Abstract

In this article we wish to look into the nature of Edith Stein’s thought, in the light of a specific work by Karl Jaspers, especially in order to clarify the matter of its possible close dependence on Husserl’s Phenomenology during the mystical phase of her work. Especially, we theorize that the path followed by Stein has widened the field of Phenomenology to a much extensive horizon than that traced by Husserl. The reading of the work of Karl Jaspers had offered us various ideas on this context, especially for the following aspects: 1) the primacy of “observational psychology” over philosophy as the ultimate scenario for validating knowledge; 2) the achievement of a balanced position between idealism and realism; 3) a justification of metaphysics and mysticism that is independent of the rigorous philosophical rationalism still present in Husserl’s Phenomenology. The grounds of this thesis were obtained by analyzing the Jaspers’s texts and by comparing them with the Stein’s thought, and finally by focusing on the following themes: 1) type of phenomenology; 2) concept of formation; 2) realist ontology.