This initial volume of the Collected Works of Edith Stein offers, for the first time in English, the unabridged biography of Edith Stein (Teresa Benedicta of the Cross), depicting her life as a child and young adult. Her text ends abruptly because the Nazi SS arrested, then deported, her to the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1942. Edith Stein is one of the most significant German women of the 20th century. At the age of twenty-five she became the first assistant to Edmund Husserl, the founder of Phenomenology. She was much in demand as a writer and lecturer after her conversion from atheism to Catholicism. Later, as a Discalced Carmelite nun, she maintained her intellectual pursuits until she, like so many others, became a victim of the Nazi persecution that raged across Eastern Europe. By making this landmark work available in English, the Institute of Carmelite Studies provides an eye-witness account of persons and activities on the scene at the time when psychology and philosophy became separate disciplines. In addition to photographs and a map, this volume is enhanced with a preface, the foreword and afterword, notes, and a list of places associated with Edith Stein’s life. It is our aim that these, together with Edith Stein’s text, may help bring into relief the many background details of the rich autobiographical work she has left us.

Any state exists only for the benefit of human beings. This basic tenet of Edith Stein's political thought rests on her conviction that humanity is fundamentally one community, precious beyond measure. Differences of race, culture, and language offer us means to grasp the values of life uniquely so that we may share them universally, reaching across all such social boundaries. Stein wrote this treatise in the early days of the Weimar Republic, shortly after the First World War. It sets forth a philosophy of law, government, and administration that is at once idealistic and practical. What is right, Stein argues, does not arise from legislation or litigation or politics. Right relations, as such, are more basic than any institution. Here, too, are Stein's first serious discussions of religious issues such as quilt, expiation, and freedom of conscience. This is the philosophical work that immediately preceded her decision to be baptized on January 1, 1922. Whether ironically or predictably, Stein was put to death twenty years later by a state that brazenly defied nearly every principle that she had defended in this treatise. In death she bore personal witness to the unity and dignity of the human race. She perished with her people, Jews and Christians alike, at Auschwitz in August 1942.!--[if gte mso 9] Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 ![endif]--!--[if gte mso 9] ![endif]--!--[if gte mso 10] ![endif]--