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

4. Types of Being

81 Four • Types of Being Stein’s account of the types of and relations among the essential structures is relatively complex. What allows her to make the distinctions that she does is her concept of essential being.1 Stein does not think that being is identical with actuality. Rather, she thinks that “being” can be said in at least three ways. In the following, I would like to lay out her view of three kinds of being, focusing particularly on essential being (wesenhaftes Sein),2 and show how her Some of these ideas have appeared in other forms: in chapter 6 of Sarah Borden , Edith Stein (New York: Continuum, 2003); and in Sarah Borden Sharkey, “Edith Stein and Thomas Aquinas on Being and Essence,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 82, no. 1 (Winter 2008): 87–103. 1. Tony Calcagno suggested that Stein’s discussion of the differing types of being might be usefully compared to the lively debate in her time among various Neoscholastics, especially the Neo-Thomists. Stein was certainly in conversation with Neoscholasticism of the day, working closely with Erich Przywara on her translation work, publishing the first German translation of Thomas’s De veritate (with its possible import for reception of Thomas’s thought), cultivating a personal friendship with Jacques Maritain and his wife, attending and being a lively participant in at least one major conference on Thomism and phenomenology in France, and writing several works aimed at bringing together the phenomenological method and scholastic thought. It is surely the case that contemporary Thomistic debates on being were part of the background of Stein’s thought. Exactly how, however, her account of essential being would fit into those discussions is, sadly, beyond my expertise. 2. Augusta Gooch translates wesenhaftes Sein as “substantial being.” This is a good way to translate it insofar as Stein sees essentialities, the paradigmatic things with wesenhaftes Sein, as a kind of proto ousia. Therefore, what has wesenhaftes Sein is a kind of first substance. See Gooch’s draft translation of Finite and Eternal Being (copy at the Edith Stein Center for Study and Research, Spalding University). But I find that it is difficult for me not to associate the language of “substance” and “substantial being” with a substantial form. Stein does not associate wesenhaftes Sein primarily (if at all) with a Thomistic substantial form, and I think that it confuses her metaphysical claims to import such language. Trans- 82 Types of Being understanding of essential being leads her to a Scotist rather than a Thomistic position regarding universals. For Stein, as for Scotus, there is something importantly different about nature or essence that allows it to maintain its identity, whether it is in a mind or in a thing. Stein focuses on the distinct being of essence, rather than its unity, but there are important similarities in the two positions. Finally, I would like to sketch out Stein’s development of this position , looking at her brief arguments for essential being and her use of this category to articulate an account of potentiality.3 Actual Being, Mental Being, and Essential Being In De ente et essentia III, Thomas Aquinas distinguishes three ways of considering essence: according to its act of existence, which can be (1) as it exists in things or (2) as it exists in the mind, or according to its character, what he calls (3) “an absolute consideration of the nature.”4 These three ways of considering essence parallel Stein’s distinction among three types of being, what she calls real being (wirkliches Sein), mental being (gedankliches Sein), and essential being (wesenhaftes Sein).5 Stein’s divisions among the three sorts of being appear on the surface like Thomas’s distinctions. Real being is active and efficacious in the world. We might think of kittens now pouncing and chewing on ears and tails. Mental being is being as thought (the kittens as remembered, anticipated, or imagined). Finally, essential being encompasses the “what-ness” of things, the kitten-ness. It is the being of intelligibilities and is lating wesenhaftes Sein as “essential being” has the further advantage of preserving the consistency of my other translations (for example, Wesen as “essence,” Wesenswas as “essential what,” etc.). See the glossary for a more thorough listing of my translations for these terms. 3. For a very interesting discussion of Stein’s account of being and non-being in Potenz und Akt, see Walter Redmond’s “A Nothing That Is: Edith Stein on Being Without Essence...