Finite and Eternal Being: An Attempt at an Ascent to the Meaning of Being

by Edith Stein

With her careful step-by-step analysis, she gradually shows how the being of all finite existents (especially the human "I") finds its ultimate ground and destiny in the eternal Divine Being, the Creator whose trinitarian nature is reflected throughout creation.

Genres: Philosophy, Theology, Metaphysics, Catholic, Christianity

625 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1950

About the author

Edith Stein, also known as St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, OCD, (German: Teresia Benedicta vom Kreuz, Latin: Teresia Benedicta a Cruce) (12 October 1891 – 9 August 1942), was a German Jewish philosopher who converted to the Roman Catholic Church and became a Discalced Carmelite nun. She is a martyr and saint of the Catholic Church.

She was born into an observant Jewish family, but was an atheist by her teenage years. Moved by the tragedies of World War I, in 1915 she took lessons to become a nursing assistant and worked in a hospital for the prevention of disease outbreaks. After completing her doctoral thesis in 1916 from the University of Göttingen, she obtained an assistantship at the University of Freiburg.

From reading the works of the reformer of the Carmelite Order, St. Teresa of Jesus, OCD, she was drawn to the Catholic Faith. She was baptized on 1 January 1922 into the Roman Catholic Church. At that point she wanted to become a Discalced Carmelite nun, but was dissuaded by her spiritual mentors. She then taught at a Catholic school of education in Speyer. As a result of the requirement of an "Aryan certificate" for civil servants promulgated by the Nazi government in April 1933 as part of its Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service, she had to quit her teaching position. She was admitted to the Discalced Carmelite monastery in Cologne the following October. She received the religious habit of the Order as a novice in April 1934, taking the religious name Teresa Benedicta of the Cross ("Teresa blessed by the Cross"). In 1938 she and her sister Rosa, by then also a convert and an extern Sister of the monastery, were sent to the Carmelite monastery in Echt, Netherlands for their safety. Despite the Nazi invasion of that state in 1940, they remained undisturbed until they were arrested by the Nazis on 2 August 1942 and sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp, where they died in the gas chamber on 9 August 1942.

Reviews

[Jason · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an amazing book, but not for the faint of heart or for philosophical neophytes.

This is a serious work of metaphysics, grappling with St. Thomas Aquinas, Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Immanuel Kant, Soren Kierkegaard, Duns Scotus, and others. Best read if one has a solid background in philosophy.

That being said, this is a work of incredible profundity and originality, and the writing of a saint to boot. Many days, I could read but a few pages, as the concepts were so dense, it would take a day or so to fully process what was being claimed.

But, patience and hard work will bear much fruit if one perseveres.

[booklady]

Although I may be reading this for the rest of my life—and not EVER understanding it*—I am going to give it a go! It is currently out of print but available here (for $10) on PDF so long as you promise never to print it, which is very difficult for me as I much prefer to read things in print. So I am going to try to just read on my kindle, without ever printing it. I don't mind kindle for easy books, but for difficult ones, I find it extremely difficult so dear Edith and the Holy Spirit are going to have to help me until a print edition comes out....

*This is Edith's magnum opus, her life's work.

[Dionysius the Areopagite · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some years ago I decided to employ this site as less a means of international communication than a massive digital archiving with occasional greetings and farewells. The books I've archived over the past two years are generally free of exchange or sociability. In what shall become an annual procedure, I find regularly deleting books marked on a whim quite the sound procedure. So when I was reading one Casey's book on monastic life I took note of one Edith Stein he'd mentioned, whose revelation in the amidst of abandoning Orthodox Judaism for Atheism by means of St. Theresa of Avila propelled her at once into Christianity; from there, the cloister, and then in the midst of The Science of the Cross unto the gas chamber. Stein's Collected Works available blew me away in size and content. Somehow I failed to notice at first glance that these books are in numerical/chronological(?) order and straight away went for this one. I read twelve pages, set it down, and ordered a number of her books.

So while I haven't finished this book, I can say that the opening pages are so close to an ongoing synthesis of mine that I cannot help but admit that if the next 300-something pages of my edition were destroyed in the printing machine and came out like Jackson Pollock snippets, I'd still give this book my highest regards. Just when I think I've hit a secular wall, along comes Edith Stein... this shall be quite the year!

[M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I did a general first reading, and it was dense and complex. But it was very useful to compare the differences of her philosophy with Husserl. Clarity was key and so was the Thomistic influx which shines here with her great capacity for observation. This is one of the first works of her that I read that is not related to the "practical questions", her metaphysical opus. The critiques to Heidegger also are delightful, and I wish I could have gotten into that instead, too. But that is left for a second reading, I suppose.

[Leonardo]

Citado en Jesús, el buen Pastor de la historia humana.

[Miguel]

Acerca del auto cononimiento y de la auto comprension de nuestras acciones y como repercuten en nuestro futuro ascendente. Tratando asi de lograr la trascendencia del espiritu

[Louise · Rating 4 out of 5]

Difficult to understand yet still excellent.