Edith Stein (Teresa Benedicta)
1891-1942 · Phenomenology · Known
Edith Stein was a German Jewish philosopher who wrote her doctorate under Husserl on a hard question: how can you know another person's grief when you only ever feel your own? Her On the Problem of Empathy gave that knowledge a rigorous account. She converted from Judaism to Catholicism, entered a Carmelite convent as a nun, and was arrested as a Jew and murdered at Auschwitz in 1942.
Signature
The position Stein is most identified with in the Profiler:
- Mind
- leans Beyond Brain
- Perception
- Eidetic Intuition
Positions on the 7 axes the sources answer
- Natural Processes
- leans Purposeful (75 on a 0–100 scale from Mechanistic to Purposeful)
- Society
- leans Collectivism (25 on a 0–100 scale from Collectivism to Individualism)
- Mind
- leans Beyond Brain (75 on a 0–100 scale from Brain Only to Beyond Brain)
- Beauty
- leans Objective (75 on a 0–100 scale from Subjective to Objective)
- Meaning
- leans Inherent (75 on a 0–100 scale from Constructed to Inherent)
- Ground of Being
- leans Transcendence (75 on a 0–100 scale from Immanence to Transcendence)
- Truth
- leans Objective (75 on a 0–100 scale from Subjective to Objective)
13 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or Stein refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- Theology
- Trinitarian Monotheism
What is your position on the existence and nature of God or gods? - Highest Good
- Union with God
What is the highest good? - Good and Evil
- Good Real, Evil Privative
What is the fundamental nature of good and evil? - End of Things
- Division of Good and Evil
What is the ultimate end of all things? - Perception
- Eidetic Intuition
What do we directly perceive? - Knowledge
- Receptive Intellect / Intuition
What is the ultimate foundation of knowledge? - Ethics Basis
- Virtue
What is the ultimate basis of ethics? - Agency
- Synergism
What is the nature of human agency and freedom? - Beginning of Things
- Creation ex Nihilo
What is the origin of reality? - Authority
- Divine Revelation
What is the legitimate source of authority? - Language
- Speech Act
What is the fundamental nature of language? - Law
- Other
What is the ultimate source of legitimate law? - Death
- Judgement
What happens at death? - Role of Emotion
- Evaluative Judgment
What is the proper role of emotion? - Human Nature
- Imago Dei
What is human nature? - Primary Bond
- The Divine
What is your primary bond and loyalty?