The Nature of the Human Person

This chapter examines Edith Stein’s understanding of the nature of the human person, tracing her examination of the pure ego as the foundation of experience, and examining the way in which reflection on the ego leads beyond it to the personal “I” with individual characteristics—an “I” that responds to experience in a way that reveals an inner life that is immaterial and nevertheless bound to and affected by the physical, external world. Through this exploration of the “I,” the soul emerges as the individual bearer of experience. In deepening her understanding of the soul, Stein develops her singular notion of Entfaltung or “unfolding.” She claims that the character of the individual person is grounded in a Persönlichkeitskern or “personal core” out of which unfolds the actualization of individual potentialities. This personal core does not come to be, or change, or transform through action, but rather is uncovered, revealed, and comes to fruition through action. In this sense, it is more proper to speak of personal “unfolding” (Entfaltung) than of “development” (Entwicklung). This process of unfolding is a process whereby the individual expresses his or her personhood through spiritual acts, insofar as the individual encounters the world as meaningful and is thereby motivated to respond to this meaning. In this responding, the spiritual self goes out toward the world, not only to understand it but to participate in it through action and creation. Thus, in moving from potency to actuality the self does not simply develop into something that it was not; rather, it unfolds out of itself toward what is outside of it.