Spirit, Expression, and Community in the Philosophy of Edith Stein

Abstract

This dissertation examines and elucidates the notion of spirit (Geist) in Stein’s work, particularly the role it plays in her philosophical anthropology and her understanding of intersubjectivity and community. While this notion is central to Stein’s philosophy, very little scholarship focuses on it directly, and there has never been an attempt to trace its development over the whole of Stein’s corpus. I argue that the key to understanding Stein’s notion of spirit is to understand spirit as expressive, and in so doing to recognize expression (or “going out from oneself”) as a fundamental characteristic of the human person. This approach to spirit sheds light on the resolutions Stein’s philosophy offers to the issue of the relationship between body and mind, and of the human person’s place in connection to both the world of physical causality and the world of willing, valuing, meaning, and reasoning (in other words, the world of spirit). Understanding spirit as fundamentally expressive helps us to make sense of what it means to be an individual human being and what it means to be a part of the human community. Although she draws from and synthesizes the ideas of a number of thinkers such as Edmund Husserl, Wilhelm Dilthey, and Hedwig Conrad-Martius, Stein’s approach is distinctive and, I argue, uniquely suited to comprehensively addressing these questions. I develop this idea of spirit as expressive by examining Stein’s claim that the person is a psycho-physical-spiritual unity that is revealed through empathy. In other words, I know the other to be a person because their being expresses itself to me. This starting point leads to an analysis of Stein’s understanding of the nature of the human person. In examining this psycho-physical-spiritual nature that Stein proposes, her singular notion of Entfaltung or “unfolding” emerges. She claims that the character of the individual person is grounded in a Persönlichkeitskern or “personal core” out of which unfolds the actualization of individual potentialities. Thus, the identity of the individual person is not created by action, but rather is uncovered, revealed, and comes to fruition through action. In unfolding, the individual expresses his or her personhood through spiritual acts, insofar as the individual encounters the world as meaningful and creatively and freely responds to this meaning. In this way, the spiritual self goes out toward the world, and the spiritual life is what Stein calls a “superabundant, diffusive life” of self-expression and self transcendence toward life outside of the self. Furthermore, in unfolding out toward the world and toward other individuals, we also are opened up to receive this self-expression from others (their “going out of themselves”). Thus, to be spiritual is to participate in a shared world and to be shaped by it; to express oneself to the other, and to be receptive to the other’s expression of spirit. When spirit “goes out of itself” in self-expression, it expresses itself to someone, and the community of self-expressing persons is a community of beings that “mean together,” beings that participate in the sharing of spiritual content and the fruit of spiritual acts. Yet, this self-transcendence is at the same time not a leaving behind of the self; in spiritual acts, individuals “become themselves” as the unfolding of one’s personal core is expressed and uncovered not only to others but also to oneself. In the creativity and freedom of spiritual acts, individuals are brought outside of themselves and at the same time become more at home within themselves insofar as, with the actualization of the individual Persönlichkeitskern, individuals more fully know and express their unique individuality. In this way, I argue, the notion of expression is not only crucial to making sense of Stein’s own account of spirit (and thereby her account of personhood, intersubjectivity, and community), but furthermore, provides a way of understanding the person as inextricably bound up in community without compromising individual identity. In going out toward others in spiritual expression, one becomes more oneself.