Knowledge and Faith

228 Pages·2000·1.49 MB·English

by  Edith Stein

The original of this work was published in German by the Archivum Carmelitanum Edith Stein
under the title
Erkenntnis und Glaube
Band XV of Edith Steins Werke
Translation authorized.
© Verlag Herder, Freiburg im Breisgau 1993
With the permission of the Archivum Carmelitanum Edith Stein and Max Niemeyer Verlag, an
English translation of Edith Stein's article “Husserls Phänomenologie und die Philosophie des hl.
Thomas v. Aquino. Versuch einer Gegenüberstellung” has been added to the ICS Publications
edition. This article originally appeared in Festschrift Edmund Husserl zum 70. Geburtstag
gewidmet, 1929, supplement of Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenologische Forschung.
Second edition © Max Niemeyer Verlag Tübingen 1974.
English translation copyright
© Washington Province of Discalced Carmelites, Inc. 2000
Cover designed by Mother Mary Joseph, O.C.D.,
of the Carmel of Port Tobacco
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Stein, Edith, 1891–1942
[Erkenntnis und Glaube. English]
Knowledge and faith / edited by L. Gelber and Michael
Linssen; translated by Walter Redmond.
p. cm. — (The collected works of Edith Stein; v. 8) Includes bibliographical references (p.
) and index. Contents: Husserl and Aquinas—Knowledge, truth,
being—Actual and ideal being, species, type and likeness
(fragment)—Sketch of a foreword to Finite and eternal being (fragment)—Ways to know
God.
ISBN 0–935216–71–5 (alk. paper: paperback)
1. Philosophy and religion. 2. God—knowableness.
I. Gelber, Lucy. II. Linssen, Michael. III. Title.
B3332.S672 E54 1986 vol. 8
[BR 100]
193 s—dc21
[231'.042] 99–046693
Table of Contents
Translator's Note
Foreword to the German Edition
Foreword to the ICS Edition
Editor's Introduction
I. Husserl and Aquinas: A Comparison
1. Philosophy as Rigorous Science
2. Natural and Supernatural Reason, Faith and Knowledge
3. Critical and Dogmatic Philosophy
4. Theocentric and Egocentric Philosophy
5. Ontology and Metaphysics, Empirical and Eidetic Methods
6. The “Intuition” Question—Phenomenological and Scholastic
Methods
II. Knowledge, Truth, Being
1. What is Knowledge?
2. What is Being?
3. Knowledge and Being
4. What is Truth?
III. Actual and Ideal Being, Species, Type and Likeness (Fragment)
IV. Sketch of a Foreword to Finite and Eternal Being (Fragment)
V. Ways to Know God: The “Symbolic Theology” of Dionysius the
Areopagite and Its Objective Presuppositions
I. Preliminary Considerations
1. The Dionysian Writings
2. The Order of Being and Knowledge in the Areopagite
3. The Degrees of “Theology”
II. Symbolic Theology
1. The Areopagitica on “Symbolic Theology”
2. The Immediate and Mediate Meaning of Symbolic Names
3. Symbol as Image
4. The Image-Relation and Its Presuppositions for the Person
Speaking and Understanding
a) Natural Knowledge of God
b) Faith
c) Supernatural Experience of God
1) Revelation, Inspiration, and Supernatural Experience of
God
2) Personal and Mediate Experience of God
3) Supernatural Experience of God; Natural Knowledge of
God
4) Significance of Supernatural Experience for Symbolic
Theology
5. Symbolic Theology as Concealing Veil
6. Degrees of Veiledness and of Unveiling
Final Remark: Symbolic Theology and Other Theologies
Appendix: Fragment (Manuscript II)
Notes
Index
About Us
Translator’s Note
T HIS ENGLISH EDITION of volume 15 of Edith Steins Werke includes one
work not contained in Erkenntnis und Glaube: the monograph “An
Attempt to Contrast Husserl’s Phenomenology and the Philosophy of St.
Thomas Aquinas.” On the occasion of Husserl’s seventieth birthday St.
Teresa Benedicta of the Cross composed an imaginary dialogue between
her two “masters,” Edmund Husserl and St. Thomas Aquinas, and
entitled it “What is Philosophy? A Conversation between Edmund Husserl
and Thomas Aquinas.” At the suggestion of philosopher Martin
Heidegger, she reworked this dialogue into an article for a Festschrift, or
commemorative issue in Husserl’s honor, of the journal of
phenomenology Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenologische
Forschung. The article appeared in 1929, but the original dialogue was
published for the first time only in 1993 in Erkenntnis und Glaube. Both
versions are printed here in parallel columns under the heading “Husserl
and Aquinas: A Comparison,” with the original dialogue labeled “Version
A,” and the later article labeled “Version B.”
“Ways to Know God,” first published in English in the journal The
Thomist, in a translation by Edith Stein’s friend Rudolf Allers, appears
here in an entirely new translation.
Curly brackets enclose additions by the German editor as well as the
page numbers of the German edition of Erkenntnis und Glaube (or the
journal and article page numbers separated by a slash in the case of the
Festschrift article, i.e., version B of “What is Philosophy?”). Translator’s
additions appear in square brackets; in particular, throughout Stein’s
texts subheadings by the translator have been added in square brackets
to help guide the reader.
The translator has endeavored to avoid specialist terms as much as
possible, but readers familiar with phenomenology and Thomism should
have no difficulty in following the technical meaning. In the case of
sensitive translations the basic German word is appended, italicized and
in square brackets (often only the first time the word occurs); in some
cases boldface is also used to indicate that part of the German word
which Edith Stein herself italicized for emphasis. In quotations of St.
Thomas and Pseudo-Dionysius, Edith Stein’s translations have been
followed. Seiendes is rendered as (a particular) “be-ing” (hyphenated) to
distinguish it from Sein, “being” (in general); Wesen appears as “being”
when it has this particular sense, but it may also mean “essence.”
WALTER REDMOND
Austin, Texas
Foreword to the German Edition
T HE PRESENT VOLUME, the fifteenth of the German works of Edith Stein,
is one more substantial contribution to the study of thought and faith.
The writings it brings together span the years 1929–1941, after she
finished her translation of St. Thomas Aquinas’s De Veritate and
immediately before and after she wrote Finite and Eternal Being. They
cover her intellectual and spiritual journey from her first turning to
Augustine and Dionysius the Areopagite, into the final phase of a well-
defined religious philosophy, to faith and knowledge. This will be
especially clear in “Ways to Know God,” which immediately preceded
Science of the Cross, her last, unfinished, work; it appears here in a
revised and enlarged re-edition.
Edith Stein’s philosophical activity has no breaks although it does show
significant development. As a young student and freethinker in religion
she turned to the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl. However, her
strict religious upbringing as a child in a Jewish home and her later
encounter with Catholic thinking through her reading and conversations
sparked a desire for a view of life based on religion—which now was
Christianity. Without foregoing the method of phenomenological analysis
and ever grounded on Thomistic principles and reasoning, she came to
value, in accord with the Carmelite approach to faith, first the natural and
then the mystical experience of God.
Our sincerest thanks to Dr. Walter Biemel for his help in reconstructing