American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly

Volume 95, Issue 1, Winter 2021

The Constitution of the Human Person as Discovery and Awakening

Scholars strive, in their treatment of Stein’s work, to express both a phenomenological concept of the human person, characterized by conscious and free spiritual activity, and a metaphysical concept of the person, seen as an individual essence unfolding throughout life. In Stein’s work, the two concepts are not simply juxtaposed, nor is there a shift from one to the other. Stein integrates her phenomenological research into a metaphysical framework. In the present contribution, I endeavor to show that Stein’s interpretation of Husserl’s concept of constitution focuses on the question of whether this constitution is to be understood realistically or idealistically and on the question of the constituting subject. I shall argue that Stein’s interpretation of constitution is closely linked to the lived experience she calls already in her early writings “self-discovery” and “awakening.”