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

6. Individual Form and Mereology

127 Six • Individual Form and Mereology Many philosophers—Descartes, for example—argue that if something is genuinely distinct, it must also be separable, at least by God.1 In contrast, Thomas argues that two things may be distinct but inseparable. For example, the substantial form and the matter of a bird are truly distinct, but nonetheless inseparable.2 If there is no matter, there is no bird; if there is no form, there is no bird; but the form is nonetheless utterly distinct from the matter, even though dependent on the matter for its actualization. In claiming that form and matter for the bird are inseparable, Thomas is not claiming that the very same matter must be present at all times with the form. He is simply claiming that the form must be united to some matter (and likewise, the matter must be united to some form). Both the matter and the form could change over time, but there could be no point at which one has the form of a bird but no matter at all. We could contrast the relation of matter and form to that between a bird and its chick. The mother bird is distinct and separable from the chick, even if the chick is quite dependent on the mother for quite some time. There may be relations of dependence between the mother bird and chick, but there is not the same kind of inseparability as between form and matter. Thus, the claims regarding separability are somewhat different from claims regarding dependence. We can further distinguish different types of dependence and differing types of relations among and kinds of parts and wholes. The 1. See Descartes’s sixth meditation in Meditations on First Philosophy. 2. This would be true of all corporeal animate beings except human beings. Thomas notes a qualified hylomorphism (or, one might say, a qualified dualism) regarding human beings. 128 Individual Form and Mereology positions that one takes on these mereological issues are critical for one’s evaluation of different philosophical claims. In the following I would like to discuss Husserl’s mereology briefly and argue that Stein is probably employing the general Husserlian account of parts and wholes. I would then like to show how such an account of parts and wholes fits with Stein’s claims regarding individual and universal form, and, finally, show how such an approach to individual form can answer certain common challenges to the Scotist account of haecceitas. Although Stein’s individual forms differ both in content and in philosophic role from Scotus’s forms of this-ness, they do share certain features, and Stein’s employment of the Husserlian mereology does, I think, respond more fully to the challenges raised to the formal distinction in at the least the common readings of Scotus. It is clear that Stein posits an individual form in addition to the common human form, but it is not evident precisely how she intends these two to relate. If the common form does not retain its integrity and distinct identity, we cannot have many individuals all of the same type (rather than many more or less similar things). Thus, the common form and the individual form must be, in some way, distinct from one another. But if the two are not also somehow united, then the individual form cannot individualize the common form nor can the entity be one being. In Investigation III of Logical Investigations, Husserl presents a theory of parts and wholes that can be applied to Stein’s theory in order to gain an understanding of the relation of individual and universal forms.3 Further, Husserl’s theory, mapped onto Stein’s theory of individual forms, fits well with a large number of Stein’s claims and creates a fairly consistent picture of the concepts she uses. In the following I would like to look at Husserl’s theory of the 3. There is evidence both in his examples and explicit statements that Husserl may have intended this theory to have ontological ramifications. For example , he says: “Our distinctions have first of all related to the being of particular individuals thought of in ‘ideal universality,’ i.e., of such individuals treated purely as instances of ideas. But they obviously carry over to ideas themselves” (III, §7a; p. 448). 129 Individual Form and Mereology different kinds of parts and their relation to a whole as well as at...