Volume 4, 2011
Selected Essays from Northern Europe
Marcus Knaup
Pages 155-189
Leiblichkeit im Angesicht des Anderen
Zur Aktualität der Leibphänomenologie Edith Steins
Based on the early phenomenological works of Edith Stein, this essay applies to the problem of intersubjectivity. By fleshing out the issues of corporeality and personhood as being specific premises of approved otherness, it can be demonstrated that Stein certainly belongs to the founders of a philosophy of the living body, a fact that has often been disregarded so far. Her inventive conception of corporeality will be defended against a naturalistic interpretation of the person focusing on the brain, whereupon the mind can be reduced to certain brain-activity making it an epiphenomenon lacking important features of its own. By presenting a valid alternative to this problematic conception, the thought of Edith Stein is both substantial and challenging for contemporary anthropology.