From Consciousness to 

Being: Edith
Stein’s Philosophy and Its Reception
in North America

Antonio Calcagno

Abstract In this chapter, I discuss the impact and legacy of Edith Stein’s philoso-
phy in Canada and the United States. I identify three waves of reception of Stein’s
philosophical work since her untimely death in 1942. The first phase we can refer to
as the “Preservation of Edith Stein’s Legacy.” The second phase consists of a dis-
semination of her work and the third, more contemporary phase revolves around
new scholarship and applications of her thought to various philosophical and social-
political questions. Deeply structured and conditioned by Protestant sensibilities,
Canada and the United States have divided Stein’s philosophical legacy along two
lines: phenomenology and Christian philosophy.

Keywords Edith Stein · Phenomenology · Christian philosophy · Mysticism ·

Theology · Social ontology

In this chapter, I discuss the impact and legacy of Edith Stein’s philosophy in Canada
and the United States. It would be fair to say that Stein’s thought has had and con-
tinues to have deep influences on theology and philosophy. Theologically speaking,
and I am not a theologian and, so, cannot speak in great detail about developments
in the field, Stein’s work, especially her late works Finite and Eternal Being and
Science of the Cross, have spawned works focusing on Christian personalism,
Trinitarian theology and questions of spirituality.1 This is evidenced by the

1
Allen, Prudence. 1995. Edith Stein: The Human Person as Male and Female. In Images of the
Human: The Philosophy of the Human Person in a Religious Context, eds. Hunter Brown, Leonard
Kennedy and John Snyder, 399–432. Chicago: Loyola Press; Baseheart, Mary Catharine. 1987.
Edith Stein’s Philosophy of the Person. In Edith Stein Symposium [Carmelite Studies 4], ed. John
Sullivan, 34–49. Washington DC: ICS Publications; Borden Sharkey, Sarah. Spring 2005.
Introduction to Edith Stein’s ‘The Interiority of the Soul’. Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought
and Culture 8:2, 178–182; Kavunguvalappil Antony. 1998. Theology of Suffering and Cross in the
Life and Works of Blessed Edith Stein. Bern: Peter Lang.
A. Calcagno (*)
King’s University College at Western University, London, ON, Canada
e-mail: acalcagn@uwo.ca

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 417

M. B. Ferri (ed.), The Reception of Husserlian Phenomenology in North America,
Contributions To Phenomenology 100,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99185-6_25
418 A. Calcagno

significant number of Masters and doctoral dissertations2 produced in the last

15 years. There have been numerous smaller works that seek to inspire rich senses
of Christian piety through Stein’s life and her own spiritual meditations, especially
those devoted to Carmelite saints.3 The Institute of Carmelites Studies in Washington,
D.C., the publisher of Edith Stein’s Collected Works in American-English, has
played a key role in not only facilitating the dissemination of Stein’s works but also
promoting her as a spiritual figure worthy of contemplation and reflection. The work
of the Carmelites has been assisted by the canonisation of Edith Stein as Saint
Teresa Benedicta a Cruce in 1998. One Canadian writer, Rachel Feldhay Brenner,4
and one American author, Freda Oben,5 have written works aimed at extolling the
virtuous, yet paradoxical and even contradictory, exemplary life of Edith Stein.
These women have also delivered numerous addresses, inspiring generations of stu-
dents faithful to study the person and spirituality of Edith Stein. Compared to our
European counterparts, the English and French- and Spanish-speaking peoples of
Canada and the United States have produced far fewer works within the aforemen-
tioned frameworks. I wonder if this has to do with the fact that Edith Stein is con-
sidered a European saint, the Co-Patroness of Europe? It should be remarked that
many of the classic works on Edith Stein as a heroic, religious figure come from
Europe and have been translated for large English-speaking audiences in Canada
and the United States.6
Let us turn to Edith Stein’s philosophical impact, which continues to grow in
interesting and rich ways in both Canada and the United States. I should say, right
from the start, that Stein’s legacy has been much greater in the United States than in
Canada—this is in large part because Canadian philosophy tends to be haunted by
its colonial past: the two founding nations or solitudes—England and France—con-
tinue to mark the philosophical psyche of Canadian scholars, and, so, German phi-
losophy, let alone phenomenology and Edith Stein’s philosophy, are not given
primacy of place as are Anglo-American and French philosophy. The situation is

2
For example: Andrews, Michael. 2002. Contributions to the Phenomenology of Empathy:
Edmund Husserl, Edith Stein and Emmanuel Levinas (Ph.D. dissertation). Villanova, PA: Villanova
University; Schudt, Karl. 2001. Faith and Reason in the Philosophy of Edith Stein (Ph.D. disserta-
tion). Milwaukee: Marquette University; Nemazee, Rowshan. 2000. ‘Ave Crux, spes unica’: The
Theology of the Cross in the Life and Works of Edith Stein (MA dissertation). Montreal: McGill
University; Van den Berg, Regina. 2000. Community in the Thought of Edith Stein (Ph.D. disserta-
tion). Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America.
3
Donavan, Victor. 1990. Edith Stein and the Cross. In Blessed by the Cross: Five Portraits of Edith
Stein, ed. James A. Sullivan. New Rochelle, NY: Catholics United for the Faith; Payne, Steven.
1991. Edith Stein and John of the Cross. Teresianum, 50:I–II, 239–256; Wright, Terrence C.. 2005.
Edith Stein: Prayer and Interiority. In The Phenomenology of Prayer, ed. Bruce Benson and
Norman Wirzba, 134–141. Bronx, NY: Fordham University Press.
4
Brenner, Rachel Feldhay. 2003. Writing as Resistance: Four women Confronting the Holocaust:
Edith Stein, Simone Weil, Anne Frank, Etty Hillesum. University Park: The Pennsylvania State
University Press.
5
Oben, Freda Mary. 1988. Edith Stein: Scholar, Feminist, Saint. New York: Alba House); Oben,
Freda Mary. 2000. The Life and Thought of St. Edith Stein. New York: Alba House.
6
For example, Herbstrith, Waltraud. 1992. Edith Stein: A Biography. Chicago: Ignatius Press.
From Consciousness to Being: Edith Stein’s Philosophy and Its Reception in North… 419

much more diverse in the United States and the strong divide between Continental
and analytic philosophy has given German philosophy and phenomenology a vital
presence in the US philosophical imagination, albeit not without controversy. This
historical reality has made it easier for Stein’s philosophy to be published, studied,
and written about.
I identify here three waves that mark the reception of Stein’s philosophical work
since her untimely death in 1942. The first phase we can refer to as the “Preservation
of Edith Stein’s Legacy.” The second phase consists of a dissemination of her work
and the third, more contemporary phase revolves around new scholarship and appli-
cations of her thought to various philosophical and social-political questions.
Deeply structured and conditioned by Protestant sensibilities, Canada and the
United States have divided Stein’s philosophical legacy along two lines: phenome-
nology and Christian philosophy. The demarcation of her earlier phenomenological
work from her later Christian work is located between her rupture with Husserl and
her conversion to Roman Catholicism. Certainly, the work of both Professors
Angela Ales Bello7 and Anna Maria Pezzella8 have shown that this division is not so
neat as many in the Anglo-American tradition of Stein scholarship believe. I cite
Marianne Sawicki as an example of this kind of division, even though Sawicki is a
Catholic philosopher and theologian in her own right.9
The first wave of interest in Stein’s work in Canada and the United States
occurred, in part, while Stein was still alive and can be dated from the mid to late
1930s to the late 1950s through the 1960s. While working under and with Husserl
and even later, Stein came into contact with the Canadian scholar Winthrop Pickard
Bell10 and, later, the American phenomenologist Marvin Farber, who was the found-
ing editor (1940) of the famous journal Philosophy and Phenomenological
Research.11 Farber studied with Husserl at Freiburg and eventually became Professor
of Philosophy at the University of Buffalo. In fact, Stein makes reference to Bell in
her autobiography.12 Bell attended many of the same lectures that Stein did and has
lecture notes and journal entries and letters documenting their interactions with
other phenomenologists. Bell had reported to philosophers at Harvard and other
Canadian institutions about the movement. He had positions at various institutions
as well as taking on various private ventures. Bell came from wealth and he helped
fund Husserl’s Jahrbuch along with certain research possibilities for Husserl and

7
Ales Bello, Angela. 2003. L’universo nella coscienza. Introduzione alla fenomenologia di Edmund
Husserl, Edith Stein e Hedwig Conrad-Martius. Pisa: Edizioni ETS.
8
Pezzella, Anna Maria. 2003. L’antropologia filosofica di Edith Stein. Indagine fenomenologica
della persona umana. Rome: Città Nuova.
9
Sawicki, Marianne. 1997. Body, Text and Science: the Literacy of Investigative Practices and the
Phenomenology of Edith Stein (original doctoral dissertation, University of Kentucky, 1996).
Boston: Kluwer Academic Press.
10
See: http://www.mta.ca/wpbell/index.htm
11
http://www.wiley.com/bw/journal.asp?ref=0031-8205&site=1
12
Stein, Edith. 1986. Life in a Jewish Family, tr. Josephine Koeppel, OCD. Washington, D.C.: ICS
Publications, 257, 292, 301.
420 A. Calcagno

others in the “Phenomenological Movement.” In fact, all of Bell’s work and letters
are contained in an archive at Mt. Allison University in Sackville, New Brunswick.
Young scholars like Jason Bell, no relation to Winthrop Bell, has accessed this rich
archive and is coming out with notes and transcriptions of fascinating material on
Scheler, Stein, and Husserl.13 No doubt, the future work of Jason Bell will bring to
light new and interesting insights about the early phenomenological movement as
he was in Göttingen with Stein. Another German colleague and friend of Edith
Stein, Rudolf Allers14 was trying to arrange for Edith Stein to flee Germany during
the Nazi persecution. In fact, Allers had asked Stein for articles that Farber could
publish in his aforementioned newly founded journal. Stein sent him her famous
essay on the names of God in the work of Dionysius the Aeropagite.15 Farber felt
that he could not publish this work, as it was explicitly theological. Nevertheless,
both Allers and Farber tried to secure Stein a position in order to get her out of
Germany. Needless to say, this failed.
As Husserl’s early student and editor of his manuscripts, Stein was deeply famil-
iar with his thought and the phenomenological movement as a whole—both the
Munich and Göttingen/Freiburg sides. She was seen as an impressive resource for
philosophy because of her knowledge and reputation within phenomenological cir-
cles. Stein’s essay on Dionysius and the divine names was probably the first work of
Stein’s translated into English16 and it was aimed at North American readers. It was
Hilda Graef’s translation of the Science of the Cross17 in the 1960s that made Stein’s
work more available to Catholic audiences. In fact, Flannery O’Connor, the famous
American writer, mentions reading Stein’s work through Graef. O’Connor was
impressed and called her work very serious; it was not “pious pap”—a critique that
O’Connor reserved for most of the popular piety that was dominant in the 1950s in
America.18 Though Stein had written much and was well-known in certain European
circles, knowledge of her person and work was very limited in Canada and the
United as it was confined to the very few Canadian and American scholars that had
known her in Germany. By way of concluding this first phase of Stein’s legacy, I

13
For example, see Bell, Jason M.. 2011. The German Translation of Royce’s Epistemology by
Husserl’s Student Winthrop Bell: A Neglected Bridge of Pragmatic-Phenomenological
Interpretation?. The Pluralist, vol. 6, no.1, 46–62; Bell, Jason M.. 2011. Introduction: On the
Discovery of Two Manuscripts by Edmund Husserl. Journal of Speculative Philosophy, vol. 25,
no. 3, 239–246.
14
Allers, Rudolf. 1946. On Darkness, Silence, and the Nought. Thomist, 9 (1946), 515–572; Allers,
Rudolf. 1952. Review of Edith Steins Werke II. New Scholasticism, 26, 480–485.
15
Now published as: Stein, Edith. 2000. Ways to Know God. In Knowledge and Faith, tr. Walter
Redmond. Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications.
16
Stein, Edith. 1946. Ways to Know God: The ‘Symbolic Theology’ of Dionysius the Aeropagite
and Its Factual Presuppositions, tr. Rudolf Allers. The Thomist 9, 379–420.
17
Stein, Edith. 1960. Science of the Cross, tr. Hilda C. Graef. Chicago: Regnery; new edition trans-
lated by Josephine Koeppel, OCD. 2003. Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications. In Collected Works
of Edith Stein, volume 6.
18
O’Connor, Flannery. 1979. The Habit of Being, ed. Sally Fitzgerald. New York: Farrar, Strauss
and Giroux, 173.
From Consciousness to Being: Edith Stein’s Philosophy and Its Reception in North… 421

would also like to mention the work of Fr. Jan Nota, SJ. I personally came to know
Fr. Nota, a Dutch-Canadian priest stationed in Thorold, Ontario, through his work
on Max Scheler and Edith Stein.19 Professor Nota taught Philosophy for a number
of years at the Jesuits’ Creighton University in Nebraska. Fr. Nota knew Edith Stein
at Echt in Holland. He frequently visited her as a young doctoral student working
on the philosophy of Max Scheler. He became very close to her and was deeply
impressed both by her holiness and great mind. Fr. Nota not only taught and dis-
cussed Stein’s thought throughout Canada but he was also a champion for the cause
of her beatification. He helped organise the Titus Brandsma20 and Edith Stein
Society in Canada to help promote her beatification and worked with the Edith Stein
Guild in New York to promote her cause.
The reason why I call this first stage a preservation stage is that, like many
European scholars, including Frs. Herman Leo van Breda21 of Louvain and Erich
Przywara,22 the individuals that knew and worked with Stein either tried to get her
out of Germany in order to spare her life or tried to reconstruct her work after it had
been scattered because of the Second World War. Fr Nota, in personal conversation
with me, revealed how he had contacted Lucy Gelber about various issues and urged
her to correct the ordering of her work on Stein’s corpus. For example, the original
publication of Finite and Eternal Being by Herder and Nauwelaerts of Louvain in
1952 had taken out the appendices on Martin Heidegger and Teresa Avila. Nota had
seen the work while a student with Stein and the appendices were always meant to
be together. If one looks at articles written in France in the 1950s, for example, there
is a special volume of Études Philosophiques (Volume 3) dedicated to Edith Stein,
and here scholars, including Pryzywara, struggle to present various aspects of
Stein’s thought based on what has been preserved. They are very mindful that there
was much there, but little was accessible at the time. Just as the Europeans were
trying to piece together and preserve Stein’s legacy, Canadian and American schol-
ars did the same, albeit to a much more limited extent.
The second phase of Stein’s philosophical legacy in Canada and the United
States can be understood as one of dissemination. Pioneers like Mary Catherine
Baseheart of Spalding University in Kentucky and James Hart of Indiana University
began to write dissertations on early phenomenologists. The former concentrated on
Edith Stein, whereas the latter on Hedwig Conrad Martius. Sr. Mary Catherine
Baseheart also began to translate some of the works of Edith Stein into English. She
translated excerpts of Stein’s Finite and Eternal Being as well as Stein’s Beiträge;
she also wrote articles on Stein’s philosophy.23 In Canada, it was the Thomist

19
Nota, Jan. 1987. Edith Stein and Martin Heidegger. In Edith Stein Symposium [Carmelite
Studies 4], ed. John Sullivan. Washington DC: ICS Publications, 50–73; Nota, Jan. 1987.
Misunderstanding and Insight About Edith Stein’s Philosophy. Human Studies, 10, 205–212.
20
http://161.58.74.187/brandsma/html/biography.html
21
http://hiw.kuleuven.be/hiw/eng/husserl/About/History.php
22
Pryzywara, Erich. 1956. Edith Stein et Simone Weil: Essentialisme, existentialisme, analogie.
Les Études philosophiques, 11:3, 458–472.
23
Baseheart, Mary Catherine. 1993. Edith Stein’s Philosophy of Community. The Personalist
Forum (Supplement), 8:1, 163–173; ——. 1998. Edith Stein’s Phenomenology of the State. In
422 A. Calcagno

philosophers at the Université de Laval that commented on Stein’s translations and

writings on Thomas. Stein never occupied a prominent place in the Laval reception
of Thomism, spear-headed by such figures as Professor Charles De Koninck (1906–
1965). She was usually depicted as misreading Thomas’ work and ideas. Though
some of these criticisms may be fair, it should also be noted the access to Stein’s
texts as well as the knowledge of her project and her oeuvre certainly hindered
scholars’ appreciation of her particular intervention in philosophy. By and by, the
years from the 1960s to the early 1980s, were lean years. Few figures worked long
and hard to begin the work of translating and disseminating the work of Stein into
English (the French translations were being carried out in Belgium and France.)24
French Canada has yet to produce a translation of Stein’s work.
The work of dissemination does not only consist of the promotion and translation
of Stein’s work proper but must also include her work to make readers aware of
Husserl’s own philosophical legacy. As Husserl’s first assistant, Stein had unprece-
dented access to a large body of Husserl’s unpublished works. She was often con-
sulted and even invited to speak about Husserl’s phenomenology, for example, the
international conference on Thomism at Juvisy, France in September 1932. Also, Fr.
Jan Nota often spoke and wrote about how Stein helped him understand Husserl’s
and Scheler’s philosophy. She also wrote various reviews of Husserl’s work, for
example, his Formal and Transcendental Logic, even though Stein was no longer in
close contact with Husserl. Stein’s thought is deeply influenced by Husserl and she
employed many of Husserl’s insights on empathy, intersubjectivity and the structure
of consciousness to advance her own views. For example, the two substantial treat-
ments of empathy, one written under Husserl’s doctoral supervision and the other
written after ceasing to be Husserl’s assistant, go a long way in explaining, critiqu-
ing, and even substantiating Husserl’s own treatment of empathy.25 For many readers

Reinterpreting the Political: Continental Philosophy and Political Theory, ed. Lenore Langsdorf,
51–63. Albany, NY: SUNY Press; ——. 1987. Edith Stein’s Philosophy of the Person. In Edith
Stein Symposium [Carmelite Studies 4], ed. John Sullivan, 34–49. Washington DC: ICS
Publications; ——. 1989. Edith Stein’s Philosophy of Woman and Women’s Education. Hypatia.
A Journal of Feminist Philosophy, 4:1, 267–279 [also in Hypatia’s Daughters (Bloomington, IN:
Indiana University Press, 1996)]; ——. 1960. The Encounter of Husserl’s Phenomenology and the
Philosophy of St. Thomas in Selected Writings of Edith Stein (Doctoral dissertation, Philosophy,
University of Notre Dame, 1960); ——. 1981. Infinity in Edith Stein’s Endliches und Ewiges Sein.
Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association, 55, 126–134; ——. 1963. The
Manner is Contemporary. America, 109 (August 31, 1963), 214–215; ——. 1966. On Educating
Women: The Relevance of Stein. Continuum, 4 (Summer), 197–207 [also in Response, 1 (1967),
4–8, 32–34 and Search, 9:9 (January 1967), 344–350; ——. 1997. Person in the World: Introduction
to the Philosophy of Edith Stein. Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers; ——. 1963. Review of
Stein’s Edith Steins Werke V and VI. New Scholasticism, 37, 94–97.
24
Stein, Edith. 1998 and 2002. L’être fini et l’être éternel: Essai d’une atteinte du sens de l’être.
Paris: Nauwelaerts.
25
See Calcagno, Antonio. 2017. Edith Stein’s Second Account of Empathy and Its Philosophical
Implications. Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal—New School New  York, vol. 38, n. 1,
131–147.
From Consciousness to Being: Edith Stein’s Philosophy and Its Reception in North… 423

in Canada and the United States, Stein’s work on empathy was the first major intro-
duction to the philosophical problem in general and specifically in Husserl’s work.
The third phase, which can be dated from the mid 1980s to our present day, has
witnessed a true resurgence of interest in Stein’s thought within Canada and the
United States. First, we must note the concerted effort on the part of the Institute of
Carmelite Studies to put into English the Collected Works of Edith Stein (Washington,
D.C.: ICs Publications, 1988–). The late Sr. Josephine Koeppel, OCD created a huge
splash with her excellent translation of Stein’s Life in a Jewish Family (1998). With
this excellent work, suddenly English readers received a first-hand account of the
life of Edith Stein and her family. Pictures of her world and philosophical formation
began to emerge. At about the same time that the Autobiography was released, Edith
Stein’s niece, Waltraut Stein, published a reworked version of her MA dissertation,
which was a translation of Edith Stein’s first work on empathy or Einfühlung. This
work forms volume 3 of the English Collected Works and is translated as On the
Problem of Empathy (1988). The translation of this work garnered huge interest
both in psychology and philosophy. If one searches for English-language articles
and studies about Edith Stein’s work on empathy, one will find the largest number
of articles around this theme. A survey of the literature that employs Stein’s work on
empathy reveals interest from a vast array of disciplines, including literary theory,
history, nursing, medicine, psychiatry, philosophy and even sociology. For Canadian
and American scholars, it is Stein’s work on empathy that has secured her a place in
scholarly history. More than Vischer or Lipps, Stein’s work is the main text that
scholars refer in order to understand the phenomenon of empathy.
At this point here in our discussion, it would be good to pause and reflect more
concretely about the reception of Stein’s work on empathy. Sadly, there are two
large errors that still continue to persist in the Anglo-American reception of Edith
Stein’s account of empathy. First, some scholars still understand her notion of
empathy through the philosophical interventions of the sentimentalists and their
take on the close connection between morality and sympathy.26 But, Stein never
claims that empathy is the same as sympathy. I feel this error occurs because of the
mistranslation of the world Einfühlung, for we have no English equivalent of this
German concept. The closest neo-logism is intropathy, which is not an English
word. Second, though philosophers are largely correct to place Stein’s work on
empathy within the broader Husserlian concept of intersubjectivity, two mistakes
generally occur with this reading: one in the analytic reading of Stein and the other
the Continental reading. In the analytic account, Stein is invoked within treatments
of the philosophy of mind. Here, Stein’s account is read as trying to justify the pos-
sibility of knowledge of other minds, always against the presupposition of a
Cartesian mind-body dualism.27 But, if one pays close attention to Stein’s project,

26
For example, Healy, John. 1976 and 1977. Empathy with the Cross: A Phenomenological
Approach to the ‘Dark Night’. In Essays in Honor of Joseph P. Brennan, ed. R. McNamara, 21–35.
Rochester, NY: The Seminary; Acampora, Ralph. 2006. Corporal Compassion: Animals, Ethics
and Philosophy. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 160.
27
De Vignemont, Frédérique and Singer, Tania. 2006. The Empathic Brain: How, When and Why?.
Trends in Cognitive Science, 10, 435–441.
424 A. Calcagno

Stein’s knowledge of other minds is not as robust as analytic philosophers wish to

make it. The most intimate knowledge Stein has is of herself, as a corporeal-psychic-
spiritual unity. Knowledge of other minds helps Stein achieve clearer self-
knowledge, which allows her to understand herself and others in larger, more
universal terms as a human person. Stein achieves self-knowledge, which, in turn,
allows her to grasp the essence of the human person. This logic seems to be missed
by analytic philosophers. Continental readings of Stein, though admittedly cogni-
sant of the intersubjective nature of her thought, tend to privilege the discussion of
the foreign other or alterity in her reading of empathy.28 Empathy gives us access to
otherness, which, in turn, can shape us. Stein is read as overcoming Husserlian
solipsism. Though this approach is probably more faithful to Stein’s project than the
more analytic reading, what is forgotten in the Continentalist reading of Stein is her
emphasis on self-knowledge as key in order to achieve or grasp the full sense (Sinn)
of what the idea of the human person. Continentalists, inspired by the works of
Levinas and Derrida and other postmodern figures like Lyotard, ignore the role of
the universal and communal essence of what Stein calls the human person.
I do not wish to enter this debate between analytic and Continental interpreta-
tions of empathy; rather, I do wish to discuss briefly another aspect of Stein’s under-
standing of empathy that is more directly relevant for Husserlian phenomenology.
Traditionally, Stein’s work on empathy is seen to be shaped by Husserl’s 1913 lec-
tures titled “Nature and Spirit.” Indeed, it was Husserl who announced in his lec-
tures that intersubjectivity and knowledge of other minds was unique problem that
needed to be studied. Stein took this to heart and did fill in an important lacuna in
Husserl’s thought, albeit in her own unique way. But if one reads the work on empa-
thy and the first part of the Beiträge more closely, one finds that Stein’s project takes
on her own unique theory of sense-making or what later Husserl would call consti-
tution or sense-bestowal. In the Logical Investigations and even in the transcenden-
tal account advocated in the Ideas, Husserl privileged logic as the key to
understanding how sense (Sinn) is made, bestowed, or achieved. Whether it is by the
corresponding adequation of meaning intention to meaning fulfillment or whether it
is the sense of something achieved, namely, essence, through reductions and eidetic
variation, logic is the key to making sense. While Stein would agree with this
account, her phenomenology, and indeed her own phenomenological method,
argues that in order for sense to be made, we need not only logic but also we have
to understand both body and psyche. Logical sense, understood as expression, I
argue, has to presuppose lower forms of sense that make the higher order logic pos-
sible, namely bodily expression and psychic causality, which would include such
things as affect and motivation as well as acts of striving and will. I believe that
when Stein, in her letters, complains that Husserl fails to see the role of nature in
constitution, she sees her treatment of sense in both her early philosophical works
as most relevant, for it develops out of bodily expression and psychic causality,
which draw upon nature, as well as motivation and willing.

28
Bornemark, Jonna. 2012. “Alterity in the Philosophy of Edith Stein: Empathy and God. http://
artelittera.blogspot.ca/2012/01/alterity-in-philosophy-of-edith-stein.html. Accessed July 5, 2018.
From Consciousness to Being: Edith Stein’s Philosophy and Its Reception in North… 425

I cannot pretend to discuss this fully here as space is limited, but sense-making
must be understood in a developmental sense: it moves from bodily expression to
psychic causality to willing and motivation and, finally, to fuller, thicker logical
sense. One can even argue that the fullest sense, the sense of being, is later achieved
in understanding the relation between finite and eternal being, as developed in
Stein’s Endliches und ewiges Sein. How this happens can be understood through the
intimate connection between expression and sense. If we examine Stein’s treatment
of causality in her first work on empathy, causality, especially as it relates to the
body, is understood as giving sense to one’s experience of one’s body insofar as the
body is subject to many straightforward cause and effect relations that do not neces-
sarily imply will or motivation or higher understandings achieved through language.
Insofar as the body is expressive, one of its expressions consists in causality. For
example, the body will express pain when it is injured or hurt. One can understand
this bodily effect as having arisen through an understanding of how causality works:
x produces effect y. All bodily expressions, be they causal, motivated or willed ones,
rely upon some basic understanding of causality. Grasping causality is also the basis
for understanding aspects of the psychic life. For example, various emotional
aspects, for example, a huge smile or the lowering of one’s eyes, can be understood
as particular expressions of joy and shame, because one concomitantly understands
the cause of such joy and shame. Rich affects cannot be merely reduced to causality,
but the understanding of causality, as well as the difference between willing and
motivation, as rich mental phenomena, help us understand the fuller sense of one-
self as well as our relationship to God: God is the cause of our own being.
As English translations of Stein’s philosophical works appeared in the 1980s, the
1990s saw both a vast amount of Stein’s other German works appear. In the English-
speaking world, Sr. Josephine Koeppel published translations of Stein’s letters in
the Collected Works (Self-Portrait in Letters 1916–1942, published in 1996).
Philosophically-speaking, it was American scholar Marianne Sawicki’s book on
Edith Stein’s philosophy of empathy and literary practices that renewed scholarly
philosophical interest in Stein’s oeuvre.29 I should also like to mention Freda Oben’s
translation of Stein’s work on women.30 This collection of essays has had a large
impact on young students studying philosophy and phenomenology in both Canada
and the United States. One must not here underestimate the importance of Marianne
Sawicki’s contributions to Stein scholarship and translation. In fact, it was Marianne
Sawicki who went to Notre Dame University and helped foster Alasdair MacIntyre’s
interest in Edith Stein. He published an excellent study of the sources of Stein’s
early philosophy, prior to her religious conversion.31 It was also Marianne, with the
collaboration of Sr Baseheart, who completed the translations of Stein’s Beiträge

29
Sawicki, Marianne. 1997. Body, Text and Science: The Literacy of Investigative Practices and the
Phenomenology of Edith Stein (Doctoral dissertation, University of Kentucky, 1996), published:
Boston: Kluwer Academic Press. See also Marianne Sawicki’s Introductions to Edith Stein’s
Philosophy of Psychology and the Humanities (2000) and An Investigation of the State in Collected
Works of Edith Stein (2007).
30
Stein, Edith. 1996. Essays on Woman, tr. Freda Oben. Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications.
31
MacIntyre, Alasdair. 2006. Edith Stein: A Philosophical Prologue, 1913–1922. Lanham, MD:
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
426 A. Calcagno

and An Investigation on the State. Walter Redmond completed translations of Stein’s

essays on Husserl and Thomas as well as Potency and Act.32 Kurt Reinhardt pub-
lished his translation of Stein’s Finite and Eternal Being.33 Professor Sarah Borden-
Sharkey’s study of Edith Stein’s notion of form in relation to the work of Thomas
Aquinas and Duns Scotus is paramount in giving English readers an understanding
of Stein’s understanding of essences and essentialities.34 Borden-Sharkey also
makes interesting connections between Stein’s work and issues of feminism and
identity. Professor Joyce Avrech Berkman35 of UMass Amherst has published a
notable collection of essays on Stein’s work, which has gone a long way to helping
philosophers and historians understand Stein’s legacy. She continues to research
and work on the Stein family legacy in the United States. In Canada, there is the
work of Chantal Beauvais,36 William Sweet, and Richard Feist37 as well as Jeff

32
Stein, Edith. 2000. Knowledge and Faith, tr. Walter Redmond. Washington, D.C.: ICS
Publications; Stein, Edith. 2009. Potency and Act, tr. Walter Redmond. Washington, D.C.: ICS
Publications.
33
Stein, Edith. 2002. Finite and Eternal Being: An Attempt at the Ascent of the Meaning of Being,
tr. Kurt Reinhard. Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 2002. Walter Redmond is currently revis-
ing the translation.
34
Borden-Sharkey, Sarah. 2001. An Issue in Edith Stein’s Philosophy of the Person: The Relation
of Individual and Universal Form in Endliches und ewiges Sein (Ph.D. dissertation). New York:
Fordham University; ——. 2003. Edith Stein [Outstanding Christian Thinkers]. New  York:
Continuum; ——. 2006. Edith Stein and Individual Forms: A Few Distinctions regarding Being an
Individual. Yearbook of the Irish Philosophical Society, ed. Catherine Kavanagh. Maynooth:
Maynooth College. 49–69; ——. 2008. Edith Stein and John Paul II on Women. In Karol Wojtyla’s
Philosophical Legacy, ed. Nancy Mardas Billias, Agnes B. Curry, and George F. McLean, 265–276.
Washington, DC: The Council for Research in Values in Philosophy; ——. 2008. Edith Stein and
Thomas Aquinas on Being and Essence. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly (Special edi-
tion), 82:1 (Winter), 87–104; ——. 2006. Edith Stein’s Understanding of Woman. International
Philosophical Quarterly 46:2 (June), 171–190; ——. 2005. Introduction to Edith Stein’s ‘The
Interiority of the Soul’. Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture 8:2 (Spring), 178–182;
——. 2006. Review of Literature in English on Edith Stein. In Contemplating Edith Stein, ed. Joyce
A. Berkman, 320–342. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press; ——. 2010. Thine Own Self:
Individuality in Edith Stein’s Later Writings. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America
Press; ——. 2006. What makes You You?: Edith Stein on Individual Form. In Contemplating Edith
Stein, ed. Joyce Berkman, 283–300. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.
35
Berkman, Joyce Avrech. Ed. 2006. Contemplating Edith Stein (Notre Dame, IN: University of
Notre Dame Press, 2006); ——. 2008. Edith Stein: A Life Unveiled and Veiled. American Catholic
Philosophical Quarterly (special edition) 82:1 (Winter), 5–29; ——. 2006. The German-Jewish
Symbiosis in Flux: Edith Stein’s Complex National/Ethnic Identity. In Contemplating Edith Stein,
ed. Joyce Avrech Berkman, 170–199. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press; ——. 1997.
‘I am Myself It’: Comparative National Identity Formation in the Lives of Vera Brittain and Edith
Stein. Women’s History Review, 6:1, 47–73; ——.2006. The Intellectual Passion of Edith Stein: a
Biographical Profile. In Contemplating Edith Stein, ed. Joyce Avrech Berkman, 15–47. Notre
Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.
36
Beauvais, Chantal. 2005. Edith Stein et Erich Przywara : La réconciliation du noétique et de
l’ontique. Laval Théologique et Philosophique, vol. 61, no. 2, 319–335; ——. 2002. Edith Stein et
la modernité. Laval Théologique et Philosophique, vol. 58, no. 1, 117–136.
37
Sweet, William and Feist, Richard. 2003. Introduction: Husserl, Stein, and Phenomenology. In
Husserl and Stein, eds. Richard Feist and William Sweet. Washington, DC: Council for Research
in Values and Philosophy.
From Consciousness to Being: Edith Stein’s Philosophy and Its Reception in North… 427

Mitscherling38 that has gone a long way in promoting Stein scholarship as well as
early phenomenology, including Husserl. Finally, one must not forget the work of
Sr. Prudence Allen,39 a scholar of Stein’s work, especially Stein’s writings on woman
and essential forms. Mette Lebech,40 a Danish philosopher and Professor of
Philosophy and the National University of Ireland at Maynooth, is collaborating
with American and Canadian scholars to produce a revised Collected Works in
English that will eventually supersede the present edition. I am preparing the trans-
lation of Stein’s Introduction to Philosophy (Einführung in die Philosophie). Both
Sarah Borden-Sharkey, who has also written a marvelous introduction to the person
and philosophy of Edith Stein, and I believe that Stein’s work must be brought into
conversation on all kinds of issues, especially relevant philosophical, social and
political discussions. To this end, we have tapped Stein’s discussion on personal
identity, the liberal state, and social policy.41
Though Canada and the US have just recently come to know Edith Stein, the
dedication and activity of scholars and philosophers as well as theologians to con-
tinue her work and understand her philosophy are rich. As more and more young
people come to know Stein and her work, it is my hope that her legacy will continue
to bear more fruit.

38
Mitscherling, Jeffrey. 1997. Roman Ingarden’s Ontology and Aesthetics. Ottawa: University of
Ottawa Press.
39
Allen, Sr Prudence. 1995. Edith Stein: The Human Person as Male and Female. In
Images of the Human: The Philosophy of the Human Person in a Religious Context, ed. Hunter
Brown, Leonard Kennedy and John Snyder, 399–342. Chicago: Loyola Press; ——. 1996.
Metaphysics of Form, Matter, and Gender. Lonergan Workshop, ed. Fred Lawrence, vol. 12.
Boston, MA: Boston College, 1–25; ——. 2001.The Passion of Saint Edith Stein. Fides Quaerens
Intellectum, 1:2 (Winter), 201–250; ——. 1998. Review of Stein’s Woman. Review of Metaphysics,
52:1, 180–181; ——. 1993. Sex and Gender Differentiation in Hildegard of Bingen and Edith
Stein. Communio, 20 (Summer), 389–414.
40
Lebech, Mette. 2005. Edith Stein’s Philosophy of Education in The Structure of the Human
Person. Religion, Education, and the Arts, Issue V: The Philosophy of Education, 5, 55-70; ——.
2009. On the Problem of Human Dignity: A Hermeneutical and Phenomenological Investigation.
Würzburg: Verlag Königshausen & Neumann; ——. 2009. Stein’s Phenomenology of the Body:
The Constitution of the Human Being between Description of Experience and Social Construction.
Yearbook of the Irish Philosophical Society 2008, (ed.) Fiachra Long; ——. 2004. Study Guide to
Edith Stein’s Philosophy of Psychology and the Humanities”. Yearbook of the Irish Philosophical
Society: Voices of Irish Philosophy 2004, 40–76; ——. 2005. The Identification of Human Dignity
(Doctoral thesis, Philosophy, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Hoger Instituut voor Wijsbegeerte,
Belgium); ——. 2000. Why does John Paul II Refer to Edith Stein in Fides et Ratio?. In The
Challenge of Truth, ed. J. McEvoy. Dublin: Veritas.
41
For example, Marianne Sawicki presented a paper at the inaugural meetings of the International
Association for the Study of Edith Stein detailing the use of Stein’s political philosophy vis-à-vis
changes in EU policies on sovereignty. June 2011 at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth.
428 A. Calcagno

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———. 1995. Edith Stein: The Human Person as Male and Female. In Images of the Human: The
Philosophy of the Human Person in a Religious Context, ed. Hunter Brown, Leonard Kennedy,
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———. 1996. Metaphysics of Form, Matter, and Gender. In Lonergan Workshop, ed. Fred
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———. 2011b. Introduction: On the Discovery of Two Manuscripts by Edmund Husserl. Journal
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———, ed. 2006a. Contemplating Edith Stein. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press
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Identity. In Contemplating Edith Stein, ed. Joyce Avrech Berkman, 170–199. Notre Dame:
University of Notre Dame Press.
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Edith Stein, ed. Joyce Avrech Berkman, 15–47. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.
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Quarterly (special edition) 82(1 (Winter)): 5–29.
Borden-Sharkey, Sarah. 2001. An Issue in Edith Stein’s Philosophy of the Person: The Relation
of Individual and Universal Form in Endliches und ewiges Sein. PhD dissertation. New York:
Fordham University.
———. 2003. Edith Stein [Outstanding Christian Thinkers]. New York: Continuum.
———. 2005. Introduction to Edith Stein’s ‘The Interiority of the Soul’. Logos: A Journal of
Catholic Thought and Culture 8 (2, Spring): 178–182.
———. 2006a. Edith Stein’s Understanding of Woman. International Philosophical Quarterly 46
(2, June): 171–190.
———. 2006b. Review of Literature in English on Edith Stein. In Contemplating Edith Stein, ed.
Joyce A. Berkman, 320–342. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.
———. 2006c. Edith Stein and Individual Forms: A Few Distinctions Regarding Being an
Individual. In Yearbook of the Irish Philosophical Society, ed. Catherine Kavanagh, 49–69.
Maynooth: Maynooth College.
———. 2006d. What makes You You?: Edith Stein on Individual Form. In Contemplating Edith
Stein, ed. Joyce Berkman, 283–300. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.
———. 2008a. Edith Stein and John Paul II on Women. In Karol Wojtyla’s Philosophical Legacy,
ed. Nancy Mardas Billias, Agnes B. Curry, and George F. McLean, 265–276. Washington, DC:
The Council for Research in Values in Philosophy.
———. 2008b. Edith Stein and Thomas Aquinas on Being and Essence. American Catholic
Philosophical Quarterly (Special edition) 82(1., Winter): 87–104.
———. 2010. Thine Own Self: Individuality in Edith Stein’s Later Writings. Washington, DC:
Catholic University of America Press.
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———. 2017. Edith Stein’s Second Account of Empathy and Its Philosophical Implications.
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Stein, ed. James A. Sullivan. New Rochelle: Catholics United for the Faith.
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Night’. In Essays in Honor of Joseph P. Brennan, ed. R. McNamara, 21–35. Rochester: The
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———. 2004. Study Guide to Edith Stein’s Philosophy of Psychology and the Humanities.
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Universiteit Leuven, Hoger Instituut voor Wijsbegeerte, Belgium.
———. 2005b. Edith Stein’s Philosophy of Education in The Structure of the Human Person.
Religion, Education, and the Arts, Issue V: The Philosophy of Education 5: 55–70.
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Investigation. Würzburg: Verlag Königshausen and Neumann.
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Antonio Calcagno (b. 1969) is Professor of Philosophy at King’s University College at Western
University. He specialises in contemporary Continental European philosophy and has interests in
medieval and Renaissance philosophy. He is the author of: Lived Experience from the Inside Out:
Social and Political Philosophy in Edith Stein, (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press: 2014),
which won the Edward Goodwin Ballard Book Prize in Phenomenology for best book in
Phenomenology 2014, Badiou and Derrida: Politics, Events and Their Time(New York/London:
Continuum, 2007), The Philosophy of Edith Stein(Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 2007),
and Giordano Bruno and the Logic of Coincidence: Unity and Multiplicity in the Philosophical
Thought of Giordano Bruno in Renaissanceand Baroque Studies, vol. 23 (Frankfurt: Peter Lang,
1998). He has translated the works of Roberto Esposito, Ernst Cassirer, Edith Stein, and Umberto
Eco. In 2015, he was elected as a Member of the College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists
of the Royal Society of Canada.