Intuition of Essence

Abstract

The direct influence of Edmund Husserl’s theory of the intuition of essence is apparent in the content and method of Edith Stein’s philosophy. In this area, as in others, Stein studied the methods of phenomenology carefully in the light of knowledge theory of other times and other schools of thought, and she applied them critically in her own philosophizing. She treats the subject of intuition particularly in the Festschrift article, in which she compares Husserl’s phenomenology with the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas,¹ and in some sections of Finite and Eternal Being. Her ideas on the subject appear also in the discussions, in which she participated, of the Société Thomiste at Juvisy, which were published in 1932. In all of these, she insists that a large, separate work would be necessary for a comparison of Thomistic and phenomenological knowledge theory.² In the course of the works mentioned and of those referred to in previous chapters, however, her position regarding intuition (Anschauung) emerges from her own methods of scientific analysis as well as in her exposition of theory.