This collection of essays originates in a colloquium held at the Catholic University of Ružumberok, Slovakia, Nov. 2011. It was organised by the editor and it gathered manyStein scholars active in Central Europe and further afield. The bulk of the papers centre on the theme directly while addressing the topic from different angles. A few papers orbit the theme a little further out and thereby neatly contextualise the former.
The question the collection attempts to address is the following: Where exactly do Husserl and Aquinas meet in Stein's work? Otherwise formulated: how do Husserl and Aquinas relate for Stein, and for us, as readers of Stein? More general topics addressed - like the philosophy of education, education in an era of globalisation, empathy and the presupposition in Husserl's philosophy for Stein's conversion-all represent aspects of Stein's work that deserve a place at the table where the question of Aquinas and Husserl in Stein is being discussed.
Let us start with the direct answers. Their variety testifies to the subtlety of the relations under investigation.
Gerl-Falkovitz proposes that Stein develops from a Husserlian phenomenology towards a greater awareness of what today is referred to as 'counter-intentionality'.
This means that Stein's phenomenology is 'prised open', such that phenomenology is slowly abandoned for a gradually adopted ontological approach as is found in Aquinas. Gerl-Falkovitz sees the fundamental difference between Stein and Husserl consisting in their different understandings of the relationship between being and consciousness (p. 17). Stein, according to her, attempts to identify a 'correlate' between being and consciousness (p. 18) consisting in an intertwinement between being and consciousness. Hence Stein's development is portrayed as an increasingly confident insistence on her 'heresy' in relation to Husserl. To this reader, however, the problems with this reading is its identification of independent, absolute, worldly being with being as such. The being of the categories, or of the essentialities likened with the Platonic forms, is not real being but essential being according to Stein (FEB, II), and its being is 'absolute' only in the sense that it is a priori. It is certainly given (gegeben) but it is not transcendent in the sense that real being is transcendent. With essential being a formal ontology is possible within phenomenology. When this is said, however, there also is a transition of the type Gerl-Falkovitz sketches taking place, but it would be interesting to see exactly how it relates to Stein's understanding of formal ontology.
Raschke emphasises the rejection of various forms of relativism at the basis of Husserl's understanding of science. These methodical rejections, shared by Stein, were also shared by Aquinas and before him by Aristotle. Although the scientific ideal took different forms in Husserl and Aquinas, it is still recognisable as a quest for justifiable knowledge.
Anna Jani's article reviews the period 1921-31 where Stein made the transit to what Jani calls a 'phenomenology of being'. Jani emphasises Stein's insistence on truth and sees her engagement with being as originating here (being as the transcendental status of what is known to be true). Jani also investigates the translation of Alexandre Koyré's Essai sur l'idée de Dieu et les preuves de son existence chez Descartes, which she made with Hedwig Conrad-Martius; Stein's translationcommentary of Aquinas' De Veritate; the Husserl-Aquinas dialogue from Husserl's Festschrift, as well as Potenz und Akt: four works that are often insufficiently explored. There are many fine features of Jani's discussion.
She emphasises, for example, how Stein saw her translationcommentary as a preparation for her later work (p. 156) as well as a continuation of an early formulated question regarding the relationship between phenomenology and the thought of Thomas Aquinas.
She also remarks on Stein's manner of proceeding in that work, which often is denigrated: her attitude was 'eine rein sachliche', i.e., not philologico-critical, but systematic. The fact, however, that Jani does not engage with Aufbau der menschlichen Person or Was ist der Mensch? leaves her to underestimate, it seems, the role Stein attributes to faith as contributing the missing elements to our understanding of the whole needed for a metaphysics, i.e., for an ontology that includes not only formal but also material aspects of being. Another point of contiguity between Husserl and Aquinas in Stein's work is explored by both Alfieri and Betschart. Here it is a point of explicit criticism of Aquinas that is investigated: the principle of individuation. To formulate it like that is to formulate it in a way Stein would not take to be adequate to the things themselves, however. There is need of individuation only when one understands the intellect to engage exclusively or primarily with universals. As both authors rightly see, Stein thinks independent substances are individual by themselves and are intelligible as such. Their individuality is, far from being in need of intelligibility from elsewhere, a principle of intelligibility.
Alfieri's article discusses not only the relationship between Scotus and Stein and Stein's position on Aquinas' doctrine on individuation, but it also introduces Husserl's Bernau manuscripts on individuality and the constitution of time.
Alfieri claims that Stein's doctrine on individual essence in fact draws on Husserl's, and in so far as this is correct, Alfieri certainly raises an issue that needs to be further explored. It implies that the fundamental thought of Stein's Finite and Eternal Being would be Husserlian in origin and thus adds weight to the argument that Stein remained a phenomenologist throughout her life.
Betschart explores in detail Stein's criticism of Aquinas' understanding of individuality, in particular as it is received through Gredt and Roland-Gosselin. He also explores in a more introductory fashion what her position would be if compared with more modern Thomists, such as Norris Clarke and Sarah Borden.
A third approach to the relationship between phenomenology and the philosophy of Aquinas is attempted by Peter Volek himself, who writes on the free act in Stein and Aquinas. His is an approach that comparatively explores the early Stein's position for convergences with Thomistic positions. This challenges both phenomenological and Thomistic thought to deepen awareness of their exact topography and is thus very interesting.
Kormos and Donabaum both explore Stein's philosophy for what it might contribute to a philosophy of education. At the back of this preoccupation is Stein's extensive engagement with education and education theory in the years where her reading of Aquinas was at its most intensive. That neither author explicitly deals with the relationship between Husserl and Aquinas seems to cover over the fact that precisely Stein's volumes on education bear the mark of the two influences in a way that see them almost fused. For this reason they orbit the question further out in comparison with the previously mentioned articles.
Kormos defines what he means by an education philosophy and then presents what seems like a list of contents, dating back to Stein's Münster years (1932-33), which quite likely is Stein's proposal for what a Catholic philosophy of education would have to include (the staff at the Marianum were at the time being asked to apply themselves to this topic).
It seems that her two volumes of anthropology fit as the first two points on the list: 'I. Philosophical anthropology as the foundation of pedagogy' and 'II. Theological anthropology'. The remaining more practical subjects were not addressed in subsequent volumes but were, as Kormos remarks, often addressed in Stein's previous writings. It seems slightly odd therefore, that Kormos does not think about the twin-work Aufbau/ Was ist der Mensch? as education philosophy.
Donabaum's important question-how does one learn and educate under the conditions of globalisation?-is answered tent-atively with material presented from Stein's writings, in particular from An Investigation concerning the State. Stein's answer: one learns as a human being, one educates human beings, is presented in the context of the state's role in education. In so far as the nation state is challenged by globalisation, there is a need to think about this role, as is well identified by Donabaum.
Uram's article treats of five themes in Husserl's philosophy which he sees as preparatory for Stein's conversion: truth, objectivity, the human being and its body, inter-subjectivity and community, and teleology. The resulting portrait of 'Stein's Husserl' is very interesting.
Finally Simonic treats of the classical theme of the other and empathy in Stein. It is a Husserlian theme which no doubt also has relevance for the relationship between Husserl and Aquinas in Stein. Exactly how empathy slots in between modern subject-centred metaphysics and classical cosmocentric meta-physics will have to be left for further exploration; however, no doubt it has to do with inter-subjectivity. It is the only article in the collection in English.
All in all this collection is very worthwhile. It is indispensable for those interested in the relationship between Husserl and Aquinas in Stein, and is also to be recommended for its neat presentation and the clarity of its articles.
Mette Lebech
Maynooth University
Copyright © 2016 by Verlag Traugott Bautz