Edith Stein — Philosophy’s Saint
She wrote on the contents of consciousness, and showed how philosophy and spirituality are compatible
Edith Stein (1891–1942) is another forgotten philosopher. In her life, and in the years since, she has been sidelined by prejudices against women and against religious people. Stein was born into a practicing Jewish family, but she converted to Catholicism and eventually became a nun. Her conversion was after, but not incompatible with, her philosophical career, in which she studied the philosophy of emotions, especially empathy.
She studied under Max Scheler, and her PhD thesis advisor was Edmund Husserl, for whom she later worked as his teaching assistant. Despite fulfilling all of the professional qualifications, Stein was refused habilitation (a postdoctoral certification required to be a professor in the German system) in 1919 because she was a woman. Despite the support of Martin Heidegger, she was again denied habilitation, in 1931 by the University of Göttingen, again, because she was a woman. She did land a teaching German Institute for Scientific Pedagogy, where she taught for several years and worked on her philosophy.
Stein’s Philosophy
Stein applied Husserl’s phenomenological method of the epoché (bracketing off of…
