Edith Stein (1891-1942), who was recently canonized, was one of the most intriguing Catholics of the twentieth century. A Jewish convert, an eminent philosopher, educator, and advocate for women, she became a Discalced Carmelite nun, Sister Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. Arrested by the Nazis she died in Auschwitz in 1942. This volume highlights the extraordinary features of her spirituality -- a vision that integrated her philosophical training, her affinity for Carmelite mysticism, and her personal identification with the way of the Cross. Edith Stein provides a wonderful introduction to an extraordinary mind.
A rising feminist thinker, Edith Stein examined everything in her relentless pursuit of truth. This ultimately led her to the foot of Jesus’ cross and to taking the veil as a Carmelite nun. Though she renounced fame for a hidden life of prayer and service, history would not pass her by. Because of her Jewish heritage, her life ended in the gas chambers at Auschwitz. Yet she will be remembered for all time as a saint, martyr, and trustworthy spiritual guide, Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. This collection introduces Edith Stein to a new generation, inviting the reader to walk with her on the way that leads to joy, peace, and assurance even in times that test the soul. The selections bring together her most essential writings – reflections, letters, prayers, poems, advice, and spiritual meditations – offering a window into a soul whose love for Jesus gave her life a firm direction from which she never wavered. Whether used for group study or quiet personal reflection, this little book will encourage anyone seeking to follow God in a complicated world.
Finite and Eternal Being bears the imprint of the extraordinary intellectual and spiritual journey of its author. Throughout her precocious youth, her conversion to Catholicism, her life as a Discalced Carmelite nun, and all the way to her martyrdom at the hands of National Socialism, Edith Stein's entire life was a consistent seeking after the truth. After her conversion in 1921, Stein sought to reconcile the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl, her previous intellectual master, with the thought of the new intellectual and spiritual masters she found in the Thomistic and Carmelite traditions. Stein produced this volume in the mid-1930s as a complete reworking of her earlier study of being, Potency and Act, and as her final synthesis of phenomenology with Thomistic metaphysics, Carmelite spirituality, modern scientific discoveries, spiritual and psychological debates about the soul, and Trinitarian theology.Starting from the most fundamental principles, the author takes us on a journey through a wide range of classic philosophical themes, such as potency and act, substance and accidents, matter and form, and time and eternity. Stein engages with the great thinkers of the past (e.g., Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Pseudo-Dionysius, Aquinas, Scotus) and of modern times (e.g., Kant, Husserl, Heidegger, Przywara, Conrad-Martius). Ascending to the meaning of being, she demonstrates how all finite being finds its ultimate ground in the eternal Divine Being, the Creator, whose Trinitarian nature is reflected throughout creation. Stein concludes with two appendices—appearing here for the first time in English—""Martin Heidegger's Philosophy of Existence" and "The Interior Castle," a study of St. Teresa of Ávila's mystical treatise.This new translation of Finite and Eternal Being inaugurates a new series, Edith Stein: The Complete Works: Critical English Edition, which replaces the existing series of Stein's writings, also published by ICS Publications. This volume, the twelfth in the new series, brings the recently completed German critical editions (Edith Stein Gesamtausgabe) to the English-speaking world.
