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

10. Conclusion

234 Ten • Conclusion Stein’s conception of the human individual is beautiful, and she articulates well an experience all of us have had of the uniqueness of each person we truly love. We do not love a human being, but this particular person. Stein’s focus on individuality—and what it means to be oneself—is exceedingly valuable and challenging. There is certainly an emphasis (and a right and good one) in our culture, both philosophical and social, on individual uniqueness and “being true” to oneself. There is something convincing about the idea that there is a predictable structure to our personalities, and I have certainly seen in myself and others willful strivings both to develop and to repress personal traits, with both good and bad results. These descriptions surely get at something philosophically significant. Stein’s metaphysical positions regarding essence and being, and her related understanding of the nature of potency and act, are theoretically powerful and ought to have a place in our contemporary philosophical discussions. Nonetheless, I am hesitant about her a priori individual forms. Stein can, through Husserl’s mereological theory and her own claims regarding essences and essential being, account for the integrity of both the individual form and the common form while also insisting that the two are irreducibly united. Her theory exhibits genuine conceptual progress. Despite her success in this and her admirable concerns regarding the value of individuality, I am not yet ready to affirm with Stein her particular account of individual forms, first, because I am not yet convinced that they are necessary to account for our experiences of ourselves and others, and second, because they pose significant challenges which may prove difficult to address fully. My leaning at the moment is to follow Thomas more closely than Stein in accounting for the positive val- 235 Conclusion ue of our individual uniqueness in terms of our freedom and existence in our particular historical, social, and cultural formations, rather than through a priori content-rich individual forms. As noted in chapter 8, there are a few texts that suggest Stein may have been willing to go in this direction, but the majority of her texts articulate a less Thomistic position on individual distinctiveness. But even if one follows Thomas more closely than Stein on questions of individuality, Stein has mounted substantive challenges which will require us to update and modify our Thomism, both in its emphases and in its understanding of the lawfulness of the species-form. Stein, it seems to me, has rightly raised questions that will call for, if not a significant modification in our understanding of species-form, at the very least different emphases in our account of the species and the individual. I have attempted to sketch briefly the lines for such work, but my position is woefully underdeveloped . The arguments made in the previous chapters are insufficiently fleshed out to account for all that needs to be accounted for in order to be fully defensible. I have hopes that such development is possible, but these are still promissory notes. Further, however, and more significantly, a full evaluation of Stein’s position on individuality and individual forms will require greater discussion and evaluation of more foundational issues, in particular, the key questions of philosophy: being and method. What is being, what is ousia? And how do we have access to being ? Stein can posit a priori individual forms in part because she affirms a kind of being distinctive in all formal structures. Individual forms (in relation to finite beings) have first and properly essential being, and they may also come to have actual or mental being . In that essential being, individual forms may timelessly retain their identity and distinctness from the common human form. Stein’s tripartite division of being into actual, mental, and essential , as well as her account of essence and its relation to potency and act, is central to her account of individual forms. And significantly tied to Stein’s account of being and essence is an account of how we are in communion with each. As far as I can tell, Stein, like Scotus, thinks that there must 236 Conclusion be something about the essence that enables us to grasp its intelligibility , in contrast to its actual existence. Essential being is that which ensures the “unscathed-ness and virginity” of the essence in both actualization and intellectualization;1 essential being is that...