Stein's Synthesis of Thomism and Phenomenology: Toward an Ontology of the Human Person

The Fulfilment of Reason and Being. Edith Stein’s journey from phenomenology to metaphysics is discussed, showing how she united Husserl’s study of Consciousness with Thomistic realism. She reveals the human person as relational, embodied, and spiritual capable of knowing truth and participating in God’s being.

Edith Stein’s synthesis of Thomistic philosophy and phenomenology represents one of the most sophisticated efforts of the twentieth century to reconcile ancient metaphysics and modern consciousness.

Her mature philosophy demonstrates that the human person is both subject of experience and participant in eternal being, a unity that finds its fulfilment in the encounter with divine truth.

From Phenomenology to Metaphysics

Edith Stein began her career as a student and assistant of Edmund Husserl, whose Logical Investigations (1900–01) and Ideas I (1913) founded phenomenology as a “science of essences.”

In her early work, particularly On the Problem of Empathy (Zum Problem der Einfühlung, 1917), Stein refined Husserl’s notion of empathy (Einfühlung) as the mode through which one accesses the consciousness of others.

This work revealed her enduring concern with the relational nature of the human person, a theme that would later find its metaphysical grounding in Thomism.

However, Stein grew dissatisfied with Husserl’s transcendental idealism, especially his tendency to reduce being to what is constituted within consciousness.

Her turn to Thomas Aquinas, mediated through her study of Aristotelian metaphysics and Christian mysticism, was motivated by the search for an ontological realism capable of grounding the structures of experience in a reality independent of the subject.

In Finite and Eternal Being (Endliches und ewiges Sein, 1936), Stein explicitly undertook what she called a “re-translation of phenomenology into the language of scholastic philosophy.” This text is the fullest expression of her synthesis.

Reconciling Subjectivity and Objectivity

Stein’s philosophical innovation lies in her redefinition of the relationship between subjectivity and objectivity. While phenomenology begins from the first-person standpoint, Thomism begins from an ontology of being (ens).

Stein refused to abandon either: she argued that subjective experience is the site in which objective being becomes manifest.

For Stein, every act of consciousness (Erlebnis) reveals not only its intentional content but also the ontological structure of the person who experiences. In Thomistic terms, the soul (anima) is both the form of the body and the centre of personal consciousness.

Thus, human subjectivity is neither purely immanent nor detached, it is a being-in-relation, simultaneously directed toward the world and ordered toward God.

This framework allowed Stein to overcome the dichotomy between Husserl’s transcendental ego and Aquinas’s metaphysical realism.

Truth, she held, is both Experiential and Ontological: it arises from the encounter between finite consciousness and the eternal source of all being (ipsum esse subsistens).

Essence, Existence and the Human Person

In Aquinas, essence (essentia) and existence (esse) are distinct in all created beings. Stein deepened this distinction phenomenologically by showing how the human person experiences existence as contingent, as a participation in, rather than possession of, being.

Drawing on her own phenomenological analyses of inner life and self-awareness, she argued that human existence reveals an inner structure of dependence on a transcendent ground.

In Finite and Eternal Being, Stein wrote that “the act of existing is the highest form of actuality,” echoing Aquinas’s actus essendi. Yet, unlike Aquinas, she explored how this actuality is experienced within consciousness: as a tension between self-possession and transcendence, between the immediacy of lived life and the metaphysical rootedness of that life in God.

Her integration of Thomistic metaphysics with phenomenological psychology culminated in a rich philosophical anthropology, in which the person is understood as a unity of body, soul, and spirit, each dimension corresponding to a different openness to reality: the bodily to the world, the psychic to other persons, and the spiritual to God.

The Personal and the Transcendent

Stein’s thought advanced beyond Aquinas by incorporating the experiential and affective dimensions of the encounter with God. Drawing on her Carmelite spirituality and her reading of St. John of the Cross, she described the soul’s ascent as a process of phenomenological deepening, a purification of consciousness that reveals divine presence within the interior life.

In her Science of the Cross (Kreuzeswissenschaft, 1942), Stein interpreted mystical union as the ultimate realisation of the person’s metaphysical structure: the finite being’s total openness to the Infinite.

This approach grounded religious experience in both phenomenological method and Thomistic ontology, showing that personal encounter with God is not an irrational leap but the fulfilment of reason and being.

Moral Philosophy and Human Dignity

Stein’s synthesis also yielded an original moral philosophy. Building on Thomistic natural law ethics, she maintained that the human moral sense arises from the structure of being itself: ordo amoris, the order of love. Yet she complemented this with phenomenological insights into empathy and the value of persons.

Her analysis of moral formation in The Structure of the Human Person (Der Aufbau der menschlichen Person: The Structure of the Human Person, 1932) anticipates personalist ethics: freedom is not mere autonomy but a responsible participation in divine being. For Stein, suffering and moral action acquire their deepest meaning in light of Christ’s redemptive act, a position that she embodied in her own martyrdom at Auschwitz.

Legacy and Philosophical Significance

Stein’s integration of phenomenology and Thomism anticipated later developments in Christian existentialism and personalism, influencing figures such as Karol Wojtyła (Pope John Paul II) and Emmanuel Mounier. Her thought demonstrates that faith and reason, subjectivity and objectivity, are not opposing poles but complementary dimensions of the search for truth.

At the end of her philosophical project, Stein saw being itself as luminous with divine meaning: the human person, through intellect and love, participates in God’s self-communicating reality. Her synthesis thus represents not the abandonment of modern subjectivity but its transfiguration within an ontology of participation.

 Key Related Works of Edith Stein

• On the Problem of Empathy (1917). Zum Problem der Einfühlung.

  • Phenomenological foundation of intersubjectivity.

  • Stein examines how we understand and share others’ feelings and experiences.

  • She shows that empathy allows us to access another’s consciousness highlighting the relational, interconnected nature of human beings.

    
    
    
    

• The Structure of the Human Person (1932). Der Aufbau der menschlichen Person

  • Philosophical anthropology and moral psychology.

  • Explores the human person as a unity of body, soul and spirit.

  • She examines how personal consciousness, moral responsibility and social relationships shape human dignity and ethical action in everyday life.

    
    

• Finite and Eternal Being (1936). Endliches und ewiges Sein

  • Systematic synthesis of Thomism and phenomenology.

  • Examines the relationship between human consciousness and objective reality.

  • She integrates phenomenology with Thomistic metaphysics, showing how finite human existence participates in eternal being and is oriented toward God and ultimate truth.

    
    

• The Science of the Cross (1942) — Kreuzeswissenschaft

  • Mystical theology and the completion of her philosophical vision.

  • Written by Edith Stein leading to her capture to be murdered by gas chamber at Auschwitz II–Birkenau Concentration Camp on the 9th of August, 1942.

  • Discusses the spiritual and mystical dimensions of human existence.

  • She shows how suffering, love and self-giving lead the person toward union with God, integrating phenomenology, Thomistic thought, and Carmelite spirituality.