Thine Own Self: Individuality in Edith Stein’s Later Writings

290 Pages·2009·1.43 MB·English

by  Sarah Borden Sharkey

Thine Own Self

Thine
Own
Self
individuality in
E dith Stein’s
later writings
Sarah Borden Sharkey
The Catholic University of America Press
Washington, D.C.
Copyright © 2010
The Catholic University of America Press
All rights reserved
The paper used in this publication meets the mini-
mum requirements of American national Standards
for information Science—Permanence of Paper for
Printed library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.
∞
Designed by Kachergis Book Design of Pittsboro, nC
Printed by Sheridan Books of Ann Arbor, Mi
library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Borden, Sarah R.
Thine own self : individuality in edith Stein’s later
writings / Sarah Borden Sharkey.
p. cm.
includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8132-1682-9 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Stein,
edith, Saint, 1891–1942. 2. individuality. i. Title.
B3332.S674B66 2010
193—dc22
2009022586
fOR MOM AnD DAD
whose gentleness called forth my self
AnD fOR ShARK
whose wisdom and joy bring it more fully to be

Contents
Preface ix
introduction xv
Glossary xxix
One individual form and Relevant Distinctions 1
Two Reasons for Affirming individual forms 26
Three Types of essential Structures 56
Four Types of Being 81
Five Principles of individuality 104
Six individual form and Mereology 127
Seven Challenges for individual forms 153
Eight Alternative Accounts of individual form 185
Nine An Alternative Account Revisited 210
Ten Conclusion 234
Selected Bibliography 239
index 253

Preface
what it means to be a human being is a critical question, but it
is also important—in an even more personal way—to say what it
means to be an individual, to be a particular human being. There is
increasing concern, in both our philosophical community and our
more general society, for difference, and there is a worthwhile em-
phasis on respecting difference and on recognizing and being ethi-
cally responsible to alterity. Yet this concern for alterity can run
the risk of making others so inaccessible and unintelligible to us
that we lose all sense of our commonality and membership in a
common community. Questions of both commonality and differ-
ence are philosophically important, and all substantive accounts of
the person ought to be able to account for both.
Plato and Aristotle both account for our commonality in terms
of form and our differences in terms of matter.1 Although each
presents an elegant account, many thinkers have worried that such
an approach inadequately appreciates our differences, our individ-
uality, and our personalities. John Duns Scotus’s thought has been
attractive to many for precisely this reason: Scotus posits not only
a common human form, but also a haecceitas (individuating form)
for each individual, and thus he places individuality at the level not
of matter (which is precisely the unintelligible in which the intelli-
gible comes to be), but of form.
1. Their respective understandings of form and matter differ, but both none-
theless place the responsibility for commonality on our form. in Plato’s case,
at least in the most common interpretations, this is a form separate from this
world, which, in some sense, is “stamped” upon matter and thus made into many
items of the same general type. According to Aristotle, the form is not separate
from material items, but comes to be in and through matter. each member of
one species has the same (structurally, not numerically) form, but will differ in
terms of the matter in which that form comes to be.
ix