Edith Stein and Jean Paul Sartre: A Possibile Comparison?

Abstract

Edith Stein and Jean Paul Sartre: a possibile compariso? takes into account three possible areas of investigation: their respective visions of the human being or their philosophical lem of God. The Leitfaden of Stein's speculations are her anthropological investigations, which run throughout her work. And when Stein discusses human beings, she notes that they are a composite of body, soul, and spirit. The Sartrean vision of the human being is profoundly different vis-a-vis the Steinian point of view. Privileging the relation consciousness-world, Sartre empties out the I, throwing it into existence and rendering it a thrown project. With this move, Sartre distances himself from Husserl and draws closer to Heidegger. Stein admits that one cannot speak of an individual human being without thinking of that being as being raised and formed within a community. One is born first as a communal being and then one recognises oneself as an individual. One can choose to isolate oneself or to exit such community, but one can never eliminate this moment insofar as it is that which renders the human being a human being. It is only in the interior of communities that other persons can invite us to become men and women in the true sense of the word. Without the other we would not have the possibility to recognise one another, to grow, understand one another, to become that which we are. Even here the difference with Sartre is quite clear. Others are not hell, as Sartre proclaims at the end of No Exit. In the relations of others for themselves, toward which the I directs itself in order to fill the part that is lacking in itself, the subject continues to discover a nothingness. The other objectifies me, reducing me to a mere thing and negating my transcendence. The gaze of the other, from which there is no escape, is the most atrocious punishment that one can experience. One always feels surprised when one looks in the keyhole. Sartre's position with respect to the problem of God is articulated and developed over the years. He considers himself an atheist, maintaining that religious sentiment is a useless passion insofar as it is merely the desire of human beings to see themselves as a totality. For Stein, God represents that lighthause that allows one to make choices that are always responsible and individual, choices that even God cannot enter into.