The human person

pp. 30-57

in: Mary C. Baseheart, Person in the world, Berlin, Springer, 1997

Abstract

Edith Stein's approach to the person is an original blend of phenomenological and perennial ways of probing the question of what it means to be human. Initially she proceeds from analyses of concrete lived experience to conclusions regarding the essential structure of human being. She differs from both her masters. Husserl, in his concern for epistemological structures, did not produce a holistic philosophical anthropology and separated personal experience from his ideal of philosophy as strict science. Aquinas uses experience as an important source, but Stein's specifically phenomenological method is radically different from his.