Philosopher · Contemporary
St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein)
1891–1942 · Phenomenology and Thomism; Carmelite
Canonized 1998; co-patroness of Europe; martyred at Auschwitz.
Husserl's assistant and a leading phenomenologist, a Jewish atheist who read St. Teresa of Ávila in one night and was baptized in 1922. She translated St. Thomas's De Veritate, sought in “Finite and Eternal Being” to bring phenomenology and Thomist metaphysics together, wrote on woman and education, entered Carmel in 1933, and wrote “The Science of the Cross” on St. John of the Cross before being murdered as a Jew and a Catholic.
Why he matters: A saint-philosopher who shows that modern phenomenology can serve the perennial philosophy; her thought on empathy, the person and woman influenced John Paul II, and her martyrdom binds Israel and the Church.
School of Thomism · Personalist and phenomenological Thomism
Wojtyła and Edith Stein: Thomas's metaphysics of the person joined to the phenomenology of lived experience, giving the Theology of the Body and “Finite and Eternal Being.”
Others in this strand: St. John Paul II (Karol Wojtyła)
Documented positions
Where this thinker stands on each dispute the test covers.