Edith Stein's Concept of Christian Philosophy. Between Husserl and Saint Thomas

Abstract

Stein’s Christian philosophy emerged in the field of tension marked by Edmund Husserl's phenomenology and Thomas Aquinas’ teaching. The former fascinated her with his ethos of rigorous and honest thought and the latter with his clear concept of the common working field for reason and faith. In this way, Stein in turn came up with the idea of the confrontation between Husserl and Thomas, with the hope that philosophy would thereby come closer to its ideal. For philosophy since always wants to be a closed and possible coherent theory of being, whose propositions are definitively proved. However, according to Stein, it can be such a theory only if it takes into account what theology says about being and, more precisely, about its cause. In Stein's philosophy in the Christian state, one can constantly see influences of both Husserl and Thomas. At the same time, Stein proposes her own design of philosophy and thus these influences rise far above. The article aims to describe Stein's intellectual path to this philosophy, the influences of Husserl and Thomas on her theoretical approach to Christian philosophy as well as on her practical investigations within the framework of Christian philosophy and especially the peculiarity of Stein’s philosophy.