Part 3 - Why Did the Nazis Kill Edith Stein?
The Difference Between Ens and Esse – Third Part (3/3)
Initially, Husserl seemed to reject idealism to propose realism, and in part, he did so by recovering intentionality and the distinction between subject and object. He rehabilitated, against idealism, the notions of observing, intuiting, and seeing. Thus, he made his famous call with the words: "Back to the things themselves!"
However, he did not use the term Ding, which means res, the thing-in-itself, the extra-mental entity, already rejected by idealists and accepted by realists. Instead, he used the term Sache, which has a lesser ontological weight and pertains more to thought, since it properly means "fact," "affair," or "legal cause."
Furthermore, he was not concerned with existence, but with essence, which brought him closer to idealism. As for the question of the real, he was not worried about calmly asserting that the phenomenological being is not real. But he was also keen on affirming that the phenomenological being is not ideal, like the being of the idealists.
Husserl called his philosophy "phenomenology," deriving the term from Kant, meaning that a phenomenon is a manifestation to me, in sensible experience, of the thing-in-itself, whose essence remains unknown in itself, but a phenomenon in the sense of being that appears to me and reveals itself to me, being or essence (Wesen) that I intuit in my consciousness, as correlated to my consciousness.
Nonetheless, Husserl, despite this sign of realism in which he admitted the intuition of being (Wesenschau), remained an idealist. This is because, despite his persistent affirmation of objectivity and the vision of essences, the being intuited or seen was still an intra-mental being and not an extra-mental one, as would be the case in true realism.
In support of realism, Husserl asserted that the object is not posited by the subject, as the idealists had claimed, but rather "given" to the subject. However, since this given remains internal to the subject rather than external, he ultimately remained within the horizon of idealism.
At first, Edith did not notice the trap concealed in Husserl's false realism, especially because, in the beginning, he seemed to reject idealism. For this reason, he replaced the idealist thesis of the consciousness that "posits" (setzen) the object with the theory of consciousness that "gives meaning" or "constitutes" the object.
But with these different terms, Husserl still did not avoid idealism, according to which the object does not have meaning or constitution by itself before and independently of the cognitive act, but is posited and determined by the subject. The object in itself is a purely empty a priori form, as in Kant, a form that is filled with meaning and significance by the subject. The thesis of external reality is not denied but rather bracketed, as it pertains only to the natural attitude, not to philosophy.
Husserl's proposal to suspend or set aside the natural attitude in favor of the phenomenological one leaves us at least perplexed and leads us to ask: if the phenomenological method is not natural, then what is it? Unnatural? Against nature? One cannot escape this question, and Husserl, embarrassed, does not respond to it or clarify. He seems to adopt a certain attitude of double-dealing. He does not dare to say that the realist method is false and that the only true one is the phenomenological method. But if the natural method holds, why then suspend it? Only because it is "naive," or because it admits an external reality?
Is the phenomenological method simply more prudent and cautious, or is it the true one because it denies external reality, since the external reality, affirmed by the natural attitude, does not exist? Here, Husserl is ambiguous. He explicitly denies, following the idealists, the existence of an external reality outside of consciousness.
So, what can one deduce other than that for him, realism is not only naive but rather false, because it admits an extra-mental reality? However, since he does not feel comfortable stating this openly, he refers to "naivety" and the "suspension of judgment" (epoché).
This ambiguous situation could not last forever. At a certain point, Husserl revealed his hand, openly praising Descartes and Kant, without accepting Hegel. At this point, several of his disciples, especially the Catholics, were scandalized and left him, and Edith opened her eyes. Yet, in her great charity and broad-mindedness, she was able and willing to preserve the valid aspect of phenomenology, which can be seen as an introduction to metaphysics in that it marks the passage from being that appears to being that truly exists outside of thought and is the rule of thought.
Stein continued to practice phenomenology as a process of awareness, systematic analysis and description of the immediate and mediated data of consciousness, as well as of the systematic, syntactic, logical, imaginative, intentional, projective, mnemonic, and experiential constructs and arrangements of the spirit, the so-called "lived experiences" (Erlebnisse), that is, the vast and diversified world of the activities of the self, belonging to the intellect and will, sciences and virtues, sensitivity and emotions, the inner world, which, however, always remains the world of the human self, which for no reason — I observe — can become that "pure self" that Husserl dreamed of, the self with the claim to replace the divine "I."
Why Edith Stein Left Husserl for St. Thomas
The need for interiority, truth, certainty, and the absolute, as well as the desire to see clearly into herself, led Edith Stein to follow Husserl’s lectures in Göttingen and to graduate in philosophy with him, hoping to find an answer from Husserl.
For some years, at first, she remained enthusiastic, believing she had found the truth. However, Edith, who perhaps unconsciously had already been in contact with God in her innermost being, "through what has been made" (Romans 1:20), realized that Husserl's proposal to conceive of consciousness as self-sufficient and as an absolute, closed-off from extra-mental being, was not leading her to an encounter with that God she dimly sensed, present within her consciousness — the true transcendent, extra-conscious God, the creator of the external world and our self.
While teaching at the Dominican Sisters in Spira, they introduced her to the doctrine of St. Thomas, and she realized that the natural attitude Husserl considered naive was, in fact, the right and wise one, for it allowed the discovery of God, the creator of the world. In contrast, Husserl’s concept of consciousness had deified the self, replacing it with God. St. Thomas helped Edith understand that the true "phenomenological reduction" is not to leave everything for one’s, but to leave everything for Christ.
Thus, Edith succinctly summarizes the happy and liberating outcome of the troubled path that had led her to realize the deception of phenomenology, the positive aspects of which she always retained with gratitude for the master:
"The question that transcendental reflection poses is as follows: for a consciousness that I can only scrutinize from within, how is the world constructed? The inner world and the outer world, the world of nature and the world of the mind, the world of material goods and even the world ordered by religious sense, the world of God?"
"The path of transcendental phenomenology has come to establish as the starting point and center of philosophical research the human subject. All things are referred to the subject. The world, which is constructed in the acts of the subject, remains always a world for the subject. It is impossible through this path (and it was the objection that the circle of students constantly raised to the founder of phenomenology) to leave the sphere of immanence in order to rediscover that objectivity, from which it had nonetheless started and which it was pressing to guarantee: it is impossible to rediscover a truth free from any subjective relativity.
Never will the intellect, in its search for truth, be satisfied with the transposition that results from transcendental research, which consists in identifying existence with a process of self-manifestation of consciousness. And this transposition, first of all, because it relativizes God Himself, is in contradiction with faith. Here we touch on the clearest opposition that separates phenomenology from Catholic philosophy: on one side, the orientation is theocentric, on the other, egocentric."[1]
From Husserl to Heidegger
But the opposition to Husserl had to be followed by that to Heidegger, who aggravated Husserl’s egocentrism with a conception of being inspired by Parmenides and Heraclitus. From this conception of being, which adds existence and historicity to the being of consciousness, arose Heidegger's humanism, according to which man himself coincides with existence.
Heidegger maintains Husserl's conception of being as a phenomenon, as appearance; Being is the "presence of the present," the "unconcealed," although it is also "nothing." However, for him, being is no longer essence, eidos, or cogitatum, but "destiny" (Geschick), "project" (Entwurf), and "event" (Ereignis); it is, by essence, historical and temporal.
To place truth, as Thomas does, in the act of judgment, Heidegger considers subjectivism and prefers to define truth as the revelation of being. Heidegger is right to base truth on being, but there is a difference between the ontological foundation of truth and the essence of truth.
Certainly, being appears as true to the intellect, but the essence of truth lies in the intellect’s conformity to the entity. Subjectivism arises from bending the object to the subject; objectivity is given when the subject is relative to the object. It is in the Thomistic adaequatio intellectus et rei that the first thing occurs, while it is in the Heideggerian conception of truth as the appearance of being to the subject that the second thing occurs.
Heidegger does not realize that with his theory, it is he who is the true subjectivist. St. Thomas points out that while the being as true (and therefore truth) supposes the relationship between the intellect and the being, being as being does not at all suppose the existence of the man who thinks the being. Being could very well exist even if man did not exist.
In Heidegger, man himself becomes the Being-there (Dasein) of being. Being is the human being, and the human being is being. Anthropology coincides with metaphysics. But, as in Hegel, being is history.
Already in Husserl, being is I, but in Heidegger, this I expands, it socializes, it becomes the community, it becomes the people, and even emerges, behind the influence of Hölderlin, Fichte, Nietzsche, and perhaps Luther, as the man par excellence, the German. "Whoever does philosophy," Heidegger declared, "speaks German."
The so-called “ontological difference” between ens and esse, upon which Heidegger so insistently dwelt, might at first have appeared as an intimation of the ipsum esse subsistens that transcends and creates the ens. Yet Heidegger’s explanation proved altogether disappointing, for by “being” he understood the finite as bordering upon nothingness, and he went so far as to assert that being cannot subsist by itself, but is always dependent upon the ens. Thus, God had no place whatsoever in his account.
And even when Heidegger speaks of the "divine God" or the "sacred as the horizon of the divine," or asserts that "only a God can save us," while excluding being, personality, and causality from God, we must ask ourselves which God he is referring to. For it is not enough to simply use the word "God" to properly signify the true God. Even the Nazis had the motto "God with us," but there is reason to doubt the correctness of their concept of God.
It should also be added, to understand Edith Stein's critique of Heidegger, that in Heidegger’s ontology, Husserlian humanism—still an empirical expression of the pure I and the absolute consciousness, which are the sublime outcomes of the phenomenological reduction—takes on flesh and blood, power and kingdom, efficacy and historicity as the "we" of Dasein, and becomes pre-understanding, emotional state, concreteness, existence, revelation, authenticity, openness, decision, project, anguish, thrownness, destiny, care, guilt, being-toward-death, historicity, freedom, and joy. Heidegger says:
"The anticipatory self-projecting in the insurmountable possibility of existence (death) guarantees only the totality and authenticity of the decision." [2]
"The thrown Dasein is certainly abandoned to itself and to its possible being; however, as being-in-the-world, the thrown Dasein is assigned to a 'world' and indeed exists with others." [3]
"The decision in which Dasein returns to itself opens the actual possibilities of an authentic existence starting from the heritage it assumes as being thrown. The decisive return to being thrown brings with it a transmission of heritage." [4]
"Only being free for death decisively offers Dasein its own end and installs existence in its finitude." [5]
"If Dasein, anticipating death, makes it the master of itself, then, free for it, it understands itself in the overwhelming power of its finite freedom." [6]
"But since Dasein, burdened with destiny by virtue of being-in-the-world, always and essentially exists as being-with-others, its historicization is a co-historicizing that constitutes itself as a common destiny. With this term, we mean the historicization of the community of the people." [7]
"Only in communication and struggle does the force of common destiny become free. The destiny that Dasein shares with its 'generation' and in its 'generation' expresses the full and authentic historicization of Dasein. Destiny, as impotent and courageous overwhelming power of the silent and anguished self-projecting of its being-in-guilt, requires as an ontological condition temporality." [8]
Here we see how Heidegger’s Dasein, which for him is man, is the eternal temporalized, the nullified being, the spiritual materialized, the infinite finitized, slavery and war generating freedom, life in death, omnipotent impotence, guilt as the principle of innocence, the degraded being as the principle of community, the confusion of the relative with the absolute, of man with God."
For this reason, Edith, in the 1930s, already a Carmelite nun, Sister Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, fully aware of the grave danger threatening Europe, the Church, and the world, foreseeing the outcome of Nazism, and ready to offer her life for her people—who, a few years later, would become victims of the practical consequences of Heidegger’s ontology (emphasis added by the translator) —wrote two remarkable and deeply challenging metaphysical works. She devoted herself to subtle and crucial distinctions where Heidegger had confused Act and Potency: Act and Potency: Studies for a Philosophy of Being [9] and Finite Being and Eternal Being: For an Elevation to the Sense of Being [10].
Edith Stein, with her works Act and Potency and Finite Being and Eternal Being, offers us precious metaphysical distinctions within the horizon of the analogy of being, dissipating the harmful confusion that leads to egocentrism, atheism, pantheism, materialism, nihilism, idolatry, and impiety.
Like the biblical prophets, Edith, for a moment drawn by the cunning of the ancient Serpent (emphasis mine, trans.), realized the deception, and illuminated by Christ, cast down the pagan idols, and enlightened us with the light of Christ. Refuting the wisdom of the world, Edith tells us, with Saint Paul, through her life and writings, that she knows nothing except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified (cf. 1 Cor 2:2).
Fr. Giovanni Cavalcoli OP
Fontanellato, March 13, 2025
Source:
https://padrecavalcoli.blogspot.com/p/perche-i-nazisti-hanno-ucciso-edith_17.html
References:
[1] Quoted from Elizabeth de Miribel, Edith Stein. Dall’Università al lager di Auschwitz (Edith Stein. From the University to the Auschwitz Lager), Paoline Editions, Milan 1987.
[2] Heidegger, Essere e tempo (Being and Time), Longanesi &C. Editions, 1976, p. 459.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Op. Cit., p. 460.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Op. Cit., p. 461.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Città Nuova Publishing, Rome 2003.
[10] Città Nuova Publishing, Rome 1999.