Volume 4, Issue 1, Fall 2013
Selected Papers on The Legacy of Edith Stein’s Finite and Eternal Being
Christopher T. Haley
Pages 95-106
Manifesting Meaning: Art, Truth, and Community in St. Edith Stein
In this paper I investigate the peculiarities of artistic truth in relation to God, the artist, the work of art, and the artwork’s audience in the context of Stein’s thought. In doing so, I attempt to fashion from Stein’s unsystematic statements about art the rudiments of an aesthetic theory. The core of this theory is the role of beauty in the manifestation of truth and meaning in the world of finite being. This manifestation, I argue, affords art a unique possibility of creating a fuller harmony between finite and infinite being, and so a fuller harmony with God.