Friday, January 27, 2012

Stein on Husserl

I am not at all worried about my dear Master. It has always been far from me to think that God's mercy allows itself to be circumscribed by the visible church's boundaries. God is truth. All who seek truth seek God, whether this is clear to them or not.

Edith Stein, from the Letter to Sr. Adelgundis Jaegerschmid, OSB, Freiburg Gunterstal (#259), Self-Portrait in Letters, 1916-1942, Gelber and Leuven, eds., ICS Publications (Washington DC: 1993) p. 272.

Here she's talking in particular about Edmund Husserl, her teacher. Like Stein, Husserl was Jewish by birth, but raised in a family that was largely secular; like her, he later was baptized, although he was baptized as a Lutheran rather than a Catholic; and like her he had problems with the Nazis due to being Jewish. He, however, died of natural causes in April of 1938, about a month after this letter was written.