Edith Stein

Edith Stein (October 12th 1891, Day of Yom Kippour, Breslau (Chief town of the province of Silesia, Kingdom of Prussia, German Empire: current Wrocław in Poland); gazée the August 9th 1942 with Auschwitz) is Jewish, German philosopher , disciple of Husserl, become catholic and Théologien . She was declared Bienheureuse, Sainte and Co-owner of the Europe by the pope Jean-Paul II.

Biography

Childhood and studies

Edith Stein is last of a Jewish family many of 7 children (Out of 11 children, 4 died in low age), orphan of father at two years. His/her father, trading out of wood, died when Edith was not yet three years old. His/her mother, woman very religious, active and voluntary, nobody really admirable, remained only, was to be occupied with the care of her family and to direct her large company; however it does not succeed in maintaining in her children an alive faith. Teenager, Edith lost her Jewish practice, even if it continues to accompany her mother with the synagog: " In full conscience and in a free choice I ceased prier". The little girl becomes woman, it finds large a appêtit knowledge and after having left the college voluntarily, it goes back with brilliance to the studies.

She is educated in an Jewish family. As it is the last of its family, it is with it that returns, according to the Jewish tradition (liberal), to put the liturgical questions at the time of Jewish holidays, questions which give place to more complete explanations by celebrating.

The philosopher

She starts brilliant studies at the university of Breslau, which she continues in Göttingen, as from 1913, near Edmund Husserl, founder of phenomenology. She becomes thus her disciple. She meets also the philosopher max Scheler.

Whereas the First World War burst, she wrote: " When the war is finished, if I still live, I can again think of my occupations personnelles". For the immediate one, she wanted to better be used and help as sound. She attended a course of nurse and worked in an Austrian military hospital. For it they were difficult times. It looked after the patients of the service of the infectious illness, worked in operational room, saw dying of the men in the flower of the age. Following the bracket of the First World War and with the closing of the hospital, it decides to follow Husserl to Freiburg-in-Brisgau, where it is one of the first women to obtain her thesis " there; summa cum laudae" in 1917, whose title was: On the problem of the empathy , which it defines as follows: " It is an experiment' sui generis', the experiment of the state of consciousness of others in general… the experiment that one me in general has of another me similar to this one ". It then takes a point of view different from the philosopher Théodor Lipps.

It becomes then the assistant of Husserl, for which it will synthesize volumes 2 and 3 of the " Guiding ideas for a pure phenomenology and phenomenologic philosophy ". It will also write starting from the notes of Husserl the work of this last, " Leçons for a phenomenology of the conscience intimates time " , work which will be published by Martin Heidegger in 1928 without mentioning correctly the contribution of Edith Stein. Its philosophical research relates primarily to the human person, the interpersonal relationships, the communities of membership (State, people, ethnicity, religious etc). She insists on the direction of the values, freedom, the refusal of totalitarianism.

Conversion and engagements

Feminism

Edith Stein was interested also much in the questions concerning the women, it militated for the drit of vote of the women (acquired in 1919). She entered the organization " Prussian Association for the Women's right to the Vote ". In January 1919, it engaged with the DDP, the German Democratic party, a party center-left which sheltered feminists (and Jewish personalities). Gradually, the large idealist is disappointed by the reality of the politicians. Later she will write: " Young coed, I was a radical feminist. Then this question lost any interest for me. Now I am with the research solution purely objective ".

She will say thus that she had had " of heats discussions " within this party. It will be the first woman become doctor in philosphie in Germany and the first to have required officially that the women be allowed to present an enabling to professorship. It will observe towards the end of its life the acquired evolution: " The young girls pass the baccalaureat today and are registered at the University by generally being unaware of what it was necessary of meetings, resolutions, petitions addressed to the Reichstag or Staatsregierungen so that to the women, in 1901, the doors of the university allemande" open;

Conversion

The conversion of Edith Stein follows a long intellectual and spiritual research (1916-1921). She lived an outstanding experiment at the time of the visit of a cathedral with Francfort-sur-le-Main where she saw a woman coming from the market which entered, made a short prayer , like a visit, then left: " It was for me something completely again. In the synagogs and the temples which I knew, when one went it there was for the office. Here, with the right in the middle of the businesses of the daily newspaper, somebody penetrated in a church as for a confidential exchange. That I never could the oublier" .

In the circle of the phenomenologists, conversions with Christianity multiply (Mr. Scheler, Adolf and Anne Reinach, Pauline Reinach, F. Hamburger, H. Conrad…). But it is in August 1921 that Edith Stein chooses the catholic faith definitively. At the time of a visit to her Conrad-Martius friends, Edith Stein reads a book which offered to him Reinach: Life of holy Therese of Jesus, by itself. This quasi legendary episode is only the result of its long search of the truth. As of this moment she wants to be a Carmelite nun. She asks the baptism within the Catholic church on January 1st, 1922.

Conferences

After its baptism she wants to enter to the Carmel, but her interlocutors, the general Vicar of Whorl and the Father Erich Przywara, refuse it and ask him to teach German and the history with the college and female teacher training school of the convent of Dominican of the Madeleine de Spire, which she will do of 1922 to 1933. Archiabbé Raphaël Walzer of the convent of Beuron, his/her spiritual father as from 1928, and the P. Erich Przywara encourage it to give conferences which she undertakes then, making of long voyages in Germany and beyond. Many its conferences relate to the place of the woman in the company and the Church, on the and training of young people Anthropologie. It resolutely gives an opinion against the Nazism and for the dignity of any human being. She works much, translating the letters and the newspaper of the period pre-catholic of John Henry Newman as Questiones disputatae veritate of Saint Thomas d' Aquin. The Father Erich Przywara encouraged it to confront holy Thomas d' Aquin and modern philosophy.

In 1931, it finished its activity with Spire. It again tried to obtain enabling to teach freely in Wroclaw and Freiburg, which it did not obtain. It was then put to write its work on the concepts of Thomas d' Aquin: " Power and action " , premises of its work the " To be finished and Be eternal ". It finds a station at the Institute of teaching sciences of Münster, institute managed by the catholic teaching (which will be closed by the capacity Nazi a few years later). Even when in 1933, it is prohibited of teaching, the Association of the teaching catholics continues to pour a purse to him.

Actively opposed to the Nazism, she writes even to the pope to ask for a catch of clear position of the Church against " the idolatry of the race". This one will take place by the encyclical MIT brennender Sorge (1937). At the time of the arrival of the Nazi party to the capacity, Edith Stein, of Jewish origin had to stop her activity of teaching, it cannot express herself more publicly. Archiabbé Walzer de Beuron did not prevent it any more from entering a convent of the Carmelite nuns. In the festival of holy Therese d' Avila, on October 15th, 1933, it carries out finally its dream: she crosses the threshold of the fence of the monastery.

Religious life

In 1933, private from now on like Jewish of the right to be expressed publicly, it enters to the Carmel of Cologne. It takes the dress on April 15th, 1934, and takes the name of “ Therese-Benedicte of the Cross ”. Its higher obliges it soon to resume its philosophical work. She writes spiritual texts then, and undertakes her considerable work: the finished being and the being eternal , which cannot be published because of the antijuives laws of the Reich. May 1st, 1938 it makes its final wishes as a Carmelite nun.

December 31st, 1938 in order to avoid persecutions of the racial laws, Edith Stein and her Rosa sister, who it also converted with Catholicism, take refuge in Carmel d' Echt, in Holland. There still sister Therese-Benedicte of the Cross must continue to write, in accordance with the orders of her the higher, but on the mystical Théologie of Saint Jean of the Cross. She entitled her work " Scientia Crucis " (The Science of the Cross), although it never had time to complete it.

Holocaust

It was stopped by the S.S. with all the Jews having received the catholic baptism on August 2nd, 1942, following the protest of the Dutch catholic bishops against the persecution of the Jews. At the dawn of August 7th, a convoy of 987 Jews left in direction Auschwitz. All the people of the convoy are gazées with the concentration camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland on August 9th, 1942. The last words of Sister Benedicte, by leaving Carmel, are addressed to his/her sister. " Come, says him it by taking its hand, go for our people! ". Edith Stein was thus off-set as a Jewish catholic, in repression of the Jews but also of the protest of the Dutch bishops.

Philosophy of Edith Stein

On philosophy

philosophical Method

Edith Stein in her work " the Woman and her destiny " give the vision of its Philosophie: " I divide with the phenomenologic doctrines the idea that the process of philosophy is distinguished in its principle even from that from positive sciences. Philosophy so has means of knowledge which are particular for him and, it is possible for him to delimit the field specific exactly to a given object and to conceive the methods which must adapt to it. Phenomenology called this function of knowledge (Erkenntnisfunktion) very particular Intuition or consideration of the gasoline. (...) Personally, I understand by there the effort of knowledge (Erkenntnisleistung) thanks to which emerges the general structure of the concrete objects and which, for example, enables us to say what (...) It is a material object results for the philosopher the duty from it to release a function of knowledge (Erkenntnisfunktion) general acquired by the experiment, to develop it systematically and to also raise it with the row of a method scientifique" .

Relations between philosophy and theology

In the examination of the things which she proposes Edith Stein puts philosophy initially, then theology " While philosophy, by its specific functions of knowledge, is intended to look further into the needs and the possibilities of being it, it falls on theology to note what the divine revelation communicates to us (...) the theological and philosophical considerations, if they are well included/understood and actually applied, should not be made competition, but on the contrary to be supplemented and grow rich reciprocally ".

Empathie or Einfühlung at Edith Stein

August 1st

Vision of the Woman

Edith Stein was very early marked by her female condition, first woman doctor, defending the possibility for the women of going to the university, Edith Stein will be marked all her life by the female condition. It is towards the end of its life that Edith Stein written to the woman and her destiny , in which it develops a catholic Théologie of the woman, who did not exist at the time, in order to make it possible to know the destiny of the woman, but also its education, thus answering the development of feminism. It seems that its work partly influenced the pope Jean-Paul II, in the apostolic letter Mulieris dignitatem on the dignity and the vocation of the woman, of 1988.

Thus in its work after having presented the philosophical methods used, it develops its vision of the woman: She thus develops a vision of mankind, common to the men and the women, there is, according to Edith Stein, a female mankind. The fact that there is a mankind common pleasing to same features fundamental of character , thus " the women can show a behavior very close to that of the men and conversely ". This pleasing study to think that the woman has three fundamental goals: " the blooming of its humanity, her femininity and its individuality ". Being based on the account of the Genesis, she affirms that the vocation of the woman is modernity but also education, giving the Virgin Mary like model. However the education of the woman, according to Edith Stein, should not be confined with the family sphere, far from any community activity: " the goal which consists in developing the professional capacities, drank to which it is good to aspire in the interest of the healthy development of the individual personality, also corresponds to the social requirements which claim the integration of the female forces in the life of the people and the State. But it is still a goal which should not be omitted, among all those that one must set in the work of instruction of the young girls: it is to inform those on the structure of the laws of the State and the Company; because only this knowledge makes it possible to carry out the integration of the community activity in the social whole ".

The analysis of the vocation of the woman leads Edith Stein to wonder about the ethics of the female professions. Initially she wonders about the fact of knowing if there is a natural profession of the woman. She answers it by the affirmative while being based on saint Thomas d' Aquin ( animated formed corporis ), thus Edith Stein affirms that female morphology led to a difference giving to the woman predispositions to a practical attitude, and maternal provisions specific. However the original fault constitutes an obstacle with the complete realization of the professional vocation. The only model which allows its realization is that of the Virgin Mary. In the second time Edith Stein wonders whether a woman can or must occupy of other stations that the natural Profession S female , there still Edith Stein answers it by the affirmative " One can even, undoubtedly, affirm that there does not exist occupation which a woman could not follow if necessary " , " No woman is only " femme" , each one has its singularity and its provisions exactly like the Homme " . All the professions are possible, even desirable for the Femme S, but it is especially by taking account of the female condition and its specific provisions (that it determined before thanks to the philosphie, but as with theology), as the woman could be carried out and be useful for the company: " Thus the access to multiple professions could be a benefit of the social life, for the public private life and, and that especially if it keeps an ethics féminine." Edith Stein develops finally the supernatural mission of the woman, affirming that the woman is carried out fully as a God by the life of prayer and sacraments.

In the fifth conference Edith Stein gives her vision of the woman and her integration in the Church. Thus Edith Stein affirms that the women must imitate the Virgin Mary, called Mère of the Church. Its model is taken in example: " Marie is our mother in a direction which exceeds the terrestrial direction " , " the women who want to achieve their trade of woman " , (...) owe " to keep living the example of the Virgin Mary, to entrust while placing itself under its control ". Thus the education of the young girls must be done by the baptism, a research of the purity but also by a " clear dogmatic instruction ": " the faith is not a business of imagination, nor a feeling of piety but a intellectual gripping ". Thus Edith Stein insists on dogmatic education (or cathechism), allowing the women to include/understand the " supernatural maternity " of the Virgin Mary and thus to make use of it like model, she criticizes the fact thus that it piety but of instruction enough there did not give too much to the women.

The finished being and the being eternal

August 1st

Vision of the Judaism

August 1st

Posterior recognition

Canonization

Edith Stein was béatifiée by Jean Paul II, on May 1st, 1987 in Cologne for the heroism of its life and its death of martyrdom, assassinated “ex odio fidei” of hatred of its catholic faith. It was canonized by the pope Jean-Paul II the October 11th 1998, proclaimed copatronne of the Europe on October 1st 1999. With its beatification in the Cathedral of Cologne, the ler May 1987, the Church honoured, like said it the Pope Jean-Paul II, " a girl of Israel, who during persecutions of the Nazis is remained plain with faith and love with the Lord Crucifié, Jesus Christ, a such catholic, and with her people a such Jewish ".

October 11th, 2006, Pape Benoît XVI blessed a large statue of Holy Therese Bénédicte of the Cross (Edith Stein) placed in the part external of the apse of the Basilique Saint Pierre of the Vatican in a niche between the owners of Europe.

Polemic

With the canonization of Edith Stein, in 1998, a polemic was born, certain criticizing the pope Jean-Paul II which would have liked " to recover " the Shoah, through its Canonization. Thus Jewish personalities criticized the pope requiring of him to cancel canonization, seeing in that Ci the will “ christianization of Shoah ”. This polemic seems partly due to a bad interpretation of the speech of the pope Jean-Paul II who affirmed: " By celebrating from now on the memory of the holy news, we will not be able, year after year, not to also point out Shoah, this plan wild of elimination of people which cost the life million brothers and sisters juifs" . Some believed there in the one day institution commemorating the Shoah, but it proves that this day instituted forever and that the remarks on-were undoubtedly interpreted.

Quotations

poor Christ destroyed, crucifié and even abandoned by his/her celestial Father was stripped of all, of any residue of ego, was humiliated in its most intimate being Edith STEIN, the science of the Cross: passion of love of Jean saint of the Cross, Nauwelaerts Editions, Beauchevain, 1998, p. 209.
" I addressed to the Lord and say to Him that I knew well that its cross would weigh henceforth on the people of Israel. I was ready to engage me in this way. That the Lord indicated only to me what I were to do. When the office finished, I had the interior certainty to be exaucée. But I did not know yet which would be my way of cross. " Confidences of Edith Stein of one evening 1933.

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