The breadth of shared intellectual debts and interests in the work of Edith Stein and Max Scheler demand that they be placed in conversation.
This volume brings together philosophers and theologians to explore the convergences and divergences in Stein and Scheler’s respective work. Both thinkers were early practitioners of the phenomenological method, drew from and reflected on theological resources in their philosophical explorations, and maintained a lifelong interest in the human person. It examines key themes such as the human person, spirit (Geist), education (Bildung), and social ontology, demonstrating their historical importance and contemporary relevance. The authors argue that reading these philosophers together is essential for understanding their historical significance and for illuminating contemporary concerns both within and beyond academia. The volume also features the first English translation of Edith Stein’s seminal essay, “The Meaning of Phenomenology as Worldview.”
Table of Contents:
Notes on Contributors
Introduction: Why Put Edith Stein and Max Scheler into Dialogue? Timothy A. Burns, Travis Lacy, and Eric J. Mohr
Part I: Human Personhood and Individuality
1. Revisiting the Concept of the Person and Its Moral Responsibility in Max Scheler and in Edith Stein, Eugene Kelly
2. Two Tenets of Personalism: Irreducibility and Individuality in Max Scheler and Edith Stein, Eric J. Mohr
3. Scheler and Stein on the Notion of Unity in the Definition of the Person, Elise Dravigny
4. Stein’s Reading of Scheler’s Idole der Selbsterkenntnis: Distinguishing Empathy and Psychic Contagion, Mette Lebech
5. The Role of Spirit in Shaping Personhood: Insights from Scheler and Stein, Susan Gottlöber
Part II: Human Embodiment and Sociality
6. Relational Ontologies: Ethics and Embodiment in the Thought of Max Scheler and Edith Stein, Michael Andrews
7. Stein and Scheler on the Experience of Essences, Daniel Neuman
8. Stein, Scheler, and the Contemporary Debate on Body Ownership, Martina Properzi
9. On Some Gnostic Motifs in Max Scheler’s Philosophical Anthropology—Rethinking the Future of Personalism with Edith Stein, William Tullius
10. The Concept of Bildung in Stein and Scheler: Its Relevance and Contribution to the Flourishing of the Human Person, Valentina Gaudiano
11. Max Scheler and Edith Stein’s Phenomenology of the State, Olivier Agard
Part III: Philosophy of Religion and Theological Indebtedness
12. What is the ‘Philosophical Worldview’ According to Scheler? From Stein's Comments on Scheler, Maximillian Lu
13. Spirit versus Matter or Life?: Edith Stein’s Finite and Eternal Being in Dialogue with Max Scheler’s The Human Place in the Cosmos, Sarah Borden Sharkey
14. A Phenomenology of Spiritual Life? Tareq Ayoub
15. Les Raisons du Coeur: The Intelligence of Love in Edith Stein and Max Scheler, Travis Lacy
16. ‘That They Maybe All Be One’: Edith Stein, Max Scheler, and a Phenomenology of the Eucharist, Timothy A. Burns
Part IV: Translation
17. The Meaning of Phenomenology as Worldview (Die weltanschauliche Bedeutung der Phänomenologie), Edith Stein, translated by Walter Redmond
About the Author :
Timothy A. Burns is Senior Teaching Professor of Philosophy at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota.
Travis Lacy is Assistant Professor of Theology at Providence College.
Eric J. Mohr is Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Liberal Arts program at Saint Vincent College, Latrobe, PA, and Secretary of the Max Scheler Society of North America.
Review :
Finally, a comprehensive anthology of essays comparing and contrasting Edith Stein and Max Scheler by a collection of world-class Stein and Scheler scholars! This is a most welcome volume on one of the most fascinating constellations of phenomenological stars in history, when Edmund Husserl and Scheler gathered about them in Göttingen a cluster of some of the brightest young rising philosophy students in Europe, including Stein and Dietrich von Hildebrand, whom Scheler (a Catholic of controverted standing and Jewish-Lutheran parentage) influenced to convert to Catholicism. Stein’s relationships to Husserl and Scheler and their sometime strained relationships and their respective intellectual and spiritual emphases are brilliantly developed in this volume.
