Open questions about the gap between Edith Stein and Edmund Husserl. A study based on the reception in E. Stein of the works Logical Investigations and Ideas I

Abstract

The present study aims to be an approximation of a particular aspect of the relationship between Edmund Husserl and Edith Stein that helps elucidate the reasons for the distance between the two throughout their academic career. Specifically, the research focuses on the reception of two specific works of the Husserl in Stein's thinking: Logical Investigations (IL) where the philosopher had the first encounter with phenomenology and gave himself to this new method with passion and the first volume of Ideas: Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology (Ideas I) with which she began to distance himself from the position that E. Husserl began to adopt. The great contribution that Edith Stein attributes to IL is mainly the idea of absolute truth and the objective knowledge proposed by E. Husserl in his new phenomenological method, which underwent all the relativisms that she saw in modern philosophy. However, with Ideas I, the philosopher distances herself from some aspects of Husserlian thought, since she sees in them rather a reissue of Kant's proposals of idealism, rather than a continuation of what she had initially conquered. What Stein experiences with the development of Husserlian thought is disenchantment, for the contribution that E. Husserl's early thought made to his constant search for truth was dissipated with later works, which for the philosopher were mainly focused on making a convincing foundation of Idealism. On the other hand, the approach to the thought of Thomas Aquinas opened the way to a "philosophy of life" that he was not finding in the phenomenological method proposed by his esteemed Professor Husserl.