through the Church ••• I am conscious of
the danger that such a method ent~ils, and. of the risk: that I vould have
taken had I tel t myself deeply bound to God, and Christian in the depth of
 14
my heart ••• • 2; This note from the hand of the master of phenomenology him-
self seems to indichte a trait of more than personal relevance. It could
apply to any philosopher who 1s asking the question for the meaning of ~eing

w1 thout considering the ultimate reality of God. It Edith Stein in her phi-
losophical analyses eventually arrives at the fullness of Being, then only
her faith and her conviction allow her to identify Being with the personal
and living God, involving a leap beyond an abyss that cannot be explained
by philosophy alone. Philosophical investigations can find an answer in the
quest for the meaning of being} they can penetr~te to the Pure Act and the
Cause of contingency. But the identification of this First Principle with
the Christian Go~ of Revelation necessitates faith. This necessity is also
evident in the Thomistic proofs for the existence of God, where Aquinas rea-
sons to an Unmoved Mover, a first efficient and necessary Cause, a most
perfect Being. 26 But the recognition of this Principle as "God" cannot be
achieved by philosophy alone.
In relation to Stein's approaeh, Heidegger's p~alysis of humEm existence
may be a means "to open the way to Being to those who do not know him," ret
as Husserl also recognized, it is ~n extremely dangerous one. Edith Stein
also recognized this danger 8lld realized that philosophy is e. "continu..eous
walking along the brink of the abyss, n th4t every moment of philosophizing
is one of the. greatest responsibility for someone who has taken Ilpon himself

25Husserl cited in Henri Bordeaux, ¥ai~h Steip, Thoughts on her Life

and Times, trans. Gallagher (Milwaukee, The Bruce Publishing Company,1959),p.
26I111 I,2,3c.
 15
the search for truth. In his search, the philosopher may come "terribly
close to the untrue, for only a knife's edge divides it from the true. But
though he may fall into error, darkness, "md despair, he may come, on the
other hand, to know philosophy's insufficiency and his own, and thus be cap.-
tured by the living 004. 027

27
Stein cited in Oesterreieher, pp. 533-54.
 CHAPTl!at II

T~ORAL LIMITATION OF FINITE BEING

The very placing of the question of being already implies a certain
pre-ontological knowledge of being. Diverse paths may be chosen tovsrds
the attainment of the goal of this quest. "It matters little," says Mari-
tain, "whether the intuition of being resemble the innate gift of an impe-
rial intelligence serenely relying upon its limpid strength •• oJ whether,
a~ternatively, it spring unexpectedly like a kind of natural grace at the
sight of a blade of grass or a Windmill, or at the sudden perception of the
reality of the Self••• ; whether I make my way towards it by inner experience
of duration, or of anguish, or of certain moral realities which transcend
the flow of time - these alternatives, I repeat, are of slight moment •••
what counts is to have seen that existence is ••• a primi ti ve datum for the
mind itself ••• nl Even though these alternatives be of slight moment, there
is reason enough to give preference to one's o~ existence rather than that
of things as the point of departure in ibis quest, because of the peculiar
and unique relationship that the inquiring subj ect has to his own being.

It is something inescapably close to man, and whenever 1n his search for

truth he inquires into the possibility of an indubitably certain starting
point, he is brought back to "the fact of his own existence" (gj,s Tatsache

IJaoquea Karitain, Existence and the Existent, trans. Galanti're and

Phelan (New York. Image Books, 1956), pp. 30-31.
16
 17

In chooeing this starting point, Edith Stein followed the great tra-
dition of introspection as the primary mode of knowledge, which discerned
the most certain truth in man's own existence. She explicitly mentions
St. Augustine, Descartes, and liusserl in the line of her predecessors. St.
Augustine said about the fact of our own life that "in regard to this ••• we
are absolutely without any fear lest perchance we are being deceived by some
resemblance to the truth, dnce it is certain, that he who is deceived,
yet lives ••• The knowledge by which ve know that we live is the most in-
ward of all knowledge •••• 5
~hen Descartes many hundre~ years later applied the universal doubt
to all his previouB knowledge in order to establish a sure founqation for
the edifice of philosophy, the very fact of doubting and thus of thinking
resisted the doubt. Together with the cogitg he ~escued the sum from the
uncertainty of doubt, and 88 clear £llld distinct idea could make it the
first principle of his Philosophy.4
In a similar way, Edmund l:Iusserl required a suspension of judgment,
~ epogh&, towards everything man simply accepts in his "natural attitude".
This suspension extends to the existence of the natural world as well as

2Ste:1n, pp. 54-55.

3
St. Augustine, "On the Trinity", Basic Writings ~ Augustine, ad.
Whitney J. Oates (New Yorka R~~dom House, 1948), XV,12, p. 349.
~, Descartes, UMeditations on Firat Philosophy-, Phi~osoPh1eal
~.sU: Descartes, trans. E. Heldane and G/F/T/HosS (Dover ublic&tions,
1955), I, p. 150.
 18
to the validity of science referring to it. Thus for HUGserl, only the
field of oonsoiousness remained for investigation& it is unimportant vhether
the thina peroeived exist in outside reality or not; but the perception as
such and thus the peroei ver cannot be denied. 5 An "I am" can thus be dis-
cerned in the "life" of Augustine, in the "I think" of Descartes, and in the.
"being oonsoious" of HUBserl. 6 There is no need for a syllogistio reasoning
process to oonclude to the certainty of one's o~ existence, but this exist-
enoe is known 'With directness and immediacy. It is the only apodlctioallr
oertain truth end mirrors the description that Husserl gs.ve to "e.pod!otic
evidence'" not only implying the certitude of the existenoe of something,
but also the absolute inoonoeivability of its non-existenoe and therefore
excluding in advanoe all imaginable doubt as meaningless.? Such QD 8podic-
tic evidence only applies to the ~cQgito as the realm on which every
radical philosophy must be founded. 8
From the phenomenological school, Edith Stein holds the necessity to
suspend juc1gment about the total. existenoe of the natural world. In oons1-
dering "consciousness" as the primary awareneSS of the fact of one t & own
being, she bases her quest for being upon a genuine and true reflection on

5Edmund Husserl, ldeen..ill einer rein en PbAAomenologie .Y!l.2. PMnomenolo-

GISCHEN Philosoph1g I, hers. Valetr Biemel (Ha&gIMartinus Nijhoff, 1950),
* 51-52, pp. 65-69.
6
Steln, pp. 55-56.
7Edmund Husserl, Cartesionische M'd1t8ttonen ~ Parlser Vortrage, hers.
Dr. S. Strasser (HaaglMartinus Nljboff, 1950 , *6, p. 56.
8~., *8, p. 58.
 19

~ante existence. His own being is eo~th1ng closest and most certain to
man in an inner experience, presented to his consciOQsness by a most origi-
nal (uxsPrUnglich) knowledge. This knowledge has neither a priority of time
nor of being over the knowledge of the external world. Evidently it is not
first in time, for the "naturalft attitude and inclination of man is directed
toward the external world, and it often takes 9. long time to find snd know
oneself. Also it is not first in the sense of a principle from which all
other truths might be deduced logically. But this knowledge i$ ~n intuitive
awareness that gives "unreflected" certitu.de, conSisting in that thinking
by which the mind comes out of its originai attitude towards objects in or-
der to look upon itself. 9
Tbe knowledge of one's own existence is not derived from introspection
in the traditional sense of the term - it is not an l'tCt subsequent to the
act of existing, but it is a certainty lived in the act of existing itself.
This approach to the mystery of existence is common to contemporary pheno-

meno1ogy& "What has happened in recent phenomenology is the intensive deve-

lopment of that germ of self-consciousness which we exercise not after the
act rof ex1stinil, but in the very act as it proceeds. I t is only by dwel-

ling on this self-consciousness and by bringing it to expression that we

may come to know existence a8 it is in the act."lO Thus the impossibility

9Stein. p. 36.
lOJohn Wild, "Contemporary Phenomenology and the Problem of ~xistence,fl
Philosgphy and Phen0lAenglogigal Research (Buffalo, 1959), XX, 16'3.
 20

of expounding a set of rules of bow to achieve this awareness is evident.

E. Stein emphasizes the necessity of the reader's willingness to follow in an
analysis of existence and to apply it to his own life ~here it will become
an existential experience. Thu.s self-knovledge is opposed to the contempla-
tion of a "self-point- &s an opaque entity. It implies something of that
illuminative transparency of human existence which fieidegger triee to cap-
ture in his analysis of naseiP.ll Man does not obtain a genuine existential
knowledge without being personally involved in the mystery and aware of exist
ence as Dever-mineJ" This knowledge is not an objective theory about oneself,
but a necessary part of one's being, of which man becomes aware in every
genuine reflection upon his act of existing. Wild points out the importance
of such an existential knowledge for the growth of philosophy.
This primordial type of awareness and the life-world 'Which it
directly reveals ha.ve been neglected in our traditional philosophy
for the sake of that clarity and distinctness which comes only 'With
objective reflection. From this it was hoped that existential cer-
tainty might be achieved. But this hope has been disappointed. The
rationalist attempt to base all knowledge on clear and distinct ideas
8lld principles has ended only in chaos and doubt. Perhaps the time
has come at last when we shall reverse this procedure, returning to
our lived experience which reveals itself only vaguely, but with di-
rectness and certainty. From this concrete starting point we may then
prooeed to achieve a certain clarity without loosing I,-rtainty. "
This is the goal of what is now called phenomenology. .

Edith Stein chooses the same path) for her, the awareness of onets ovn act
of existing is the startinl point par gcellepce for an ascent to the meaning
of being.

llHeidegger, *' 31, p. 146.

12Wild, p. 180.
 21

Directing his reflection upon hie existence, man is confronted with the
peculiArity of his own being. He reoognizes it as a "now" between a "no
longer" and 8 "not yet", as an aotuali ty lim ted to 8. single moment, as a.
contingency inseparable from time. But this presently-aet~al being 1s not
thinkable as an isolated event -- as the point is not thinkable without a
line and the moment not without a duration of time. A "before" and "after"
are part of the existential awareness; they are not part of the fullness of
present actuality, yet are not simply nothing. Man!$ aot of existing is
like the highest point of a wavel a point that presents itself as something
ooming out of darkness, passing for a moment through e ray of light and sink-
ing back into darkness. The wave itself is part of the Whole stream of man's
existence that continually attains a highest point. At this momentary height
of actuality, man's being resembles being-se-such that transcends all tempo-
ral ehange. 13 It touches eternal being (eternal in the sense of tlmlporal
infinity14) and achieves its own limited actuality only through a partici-
pation in an unchangeable actuality. This participation is "punctual", for
it is possible only at the highest point of the wave and implies the con-
tingency of man's being by reason of this pwnctuality. Yet the same punctu-
al partiCipation establishes a relationship between man's finite being and

8. stable being beyond temporal limi tatton, a relationShip 'Which groun<.1s the
possibility of the analogi&. entis. In a single point, a limited reality
touches an unlimited one; human existence as a limited being shares in
timeless actUality and from there derives its own height of life.

13Stein, pp. 37-38.

 22
This punetuel.ity constitutes the Unow" of humt.m existence, a ususpension
between not-being and being.".15 The fully-actual present is the foundation
of time, which thus can be understood only from the perspective of the -now,"
of that point which gives reality to a transience.
Past and future c~~not participate in this actuality of the present rna-

mant, yet the present is not possible without these dimensions of time which
as possibilities seem to cause a certain breadth of existence. Man holds the
past and future aspects of his being in the form of memory and expectation
wi thin his reach and thus obtains the image of an enduring being which fills
the dimensions of past and future. 16 But this breadth is a deceiving one,
While in reality man's being stands on the edge of a knife. Stein relies on
the analyses of Conrad-Martius in order to emphasize the contrast between the
phenomenal breadth and the factual. punctual actuality of man f s existence. 17
Past and future seem to constitute dimensions from which enduring being
could arise and into which it could sink back, but in reality they do not
contain and guard enduring being, they do not offer what they seem to pro-
mise. IS The Montic birth place of timeR lies in the "fully-actual present,"
in the fact that" actual existence ••• is a mere touch With being ••• in a
point", presenting something giy~ at the same time a8 something received. 19

15H• Conrad-Martius, "Die Zeit," PhilosQPAbsoher AGzei~er (1927-28),

cited in Stein, p. 39.
16Stein, p. 38.

17l:t4.si., pp. 38-39.

18l.l;D"g., p. ~9.
19.il?J..g..
 25
What appears as enduring being is only the continual passing of the place
where the communication between a tinite act of existing &nd existence
without qualification is accomplished. This passage is the existential
movement that constitutes time as its "space,· that constitutes the ·present W
in its punctual actuality. 20 The existential movement posits the past and
the future 88 "empty dimensions" in and through the present, for it is a
movement out of something into something, a movement which continually at-
tains a height in the present moment but as movement is always in a state of
transi tion. In ~ sense, being is forever 8 becoming snd never attains a
state of rest. It needs time. The position of the present which is to be
renewed constantly in this existential movement presupposes a formal dimen-
sion in whioh a place can be found. it necessi tatas a future which can be-
come present and a'past which succeeds the present.'the progression of time
lies in this constant advancing of actuality. The center around which every-
thing else gravitates is the passing present. 21 The similarity of Stein's
analyses to the Aristotelian notion of time is obvious. Alao Aristotle
recognized the importanoe of the pres0nta time is both ~de continuous by
22
the 'now' and divided at it. If time is considered as a continuous res.ll-
ty, as a deceiving breadth by reason of the dimensions of past and future.
then it nevertheless is clear that "the 'now' is the link of time" in its

.20~.

~., pp. 59-40.

22Aristotle,PhysiQS, Elk. IV, Ch. 11, 220a, 5, ~ Basic Works .2l
Aristotl.,ed. Richard McKeon (New York' Random House, 1941), p. 295.
capacity of connecting the past and the f~ture.25
Since the present alone i8 able to reveal being, Stein's philosophi-
zing is centered arolmd the present. In a striking parallelism of the phi-
losophical investigation into the relationship between being and temporality,
Martin Heidegger considers this very present as the mark of greatest un.u-
thenticity, indicating the "fall" away from the Self, the forlornness of
the individual in an impersonal collectivity, the concern with vorld and
others. 24 For Heidegger, the future constitutes that aspect, of time which
alone gives authenticity to Disela by providing t~o8e existential possibili-
ties that contribute to Dase;1n t I capaci tl to reveal being. This future im-
plies a projection into possibility, a Dasein which is already-ahead-of-
itself and thus can exist in its -total capacity_to_be. n25 Yet in spite of
the different emphases on Heidegger's future and Stein's present, both seem
to imply a "going-ahead-I Hetdegger tries to capture the fullness of h~man

existence by the projected project which is better able to reveal being it

it is as to tali ty held out into nothingness. Stein cannot deny the fact of
contingency which also the future does not eliminate, yet she achieves
man's punctual communality with being only through a continual ftpushing_
ahead," through the constant advance of actuality which constitutes a new
present. 26 For her, human existence can never be projected as a totality,

23~., Ch. 13, 222a, 10, p_ 296.

24Heidegger, * 38, p. 175.
25~., * 55, p. 264.
26 Stein, p. 40.
 25

but aDly within the existential movement as a temporally limited capacity-

to-be.
In his punctual existenoe, man finds himself "already-in-the-world,"
thrown into his particular spatio-temporal situation. Since both ~ atti-
tude of questioning and a oomprehension of being are proper to him, his na-
ture implies a desire to know the reasons for his existential situation
(his being-in-the-world or being-there, a state in which one finds oneself
wi thout having made a choice, an unauthentic "there" which still must be made
an authentic tlhere".) Heidegger, blinding himself to the facts of contingen-
cy, finds that any inquiry for the "whence" and "whereto" is unnecessary,
since man cannot penetrate behind the lI18.tter-of-factness of hie being-there.
Thus an inquiry into causality would not clar~fy man's existential situation.
Edith Stein, however, having reoognized the narropmess and limitation of
human existenoe in its mere punctual actuality, sees the need for investiga-
tions transcending a contingent punctuality in order to achieve a first di-
mension of duration on her way to the attainment of being in its fullness.
Theprima.ry step toward such a duration is the act of a.wareness i teelf,
which builds up beyond the present moment to a"unit of experiences. p Al-
though a punctual actuality was found in one's Ol.'ll being, yet an ex;>erience-
uni t forms a 'Whole which in some 'Way is actual as a whole. 'I'he meaning of
such an enduring unit plays ~~ import(~t role in the fiscent from finite to
Infinite Being. At this stage of the inqairy, it gives a broader scope to
the constantly passing actuality of being by holding together apparently un-
related moments of being or points of touching existence. Since a. whole
unit of experience is encompassed from the present moment, it gives a new
 26
duration to msn l a punctual being.
Stein concludes to this duration by an analysis of that mental activity
which is present-actual right nowl -m thinlCing, the reflect.ion 01:1 the
question of being. u27 This activity has already endured for some time and
will continue to endure until 8 different mental activity will be eagssed in,
or until a Budden sense-impression from the external world will bring this
specific thinking actlvi ty to an end. Throughout the dura.tion, this mental
activity constitutes a whole, a unit wbich grows out of man'a 11fe end
'fills· a duration of time. 28

An analysis of the stream of consciousness is necessary for the recog-

nition of the significance of experience-units. Such an analysis might at

first seem to be a psychological procedure which has no legitimate place
in an ontology. Yet Edith Stein distinguishes her own approach from a stric
ly psychological one. According to her, psychology is exclusively concerned
with psychic events man finds in his mental world, whereas phenomenology en-
gages in a reflective meditation and thereby recognizes the natural world
in its correlation to human consclousness. 29 A psychologicsl analysis is
confined to static facts within the closed world of immanence, whereas a
phenomenological analysis considers such "facts· as referring beyond them-
selves, as implying the vital relationship to the world of existing things

27lW ., p. 42 •
28~.J cf. note 28.
29Stein, "Beitrage,· p. 5.
 27
and the world of essences. Since Stein accepts the basic phenomenological
thesis of the "intentional object-intending nature of our experience,· she
is able to show hoy 8 descriptive analysis of the life of consciousness ~

be used for metaphysical and ontological purposes without violating the

reality of the material world. 30 The advantage of ber own phenomenological
approach is a manifestation that one S!A start 8 quest for being from one's
own existential awareness without being confined to one's own punctual being;
that a breadth cen be achieved by proceeding from the chosen starting polnt;
that the rich variety of beings (existents independent of human existenoe
as well as essential beings) ~ be att~ined in a genuine phenomenological
ahalysisc that it lies in the true nature of immanence to relate to trMB-
cendenee, that the self known with immediacy and existential certainty is
able to reveal this transcendence.
The original stream of consciousness is a movement of pure becoming in
which the different phases of experiencing flow into one another. Within
this stream, units are formed by the fact that a variety of contents suo-
ces8ively occupies the life of the Ego, a joy, a fear, an aot of thinkins,
an act of perceiving ••• A unit is constituted 8S soon as no new phases
within the same frame of referenoe are added to the preceding phase. The
stream of experience is continuous as a whole, for new phases are added and
li veel phases are rescued from an engulfing pa.st by being consti tilted as
possibility for memory. Particular experiences may be added either in a tem-
poral. sequence, or they mEty occur simlll taneol.J.sly and thus provide a multiple

30
CoUins, p. 141.
fulfillment of one single moment. 51 On the other si~e, the continuity ot
32
the one stream is safeguarded since it proceeds from one Ego.
The units within this stream are fully-living and thus actual for 8

limited duration of time. A whole unit is conceived as present, past, or

future. Yet how can 8 whole unit be considered as npresentn and thus trans-
cend the punctual actuality of the present moment, since all fullness of
55
being lies only in the punctual present? The reality of such units that
are built up in the movement of mants living being and have need of time for
their full constitution cannot be denied. They are englobed from the pre-
sent and thus are enabled to participate to a certain degree in actuality
By the fact that one aspect of a unit reaches the height of being. 34

The activities of thinking, of writing, of being joyful, of being sad,

of loving ••• could ell be taken a.s examples of experience-units that are
constituted in the continuous stream within a definite duration. Aa unit,
each one of these activities is at a certain time actual in regard to other
similar activities that then belonged already to the past or still to the
future. It is not, however, actual in its totality, since in a strict sense
only the act! vi ty of the "now ft attains the fullness of reality and life.
But the "now" is an indivisible moment and immediately sinks back into the

31Stein, "Be! trage ft , p. 8.

321,W., p. 11; cf. chap. III.
33Stein, p. 1.3.

34.I.:b1S ., p • 45.
 29
past. The life of the Ego appears aa a contin~ous living-out-of-the-past-
into-the-future; potential aspects become actual, and actual aspects sink
back into potentiality; that which is not yet fuUy-living reaches the

height of life, and full life becomes "lived life", the future becomes pre-
sent and the present becomes past. How then can a duration&! unit reach
beyond the moment, how can it -- as something-which-is -- extend from the
past through the present moment into the future and thus provide the content
for a duration of time1 Z5 No being is possible in the empty dimensions of
the past and of the future, yet a complete durational unit may be conceived
as present even if it is not fully-living in its total extension, but in a

living process of becoming participates in s~cce8sive actuality.~6

When a partial aspect of a unit reaches the height of beins, the total
unit participates in this present actuality. Thus the lDode of being of the

whole un! t derives from the character of punctual actuality which belongs
to something. to my fear of a bad news, to my reflection on the question of
being. This something which looses its character of present-actuality by
becoming "past", constitutes the content for 1.\ particular experience and is
essential for its unity and its actuillity as totality. 57 Both the object of
an experience and the experiencing Ego condition the content of a unit to a

certain extent; they are necessa.ry for l:l.Il experience and yet transcend it. 58

5,.!h.19._, p. 43.

~~.
~7Ibid., p. 45; cf. chap. IV, p. 4~
5a~., pp. 45-46.
 50

The pure content "fear" or "'joyll, however, derives from a sphere indepen-
dent of man's own being; it gives intelligibility to &n experience and ex-
tends the punctual actuality to a breadth that permits to advance in the
quest for the meaning of being.
The investigation has shown that mants being is a continuous motion
and stands in extreme opposition to a changeless actuality. The thinkers
of ancient Greece tried to solve this dilemma by confining real being either
to a contillLUU. flux and thus to becoming (Heracli tue), or to the eterne.l-
changeless being (Parmenides). But the encompassing communality between be-
coming an~ being, the ;nalogia entis, is eviqenced by the fact that becoming
cannot be separated from being, because it is the transition to being and
as such is determined through being.~9 The continuous becoming and passing
away which man experiences in himself, points beyond i teelf. It strives
toward being, yet touches it only from moment to moment. But it is in this
present-actual communality with an unchanging height of actuality beyond
temporal limitations that m~ls existence already reveals the "idea of true
Being", the eternally changeless, the pure Act. 40

39·~
11...:;" rl ... p- 44.•
p

40ll:l1si.
 CHAPTER III

LIMITATION OF THE EGO

Already in the discussion of durational units, the experiencing Ego
was introduceq as 8 factor that is necessary for an experience and yet traGa-
cenda it. l An investigation of the eminence and limitation of t his Ego will

contribute to the progress in the aseent to the meaning of being. As basic

for a variety of passing experiences, the Ego constitutes a further step
in the attempt to go beyond the punctual actual! ty of contingent being.
Stein calls this ~go ~th Husserl the "pure I": that which possesses
an immediate consciousness of an object or an aetion in the very aot of ex-
periencing. Husserl considers this I as "pure I and nothing else," 2 which,
as long as it is, remains the same. The I lives in every "I perceive, I
conclude, I think, I desire," and is directed upon the object of perc:eption,
thought, or desire. As belonging to every experience, the Ego's life is the
stream in which experience-units are continually constituted. "The I lives,
and this lite is its being ...5 The stree,m of life is thus identical with the
stream of being; the punctual actuality of the "now" is enlarged by reason
of an underlying factor (the Ego) which is living and self-identical in

1
ct. Chap. II, p. 29, note 38.
2
Stein, p. 46; ct. Husserl, Ideen ••• II, pp. 97-104.
5
lW., p. 47.
51
every "now". Living out of the past into the future, the I continually
brings forth new life and carries along past life. 4 For it engages in nw
acts of experiencing and thus brings experience-units 'Wi thin i te O'h'!l 11fe-
stream. Sinoe this stream is one of enduring being, experience-units par-
tioipate in being by entering this stream. The self-identical E,O 15 thus
being in anatdnent way. It is related to its experiences 8.S the holder to
that which is held, the carrier to that which is carried,5 and henoe 115
capable of making durational units participate in its ow actuality. This
manifests the greatness of the I as t.he "radiating-point of pure experien...
6
oing." Floating along in its own life-stream, t.he I is able to "open its
spiritual vision lt and to direct itself to something outside of this stream,
which then enters the View of the Ego and by this directive activity beoomes
7
an object. This reminds of the Kantian A priori forms, the subject.ive ele-
ment that colors and to some extent constitutes reality. But Stein does not
hold an essential dependence of the known object on the knower; she bases
her position on the Husserlian intentionality which does not constitute a
reality as object, but makes an independent entity meaningful to the knower
by bringing it into his own realm of experience. This is achieved by "open"::
ing the Vi sian" of the Ego and taking an 0 b.1 ect in to its vi ew, which thus
acquires significance for the experiencing pereon.

4Stein, It Beitrage," p. 11.

5
Stein, p. 47•
6
Stein, "Bei trage, II p. 20.
7
~., p. 34·
 Stein t s Ego does not have the static character of Husserl t S "pure pt,
but possesses a vitality that is increased by additions from "outside."
The I is not confined to its own little world of immanent activity, but is
able to relate itself to the whole material and spiritual world. It becomes
obvious at this point that the choice of the Self 813 starting point 1n the
quest for 'being does not throw consciousness back upon 1 teelf, but that it
leaves the way open for a genuine ontology and for intersubjective commu-
nity.8 This possibility of extending the search for trut.h from the micro-
cosm of individual consciousness into the ma.crocosm of things and persons
is safeguarded by the ,~irit of objectivity that was described earlier as
characteristic of the phenomenological method. 9 The analysis of conseious-
ness does not necessarily lead into an extreme subj ecti vism, al though the
tendency might be strong as exemplified by Husserl himself. For tclith Stein,
such a tendency lost all its attraction, since her main purpose of phtloso-
phizing was the quest for being, 8 quest which legitimately may start from
man's own existence, but if genuine never remains confined to the limitations
of this perticular existence.
The greatness of the Ego consists in the fact that "its being is pre-
sently-actual at every moment of this life."lO This discovery throws light
on the actuality that experience-units attain in the successive moments of

s'or a phenomenological analysis of community, see ~., ~weite Ab-

handlung "Individuum. ~d Gemeinschaft", pp. 117 ff.; .b:dith Stein "bine Un-
tersuehung uber den Staat", Jahrbuch VII, pp. 1-123. ",~, S To 1\1 ~
~"'!l", t:. ~
9 ~ ~ ,~
cf. chap. I, p. 4. V LOYOL II ;

lOStein, p. 47•
their "touch" with existence, for the whole stream of experience is englobed
by the life and thus the being of the !go. The enduring actuality of the
Ego's being provides the possibility for a temporal duration of experience-

units. Thus the "past" does not Simply fall back into nothingness, and the
"future" iAalready in a certain way before reaching the height of life in
the present. ll The grasp of the Ego holds that which 1s past and stretches

out toward that which is coming} it is encompassing ift the true sense of
the word and grounds the po8sib111 ty of a "retentional It and a "protentional"
12
mode of existing. The Ego has the capacity to live a past experience over

again, to step back into the past. But since being is ultimately bound up
With the present, the Ego iA only in the present moment. Yet it holds a

passed reality still Within its spiritual grasp and has the freedom to repeat
1'!Z:
what paten tially is wi thin this grasp. v

The vitality of the Ego does not embrace everything that belongs to it

to the same degree. It experiences differences in intenSity as well &13 a

temporality-bound vitality. The Ego's life extenQs through a successive
duration, but only "as long as it is ...14 Thus the endurIng £go or Self is

seen in a different perspective, what previously might have resembled a

psychologicu horizon 15 recedes in favor of en ontological one. With the

11
~., p. 48.
12
1,bj,g., note 35, referring to Husserl, ttVorlesungen zur Phllosophle des
inn ern ZeitbewuBstseins."
151.Q1.g., p• 49.
14.w..d. , p. 50.
15 cf. chap.
II, p. 26.
 55
Ego, the search for the meaning of being has reached a critical point. At
a first glance, this Self seems to contain the fullness of being: it is
always actual, even if past and future are only potentially in it. Should
this be the ultimate step in the quest for being? Should the Self contain
the plenitude of being and thus the power to make experiences participate in
its own being?
At this point, a reflection upon the .Ego in its relation to the past
redirects the search for the meaning of being and manifests the Ego t 5 in-
sufficiency. The Self can go back: in thoughts and memories, yet its free-
dom in this reflection is not unlimited. There are interruptions in the
stream that the Self is unable to bridge, there are empty spans of time in
which it net ther finds anything to be "represented" nor i taelf. Such an

emptiness might be a lack of memory, but also a dreamless sleep, a state of

unconsciousness. was the Ego's being interrupted at that time?16 Further-
more, the stream of experience is neither clearly recognized 88 li~ited nor
as unlimited. In its reflection on the past, the Ego comes to a horizon of
obscurity_ It does not penetrate to a clear beginning. The question for
such a beginning and also for a possible end is not ans~ed ~ i~m6diate ex-
perlance. The Self has become aware of emptiness at various points of its
own being, and the existential question arises whether it comes out of no-
thing, whether it goes into nothing, whether the abyss of nothingness can
open at any moment. 17

l6stein, pp. 50-51.

17Ibid ., p. 51.
 The trans1torineas of man's being becomes obvious. It is emmnent being
in comparison to the experience-units, and yet it reveals its own finiteness.
The Ego' 6 life haa need, of contents vi thout which it is empty. For these
contents, it depends on something outside itself, thus a noise comes from
"outside" J a joy ariSing vi thin man comes from "inside", out of e depth
that opens itself to joy in a conscious act of experiencing without becoming
completely transparent. Through its contents, the conscious life of the Ego
thus depends on 8 double "beyond"} on an outer and an inner world that are

manifested in the Ego t s realm of immanence. IS In Husserlian terms, the

"immanence" of tbe Self manifests a "transce."ldence" and depends on it for i tos
very life. The human being is conditioned from above and from below. His
"life rises from a dark ground, it ascends like the flnme of a candle that
shines. but is nourished by the material that is not itself shining. H19 The
human spirit is not completely tronsparent to itself. an.a is not completely
able to penetrate other things. Its limitation is manifested by this dar\(-
nessa ft ••• the past is full of gaps, the future can be foreseen only in
certain details and ~ith some probability, far more is indefinite and uncer-
taln ••• Origin and goal are completely inaccessible, a8 long a8 we confine
ourselves to the consciousness that belongs to life itself and ere not as-
siated by the experience of others, by judging and concluding thought and by
20
truths of faith ••• " It one ~anta to understand the truth about man's

lSIb1d., pp. 51-52.

19Writing, JU: Ed! th Stein, Selected, translated, and introduced by Hilda
Graef (London: Peter Owen, 1956), p. 100.
20
Ib •
 37

being, its sublimity together with its limitation, then it is necessary to

conclude from all the previous analyses that man C!lrulot have his being from
himself, but that it is a received being, at one point "put into being" or
21
"thrown into the 'World" and kept in it from moment to moment.
This view of Edith Stein rejoins Heidegger's thrownness or facticity;
man finds himself tn a situation 'Without knowing how he got there. But the
question about the orig1n does not disappear -- man may try to silence it, t~

condemn it. Heidegger may consider it as irrelevant for the quest for being,
yet it rises again and again because of the fundamental constitution of the
human being. This human being naturally asks for "Being which ground.s the
groundless and is grounded in itself," for someone who "throws the thrown."
To Stein, the "thrown" reveals itself as creature; "creatureliness Jl is thus
the mark of finite b0ing and indicates the relationship between the contin-
22
gent existent and God.
The admission of "thrownness" is followed by the recognition that re-
ceived being can only come from something that is in possession of being,
from someone who is master over it. A reception of being incependent of eter-
nal Being is unthinkable, because no temporal existent 1s truly in the pos-
session of being. The true relationship between the Self and Being on which
it d.epends can be explored only if the investigation will extend beyond the
2~
realm of immanence.

21Stein, p. 52.

22~., note 40.

2~.ll?1..Si., p. 515.
 38

Man's being is a fleeting one impregnated by nothingness. He faces the

aby.SB of the nought at every moment, and from moment to moment must be pre-
sented with being as a gratuitous gift. Yet this utterly limited transient
human existence J.A being and thus reaches the fullness of being. This
height is achieved in a moment of tranSition from future to past, from a
possibility to become present to a possibility to become re-present. The
Ego lives this fullness of being in successive moments, not however as
changeless, but with ever changing contents of its 11fe. 24
From the peculiar! ty of its own temporally Umi ted being, the Ego can
attain the idea of eternal. beings in a natural tendency it draws back from
nothingness and longs not only for the timeless continuation of its being,
but also for the full posseSSion of being' a being that could embrace its

total content in a changeless present. Thus it attains the "idea of full-

neea n by piercing through that which it recognizes as its own linlts. 2 ; The
Cartesian approach to God becomes evident here, for also Descsrtes reached
the idea of the infinite through the idea of his own limited finite being.'""6
FUrthermore, the Ego experiences degrees of closeness to or remoteness
from the height of being. Its present is not always of equal extent and
encompassing capacity (SplQnweite), and also 1s subject to a gradation of
vitality. Thus there are differences of degree in the horizontal inc1usive-
ness Bnd extension 68 well as the vertical intensity of the consciou5_ lii'e

24Ibid•

.2 51.l21s!., p. 54.
26Meditation III, p. 166.
of the Ego. In going beyond all the degrees of extension and intensity
attainable to itself, the Ego, transcending itself, can penetrate to the ex-
treme limit of the possible and thus to the idea of an all-encompassing Being
marked by the ultimate height of Intensi ty -- .Jl!.t ..!.S.u e;!.nes allwnsPannEmgen
•• 2.7
~ hQohatgesPannten Seine. The Anselmian proof for the existence of God
shines through this approach to infinite Beinga there t~y exists a being
than which a greater cannot be thought, a being greater even than can be
213
thought. Confronted with this intensity of aotuality, man becomes aware
of pure and eternal Being as the measure of his own limited being. The
amplification of his own perfections to the highest possible degree again
calls to mind a thought from the Proslogionl God alone haa "existence most
truly and supremely" and all other beings have it in a lesser way.29 Every
existent participates to a limited degree in a maximum perfection and thus
also a maximum intensity of being. (§ •..!. 1,2,50, Fourth Way). The 'Whole
notion of the AAalQgia entis admits of 8. certain degree of participation
(the communality of being in different kinds of existents), which plays a
major role in Edith Stein's quest for being. Yet the principle of causality
Joins that of participation in her description of mants way to God. Similar-
ly, Thomas Aquinas in his Fourth Way relates the gradation of perfection
in things to a "maximum in any genus" which ie the "cause of all in that

2'Stein, p. 5/.,.

28St• Anselm of Ca.nterbury, "The Proslogion", The 'Wisdom. .!2f Ce.thol1c:i,sm,

ad. A. Pegls (New York: The Modern Library, 1955), Ch. III, p.209; XV, p.2l9.
29~., Ch. III, p. 210.
 40
genus." (§.T.I,2,3c). Man discovers the idea of Pure Act or Infinite Being
to be not only the messure of his ow being, but the source anc! origin of
~O
finite b&ing. Only divine Being, however, is actUl purus. Any other exis
ent is marked by a mixture of being and not-being, which as essential limi-
tation of the structure of any imperfect be1ng shows forth its consequences
in everything man does and is.
The transitoriness of his own being becomes evident to man when he
tries to penetrate to its ultimate ground. 51 Stein is aware of the engul-
fing nothingness, of the darkness which both precedes and succeds the fu1l-
ness of existence in the punctual actuality of finite being. She is aware,
too, of the dread which accompanies man -- unredeemed man -- in various dis-
guises throughout his life, now as fear before this or that, but ul timate-
11 as anxiety before his own not-being, which "brings man before nothing-

nes8."52 Recognizing this human situation, Heidegger presents the very

structure of Dastin as "being-unto-death", experiencing in death and the sen-
timent of dread its most authentic capacity-to-be. 53 Man cannot go beyond
this ultimate existential possibility, but is forced to "face himself lt
unto death in the confinement of his own limitations. For Heideiier, a genu-
ine anxiety marks the arrival at authenticity; for Edith Stein, however,
anxiety is not the dominating sentiment of lite. But she is also aware of

50
Stein, p. 41.
3l~., p. 55.
5.2Ibid •
55
Heidegger, * 50, pp. 250-51.
the superficiality of a false security resulting from man's finite mode of
being, comparable to the Heideggerian immersion in an impersonal collecti-
vity. The superfioial view 1:9 a deceiving oneJ in 8 "static" time it pre-
sents a "permanent and enduring" being and conceals the outlook on t.he no-
thingness of the Self through the preoccupation with daily activities.~4

But she already presupposes a reflective view upon the truth of man's being
in its totality, and is ultimately concerned with his authentic mode of
existence. This mode reveals that there is little reason for 8 self-assured
security of the fleeting h~an existence. Yet Stein elso asks whether that
is sufficient to reject any security of being (Seinssich§rbeit) as objective-
ly unfounded and hence "unreasonable", and whether the only reasonable atti-
tude is a "passionate ••• self-s.ssured freedom unto death. ,,55 For the unde-
niable transitoriness of man's being does not exclude another undeniable
fact: he.1l and knolo(s himself kept in being. In thi s he has peace and se-
curity, not the "self-assured security of a man who stends on firm groQ~d

by his own strength, but the sweet and blissful security of the child carried
by a strong arm, a security which objectively considered is not less reason-
able. Or would the child be "reasonable" who lived in constant fear that his
mother might arop him?56
At first glance, it seems that neither Heidegger nor Stein kept sn
unwavering "reasonable" attitude throughout their analyses of finite human

~Stein, p. 56.
:iSl.bid.
56lQisl., p. 57.
existence. Heidegger's passionate freedom to death breaks throueh the li-
rai ts of reasonable courage and spin t of adventure. His glorification of
pasein is opposed to its very nature and. existential.,experlences and in that
respect "unreasonable." But Edi th Stein's conclusions are not confined to
strict reason either, for the confidence required in order to identify the
fUllness of Being with Goa is not possible without p~ssing into the realm
of fait.h. This is an inqication that philosophizing, if it be at all true
and genuine, cannot be di~orced from a whole attitude toward life. Man's
whole being is involved in the search for truth. Personal convictions pro-
vide those basic assumptions, supplementing the strictly philosophical ones,
that influence and to a certain degree determine not only the procedure but.
also the result of all philosophizing. It is hard for a mM to admit his
limitations, but a humility before facts is more sublime than an extreme
firmness in one's own preferreci pod tionl the one enabling man to transcend
himself, the other foreing him to endlessly "stare at himself u in his dread-
ful finl teness.

Although faith 113 required to identify the personal God with the Groun4
for man's groundless being and the Condition for his conditioned being, yet
natural reason can penetrate to a Cause that must have being by and through
itself beyond the limitation of time, that alone is able to reveal the ulti-
mate meaning of being. In his confrontation with nothingness, man recognizes
his own being as received. It is in this sense that nothing and being be-
long together, not because "being itself is in its essence f1nite ana re-
veals itself 1n the transcendence of Peseia held out into noth1ngness,n 57
but because the finite human existence. reveals Being as the infinite Cause

of its own fin1 tenaGe. The Ground of man' IS being can ultimately only be

.Being per B, Being that necessarily y.38 'I'he existential Ql(areneSB of

one's own contingency leads to the recognition of the necessary divine Being

as First Causal Principle of all contingency.

58
Ibid., p. 57; cf. ~.T. 1,2,3c.
 CHAPTER IV

LIMITATION OF ESSENTIAL BE~NG

Finite being has been recognized as temporal being, as limited to a

mere "touchtf ldth Being in the indivisible IlGment of the "nov" by reason of

its spatio-temporal situation. Although the punctual existence has been

given a certain breadth by the eteeam of experienoe extending beyond the
strict "now", and although the durational experience-units have been given
being by the Ego that as self-identioal subject of experiencing lived through
the various phases of time, yet the limitation of the apparently more eminent
being of the experience-units and the Ego in regard to that which they encom--
passed has been recognized. The whole of mants being is a fleeting one,
unable to give meaning to its ow transi toriness and to reach pennanence ex-

clusively in and through itself.

The question now arises whether all finite being is temporally limited,
whether tempor8J.i ty and fini tenese are id.entical. The answer to this qlles-

tion is an important one in Stein' 8 quest for the meaning of being: in

~eyond the realm of space and time, she searches
di scoveri ng ii11 it e be i ngs "
into something that is able to give meaning to that which is realized in the
contingency of temporal existence, in the temporal transition from potenti-
ality to actuality. If a temporal existent were maintained in being for an
unending duration of time, 1t would not for that reason be infinite. For
the truly infin1 te is only that which cannot end because it is in possession
 45
of being and master over it, and hence is eternal. ThuE> fini tanes! means

more than temporality, and eternity more than the impossi bili ty of ending in

time. A characteristic mark of finite being is to be §omethingl not nothing

and not everything, but a single limited aspect in the multiple variety of
things. 'Ihis factual limitation seeInS to be possible in a realm beyond tem-
2
porality1 where essences are discovered ss non-temporal yet llmited.

Thus this phase in the search for the meaning of being 'Will center

not aroWld the b§j.ng of a thing, but around its~, not around the con-

tingent punctual act of existing, but around that which rece.ives this act

of existing yet has its own specific mode of being in its own realm.

Already the discussion of experience-units has revealed a content of

the experience in distinction from 1 ts mode of being, whioh was important for

the cohereuce of the durational unit, and which by giving unity gi vea meaning

and intelligibility to such a phase in the experiential stream. 3 In the

example of limy experienced joy at a certain moment of my life and about a

certain object," that Joy which at a certain time enters man's experiential

world must be ~istinguished from "joy" which for man comes and goes. The

content "Joy" is other than the activity of "being Joyful. tt4 It comes from
a world independent of mants own consciousness, from an flouter" world that

consti tut., a sphere different from that of man f s own existential being and

1
Stein, p. 60.
2
Reference to such a realm in chap. II, p. 29, and chap. III, p. :36.

30f• chap. II, p. 29, note 37.

4S tein , p. 61, cf. p. 51.
his experiential activities, a sphere ~here the content of an experience
originates. One is confronted here with the problem of Plsto'e subsisting
Forms that Aristotle vigorously objected to and yet adopted With the diffe-
rent signification of lidos or uform. n5 Edith Stein applied the term "essen-
tiality" (Vesenhelt) to this reality which has no being in space and time,
but which is realized or concretized in the various instances of actual
existence. It is a timeless form that has become actual in time, a ground
beyond time without which nothing temporal is possible, the "last condition
for the possibility of obJects. n6
It is difficult to assign a place to these essentialities 1n an onto-
logical hierarchy. They do not have the status of the Platonic Ideas nor
are they God, but they assume an intermediate position between the world of
temporal contingency and the perfect divine Being, as mediators between
eterni ty and temporality, between unity and mIll tiplici ty, 'between necessi ty
and contingency. The nature and place of these essentialities seems some-
what vagu2 at first glance,7 but they are important for the full unclerstan-
ding of being because they alone make a contingent and chaotic world intel-
ligible. Edith Stein is able to ultimately locate t.hese timeless essentiali-
ties in the divine Mind. However, for the progreSSion of this invest.igation
and an understanding of the widening notion of being, they vill be considered

s]lig., pp. 61-62.

6~., pp. 63 and 99J cf. Oesterreicher, p. 356.
7Collins, "Review of Mrllichee .!Yll! E'Wiges ~, It p. 145.; Rudolf Allers,
"Review of Endliche. und '&"j,ges Sein", 1.b!. ~ Scholasticism, XXVI, p.485.
 47
in their own proper mode of being. Stein places her own treatment of essen-
tial being into a realm between "moderate realism" find "Platonic realism ll
(according to the traditional interpretation of Platonism), thus approaching
most elosely the conception of Duns Scotus. a
Duns Scotus followed the tradition of Avicenna in considering the realm
of essences as relation between infinite Being and finite beings. The phi-
losophical problem and its solution seems to be the same for Avicenns, Duns
Scotus, and Edith Stein. Hence Stein'. solution will gain in clarity and
philosophical significance by a brief exposition of the Avicennian and 8co-
tlstic position.
By attributing an ~ 8a@entiee to the essential elements that are
concretized in existing things, Avicenna ple.ced essences into a realm dif-
ferent from that of existing things ~ Qa~urale) and that of the knowledge
of these things ~ TAtlonis). Essences thus have an absolute priority
in regard to the added states of singularity and universality.9 Their being
is that of an ideate of the divine ideas: an idea existing as the correla-
ti ve of the divine idea. The.!§.l!1. .Issentiae thus belongs in a sphere which,
considered temporally, occurs after God's self-knowledge and before God's
will giving them actu«l existence. 10 This Avicennlan view presents diffi-
culties for the knowledge of a free and all-powerful God by considering

8Stein, p. 98.

9Gerard Smith, S/J/, NaturaJ. .:.t.heolon (Ne\;' York: The Macmillan Company,
1957), pp. 238-~9.

l0.!l2.1,g.. p. 239.
 48
essences as "dangling bet'Ween God's self-knowledge and the world of things. ltll
Such a difficulty, however, seems to be greater for theology than for phi-
losophy. In a quest for being that takes its starting point from the world
of actual existence, the meaning-giving essences must be confronted 'With
equal intellectual rigor and honesty, without philosophical presuppositions
of where they will be ultimately located.
Duns Scotus solved the problem of the being of essences in his "pos-
sibles" that are necessary for all contingency. Also for SCOtU8, they
occupy a midway realm betWeen the impossible and the necessary, the 'World and
God. 12 If essences as ideates of divine ideas had their own existence, crea-
tion would no longer be .112. nihilb.
But in God, the idea possesses a mini-
mum of formal entity without which it would be nothtng. l5 Thus in order to
escape nothingness, an essence must have a certain mode of being. For ScotUB,
this mode is "possibilityU, a self-identical state independent of actual
existence that remains indifferent to all ftlrther determinatIons. 14
These views clarify Stein's contention that the essentialities contain
in themselves the conditions of their own possibility and are prior in re-
lation to their existing concretization. She refers to her fellow-phenome-
nologist Jean Hering, who-in distinction from Duns Seotus represents the

ll.Il:l1.!!., p. 240.
12Etienne Gilson, ~~ Scot, Introduction a ses Positions Fonda-
mentales (PariS' Libreirie Ph1losoph1que J. Vrin, 1952), pp. 518-19.
1~.I.!?19.., pp. 290-91.
lL~., p. 325.
"philosopher's" view of essences. For he does not consider allY first. Being
to which essentialities would be relateQ in an "upward" manner as they are
related to empirical obj ects in a "downward lf manner. It'or him, the sphere
of essentialities is not one of midway or "between n, but simply one beyond
that of concrete existents without speoification of the nature of this he-
yond.
aering Qlstinguishes the essence of an object, in the cocmon significa-
tion of the constitutive moments of its whatness, from an essentiality that
is free from any relation to objects. Since the mode of being of such es-
sentialities does not depend upon a reeei ving element, he can consider them
as "subsisting and resting in themselves. Ill; In this sublime mode of being,
essentialities yet do enter the empirical yorld, they become embodied in
the essential form of obJ ects that thus can participat.e in the timeless
forms. let for Hering, an essentiality does not participate in anything out-
side of itself; it prescribes its own essence and contains the conditions
of its pos8ibility completely in Itself. 16 BY limiting r~s quest to the in-
definite "beyond", Hering's eosentialit.ies 8eem to exhaust the meaning of
being, since any further participation is cut off. Thus they approach most
closely Plato's Ictus, although Hering specifies the use of iUs own IIparti-
cipation tt as a mere linguistiC approximation of the interrelationship be-
tween objects and timeless forms, which relationship seems to resist an

15Jean Hering, "Bemerkungen uber das 'vw'esen, die Wesenheit und die Idee,"
lahrbuch~ Philosop~e ••• hers. E. Husserl (Halle, 1721), IV, 510.
16Ibid., pp. 510-11.
exact expressiQn.
Essentialities can nQW be recognized in their relation to hump~ expe-
rie."lCel "The life. of the £gQ WQuld be chaQS impossible to disentangle, if
nothing could be distinguished in it, if the essentialities vere not rea-
lized." Through them, life becomes ordered and harmonized; it attains a
planned unity and intelligibility.l7 Essentialities t.hus constitute the
meaning Qr logos, the ultimate conditiQn of everything that can be said or
understood. 7he very possibility Qf oommunication is grounded in the fact
that words have a meaning. In this context, the being of essences could be
related to Bertrand Russell's "relation": since it is the relation of a
word tQ an individual thing which "makes the one mean the other", t.he rela-
tion between these tVQ 11. meaning. It! An analysis of language alone is !'lot

sufficient to discover this meaning, but it is a means to penetrate to the

intelligi ble foundation Qf things. PhilQsQphical endeavor can disclose t.his
fundamental meaning by piercing to the rOQt Qf intelligibility and thus mak-
ing understanding possible, fQr meaning can be understood, and understan-
ding is to grasp a meaning. The prQper function Qf spirit Qr intellect is

to understand the intellieibl~, guided in its search intQ the interrelatIon-

ship of meanings by the very intelligibility it tries to discover. The mind
is restless until it penetrates tQ the logos of 8 thing, until it 4iscovers
the reasons &ncl conditiQns for its being what it 1S.19 Already Plato sug-

17
Stein, p. 64; cf. Graef, p. 152.
18Bertrand RusseU, Selected Pa.pers Qf Bertrand Russell, "Worde l).nd
Meaning" (New YQrk: The MQOeI~ Library, 1927), p. 451.
19St .
 51
gests such a penetration to the idea of the individual thing in which alone
man's mind can rest. Thus the very power of reasoning necessitates some-
20
thing stable and unchanging beyond the sphere of contingent things.
These ultimate reasons constituting the meaningfulness of an object
or an experience are the essentialities. Hering calls them the only reali-
ties that by and through themselves have the capacity of making things in-
telligible; their knowledge 8.10ne enables man to understand. 21 Philosophi-
cal knowledge is characterized by this attempt to discover the ~tim8.te cause
of a thingJ it requires a penetrat.ion to that aspect 'Which gives a thing
its very intelligibility and thus makes the grasping of its meaning possi-
ble.
Dialectical training is necessary for coming to know this meaning of
things, otherwise, as Plato already advised, the "truth will elude your
22
grasp." Thus it is not surprising that phenomenologists he.ve put such a
great emphasis on a method of grasping the basic const.itution of things.
A philosopher, one who seeks to explain reality in terms of its ultimate in-
te~igibi1ity, has the obligation to engage in an adequate way of inquiry
in order to achieve an intellectual vision of the essence of a thing (~-

'enllehau). Such an "intuition" must be clearly understood in a phenomenolo-

gical context. 25 One does not wait for a mystical ill~~inationJ but aclrleves

20
Plato, "Parmenides", ~ D1,lo&ues .2.t'. Plato. tr. B. J o'Wett, Vol. II
(Ne'W York: Random House, 1957), 135b, p. 96.
2lHering, p. 522.
22Plato, "Parmenldes", 1550, p. 97.
23Stein, " Husserl 's Phanomenologie ••• fl, p. 329.
 52
any insight through laborious intelleetual 'TOrlk, which supposes a "piercing
and painstaking analysis of the given material, a careful and exacting 1n-

telleetual synthesis of various aspects of the object. 'I 21

q. Stein charact.e-

rizes the phenomenological method as a sharp penetration into the interior

aspects of a thing 'Wbich will permit the analyst to "resod wi thin" the thing
25
(iutus legere), and thus to flintllit" its essential nature. Such an in-

tuition is adequate if an essence is revealed in its completeness. But more

often it is imperfect or inadequate, not only 'With regard to an intensive

but also to an extensive completeness of the essence under consideration.

For it lies 1n the nature of certain ca.tegoriea of essences that their gi-

venness is always "onesided." In a se<luential analysis, this results 1n e

"manysided" knowledge, which ho'Wever can never become "nll-sided", which ne-
ver can be an in tui ti ve grasp of a full and cornplete presence.
26 'l'he actual

moment of insight as the most proper achieve~ent of the intellect is consti-

a
tuted byVpassive reception. But activity implying concentration on the part

of the knover and minute analysis of' the object of knowledge is 8i necessary
27
preparation for the possibility of inSight.
The phenomenological method thus consists in pointing to 'What is given

and elucidating it, in fixing the gaze directly on the object and trying to

24Collins. "Edith Stein and the Advance of Phenomenology," Thgug~

XVII, 706.
25Stein, n~lsserl's Phanomenologie ... ",
26Husserl, Ideen I, pp. 13-14-
27Stein, Wusserlte Phanomenologie ... ", p. :352.
discover its pure eidos. The rigor of this method makes the required apo-
dictieity and the revelation of truth possible, for all evidence is derived
from the thing itself. tdith Stein engaged in such 6 method in order to
avoid even a momentary neglect of the path to be followed in the search for
the meaning of being.
Husserl seems to suggest a complete separation of the knowledge of facts
and the knowledge of essences, two fields of inquiry without relation to
each other, thus founding a pure empirical science and a pure eidetic science
The essence of pure eidetic science consists in the exclllsive use of idea-
tion without acknowledging empirical facts either in its origin or in the
course of its progression. 28 Edith Stein indicates in her own approach to
the phenomenological method the necessity to start from eense experience
in order to achieve any eidetic vision. 29 Only by the consideration of fi-
nita being which man encounters in the world of natural experience, is he
able to attain essence as the inner determination of things independent of
exterior influences. With this approach to knowledge,any "realist" objec7
tlon to the phenomenological intuition of essences becomes meaningless.
Such an intuition is not divorced from concrete reality, and doee not hold
a !isl0 peatiflca in this life. Man does not intuit essences of things as
determined by the divine Essence itself. But he discovers the essential
constitution of a finite being which points beyond itself to an archetype

28Husserl, Idten I, * 2, p. 22.

29Stein, pp. 99-100.
 54
which ~ignifies measure and orientation for the thing. The being of these
archetypes, pure forms or essentialities -- the eSse essentiae of AVicenna
and the "possibles" of Duns Scottle - is veiled in mystery_ Ma.n does not
comprehend the essentialities in the proper sense of the word, but only ap-
proaches them. Yet it is only by their help that he grasps whatever intelli-
gibility things contain. Thus every thing contains in its essence a secret
by which it refers beyond itself. 50 This referential character makes the hurn
knowledge of essences possible, but never exhaustive and complete. Bound to
the knowledge of things in time, a human vision of essences is always frag-
mentary.51
By affirming the necessary role of sense experience as a starting point,
Stein preserved access to objectivity and left the way open to a genuine
knowledge of reality. In regard to this starting point of knowledge, she was
aware of a far-reaching similarity between the phenomenological end the scho-

lastic method -- in spite of the different realms in which the initial cen-
ter of apodtcticity is located: knowledge begins with the senses and 1s 8-

ohieved through en intellectual elaboration of the sensory material. A basic

difference, however, lies in the fact that for phenomenology, II. comparison
of individual things and a subsequent abstraction are ~ the means to reach
the essence of a thing. A single object might be sufficient to "abstract,"
~2
to disregard that whioh belongs to a thing accidentally.v

50Stein , pp. 227-29.

51 Ib1d ., pp. lOO-Ol.

~2Stein, "Husserl's Phenomenologie ... , pp. :;50-51.

It
 55

To understand this II abstraction " from a single individual, a. more de-

tailed analysis of essence or concretized essentiality is necessary. Basi-
cally, it is the peculiarity constituting an object, its thisness, that
"by vMch the what of an object is determined ••,3g Husserl calls it the nexus
of essential predicables that must constitute a thing so as to be able to
accept further secondary accidental determinations. 54 Thus essence is a
connection of essential traits which achieve unity through a nucleus, an
interrelated intelligible structure. 55 One has to search for such a nucleus
in the elucidation of given data. 36 For the essen tiel traits reveal the es-
sen ti ali ties they participate in, and thus provide intelligibility. All
other traits must be disregarded, since they have no significance in disclo-
Sing the meaning of a given object. Considered from 8 non-phenomenological
point of view, a comparative analysis of various individual objects might
seem able to facilitate this search for the nucleus of the essence by dis-
covering a pattern. But for phenomenology, such a facilitating pattern con-
taine the danger of insufficient intellectual rigor. Only the concentration
on esch particular object aims at the discovery of truth as the goal of the
search.
This search for the nucleus reveals that the essence is something .iliJl-

55Stein, p. 69.

34Husserl, Ideen I, * 2, p. 15.

155Stein, p. 35.
56
Hering, p. 502.
covered in a~ object and thus is basically different from a notion or con-
cept that is fo rm ed. 37 A notion summarises what is co~~on to several essen-
ces a.s the realization of a timeless eeeentiality, and a.s su.ch it is separa-
ted from and "intends" the object. Concepts can be formed only after an
eseence is grasped in an intuitive vision.
The distinct mode of being of the entlti~s that iive meaning and in-
telligibility to spatio-temporal existents is "essential being." This mode
belongs both to essences as the temporal concretization of timeless forms
and to essentialities or ~ essences in their unconcretlzed sta.te of being;
for the essence of a particular existent is but a means by which the pure
forms relate themselves to the world of spece and time and provide intelligi-
bili ty. lIhat exactly distinguishes this "essential being" from the t'existen-
tial being" of the temporal world, and how does 1t contribute to a more COM-
plete understanding of the meaning of being?
The essence "joy· is realized Or actualized (vetwitklicht) in a concrete
instance of "my joy. flB8 But joy is actualh;ed only as long as my joy is

actual. Previous and subsequent to this durationally limited actualization,

it baa no being in the experiential reality of the Ego. Yet the essence
"joy· cannot be denied a mode of being in its state of independence -- it is
something and thus j£.39 As preceding the object and contributing to its

37Stein, p. 71.
38cf. chap. IV, p. 45.
59Stein, p. 80.
 57
realization, it can be called "possible. ,,40 But this poseibili ty signifies
more than the logical possibility of becoming actual in an object. and also
more than the lower preparatory step to actJual being, which is "potency" in
Stein's sense of the word. The "possibility of essence" (WesensmOglichkeit)
refers to the possiblli ty of actu8.lization that is grounded in the essence
as the constitution of everything actual and PoSSible. 4l But beyond this
possibility as a means to the goal of actualization, essence implies its own
being, its essential being. This mode of being is the only one for essentia-
lities, whereas for essences in the limited sense of the term it is & pre-
actual mode of being. For the world of essential being can be thought of as
a hierarchy 1n which the essentialities as simple archetypes constitute the

highest level, which in turn are imitated by the essential entities. In

this second level, one discovers a hierarchization according to greater or
lesser universality.42
The mode of essential being, considered in separation from its concre-
tization, does not imply any temporal transitions. It thus is differentiated

from "real being" which allows gradation in relation to its nearness to or

distance from perfect Being, and which is engaged in a continued as~ent from
po.8ibili ty.•to actuality, thus intensifying its height of being. In the
experiential world of the Self, "real" being signified " pl1'esently-a.ctual."
But 1n the whole existential. world of contingency, reality also implies

40Compare a.gain with the "possibles" of th.'18 Scotus, chap. IV, p. 48.
41 Stein, pp. 81 and 257.

42Ibid., pp. 81-82.

 58
"efficacy." This efficacy (Wirk@§mkeit) is not strictly identical With res-
lity (Wirkliohkeit); it is grounded in an existent's highest meaSMra ~

being. On this height, Stein considers being as bursting forth into efficacy
- it is truly "efficient," goes out of itself, "reveals" itself. 45 Essen-
tisl being does not possess this efficacys the essentiality II joy" does not
vivify, t,he essential1 ty !flight" does not shine forth. But the mode of es-
sential being 8eems to have its own eminent "height" or "perfectiontl: whAt-
ever is essentially, .u wi tbout change what it l!.I§..44 The distinction be-
tween the phsses of time, present, past, and future, is nullified. In coa-
plete independenoe of time, itj& at every moment., the very being of essen-
tiality is rest in itself. 45 This mode of being manifests the autonomy of
essential in rqard to real being. To human awareness, essences have grown
out of the stream of time, but they seem to transcend that stream in timeless
ness. They constitute the law8 that determine the stream of time and expe-
rience, but are not themselves part of this stream. A5 sourcee of inf..elligi-
bility, they are finite in their faotual limitation to be something at the
exclusion of everything; but they are also beyond the possibility of begin-
ning and ending in time. Do these entities contain the eminent being toward
which the whole search was directed, or do they signify something which is
neither temporsl nor "eternal" in the full sense of the all-enoompassing
Being1 46

43lbid., pp. 88-89.

44Ibid", p. 90 ..
45.!l'Wi.
46Ibid ., p. 102.
 59
Although essentialities are "resting in themselves," stable and timeless
they do not have their mode of being by and through themselves and are not
capable of determining the moment of their own concretization. Lacking the
efficacy that results from the highest intensity of being, essentialities
cannot effect their "transition from essential to real being" and thus do not
contain the full meaning of "actual being. 1l47 Hence they are not creative,
but seem to be weak and powerless forms in their sublime mode of being. Thus
it is not the underlying meaning or intelligibility of an experience or an
object which gives being to a contingent reality. It does not have an en-
globing actualizing capacity and thus cannot account for 8 breadth of exie-
tence. But together with his own being~ man bas been given meaning by the

master of being who at the same time is master of meaning. The fullness of
intelligibility is contained in eternal Being that takes the meaning for eve
creature out of itself. Essentialities are thus not self-subsisting besides
eternal Being. But they are formed by eternal Being within itself as arche-
types for the world to be ereated in and with time. 48
Eternal Wisdom answers the question of the philosopher: "In the begin-
ning was the word ••• " (togos, meaning). The theological and the philoso-
phical meaning of logos interpenetrate and contribute to their respective
understanding, which is evident in the striking analogy between Logos in God
and logos as the meaning of the content of things. Created things are not
in God a8 parts in a whole, but the subsistence and. interrelationship of all

471,W., p_ 93.
48~., pp. 102-05.
 60
things in the Logos signifies the unity of everything that is, the unity of
~ meaningful whole. 49 This relationship is that of 8 completed work of art
in which each single trait fits into the harmony of the whole structure ac-
cording to a pure law or pattern. Thus all meaning is encompassed by the dl...
vine Spirit, and everything existing hes its exemplary-causal condition in
the divine Being.
50

In the present phase of the inquiry, the quest for the meaning of being
has investigated the n.ture and knowability of finite entities beyond space
and time. These entities seemed to possess the plenitude and height of being:
they seemed to be eminent both in extension and in intenSity; they seemed
to reet in themselves and thus to constitute the final goal of the search.
But the sublimity was a dead one& a sublimity thst included reality but ex-
cluded efficacy, a sublimity that ultimateli was recognizeq 8S not self-sub-
slsting, as capable of co apl eti on through its relation to the temporal world,
as containing the possibility of entering "objective reality,",l but not

c8.pable of effecting this entrance by and through i teelf.

The path is open now to inquire into the meaning of being common to both
the real and the essential realm. The search for beins has trL~scended both
the existential and the essential. rea.1m by recognizing the limi tatioos of
both realms, and hal cleared the way to ponder over the fullness of being,
which was touched at.as the climatic point of both inquiries.

49~., pp. 108-09.

50Ibid., pp. 110 and 112.

51~., p. 81.
 CHAP'fER v

THE FULLNESS or BEING

The quest for the meaning of being is directed toward the fullness of
being. Such a fullness cannot be attained directly but is determined by the
human mode of knowing. Human knowledge proceeds by gradual progression to
an ever-increasing clarity. A variety of pa.rtial truths, insufficient in
their partial! ty, yet leads to the discernment of an ultimate truth that
assigns th~ proper place to elements with limited truth-value. Thus existen-
tial. and essential being are both lim! ted aspects of the full meaning of

being. l In the preceding inquiries, these tvo different meanings of being

have been discerned as containing limitations imposed Py the world of space
and time. In each cBse# the searching mind penetrated to a fullness of be-
ing: it constituted the Ground for man's transitory being that constantly
faces the abyss of nothingness, as well 4S the Ground for meaning and intel-
liglb111ty that timeless essentialities give to concrete experience-units and
concrete existents.
In order to grasp the full meaning of being, the separation between the
realms of existential and essential being must be transcended. Only such a

transcendence will make the diacovery of the communality of being possible,

and only this communal! ty "Will reveal being in its fullness. This fullness

lofl' ,;.,Stein, p. 2651 being is not identical with existence, but has a
wider meaning sinee it includes the being of essentialities.
61
 62
reaches beyond the confines of each partlcu1ar sphere: it is all-encompas-
s~ng and must achieve the height and breadth of being in a continuous pre-
sent.
In search for this fullness of being, one encounters certain formal
dimensions that, are found. in everything-widch-is. Since these forms are
attributable to every being without taking account of its distL:1eti ve con-
tent, they are termed "transcenclentals." 2 A transcendental thus has a more
inclusive meaning than a particular being either in the existential or the
essential order. Since the quest for the meaning of being 1s necessarily
directed toward such a transcending notion, the formal dimension proper to
everything-that-is might either fulfill the meaning of being or refer beyond
itself to the authentic fullness of being.
These introductory remarks Vill help to clarify the place of the trans-
cendentals in 6dith Stein's quest for being. For these transcendentals seem
to encompass the commwlality of being since they express something belong-
ing to seeh entity. But at the same" time, their formal character prevents
them from representing the fullness of being. This explains the importance
of a clear distinction between content and form in everything-which-is,
between a specific thisne88 ~~~ its formal dimension without which a content
can neither be nor be thought. 5 Thus the conte-nt of a particular existent
refers to its nexus of essential traits, to the ultimate essentialities that

2~., p. 265.

3Ibid., p. 2f;l;
cf. pp .. 272-7~ for this distinction between content,
ontological form anq conceptual form.
 65
8 concrete essence participates in,4 such sa redness, color, and si2e. 5
It is in the vision of these last elements that the knowing mind finds rest.
A form, however, is proper to each content. It also is intelligible
and thus contains meaning, yet it does not provide rest for the searching
mind, but refers beyond itself by its very emptiness a it demands a fo1fill-
men~hat can be given only by a content. 6 Form and content always belong
together, for all being is fullness in a form. jl.J. though the formal dimension
of a thing can be grasped in itself, yet it has the emptiness that characte-
rizes "form" and the need for content. 7
The most general of these formal dimensions is the form "something, fI
since it 1s inseparable from anything that is. Its encompassing capacity is
so great that it seems to refer to limited beings in all their gradations of
finiteness and even stretch out to the infinite. For "something" can be
understood as "any-thing-that-is", thus suggesting its exclusive reference
to finite being as "one besides another." But if understood as "not nothing,"
"something" seems to find its highest fulfillment in First Being. With this
degree of extenSion, the formal dimensions of !liquid seems to enclose all
being, end thus also the infinite gap of the analogia eqtis. 8
Stein realizes the importance of investigating the various other trans-

4cr. chap. IV, p. 55.

5Stein, p. 260.
6
~., p. 261.
?
~ ..
81lWi., p. 262.
cendental notions which reveal being from a certain point of view. Thus ns.
and .Y.!lWIl are added to aliguid 8S formal dimensions of .m§. (the totality of
being) • 9 .E.ach one points to a different emphasis wi thin being-as-such: res
to the aspect of whatness and ~ to the aspect of negation of dl vision.
As forms of fullness, all these transcendentals do not reveal a content, but
each particular existent must provide the definl te fulfillment for the empty
IO
dimension.
Thus these dimensions do not truly give the content of being but only
grasp it formally. The full meaning of being cannot be found \oP.i thin the
limits of a purely formal ontology. The boundaries of such a formal inves-
tlgation seem to be transcended by relating being-a.-such to another reality
and thus giving a content to an empty form. The transcendental notions of
the verum and bonum including the pulcWr4m provide the tranSition from a
formal to a material ontology. For they relate being to the spiritUal soul
8S knowing, and thus do not divorce any longer a positive content from the
formal empty dimensions.
Truth as conformity necessitates a relation of being to something
other than itself, and this relation helps to reveal an element of being
that was not discovered by its purely formal dimensions, namely the openness
of being to the knowing spirt t. Transcendental or ontological truth always
has its foundation in the existenta 8 true or authentic thing is in the pos-
session of all trutt belongs to its essence. Everything-which-is JJ? "in truth"

9Ibid., p. 264.
lOIbld., pp. 267 and 269.
~ which it ie. This "in truth" becomes meeningful only -when measured
according to something different from itself, thus necessitating a measuring
intellect. By reason of what it ie, a. thing can be grasped md judged by

the knowing spirit. The existent is the condition for the possibility of
conformity or non-conformity with the knowing spirit -- the logical truth
or falsity. And as foundation for logical t~~th, being itself is called
transcendentally true. ll Although the existence of known object and know-
ing spirit is presupposed for logical t~~th as something third, the possi-
bility for such a conformity is grounded in being-as-such.
In order to clarify the transcending character of this ontological truth
as truly belonging to all being, Stein distinguishes it from "essential
truth'" the identity of a reality with the pure form it concretizes. A

thing is ttessentially· true 1f it is fully and completely what it ought to

be, if 1 t is perfectly conformed to and in harmony vi th the essentiality
whence the individual essence derives its intelligibility. 12 Although this
truth is presupposed for ontological truth, it is not transcendental in the
true sense since it refers only to the world of real things, to the sphere
of temporally limited existents where things can imitate a timeless pure
form end thus can be "true" in this imi tation. 13 Transcendental truth, how-
ever, is the mark of ~ being. Openness or revealednesB belongs to all
being: it can be penetratecl by the knowing mind, even though it is not COln-

ll.Ib1!!., p. 275.
l~., p. 276.
15~., p. 283.
pletely transparent as for the divine Mind. 14 Spirit has the property to
be open to all being, to make in a certain way its own the revealedness of
beings. Aristotle expressed this insight by considering the soul as being
in some way all things, the mind as being "potentially whatever is thiIlka-
ble.,,15 In epistemology, this view was elaborated in order to oppose the
"copy-theory" of knowledge. To the realIst, knowledge is the intentional
existence of the thing known, and this is true by reason of the revealedness

proper to all being.

In contemporary thinking, Heidegger has given new life to this relation-
ship between being and spirit, since his "comprehension of being" proper to
human existence has a wlique place in his quest for being. But limiting
himself exclusively to human Oasain, he cuts off the avenues that could lead
to a true ontology, to truly transcendental relationships. Stein does not
base her quest exclusively on comprehension as an excellence of human exis-
tence, but on being, which in all its particutarized forms possesses the

character of revealedness, and which by the openness to spirit refers be-

yond i tealf. .!.ifL! is "to be revealable to spirit. "16 In the existential

realm, this revealedness is obvious by the very fact that man can know things.
But also in the sphere of essentialities, being is open to spirit: one exam-
p11fication of this openness 1s the very possibility of a knowledge of es-

14~., p. 276.
l5,,0n the Soul A, The Basic Works ill. Aristotle, Ek. III, Ch. 4, p. 591.
\

16Stein, p. 277.
 6?
sences which presupposes an essence disclosing its secret. I? Another appli-
cation is found in "artistic" trQth, where an idea is contemplated and then
by reason of its openness to the spirit engaged in the vision, is concre-

tized in the work of art. 18 Transcendental truth or revealedness belongs

to the very nature of the idea envisioned by the artists it makes an imi-
tative and imagina.tlve forming into space and time possible.
Only now has a,meaning of being been discovered that finds an applica-
tion beyond the separation of real and essential being. This communality
has helped to bridge the gap bet\teen temporality-bound and temporality-
transcending beings and thus leads toward the fullness of being. The dif·-
ferent transcendental notions relate to particular aspects of this fullness.
Being signifies revea1edness, the capacity to be grasped by the knowing
spiri tl 8.8 such all being is ~J it implies taking one t s place in the
totality of being and thus contributing to the perfection of this totality:
as such ell being is ~ it means to be ordered according to a struotu-
ral law and thus to be in h8.rmony both 'With ordering spirit and with knowing
spirit: as such being is beautiful and at the same time f98sonable. Inter-
penetration and ordering of parts in a totality implies oneness' as such
being is £n!.19 The transcendental determinations reveal being in its to-
tality. Yet 85 formal dimensions they have to be given content, and thus

17cf. chap. IV, p.

52.
lSStein, p. 231.
19Ib1d •• p. ~O8.
 68
the 1Yll meaning of being is more then the totality of transcendental deter-
minations. For being which U is not an empty dimension but 1s being in the
fullness of its nature. As such it 1s one, and everything-thAt-is partici-
pates in it. Its full meaning corresponds to the plenitude of all exist.ents.
By speaicing about being, man intends thia fullness Without, however, grasping
it in the unity of a fulf1lling vision. I t is the lnrin1 te task of h:lman
kno'Wle<lge to penetrate deeper and deeper into the fullness of being 'Without
ever exhausting it. 20

The Btte.mpt to bring this unity of being into harmony 'With the mul ti-
plicity of existents involves the age-old problem of the One and the Many.
The pure forms or essentialities provide the bridge between unity and multi-
pliei ty: they "participatet! in the one being, and as meaning-giving units
they are further im te:l:.ed and in a certain sense participated in by their
concretization in the space-time 'World. As multiple, they render the multi-
pliCity of sense objects and experiences intelligible, yet receive being from
the fullness of being 'Which is one. 21 Since these ideas do not occupy an
independent sphere Simply "beyond" contingent reality22 , but are existing in
the divine Mind, they refer the paradox of the simultaneous unity and multi-
plicity of being to p~rfect Being itself, only One is the master of all being
only One is in posseSSion of it, only One can give being. Thus the unit.y of
the totality of being is maintained by this single source and its all-encom-

20
~., pp. 508-09.
21cr• chap. IV, 46-48 for 4} discussion of essentialities as "between"
God and concrete existents.
22cf• Ibid., pp. 48-49, Hering's viey.
passing ~ea1m of dominion.
All fullness of being is thUB contained in the Infinite Divine Being,
in the Ultimate One, ~ho alone is able to give being. Thus the concretiza-
tion of an essentiality is neither achieved by a limited essential nor a limi-
ted existential being. The cause of being can neither be found in the realm
of essence nor of concrete existence, but only in a Being that from all eter-
ni ty is both' essential and real.Anything fini to ultimately leads to this
Ground without beginning and end, the First Being, the Pure Act. 25
This First Being Buffers no limitation. As Pure Act, it contains no
transitions from possibility to actuality. Temporal and factual unlimited-
ness as well as unchangeable height and intensity of being point to that per-
fection of the Bternal and Infinite which is grasped only with great diffi-
cultyl essence and existence are no longer separable, wbatness and being
are identica1. 24 In this ideo ti ty, essence and existence ha.ve a meaning
different from these principles as found in creatures, but also the. relation
between essence and existence has no longer the same meaning. Man cannot
obtain a vision of a being grounded in itself; he can only conclude that
everything finite must be pre-formed in God since both whatness and being ori-
ginate from Him as their first Source. But the ultimate Cause of all being
and whstness must be both in perfect unity.25 There is no being outside of

25Stein, pp. 510-11.

24~., p. 5U.
25lh1J1., p. 315.
 70

God in 'Which He could take part: the pure forms or essentialities 11 enter"
contingent reality and thus reach concrete existence at a certain point in
time - God alone stands sbove this limitation of finiteness. 'When St. Thoma
uses terms as HGod is His Life," "God is His Being," then tl~se are only at-
tempts to express in the form of judgments something which by reason of tts
perfect simplicity cannot be taken apart and thus cannot properly be put into
the form of a judgment. The stat6lllent flGod is - God" or even JIll isl' wou!q
be the most acceptable one, as expre.$ion of the. impossibility of Ii determi-
nation of His Essence through a.'1ything but Himself .• 26

In this Simplicity, God.i.§. all His attributes, He.u His knOWledge.

As Eternal, Infinite, Unbounded Being, Us lives in an everlasting present
and from this present encompasses ttle \4'OO1e of time and eternity. Yet any
predioation made of God is analogical; thus all divine attributes are un-
derstood only as transmitted from creatures to the Creator. Taking Itknowledg ,
as an example, Edith Stein recognizes the disparity between human and divine
knowledge in the term "knowledge" itself, which in its German version ~­

kenntnie implies a beginning, a proce6s of acquiring knOWledge (Wiseen).

In God, there 113 no "coming to know"; His ia a knowledge from eternity,
encompassing and transcending temporality. This difference is evidenced in
the relation of knOWledge to created things: since it is from eternity,
Gorlts knowledge precedes created things and is completely independent of
them. It alone is creative in the full sense, whereas human "mak1ng fl is only

26~., pp. 316-17.

 71

a transformation of s given metenal a,ccording to a given idea. 27

Concerning the role of divine ideas in the creative thinking, Edith
Stein states that they are enclosed in divine thought to-gether with their
relation to created things. They are His own essence in the self-imposed
"lim tation fI to be the exemplar of finl te things in order to make a limited
participation in the divine essence possible. 'I'his "lim1 tation" consists
in the fact that God knows His essence as variously imitable. In Thomistic
thinking, this does not mean that there is 8 plurality lIi thin Goel, or that
the 1mi table ideas could be located outside of God before entering the sUI.te
of concrete existence. 28 It is precisely at this point that Stein seems to
follow Avicenna end Duns Scotus in assigning an "essential being" to these
forms and thus fitting them for their role of mediation between the One and
the many. But since her notion of Mbeingfl is not limited to existence but
includes the ·state of being" proper to essentia1itiee 29 , Stein can locate
these ideas within Perfect Being without contradiction in her own thinking.
The Thomistic view will help to clarify the real importance of these "mediEl-
ting elements"' God's self-knowledge is a single knowledge act, since in

God, being and knowing are identieal. This single sct is the principle of
plurality. There is no distinction between self-knowledge ano the ~ivine

ideas, for "many ideas find in the one divine idea the very principle of

27
~•• pp. 284-85_
28Smith, p. 24~·
29 cf• ehap. V, p. 61.
 72

their plurality."30

The questton whether God is free in the formation of ideas and in that
sense their creator, or whether the ideas are formed according to an inner
necessity and an unchangeable law which even God cannot touch, a question
that originated the opposition between medieval voluntarism and intellecnu-
aliam, is sileneed by Stein in another quest.ion: whether a discussion on
the possibility of 8 "before" and "after" end their influence upon each other
is at all meaningful because of the perfect simplicity of the divine Being

in which to know and to will coincide. The divine Will cannot be thought
other than true which means completely independent of anything which is not
itself, and at the same time perfectly illumined by the divine Wisdom, since
both are one. Sl
Edith Stein makes a last attempt to grasp something of the perfect
divine Being by taking the Name of God as starting point. God did not call
Himself "I am.!u.!, II but "I Am Who Am. n 52 One may hardly dare to analyze
these words, but Stein concludes from the Augustinian interpretation that He
Whose name is "I Am" is being in persgn. For he did not reveal Himself
under a specific name that would bave limited His being, but attributed the
fullness of being to His "I." Perfect Being is thus not a mere Principle
or an Energy, but a Person. Only a person can be the creative and activa-

50
Smith, p. 244; cf. '§'.1. I,15,2,ad 1 "ideas are said to be many 1n-
aemuch 8.smtmy modeis are understood through the self-same essence";
ad 2 "For God by one prinCiple understands many things."
31Stein, pp. 285-87.

32EXoduB III, 14J cf. Stein, pp. 517, 5&-59.

 73

ting cause of an intelligible 'World-order; only Ii knowing lind willing being

35
can determine ends and order means in view of that end. The I is a being
aware of its own being and of its distinctness from any other being. From
the I originates that act of existing which we call life. Every man is an
Ego, at a certain point in his life he starts to call him$elf til." The
peculiar being of the Ego has been discussed earlier: in relation to the
contents that "fill" its life, 1 t pOBsesses eminent being. 54 For its life
is presently-actual at every moment whereAS the contents of its conscious
life reach the height of the present only for one llOlllent; it is the carrier
of the experience-contents, giving life and e.nglobing them to Ii unit. Yet
this eminent being is a fleeting ooe and nothing by itselft it is empty if
not filled with contents which it receives from spheres beyond itself. Its
being is characterized as 8. ray of light in the midst of darkness, contai-
ning gaps and constantly confronting nothingness. Obviously an inrin! te
abyss separates the Ego from Pure Being, yet it resembles the Divine more
than anything else in the realm of human experience since it 18 a "peraon. wS5

By eliminating every aspect of limitation and nothingness one can come to

grasp divine Being. In God, the non-identity between conscious life of the
Ego and being does not exist, liis "I Am" is the eternally-living pres,ent,
without beginning or end, vtthout gaps or darkness, present to Him in its
infinitude. It has all fullness in and by itself, it is that whence every-

33Stein, p. 517.
54 ct. chap. III, pp. 54-55~

35Stein, pp. 318-18.

thing else receives being, the Unconditioned vhieh condi tiona the to tali ty
of existents. It aruDite of no changing contents, no emerging and sinking
back, no transition from possibility to actuality or from lower to higher
reali ty. The complete fullness is eternally present, vi thout temporal sequenc
of act, but from eternity perfectly one in the w1i ty of the .sm§ divine act
in vhieh all the different significations of "act" coincide. The divine I
is not empty, but contains and 40mlnates in itself all fullness: "It is the
fullness of being formed person811y."~6 Encompassing eve~·tbing-which-is, it
is fUllness of being in every sense of the word: it is "essential being" and
as such the ground for all meaning and intelligi bili tYJ it is "real being fl
because the life of the ~go is bighest actuality, and as such it is the g~Jund

for human existence. It spiri tual11 englobes i teelf and is transparent to

itself. As ground of meaning and of existence, Perfect Being makes ordered
multiplicity possible in and through it$ unity.a?
In Steints view, the fullness of the divine Being as origin of the un-
folding of the meaning of being clll1not be grasped by philosophical knowled.ge
alone. ',fhus she considers it as beyond the possi bili ty of ns.tural reason to
harmonize the multiplicity of essential beings with the perfect oneness of
God. This seems to be the reason for the fact that the reader of her works
does not find more clarity concerning the exact ontological status of these
pure forms, for reason has reached its limit. without any recourse to faith,
Jean Hering had considered the realm of essentialities as an independent

56
~., p. 519.
57l.l21il., p. 520.
 75
sphere of self-subsisting entities. 58 Already the attempt to bring the
city of the divine Being into harmony with the multiplicity of ideas is mark
by a reason guided by faith, which under the ~lidance of the worde of Reve-

lation tries to grasp mysteries at which human concepts utterly fail. 59

The incapability of man to come to an adequate knowledge of God does
not, however, free him from the responsibility to try to penetrate deeper
into these mysteries. Edith Stein in the great tradition of Augustinian
thinking showe through her philosophy and through her life that man can do
so only under the guidance of faith. It is faith that makes man bold enough
to penetrate deeper into a realm in which all purely natural knowledge would
be insufficient. It is faith that enables him to make the leap and bridge
the abyss from the finite to the infinite, from time to eternity.
But reason can go a long way in preparing for fai thl by laborious
enalyses and penetrating inSights into the nature and life of the Ego and by
investigations into the realms of real and essential being, it can transcend
the finiteness of these realms and thus "touch" the infinite and eternal
fullness of Divine Being, the "fulfilling viSion" of which, however, is not
possible to reason alone.

:58
cf. chap. IV, 59.
39 cf. Stein, p. 287, cf. chap. I, p_ 14 and chap. III, p. 42 for the
relation between reason and faith.
 ClUPTER VI

RETROSPECT AND CONCLUSION

./

Edith Stein's quest for the meaning of being has shown that this quest
can fi~d an answer precisely because all being has a common meaning. The
empty ~mension of being-8s-such finds its proper fulfillment according to
the particular meaning given to the "is. nl Thus the fulfillment might be a
meaning-strueture or essentiality -- in this case "being" has the meaning of
"essential being." Or the fulfillment might be an existent in the world of
time and space -- "being" then has the meaning of "real being." However,
this doe~ not divide the totality of being into two specific kinds, but es-
sential being is an intelligible part of all being; as everything-which-is

hes a meaning, so every existent contains the being corresponding to this

2
meaning. It is not very clear whether this view could be identified with the

Thomistic conception that the act of existing of a particular entity is de-

termined by its inner !nten~i~ -- a correspondence which points toward the
proportionality between a particular essence and its act of existing. For
Stein, the notion of "being" encompasses an essential and an existential as-
pect, and the characteriatie roark of being is the unfolding of its meaning
both wi thin the essential and the existential realm.

'Stein, p. 502.
2
lW., p. 303.
76
 77

In the progression of this investigation, a variety of beings encoun-

tered led to a single Souree. This differentiated variety resulted from the
very act of unfolding. But only as unfolded can being be experienced} only
from a ~ultiple consideration can the search lead back to the primal Unity.
In retrospect, the quest for the meaning of being gains in clarity if this
process is reversed, if the unity of the First and Perfect Being is consi-
dered as the rich and compact Source whence the unfolding proceeds. For
God, who is His own essence and existence in perfect identity and unity, is
this fullness of being that manifests itself through the limited being of the
worlet as knowable. God 1s the original Ground (Urgrund) without beginning

and end, and in His eOduring actuality both the beginning and end of ell be-

ing other than Himself. 5 Everything-that-is originates in the fullness of

Being and leads back to 1 t) it unfolds from unity to mul tiplici ty and folds
back to uni ty.
The unfolding of the meaning of being proceeds in a movement from oon-
eealment to revealedness, and the very essence of unfolding conSists in the
continuous "disconcealing of something concealed. n4 Unfolding always implies
gradation, partiality, end thus finitenessa what is contained in plenitude
in the infinite Being manifests itself to the knowing mind under the aspects
of finIteness, for both existential and essential being have been recognized
bei(l 9
as limited. Essentialvis the timeless unfolding beyond the opposition of
potency and act, and real being is unfolding out of an essential form into

5lli5!.. J p. 311.
4!W_ J p. 504.
 78
space and t1me. 5 The timeless unfolding of essential being refers back to
the realm beyond space and time, the realm where forms are "resting in them-
selves" as meaning-giving units, but are unfolded ou~ of the unity of meaning
which 1s the cii vine togos. 6
To this timeless unfolding of whatness is added &nother unfolding.
things are formed into the temporal and spatial world. A thing could not un-
fold itself in this way if it were not determined, if it vere not rooted in
the essential form which gives direction and orientation to the further un-
folding in the realm of existence, which gives intelligibility to what other-
wise ,would be chaos. All re-al (existential) being is thus grounded in essen-
tial being, in the pure fortiS which Stein ultimately identified with the di-
vine Ideas. 7 ~l lawfulness and order of the created world rests on their
unchangeablenessJ all multiplicity is unified through them in the one divine
Being.
The unfolding of essential being into space and time involves an enrich-
ing addition to its own proper mode of being -- an addition which res~lts

from the creative act of God by which essentialities are "put into Dssein,"
by which they enter the world of temporal limitation and thus become "real"

in the sense in which only God i6 real. 8 Only in this state of realization
'

or concreti'l5~tion do they obtatn the momentary actuality which is an image of

5:.!l».s!., p. 307.
6.Ib1.,d.., pp. :302 and 516.

7Ib19 ., p. 310.
8
~., p. 516.
the ever-enduring actuality of the il1fini te Being, an image of the fullness
of the Eternal Nov. The divine If I am, n however, is the exemplar for the to-
tality of this unfolding, namely for the timeless intelligibility of things
as well as for their contingent existential reality. ' Everything that j&,
is pre-fomed in God and by Him called int.o exist.ence. 9 Everything that. is
can be know and understood only because it is encountered in 1Wl1l' S expsr1en-
tia1 world, beoause as being it is open to the human mind, and because the
knower can penetrate this very ~ revealedness &nd attain its fundamental
structure or intelligibility derived from the essential being of a pure form.
In their timelessness, these forms or essentialities are uncreatedJ yet oon-
sidered from the point of view of their unfolding, they are finite insofar
as they imply a limited meaning which then is concretized as a particular
entity. They are not able to cause this concretlzaticm by themselves, be-
cause essential being by its very nature lacks the intensity and efficacy
needed to break forth into actuality. The souree for this existential being
is God, 'Who by the very act of creation causeseseentiali ties to cross t.he
boundary that separates the existential from the essential world, the boun-
dary at which essences enter the spatio-temporal world and henceforth can be

known only by means of concrete reality. Thus the world of experience is

the starting point for lcnowledge, but an elaborate analysiS makes the pene-
tration into the essence or meaning of a concrete reality and thua the pheno-
menological intuition of essences possible. 10

9!!21!i., p. ~21.
10
~., p. 509; cf. chap. IV, PP. 51-52.
 The order of creation necessitates time as the element wh~reby the tem-
poral separates itself from the Et.ernal, the finite from the Infinite, the
bounded from the Unbounded. It is true thnt the finite essentialities were
discovered as temporally unlimited. Yet they are distinguished from the all-
encompassing fullness of the divine Being by their limitation to be something
but not everything, and by their orientation to temporal realization. Tempo-
ral-real being is thus the progressive realization of essential possibilities,
a progression which involves the constant tranSition to actuality or the
height of being. ll Essential. being has a certain perfection proper to it~
mode of being, but this perfection lacks vitality. Its sublimity is a dead
on~d attains life in its concretization, whioh concretization is caused by
~he Fullness of Being.
Stein' 8 pos! tion seems to combine in an interesting \(ay the essentialist
with the existentialist position: essentialist in all her emphasis on the
essential mode of being, its ordering and harmonizing role in a chaotic
vorld, and its intuitive knowabilitYJ existentialist in her clear elucidation
of the fact that finite essences are unable to provide their ow existence,
that this actualization ia derived from God who 1s pure Actuality and pure
Intelligibility (LogQg) and who is both in perfect identity. The very essence
of God is existence - a discovery which Artstotle had already made of his
unmoved mover when he recognized that "there must be 8 principle whose very
essence 18 utuality. ,,12 In his attack against the Platonic position as he

~., pp. 326-27.

12MetavhYSiC8, Ek. XII, eh. 6, 1071 b, 20, p. 878.
 81
understood it , and thus against any pure essentialist position, Aristotle
was right in pointing out that "nothing ••• is gained even if we sUppose
eternal substances, as the believers of the Forms do, unless there be in
them some principle which can cause change ••• ftl~ This actual principle is
not contained within the forms, but Pure Act as the fullness of existence is
necessary to make the forms enter the realm of existence. God and He alone
can bring about this crossing of the boundary line between the essential and
the existential sphere, for everything finite is encompassed by Rtf d1 vine
Spin t (thus He is master over all essence) and is causally grounded in the
divine Being (thus He is master over all existence). For in Him, there is no
separation between Spirit, Essence, or Being. 14
Concrete reality reveals this fullness of being. The unity-giving
prinCiple is realized in the worlq of experience and thus shines t.hrough the
limitations of objects and experiences. Such a principle is necessary so
that things may reveal themselves as what they are, but it also necessitates
the penetrating and searching mind in order to grasp and understand this re-
vealedness. This openness is a Sign by which entities refer beyond themselves
by which the fleetingness and cQntingency of finite being discloses the ne-
cessity of an infinite Being, that the imperfection of all finite essences
discloses the necessity of an infinitely perfect Essence which provides
ground for unity and order -- a realm of infinity where Essence and Existence

l~I
:!:.b11i., 1071 a, 14-16, p. 877.
14Stein , pp. 325-26.
are identical.
Thus all finite being is formed out of God into it$elf. Its essence is
determined b.Y the divine Essence, but remains in shadow if compared to the
intense light of perfect and ever-enduring actuality. For in its finiteness,
it cannot embrace the fullness of the Pure Act; it cannot reach the divine
perfection in extension or in intensity. Every finite being shares to a cer-
tain degree in the participation in being, but it does not even reach this
partial perfection in its plenitude because of the condition of its "fallen"
nature. This. metaphysical If fall" occurred parallel to the 11 fall fI in the
ethico-religious order. It signifies a change in nature, a break in the es-
sential determination of things, a distortion which gives the key to the un-
derstanding of the often apparent disoontinuity between conoretized essence
and pure form. 15 This explains the diffioulty of the human mind to grasp the
intelligibility of things by a vision of their essence, an~ to transoend fi-
nite being in order to reach the Eternal. Heideggerls "fall" seems to be
snother way of expressing this discontinuity and brokenness: It implies a
state of unauthenticity and distortion, a forlornness in a world of conceal-
ment where the pure revelation of being is hindered, where its transparency
is obscured. Heidegger goes so far as to negate any essential determination
which malces the structural intelligibility of a thing possible. He thus po-
sits .. world without teleology, 8 world of "proJe.ctions" in whioh human exis-
tence constitutes itself by the progressive realization of possibilities.
 85
It is the 'World of thOse philosophers for whom "existence" precedes "essence",
for whom there 1s no design, no intelligibility, and thus no unfolding of
being out of an essential into an eXis:tential realm.
This leads to 8. concluding comparison of two ontological endeavors
which will show more clearly Ed! th Stein's po iii tiona did Heidegger' s ques-

tion for the meaning of being find a satisfying answer, and was Stein's at-
tempt to ascend to the meaning of Being a successful one? Heidegger does not
intend to give an snswer; but a meaningful question should someh01I reveal
the answer from the very orientation and direction of the question, for a
question cannot even be asked if it does not at least imply a pre-ontological
comprehension of that 'Which is asked for. Starting his quest from the analy-
sis of Dasein as the eminent and only "place" in which being manifests and
reveals itself, the conclusion vould follow that a thorough analysiS of UAse1p
as carried out by. Heidegger in his fundamental distinction between unauthen-

tic and a~thentic existence, must ultimately lead to the revelation of being.
I t cannot be overlooked that for him, man provides the ~ revelation of
being, that the very quection of being can be asked meaningfully only because
of the existence of human Da§ein, which not only provides the stal"ting poiilt
for the quest, but also constitutes the horizon within which the investiga-
tion vill necessarily proceed. This dependency of being upon human existencel~
stands in direct OPPOSition to the dependency of human existence upon be.ing in
E. Stein's ontology, where an Eternal Now is necessary for a temporal now,

16Heidegger, * 45, p. 212.

where Being is the measure of man t s existence and the measure of time. This
Eternal Now i8 the foundation stone of Stein's philosophy, not provioing the
explicit starting point, but gUiding the whole search for being into the de-
finite direction it aotually takes. For Heidegger, the mere assumption that
there .it!. "etern&l. truthstt needs the proof "that in all eternity Dageio was
and shall be."17

The fundamental question remains whether Being determines time, or whe-

ther time determines being; whether the unlimited, infinite, and eternal is
necessary for time and temporal being, or whether temporality suffioes for
the comprehension and attainment of being. Doe6 this quest for being involve
a vertical or a horizontal search? Does it need to transcend the finiteness
of hUman existence beyond itself (and the only true contrast to this finite-
ness would be infinity), or is it sufficient to break through the horizontal
boundaries of Df!§ein by making it transparent in its structure of being-in-
the 'World?
It is evident that these two different modes of "transcending" indicate
the respective approaches of Edt th Stein and Martin Heideg'ger to the problem
of being, and it is also evident that Stein reaches Being, while Heidesger
does not go beyond the question and its analysis. Being's d«pendence on ~-

~ 1s understandable in the sense that the Whole question of being becomes

relevant only with the existence of D!§ein as having the fundamental struc-
ture of comprehension of being18 - the openness of' spirit to the revel a-

17~., * 44. p. 227.

18~., * 4$, p. 212.
 85
tion of being Stein speaks about. For the question for the meaning of being
Cln be asked only because man exists and has the capacity to know. Being
thus does not depend on human Daseia in the ontological but only in an ep~s­

temological sense. The being of any existent discloses itself only because
there is a spiritual faculty able to comprehend being. 'lIMa orientation of
spin t to being and the openness of being to spirit is possible becau.se "both
contain the aspect of "boingness"1 entity as something-wMch-is can only
be understood by spin t as sometbing-which-is and at the same time I)OS8688-

ing comprehension of being. For ~idegger. the oircle of being seems olosed,
since for him all modes of being are within the realm of Da8eiq and tempora-
lity. Only a true oonception of the "analogy of being" 8eems to provida the
key to the solution of this circular movement; it would put being, human
existence, end entities into their hierarchical place. But a hierarchY sug-
gests and requires a. vertical line, which implies Dasein fA going beyond i t-
eelf ••• and tlus is the very step Heidegger refuses to take.
From the very start, he so narrowed his que$tion that only the positi-
vistic limitation of finiteness could be the outcome. Thus the result is jt

prigri contained in the question and the method. Everything in his position
of the question is planned in such 8 way as to prove th(l; temporality of being.
All avenues to the fullness of being are blocked -- "there are no essences,
no meanings, no eternQl truths. t,19 Dosein, understanding, and discovery may
demand for their own clarification something independent of themselves, eomc-
 86
thing timeless that enters temporality in and through themeel ves. 20 But the
horizon of temporality cannot be transcended. And if temporality is the last
existential determination of Dase!g, then being for Heidegger c~~ot lie out-
side of this temporality, as it so obviously does for E. Stein, who rea.ches
Being from the to tali ty of De.sein t..i spa.tia-temporally limited existence.
Heidegger had the key to an aGcent to being by his rigorously elabora-
ted conception of human existence. In the £go, he gave full rigllts to being,
defining human existence by its comprehension of being. Thus he cleared the

way - the critical problem of hov the Self could get out§ids of itself be......

came irrelevant - bilt the problem of how it could get bemd itself could
not .be 80lved by Heidegger" Since being is confined to temporality, !Ian does
not search for something timeless that would give meaning to his existential
situation. he does not engage in n quest for the tullness of being and thus
the quest for God. Delp considers it as the tragedy of our time that it

does nO.t find man because it does not seek God, and that i tOOee not seek
God because 1 t has no men •••
21 This is not a choice to be made batween a

pure eiO- or anthropocentric and a pure theocentricapproach to philosophy,

but it involves the discoverr of a synthesis that vill give the right place
to things, to man, and to GodJ that is guided in its discovery of Being by
the perfection and intelligibility found in each existent. Edith Stein seems
to achieve such a synthesis, where Heidegger limits his quest to the being

20.lli.si.

21Adolf Delp, S.J., Tragiscije ~stenZt Zur Philosophie Martin Hoideg-

gers (Freiburgl Herder Verlag, 1955 , p. 122.
of human existence, there Stein dli.scovers the way for a genuine ontology

that transcends any particular realm of beings and thus can lead to a true

"ontophany", Ii manifestation or revelation of Being. Stein's ontology is

complete because it takes account of ~ aspects of being without limitation

to either the existential or the essential realm. Her ont.ology is characte-

rized by the unfolding of the meaning of being both wi thin the realm of essen-

tiali ties and of concrete existents. The process of this Wlfolding is open

to the searching mind. It is most evident in man's own being, and thus Stein

h$.s chosen man's existential awareness as the path to enter the structura.l

pattern of the unfolding of the meaning of being. By transcending the limi-

ted realms of existence and essence, by discovering their communality beyond

e. temporal separation and the fullness of being beyond. any purely formal
dimension, she had the meterial to organize this knowledge in an ontology

englobing all the realms of being.

Precisely because man has not only an understanding for hh ow but

also for other kinds of being, he if! not limi te4 to his own being as the ho-

rizon w1 thin which to attain the meaning of being. .Ed1 th Stein took 1l1an' s

own being 8S the starting point and thUG discovered the comprehension of be-

ing in ita root. But she also acknowledged the possibility of taking, the
being of things or the rirst Being as starting point in the quest for the mea-

ning of being. Because of the relatedness of everything-tr.lt\t-is, because of

its common and all-encompalsing intelligibility, the different. ktnd$ of being

refer to each other and be~{ond themselves. Also a thing must be "questioned"

if man wants to understand it. It will not answer in the same way .as roM,

aince it has no aW8?eness of its own being. But it ~ and has meaning that
 aa
expresses i taelf in and through i t5 const1 tution. It is "phenomenon" and as
such able to reveal being; all being is characterized by this self-revela-
22
tion.
It is interesting to follow the development of phenomenolo~T from Hus-
serl to Heidegger and finally to Edith Stein. Hueserl vas concerned with
the constitution of the world for consciousness that could b& analyzed in
the immanence of the stream of consciousness. The subject is thus the star-
ting and the central point of his philosophical search, to such an ext.ent
that all possi bili ty of regaining obj ecti vi ty from this sphere of immt'lnence
and subject-relativity was 10st.2~ Heideggerts phenomenology led beck to
the notion of being, and thus re-opened the path to objectivity. By his
"return to thlngs," he made ontology possible again, bu~ he understood "be-
ing" L.'1 auch 11 narroll way that the plenitude of being was concealed. 24 His
ontology is not one of being, but of "human consciousness" <.En. Meych2&-
wsstSGP), an ontology that intended to constitute an absolute human exis-
tence as the essence of being. 25 Heidegger sought an ontological solution,
but in his inadequate analysis he identified existence and e'Ssence "in the
synthetic unity of the divinized self enclosed in the world. n26 Yet he also

22Stain, PP. 141-42, note 60.

23Stein, "Hu6serl's Phanomenologie ••• ", p. 526.

24Erich Przywara,S.J., "Drei Richtungen der Pnanomenologie", Stimrnen
.£oW: l.ill (Freiburg) ClV, 259-62.
25 Ibid., p. 259.

26Collins. "Edith Stein l:Uld the Advance of' Phenomenology", p. 702.

recognized that such an identity d()es not hold in the existential realm of

human beings because of the fundamental tension tha t cannot be resolved.

By her Olm ontology, Edith Stein c.ontributed to the advance of pheno-

menology beyond lL. u,serl and Heidegger, M advance which IIreconsti t1..lted the

method [Or phenomenology! i taelf in function of

OR. ..--
8. metaph;jsics of l:>elng and

becoming. n27 Through her York, phenomenology could make contact with reali-

ty again, and it is in this "tUTa to the obJect- that her challenging fusion

of phenomenology and scholasticism conSiSts, tITtlS enabling her to attain the

fullness of being by means of phenomenological analysis and the intuition

of assences. The obj ect of knowledge "has been returned to the concrete

existent," the idee. of knowledge "has been. returned to the process of real

becoming" - by this decisive step, modern philosophy eM Itovercome idealism.

in principle as well a.s in profession. 1t2S Through Stein's version of phe-

nomenology, the modern thinker is enabled to investigate reality by takL~g

account of the contributions to the discovery of truth made by Plato and

tristotl., Augustine and Aquinas, as well as Husserl and Heidegger. He can

grasp the intelligibil1 ty of everything-that-is 818 8 totality, and t.h~ts

transcend temporality and fin1 tenees in the attainment of the Eternal and

1ntini te Seing. He can find .. true exist.ential way to God.

 BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. PRIrURY SOURCES

Stein, Ed! th. lfa:?dliehes.1m.!1 EldgS!;~. Versuch eines Aufstiegs sum

Sinn des Seins. Herausgegeben Dr. L. Gelber und Fr. Rom~eus Leuven,
OCD. Louvatnl E. Nauwelaertsj Freiburgl Verlag Herder, 1950.

-----. ftBeitrage zur plnlosophischen Be§TUndung del" Psycho1Q~ie una del"

Geiatesmssensehaften, - J'Ab:rWgh fu PW,19IoPh1§ JA.Wl PbMomenolo€d..-
..I£!l§. FOTschung, V (Halle, 1922), 1-285.

- . "Eine Untersuchung uber den Staat," JAb;rbugh & Pb11os9~b1e .!W&

PQinom&Aolgg1echt FgtBSb»ng, VII, 1-125.

-----aAquino,
"Husser.l's Ph8nomenologie und die Ph1losophie des hl. Thomas von
Fegtschrift. Edmund Husserl sum Siebzigsten Geburtstllg ge-
II
vidmet. Halle, Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1929.

-----a Writingl ~ &S1th Ste1n. Selected, translated and introduced by

Ift1da Graef. London' Peter Owen, 1956.
- . .Qu.!!1,.. ThoMS .Y2n.. !gu1gg Un:t9tsy.ghyngen ~ ~ Wahrhei1£ (Qu.aes-
tiones Dieputatae de Veritate).. In DeutscherVbertragung von Dr. Edith
Stein. Herausgegeban von Dr. L. Gelber und Fr. Rauen. Leuven, OCD.
Louvaina E. Nauwelaerts, 1952.

II. SECONDARY SOURCES

It. roOKS

Bordeaux, Henry. Edith Ste1u. Thou.ghts on her Life and Times. Tt'ansla-
lated by D. and I. Gallagher. Milwaukee I The Bruce Publishing Company,
1959.
Graef, Hilda C. ~ Scho1y .!nS. ~ CtOU- 'Ihe Life and Vork of E. Stein.
New York' Longmans, Green and Co., 1~55.

Oesterreicher, John M. Wall§ ~ Crumbl1pg. New Yorka The Devin-Adair

Company, 1952.
90
 91
Sister TereSie de Spiritu Sancto, OCD. ESitb St~in. Translated by Cecily
Hastings and ~nald Nicholl. New York, 1952.

B. ARTICLES

Allers, Rudolf. "Review of EndliGhes .\.YlS! l!.wiges ~, It ~ New Scho1astj,-

~ XXVI, 480-85.

Co1lin~..!James. "Ed! th Stein and the Advance of Phenomenology," Thought,

lVII, 685-708.

--. "Review of Englishes .1mJi Eldge§ ~ It Mgdern Sqhoo1man, mx,

139-45.
Conrad-Martius, Hedwig. "Edith Stein," Hochband (~Unchen, 1958-59),L1,
38-46.
Deva.ux, Andr'_ "Vocation in the Life and Thought of Edith Stein, II Pb,1.1o-
sophy Tgday (1958) II, 170-73.

HiUig, Franz. "Edith Stein," Stimmep..9Ju:!§il. (Freiburg, 1949-50) t

CIXXXV, 34.
Przywara, Erich, S.1. ItThomas von Aquin deutsch, n SUmmeD.s!tr. ~
(Freiburg, 1951), CXXI, 585-86.

- . "Dre1 Richtungen der Phanomeno1ogjoe, " SUmes.ruu:. ~ (Freiburg,

1925) CXV, 259-62.

III. COMPARATIVE MATERIAL

Anselm of Canterbury, Saint. flThe Pros1ogion, It ~ Wisdom .Q! C§thol~cis!ll.

Ed. A. Pegis. New lorks The Modern Library. 1955.

Aristotle. ItMetaphyeics"
ItOn the Soul II
npbys1cs u , ~ BAlig Worts ,gI.. Ari§tQtJ,~. Ed. Richard McKeon.
New York' Random House, 1941.

Augustine, Saint. "On the Trinity," Bas~c Writings ~ Aygustine. Edited

by 'Whitney J. Oates. Nev lorkS Random House, 19-48.

neecartes, Ren' • "Meditations on First Philosophy," Phl19§QphicaJ, Vgrke

.Qi Deflca:x:teQ. Translated by E. Haldane and G.R.T.Rose, Dover Pub1ica-
tiona, 1955.
 92
Delp, Adolf. Trntische Existenz. Zur Philosophie 1-1.artin Heideggers.
Freiburg, Herder Verlag, 1935.

Gilson, Etienne. ~ l2Y.!.ut~. Introduotion a ses posi tiona fondamentales

Paris: Librnirie Philosophique J. Vrin, 1952.

Heildegger, Martin. Sein..Yn.S Zeit. Achte unverinderte Aufla,e. Tublngen:

Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1957.

-----a Vas ~ Metaphyslk? Frankfurtl Vittorio klostermann, 1955.

Hering, Jean. ttBemerkungen tiber das Wesen, die Wesenhei t und die Idee, 11
JahrfuCh {UI' Philo@gl?hie ..Y:nS1 PAAngmeI)g1od@che Forsqhung, IV {Halle,
1921 , ~95-543.

Husserl, Edm\U'lc\. Carte@ianiBche Medi1a&tign~::~un4 Paris!r VQrtrige. Edited

by Dr. S. Strasser. Haag; HartlnuB Nijhoff, 1950.

- . Iaeen SIl einer reinen PhAAomeng1ggie ..YWi fbAAomenologechen Ph1lg50-

..2lU..! I. Edited by 'Walter Biemel. Haag; M. Nijhotf, 1950.
--aEdi Ideen II. ttPhSnomenologisclle Untersllchungen zur Konsti tuUon,
ted by Marly Biemel. Haagl M. Nij hoff, 1952. !iu&serliana III
II
a.l1ci IV

Maritain, Jacques. E;r:lsj;.smce AWi.1b!. Exi/iij;.E!n"!<. Translated by Gala.ntiere

and Phelan. New York: Image Books, 1956.

Plato. ftParmenides, It The W,alogue§ ..QL PIA"tg. 'translated by B. Jowett.

Vol. II. New York: Random House, 1937.

Russell, Bertrand. "\lords and Meaning, n Seleqted Papers ..QL Bertrand .&uL-
.ull,. New Yorkl The Modern Library, 1927.

Smith, Gerard, B.J. Natural Theology. New Xorkl The Macmillan Company,
1957.

~il~, John. "Contemporary Phenomenology and the Problem of EXistence,"

Philosoph;r ~ PhMomepolggical Re.earch (Buffalo, 1959) XX, 166-80.
 APPROVAL SHEET

The theais aubm1tted by Kathe Qranderath has been

read. and approftd by a board of three -bera of the

Department of Philosopny.
The f'1nal copus haft been exam1ned b7 the director
of the them and the signature wh1ch appears below

verities the fact that an.y neC8aS&1",Y change. have been

incorporated, and that the tbasis ia now gi-nn final
apprOTal. with re£ereDCe to content, torm, and mechanical

accuracy.
The theaia i . thererore accepted in partial tult111-
ment or the requ1r_nta for the Degree ot Muter of Arta.