Abstract

Throughout her entire philosophical corpus Edith Stein shows a concerted effort to reach a comprehensive understanding of the human being as individual. In this paper, I examine the question of how knowledge of the being-individual and qualitative individuality of the human being is attained, as it is found presented by Stein in her most mature philosophical work, Endliches und ewiges Sein. After briefly considering Stein’s understanding of consciousness and intentionality, I detail Stein’s own investigation of the manner the human being attains primordial knowledge of the being-individual and qualitative individuality of the self as a spiritual and personal I, through the inherently distinct and distinguishable experiences of the I as given in conscious experiences and intentional acts. In this way, I show how Stein, in contradistinction to Aquinas, who accounts for material individuation through designated matter, understands the being-individual and qualitative individuality of the human being to be ultimately rooted in the spiritual and personal I, whereby the human being is given as a personal πρώτη οὐσία, a unity that is in itself undivided and distinct from all else, and absolutely incommunicable to another. Finally, I show in what way Stein maintains that the qualitative individuality of the human being, though humanly knowable, is uniquely determined in such a way that it is not conceptually graspable and humanly knowable, and, therefore, is something properly ineffable.