holocaust, Matthew 16:,13-23, St Edith Stein, Essays: Women's Formation and Women's Soul by Edith Stein
Good Day Bloggers!
Wishing everyone a Blessed Week!
P.U.S.H. (Pray Until Something Happens). It has a remarkable way of producing solace, peace, patience and tranquility and of course resolution...God's always available 24/7..
We are all human. We all experience birth, life and death. We all have
flaws but we also all have the gift knowledge and free will as well,
make the most of it. Life on earth is a stepping to our eternal home in
Heaven. Its your choice whether to rise towards eternal light or lost to
eternal darkness. Material items, though needed for sustenance and
survival on earth are of earthly value only. The only thing that passes
from this earth to Heaven is our Soul, our Spirit...it's God's perpetual
gift to us...Embrace it, treasure it, nurture it, protect it...
"Raise not a hand to another unless it is to offer in peace and goodwill." ~ Zarya Parx 2012
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Today's Word: holocaust hol·o·caust [hol-uh-kawst]
Origin: 1200–50; Middle English < Late Latin holocaustum (Vulgate) < Greek holókauston (Septuagint), neuter of holókaustos burnt whole. See holo-, caustic
noun
1.a great or complete devastation or destruction, especially by fire.
2.a sacrifice completely consumed by fire; burnt offering.
3.( usually initial capital letter ) the systematic mass slaughter of European Jews in Nazi concentration camps during World War II (usually preceded by the ).
4.any mass slaughter or reckless destruction of life.
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Today's Gospel Reading - Matthew 16: 13-23
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| Keys To St Peter, 1482, Perugino |
Jesus replied, 'Simon son of Jonah, you are a blessed
man! Because it was no human agency that revealed this to you but my
Father in heaven. So I now say to you: You are Peter and on this rock I
will build my community. And the gates of the underworld can never
overpower it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of Heaven:
whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven; whatever you loose
on earth will be loosed in heaven.'
Then he gave the disciples strict
orders not to say to anyone that he was the Christ. From then onwards
Jesus began to make it clear to his disciples that he was destined to go
to Jerusalem and suffer grievously at the hands of the elders and chief
priests and scribes and to be put to death and to be raised up on the
third day. Then, taking him aside, Peter started to rebuke him. 'Heaven
preserve you, Lord,' he said, 'this must not happen to you.' But he
turned and said to Peter, 'Get behind me, Satan! You are an obstacle in
my path, because you are thinking not as God thinks but as human beings
do.'
Reflection
• We are now in the
narrative part between the Discourse of the Parables (Mt 13) and the
discourse of the Community (Mt 18). In these narrative parts which link
together the five Discourses, Matthew usually follows the sequence of
the Gospel of Mark. Once in a while, he gives other information, also
known by Luke. And here and there, he quotes texts which appear only in
the Gospel of Matthew, like for example the conversation between Jesus
and Peter, in today’s Gospel. This text has different interpretations
and even opposed ones in the diverse Christian Churches.
• At that time, the communities fostered a very strong affective bond of union with the leaders who had given origin to the community. For example, the communities of Antioch in Syria, fostered their relationship with Peter. Those of Greece, with Paul. Some communities of Asia, with the Beloved disciple and others with the person of John of the Apocalypse. An identification with these leaders to whom they owed their origin helped the communities to foster better their identity and spirituality. But this could also be a reason for dispute, like in the case of the community of Corinth (1 Co 1,11-12).
• Matthew 16, 13-16: The opinions of the people and of the Disciples concerning Jesus. Jesus asks the opinion of the people concerning his person, the Son of Man. The responses are varied: John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah, one of the Prophets. When Jesus asks the opinion of the Disciples, Peter becomes the spokesman and says: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God!” The response is not a new one. Before, the Disciples had said the same thing (Mt 14, 33). In John’s Gospel, the same profession of faith is made by Martha (Jn 11,27). It means that the prophecies of the Old Testament are realized in Jesus.
• Matthew 16, 17: The response of Jesus to Peter: "Blessed are you, Simon!” Jesus proclaims Peter “Blessed”, because he has received a revelation from the Father. Here, also, the response of Jesus is not new. Before, Jesus had praised the Father because he had revealed the Son to the little ones and not to the wise (Mt 11, 25-27) and had made the same proclamation of joy to the Disciples who were seeing and hearing new things which, before them, nobody knew nor had heard (Mt 13, 16).
• Matthew 16, 18-20: The attributions of Peter: To be rock and to receive the keys of the Kingdom.(a) To be rock: Peter has to be Rock that is the stable basis for the Church in such a way that it can resist against the gates of hell. With these words which Jesus addressed to Peter, Matthew encourages the persecuted community of Syria and Palestine who see in Peter the leader who belongs to their origin. In spite of the persecution and the weakness, the community has a firm basis, guaranteed by the word of Jesus. The function of being rock based on faith evokes the word of God to the people in exile: “Listen to me you who pursue saving justice, you who seek Yahweh; consider the rock (pietra) from which you were hewn, the quarry from which you were dug; consider Abraham your father, and Sarah who gave you birth. When I called him, he was the only one, but I blessed him and made him numerous” (Is 51, 1-2). This indicates that a new beginning of the People of God is with Peter.
(b) The keys of the Kingdom: Peter receives the keys of the Kingdom. The same power of binding and loosing is also given to the communities (Mt 18, 18) and to the other disciples (Jn 20, 23). One of the points in which the Gospel of Matthew insists more is reconciliation and pardon. It is one of the more important tasks of coordinators of the communities. By imitating Peter, they should bind and loosen, that is, do in such a way that there is reconciliation and reciprocal acceptance, construction of fraternity, even up to seventy times (Mt 18, 22).
• Matthew 16, 21-22: Jesus completes what was missing in Peter’s response, and Peter reacts. Jesus begins saying: “that he had to go to Jerusalem and suffer very much on the part of the Elders, of the high priests and of the Scribes, and would be killed and on the third day, he would rise from the dead”. Saying that he had to go and would be killed, or that it was necessary to suffer, he indicated that suffering had been foreseen by the prophecies. The way of the Messiah is not only one of triumph and glory, but also one of suffering and of the cross! If Peter accepts Jesus as the Messiah and son of God, he has to accept him also as Messiah servant who will be killed. But Peter does not accept the correction of Jesus and tries to draw him away. Taking Jesus aside, he began to rebuke him: Heaven preserve you, Lord, this must not happen to you!”
• Matthew 16, 23: the response of Jesus to Peter: stumbling stone. The response of Jesus is surprising. Peter wanted to direct Jesus taking the initiative. Jesus reacts: “Get behind me, Satan. You are an obstacle in my path, because you are thinking not as God thinks but as human beings do”. Peter has to follow Jesus, and not the contrary. Jesus is the one who gives the directions. Satan is the one who draws persons away from the road traced by Jesus. Once again the expression rock – pietra - appears, but now in the contrary sense. Peter, at one time is the supporting rock, at other times the stumbling rock! The communities at the time of Matthew were like that, characterized by ambiguity. This is the way we all are, according to what John Paul II said, that the Papacy itself, was characterized by the same ambiguity of Peter: rock of support for the faith and stumbling rock in the faith.
Personal questions
• Which are the opinions
about Jesus which exist in our community? These differences in the way
of living and of expressing faith, do they enrich the community or do
they render the way more difficult?
• What type of rock is our community? Which is the mission for us?
• What type of rock is our community? Which is the mission for us?
Reference: Courtesy of Order of Carmelites, www.ocarm.org.
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Featured Item of the Day from Litany Lane
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Saint of the Day: St. Edith Stein
Feast Day: August 9
Died: 1042
Patron Saint of : Europe, loss of parents; converted Jews; martyrs; World Youth Day
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| St Edith Stein |
Biography
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| Edith Stein, 1891-1942 |
Stein was born in Breslau, in the German Empire's Prussian Province of Silesia,
into an observant Jewish family. Born on October 12, 1891, she was a
very gifted child who enjoyed learning. She greatly admired her mother's
strong faith. By her teenage years, however, Edith had become an
atheist.
In 1916, Stein received a doctorate of philosophy from the University of Göttingen with a dissertation under Edmund Husserl, Zum Problem der Einfühlung (On the Problem of Empathy). She then became a member of the faculty in Freiburg. In the previous year she had worked with Martin Heidegger
in editing Husserl's papers for publication, Heidegger being appointed
similarly as a teaching assistant to Husserl at Freiburg in October
1916. But because she was a woman Husserl did not support her submission
to the University of Freiburg of her habilitational thesis (a prerequisite for an academic chair)
and her other thesis ("Psychische Kausalität" [Psychic Causality] at
the University of Göttingen in 1919) was likewise rejected.
While Stein had earlier contacts with the Roman Catholicism, it was her reading of the autobiography of the mystic St. Teresa of Ávila during summer holidays in Bergzabern
in 1921 that caused her conversion. Baptized on January 1, 1922, she
gave up her assistantship with Husserl to teach at the Dominican nuns'
schools school in Speyer from 1923 to 1931. While there, she translated Thomas Aquinas' De Veritate (On Truth) into German
and familiarized herself with Roman Catholic philosophy in general and
tried to bridge the phenomenology of her former teacher Husserl to Thomism.
She visited Husserl and Heidegger at Freiburg in April 1929, in the
same month that Heidegger gave a speech to Husserl on his 70th birthday.
In 1932 she became a lecturer at the Institute for Pedagogy at Münster, but antisemitic legislation passed by the Nazi government forced her to resign the post in 1933. In a letter to Pope Pius XI, she denounced the Nazi regime and asked the Pope to openly denounce the regime "to put a stop to this abuse of Christ's name."
Stein's letter received no answer, and it is not known for sure whether Pius XI ever even read it. However, in 1937, Pope Pius XI issued an encyclical written in German, Mit brennender Sorge (With Burning Anxiety), in which he criticized Nazism, listed breaches of the Concordat signed between Germany and the Church in 1933, and condemned antisemitism.
She entered the Discalced Carmelite monastery St. Maria vom Frieden (Our Lady of Peace) at Cologne in 1933 and took the name Teresia Benedicta a cruce (Teresia Benedicta of the Cross). There she wrote her metaphysical book Endliches und ewiges Sein, (Finite and Eternal Being) which tries to combine the philosophies of Aquinas and Husserl.
To avoid the growing Nazi threat, her order transferred Stein to the Carmelite monastery at Echt in the Netherlands. There she wrote Studie über Joannes a Cruce: Kreuzeswissenschaft (The Science of the Cross: Studies on John of the Cross).
Her testament of June 6, 1939 states, "I beg the Lord to take my life
and my death … for all concerns of the sacred hearts of Jesus and Mary
and the holy church, especially for the preservation of our holy order,
in particular the Carmelite monasteries of Cologne and Echt, as
atonement for the unbelief of the Jewish People and that the Lord will
be received by his own people and his kingdom shall come in glory, for
the salvation of Germany and the peace of the world, at last for my
loved ones, living or dead, and for all God gave to me: that none of
them shall go astray."
However, Stein was not safe in the Netherlands—the Dutch Bishops' Conference had a public statement read in all the churches of the country on July 20, 1942, condemning Nazi racism. In a retaliatory response on July 26, 1942, the Reichskommissar of the Netherlands, Arthur Seyss-Inquart,
ordered the arrest of all Jewish converts, who had previously been
spared. Stein and her sister Rosa, also a convert, were captured and
shipped to the Auschwitz concentration camp, where they are presumed to have been gassed on August 9, 1942 when Edith was 50.
A Carmel among the Nazis
Stein’s family saw her entry into the
convent as a betrayal, and as coming at the worst possible time, just when Jewish
persecution was intensifying. Christianity was the religion of their oppressors;
they couldn’t understand what it meant to her. When Stein’s mother heard
of her decision to enter the convent she was crushed.
“Why did you have
to get to know him (Jesus Christ)? He was a good man — I’m not saying
anything against him. But why did he have to go and make himself God?” It
was only after her mother’s death in 1936 that Stein’s sister Rosa felt
free to be baptized as a Catholic as well.
Stein remained in Cologne for five
years, participating in the life of the community with great joy while continuing
her scholarly work. After the terror of kristallnacht (November 9 1938), the nuns
in Cologne feared for Stein’s safety and decided to send her secretly to
the Carmel in Echt, the Netherlands. Her sister Rosa later joined her there as
a Third Order Carmelite, serving as the convent portress. When Holland fell to
the Nazis, Edith and Rosa Stein were in danger again, and plans were made to move
them to Switzerland. Before these could be finalized, the Dutch bishops issued
an encyclical attacking the anti-Semitic atrocities of the Nazi regime. The Gestapo
retaliated immediately by rounding up all Roman Catholic Jews to be sent to the
death camps. Edith and Rosa Stein were arrested on August 2, 1942. When Rosa seemed
disoriented as they were led away from the convent, Edith gently encouraged her,
“Come, Rosa. We go for our people.” The sisters were deported to Auschwitz
and executed just a week later. Edith Stein was fifty years old.
Reports from
those who were close to Sister Teresa Benedicta in those final days show her to
have been a woman of remarkable interior strength, giving courage to her fellow
travelers and helping to feed and bathe the little ones when even their mothers
had given up hope and were neglecting them. One woman who survived the war has
written a description of Stein during the time their group was awaiting transportation
to “the East.” “Maybe the best way I can explain it is that she
carried so much pain that it hurt to see her smile...In my opinion, she was thinking
about the suffering that lay ahead. Not her own suffering — she was far too
resigned for that — but the suffering that was in store for the others. Every
time I think of her sitting in the barracks, the same picture comes to mind: a
Pieta without the Christ.” Although she did not seek death, Stein had often
expressed her willingness to offer herself along with the sacrifice of Christ
for the sake of her people, the Jews, and also for the sake of their persecutors.
Legacy
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| St Eidth Stein Memorial, Prague |
Stein was beatified as a martyr on May 1, 1987, in Cologne, Germany by Pope John Paul II
and then canonized by him 11 years later on October 11, 1998. The
miracle which was the basis for her canonization was the cure of Teresa
Benedicta McCarthy, a little girl who had swallowed a large amount of paracetamol (acetaminophen), which causes hepatic necrosis. Her father, Rev. Emmanuel Charles McCarthy, a Melkite Catholic, immediately rounded up relatives and prayed for Stein's intercession.
Shortly thereafter the nurses in the intensive care unit saw her sit up
completely healthy. Dr. Ronald Kleinman, a pediatric specialist at Massachusetts General Hospital
in Boston who treated Teresa Benedicta, testified about her recovery to
Church tribunals, stating "I was willing to say that it was
miraculous." Teresa Benedicta would later attend Stein's canonization ceremony in the Vatican.
Today, there are many schools named in tribute to Stein, for example in Darmstadt, Germany, Hengelo, the Netherlands, and Mississauga, Ontario, Canada. Also named for her are a women's dormitory at the University of Tübingen and a classroom building at The College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts. The philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre published a book in 2006 titled, Edith Stein: A Philosophical Prologue, 1913-1922, in which he contrasted Stein's living out of her own personal philosophy with Martin Heidegger, whose actions during the Nazi era according to MacIntyre suggested a "bifurcation of personality." In 2009, her bust was introduced to the Walhalla temple near Regensburg.
Writing about Women
Most of Edith Stein’s writing on women and women’s
vocation stems from the decade of her professional life between her conversion
and her entrance into the Carmelite community at Cologne. The importance of these
essays cannot be overestimated, both in terms of their originality and level of
insight, but also in terms of their wider influence. On a recent visit to the
U.S., Cardinal Lustiger of Paris, himself a Jewish convert to Catholicism, called
Edith Stein one of the greatest philosophers of our time. “Her best pupil,”
he said, “is the Holy Father.” Anyone who has read the pope’s encyclical
on The Dignity andVocation of Woman, or his more recent Letter to Women, will
see immediately how much they owe to Edith Stein’s pioneering work on this
subject.
The motivation for these inquiries into the nature and vocation of
women was, in Stein’s view, the need to educate women in a way that would
be perfective of them, not just as generic human beings, but as women. Stein rejected
the radical feminist claim that there are no important differences between men
and women. As a philosopher looking for the basis of true femininity, she begins
with what might be called an ontology of woman.
After her conversion to Catholicism,
Stein had turned to an intense study of the great Catholic philosopher and Doctor
of the Church, St. Thomas Aquinas. She was fascinated by St. Thomas’s view
of the human person. Unlike the radical dualism of Descartes, which represents
soul and body as two different and distinct entities, Thomas insisted upon the
subsistent unity of the person, body and soul, since each natural substance is
a composite of form and matter. Further, since matter is what distinguishes one
human being from another, the body is essential to the person, and not simply
a machine or a shell for the soul that could be discarded without serious loss
to the “real” self.
Works
by Edith Stein
On the Problem of Empathy (collected works of Edith Stein, Sister Benedicta of the Cross, Discalced Carmelite, vol. 3) (Kluwer Academic Press, 1989) (ISBN 0792304853) and (Institute of Carmelite Studies Publications or ICS Publications, 1989).
Life in a Jewish Family: Her Unfinished Autobiographical Account (collected works of Edith Stein, vol. 1) (ICS Publications, 1986) (ISBN 0935326049).
Edith Stein: Selected Writings by Edith Stein (Springfield, Illinois: Templegate Publishers, 1991) (ISBN 0872431894).
The Hidden Life: Hagiographic Essays, Meditations, Spiritual Texts (collected works of Edith Stein, vol. 4) by Edith Stein, L. Gelber, M. Linssen (ed.), W. Stein (transl.) (ISBN 0935216170), Templegate Publishers, 1992.
Self-Portrait in Letters 1916-1942 (collected works of Edith Stein, vol. 5) by Edith Stein, Josephine Koeppel (transl.) (ICS Publications, 1994) (ISBN 0935216200).
Edith Stein Selected Writings: with Comments, Reminiscences and Translations of Her Prayers... by Edith Stein and Susanne Batzdorff (ed.) (Springfield, Illinois: Templegate Publishers, 1992) (ISBN 0872431894).
Women in the Professions
Women’s role within society concerned Stein
very deeply. She was herself a professional woman, and she taught younger women
at the secondary and later at the university level, just at the time when they
are deciding what path their lives should take. Should women be confined to the
domestic sphere to “home and hearth?” Not at all, said Stein. She saw
the gains made by the women’s movement in this respect to be positive opening
up the professions and political life to women and providing equal opportunities
in these areas.
Stein translated Newman’s The Idea of a University into
German, and she held that a liberal education can be just as helpful in the formation
of women as in the formation of men. If some subjects are more naturally attractive
or interesting to women, perhaps because of clear connections with the living
and personal, others may be helpful correctives to an excessively personal outlook.
Since domestic skills can be learned at home, Stein suggested a curriculum for
university women that would not differ significantly from what would be offered
for men. Still, she felt it is of utmost importance that teachers of women should
know how to connect their subject matter with the particular concerns and sensitivities
of women. She thought it very important that girls and women be taught primarily
by women.
When asked whether the natural vocation of women ruled out certain
professions as unsuitable for her, Stein answered: “One could say that in
case of need, every normal and healthy woman is able to hold a position. And there
is no profession which cannot be practiced by a woman.” It is likely that
some professions will continue to attract more women than men, partly because
of their strong human component. We might expect to find a large percentage of
women drawn to fields like teaching, medicine, law, social work, psychology, etc.
Obviously, not everyone can make a choice when entering the job market as to what
sort of work they would find most attractive, and many women (along with many
men) will work at jobs which are not especially suited to them. But every profession
can be practiced in a feminine way; that is, every profession can be humanized,
made more person-friendly, and brought into greater contact with human concerns.
So it is a good thing for the society that women should be found in every profession.
Speaking on the role of women in national life, Stein urged, “The nation...doesn’t
simply need what we have. It needs what we are.” The same could be said about
the factory, the office, the professions, the political sphere, as well as the
school and the home.
Stein especially encouraged women to become involved in
political life. The maternal concern of women, she felt, should lead to a deep
interest in the life of the community, from the PTA to the presidency. Since the
decisions made in the public square have a deep impact on the family and on human
persons generally, women automatically have a big stake in them. In dark times,
as in Edith Stein’s generation, but also in our own, women are especially
called upon to speak out with courage and to make an impact beyond their own families
and communities. For Stein, it is unlikely that this participation in public life
will consist in a seizing of power. Rather she seems to have in mind a kind of
public witness that women might offer.
Stein often urged women to look to their
own mothers for insight into what it means to be a woman. Her own essays on women
owe much to the example of her mother, and it is clear that she felt a deep love
and friendship for her throughout her life. Stein encouraged every woman to seek
to live out in her own life and circumstances the ideal of true womanhood. This
means especially exercising that maternal vocation, which is given primarily to
women, and which holds little in the way of glamour or attraction for many women
today.
The work of a mother is hidden for the most part, and even its rewards
are intangible. This is exactly why Edith Stein looked to women to preserve within
human society those spiritual values that cannot be measured. It is not that the
public achievements of women are unimportant of course, but that women must not
lose sight of those ends for which all other things are only the means. In one
of her letters, Stein wrote: “On the question of relating to our fellowman
— our neighbor’s spiritual need transcends every commandment. Everything
else we do is a means to an end. But love is an end already, since God is love.”
In an address just before Hitler’s rise to power, Blessed Edith Stein
urged a group of Catholic women to fight for these very truths: “Perhaps
the moment has almost come for the Catholic woman to stand with Mary and with
the Church under the cross.” It would be a shame to let her answer the call
alone.
Beatification controversy
The beatification of Stein as a martyr generated criticism and
created some controversy. Critics argued that Stein was killed because
she was Jewish by birth, rather than for her later Christian faith,
and that, in the words of Daniel Polish, it seemed to "carry the tacit
message encouraging conversionary activities" because "official
discussion of the beatification seemed to make a point of conjoining
Stein's Catholic faith with her death with 'fellow Jews' in Auschwitz" .
The position of the Roman Catholic Church is that Stein also died
because of the Dutch episcopacy's public condemnation of Nazi racism in
1942; in other words, that she died to uphold the moral position of the
Church, and is thus a true martyr.
References
- "Patron Saints Index: Saint Teresia Benedicta of the Cross" Accessed 26 January 2007.
- Excerpts: A Carmel among Nazis,Writing about Women and Women in Professions. Garcia, Laura. “Edith Stein — Convert, Nun, Martyr.” Crisis 15, no. 6 (June 1997): 32-35. Access August 11, 2012. http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/religion/re0001.html
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Today's Snippets: Two Essays By St Edith Stein
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| St Edith Stein, aka St Teresia Benedicta of the Cross German Roman Catholic nun, philosopher and Holocaust martyr |
Woman’s Formation
By Edith Stein
"The particular spiritual disposition of which we have been speaking
is the substance which must be formed: the basic faculties which exist
originally are unique in degree and in kind to each human soul. It is
not inanimate material which must be entirely developed or formed in an
exterior way, as is clay by the artist’s hand or stone by the weather’s
elemental forces; it is rather a living formative root which possesses
within itself the driving power (inner form) toward development in a
particular direction; the seed must grow and ripen into the perfect
gestalt, perfect creation. Thus envisaged, formation of the spirit is a
developmental process similar to that of the plant. However, the plant’s
organic growth and development do not come about wholly from within:
there are also exterior influences which work together to determine its
formation, such as climate, soil, etc.; just so, in the soul’s
formation, exterior factors as well as interior ones, play a role. We
have seen that the soul can be developed only through activation of its
faculties; and the faculties depend on material to be activated (and,
indeed, on material which is suitable to them): the senses, through
impressions which they receive and process, the intellect through mental
performance, the will through achievements which are characteristic to
it, the emotions through the variety of feelings, moods, and attitudes.
Definite motives which place the faculties into motion are needed for
all of this.
Simple contact with other people and with one’s surroundings is often
sufficient to stimulate certain responses. Ordinary daily existence
conditions the formation of the spirit. However, instruction and
guidance are needed for other responses, especially those involving the
higher faculties. Allowance should be made for spontaneity as well as
planned work and instruction. Formation requires the creation of
educational subject matters which will place duties before intellect and
will, stir the emotions, and fulfill the soul. But here we enter into
the realm of values—the good, the beautiful, the noble, the sacred—the
specific values which are unique to each soul and to its individual
quality.
Cognitive work and achievements of the will are free actions; so,
too, surrender to or rejection of original, involuntary, self-governing
emotional stimulations is a matter of freedom. Thus, the human being
awakened to freedom is not simply delivered to exterior formative
influences; but, on the contrary, he can yield himself to them or reject
them as he searches for or avoids possible formative influences. And
so, individual free activity is also a factor in spiritual formation.
All of the exterior educational factors—everyday existence, planned as
well as free, self-developmental work—are bound in their efficacy to the
first factor, the natural predisposition; they cannot endow the person
with qualities which are not in him by nature. All human education can
only provide subject matter and render it “palatable”; it can lead the
way and “demonstrate” in order to stimulate activity, but it cannot
force acceptance or imitation. Nature sets the limits of personal
formative work. Nature and the subject’s freedom of will impose limits
on spiritual formation. But there is one Educator for whom these limits
do not exist: God, who has given nature, can transform it in a manner
which turns it from its natural course of development (just as He can
intervene by His miracles in the normal course of external natural
occurrences). And even though He has excluded also a mechanically
necessary rule of the human will by His gift of freedom, He can bring
the will’s interior inclination toward a decision to execute that which
is presented to it.
Thus we have attained a certain insight into the nature of education:
the process of shaping the natural spiritual predisposition. In
customary usage, the term “education” also signifies the result of these
processes—the gestalt which the soul assumes thereby, perhaps also the soul thus formed, and even the spiritual matters which it receives.
In trying to formulate a proper educational program for women, the
stress is often laid on questions of method. Whoever is concerned with
the spiritual formation of woman must first of all be aware of the
material with which he is dealing, that is, the predisposition of the
human being whom he is supposed to educate. He must especially
understand the unique quality of feminine spirituality and the
individual nature of his pupils. He must also be aware of earlier
influences, such as home environment, which have already affected and
still affect his students.
He must know whether they are in harmony or not with his own aims and
purposes or whether, if they are not, an effort should be made to
eliminate them. The educator must be fully conscious of the objectives
he has set for himself and for others, which, of course, depend on his
total vision of the world. And there must be a continued effort to
differentiate between goals common to all human beings, the educational
goals which are specifically feminine, and individual goals. These
cannot be set up arbitrarily but are determined by God Himself. Holy
Scripture counsels us on the destiny of the human being in general and
that of woman in particular. Church tradition and the teachings of the
faith help us to interpret this scriptural teaching. The parable of the
talents refers to the unique gift given to each individual; the
Apostle’s word describes the multiplicity of gifts afforded in the
Mystical Body of Christ. The individual must discover his own unique
gift.
God has given each human being a threefold destiny: to grow into the
likeness of God through the development of his faculties, to procreate
descendants, and to hold dominion over the earth. In addition, it is
promised that a life of faith and personal union with the Redeemer will
be rewarded by eternal contemplation of God. These destinies, natural
and supernatural, are identical for both man and woman. But in the realm
of duties, differences determined by sex exist. Lordship over the earth
is the primary occupation of man: for this, the woman is placed at his
side as helpmate. The primary calling of woman is the procreation and
raising of children; for this, the man is given to her as protector.
Thus it is suitable that the same gifts occur in both, but in different
proportions and relation. In the case of the man, gifts for struggle,
conquest, and dominion are especially necessary: bodily force for taking
possession of that exterior to him, intellect for a cognitive type of
penetration of the world, the powers of will and action for works of
creative nature. With the woman there are capabilities of caring,
protecting, and promoting that which is becoming and growing. She has
the gift thereby to live in an intimately bound physical compass and to
collect her forces in silence; on the other hand, she is created to
endure pain, to adapt and abnegate herself. She is psychically directed
to the concrete, the individual, and the personal: she has the ability
to grasp the concrete in its individuality and to adapt herself to it,
and she has the longing to help this peculiarity to its development. An
equipment equal to the man’s is included in the adaptive ability, as
well as the possibility of performing the same work as he does, either
in common with him or in his place.
In the Old Testament, those testimonies from the Fall on, i.e., those
which reckon with fallen nature, marriage and maternity are presented
with a certain exclusiveness as the destiny of woman. These are even the
means for fulfilling her supernatural goal: she is to bear children and
raise them in faith in the Redeemer so that one day she will behold her
salvation in them. (This interpretation is also voiced from time to
time in the Pauline epistles.)
Next to this, the New Testament places the ideal of virginity. In place
of the marriage bond, there is offered the most intimate, personal
communion with the Savior, the development of all faculties in His
service, and spiritual maternity—i.e., the winning of souls and their
formation for God. One should not interpret this differentiation of
vocation as if in one case it were only the natural goal being
considered, and, in the other case, only the supernatural one. The woman
who fulfills her natural destiny as wife and mother also has her duties
for God’s kingdom—initially, the propagation of human beings destined
for this kingdom, but then, also works for the salvation of souls; only
for her, this lies first within the family circle. On the other hand,
even in the life which is wholly consecrated to God, there is also need
for the development of natural forces, except that now they can be more
exclusively dedicated to problems pertaining to the kingdom of God and
can thereby even benefit for a wider circle of people.
These works for God’s kingdom are not foreign to feminine nature but,
on the contrary, are its highest fulfillment and also the highest
conceivable enhancement of the human being. This is true as long as the
action of personal relationship is born out of love for God and
neighbor, works through love of God and neighbor, and leads to love of
God and neighbor.
Thus the education of the Christian woman has a dual goal: to lead
her to that which makes her capable of either fulfilling her duties as
wife and mother in the natural and supernatural sense or of consecrating
all her powers to the kingdom of God in a God-dedicated virginity.
(Marriage and the religious life should not be set up as alternatives.
Signs indicate that our time needs people who will lead a God dedicated
life “in the world”; this is certainly not to say, however, that
conventual life is “outmoded.”)
What can we do to aim towards this goal? We have already indicated
that woman was created for this purpose; in fallen nature, however,
there are drives working at the same time in opposition to it. So it
will be a question of supplying the educational subject matters which
are necessary and conducive to the soul’s pure development and qualified
to impede unwholesome drives. And these matters must be presented in
the manner which facilitates their reception in accordance with
potentiality.
The emotions have been seen as the center of woman’s soul. For that
reason, emotional formation will have to be centrally placed in woman’s
formation. Emotion exists in sentiments such as joy and sorrow, moods
such as cheerfulness and gloom, attitudes such as enthusiasm and
indignation, and dispositions such as love and hate. Such emotional
responses demonstrate the conflict of the individual with the world and
also with himself. It is only the person who is deeply involved with
life whose emotions are stirred. Whoever is aiming to arouse emotion
must bring it into contact with something which will hasten this
involvement. Above all, these are human destinies and human actions as
history and literature present them to the young—naturally, this will be
contemporary events as well. It is beauty in all its ramifications and
the rest of the aesthetic categories. It is truth which prompts the
searching human spirit into endless pursuit. It is everything which
works in this world with the mysterious force and pull of another world.
The subjects which are especially affective in emotional training are
religion, history, German, and possibly other languages if the student
succeeds in overcoming the external linguistic difficulties and is able
to penetrate to the spiritual content.
But, generally speaking, it is not enough only to stir the emotions.
An evaluating factor exists in all emotional response. What the emotions
have grasped are viewed as being either positively or negatively
significant, either for the concerned individual himself or, independent
of him, viewed in the significance of the object in itself. It is
thereby possible for the emotional responses themselves to be judged as
being “right” or “wrong,” “appropriate” or “inappropriate.” It is a
matter of awakening joyful emotion for authentic beauty and goodness and
disgust for that which is base and vulgar. It is important to guide the
young person to perceive beauty and goodness, but this is not
sufficient. Often the child is first awakened to the value of things by
his awareness of the adult’s responses—above all, that of the
teacher—enthusiasm inspires enthusiasm. The guidance of attitudes is
simultaneously a method of training the ability to discriminate. One
cannot introduce him only to the good and the beautiful: life will also
bring him into contact with ugliness, and by then the child should have
already learned to differentiate between the positive and the negative,
the noble and the base, and to learn to adapt himself in suitable ways.
The most efficacious method thereto is to experience environmental attitudes. The attitude of the developing individual towards the world depends
greatly on environmental influences which are both arbitrary and
instinctive. And thus it is of extraordinary significance that the
child’s education be placed in the hands of people who themselves have
received proper emotional formation.
However, this most essential, even indispensable, method of emotional
formation through value judgments is accompanied by a certain danger as
well: feelings and emotional attitudes are “contagious”; they are easily
picked up by one person from another. These attitudes are, indeed, but
pure predispositions in the affected soul. In the first place, the mind
is not open to the values presented; and these sentiments, moreover, are
neither momentarily or generally vital. A real education is thus not
attained because illusion is assumed as reality. Hence there is need for
education relevant to the authenticity of sentiments, the
differentiation of appearance from reality both in the environment and
in one’s own soul. This is not possible without sufficient intellectual
training. Intellect and emotion must cooperate in a particular way in
order to transmute the purely emotional attitudes into one cognizant of
values. (It is not our concern here to demonstrate this method of
cooperation.) Whoever knows exactly why something is good or beautiful
will not simply assume the attitudes of another. And then the exercise
of this intellectual critique develops the ability to distinguish
between spiritual truth and falsehood. Emotional reactions invoke
action. The authentic art lover will gladly sacrifice comfort for the
sake of artistic enjoyment. Those who truly love their neighbor will not
be unsympathetic and apathetic to their neighbor’s need. Words should
inspire action; otherwise, words are mere rhetoric camouflaging
nothingness, concealing merely empty or illusory feelings and opinions.
In earlier decades, the subjects which trained the emotions
constituted the principal aim of the education of young women. Such
formation corresponded to feminine nature. But there was a neglect of
the indispensable complement, the practical training and activation of
the intellect. This kind of education produced a type of woman who lives
on illusion, a woman who either denies realistic duties or surrenders
herself helplessly to fluctuating sentiments and moods, who constantly
seeks excitement. Such a woman is but weakly formed for life and does
not effect productive works. The modern school seeks to remedy such
deficiencies. It has introduced more subjects designed to train the
mind—mathematics, natural sciences, and the classics. In order that the
thematic content be grasped by the intellect, mere memorization is
de-emphasized and spontaneity is encouraged. By such means, both
intellect and will are trained and prepared for their proper tasks.
Modern education also stresses community life and practical
participation in it by such means as school clubs, walking tours,
celebrations, and team activities. Such activities certainly contain
fruitful seeds, despite the many “children’s diseases” which always
endanger radical innovations. The great danger is that the reform may
not take sufficiently into account the unique nature of woman and the
type of education it needs, while being only too narrowly confined to
the model of educational institutions for males. The changing demands of
practical life make this danger obvious.
Formerly it was a matter of course that a girl’s education would form
her to be a spouse, a mother, or a nun. For centuries, hardly any other
feminine vocation was known. Girls were expected to be initiated into
domestic activity and religious practices either in family or convent
life, and thereby prepared for their later vocation. The
nineteenth-century Industrial Revolution revolutionized average domestic
life so that it ceased to be a realm sufficient to engage all of
woman’s potentialities. At the same time, the diminishing life of faith
excluded convent life as a serious consideration for most people. In
passive natures, this climate has led to an immersion into an overly
sensual life or empty dreams and flirtations. In strongly active
natures, there has resulted a turning away from the house towards
professional activity. So the feminist movement came into being.
Vocations other than domestic had been exercised for centuries almost
exclusively by men. It was natural, therefore, that these vocations
assumed a masculine stamp and that training for them was adapted to the
masculine nature. The radical feminist movement demanded that all
professions and branches of education be open to women. In the face of
severe opposition, the movement was able to advance only very gradually
until, almost suddenly, it obtained nearly all its demands after the
revolution. In the beginning of the movement, the women who entered into
professional life were predominantly those whose individual aptitude
and inclination went in this direction; and they were able,
comparatively speaking, to acclimate themselves easily. The economic
crisis of recent years has forced against their will many women into
professional life. Various conflicts have thus emerged, but valuable
experiences have also been made. And we have reached the point where we
may ask questions which, according to right reason, should have been
cleared up before the movement began. Are there specifically feminine
professions? What are they? Do women require education different from
that given to men? If so, how should such education be organized?
Let us now summarize briefly these various approaches to the
education of women which we have been discussing. The nature and destiny
of woman require an education which can inspire works of effective
love. Thus, emotional training is the most important factor required in
the formation of woman; however, such authentic formation is related to
intellectual clarity and energy as well as to practical competence. This
education forms a proper disposition of the soul in accordance with
objective values, and it enables a practical execution of this
disposition. To place supernatural values above all earthly ones
complies with an objective hierarchy of values. The initiation of this
attitude presents as well an analogy with the future vocation of forming
human beings for the kingdom of God. That is why the essence of all
feminine education (as of education in general) must be religious
education, one which can forcefully convey the truths of the faith in a
manner which appeals to the emotions and inspires actions.
Such formation is designed to exercise simultaneously the practical
activities by the life of faith. The individual will be concerned with
these activities through his entire life: the development of the life of
faith and of prayer with the Church through the liturgy, as well as
with creating a new personal relationship to the Lord, especially
through an understanding of the Holy Eucharist and a truly Eucharistic
life. Of course, such religious education can only be imparted by those
personalities who are themselves filled with the spirit of faith and
whose lives are fashioned by it.
Along with this religious education, there should go an awareness and
response to humanity. Subjects which can contribute to such awareness
are history, literature, biology, psychology, and pedagogy; of course,
these subjects should be presented in a simplified form to meet the
student’s potential. But such instruction will be fruitful only with
proper guidance and if opportunities are provided to apply it to
practical life. Necessary for intellectual development are the
predominantly formal educational subjects—mathematics, the natural
sciences, linguistics, and grammar. But they should not be overstressed
at the expense of the student’s capacity or the more essential elements
of feminine education.
Instructional methods should be free and flexible in order to take
into account not only the specifically gifted but also to provide
opportunity for all to study theoretical subjects and cultivate
technical and artistic talents. The individual’s later choice of a
profession must be kept in mind. Obviously, in doing all this, the
teachers themselves must be thoroughly trained in their respective
fields. And, of course, for women to be shaped in accordance with their
authentic nature and destiny, they must be educated by authentic women.
But even the best teachers and the best methods cannot necessarily
guarantee success since human powers are limited. However, formal
education is only one part of the integral educational process. Formal
education must reckon with the capacities of the student and with the
outside influences to which the student is subjected; but it has neither
the possibility to identify all these factors nor to deal effectively
with them. Moreover, formal education ends long before the total
educational process is completed. The instructor may even consider the
education successful if the pupil has been prepared to continue her
education independently in the initiated direction. But the
circumstances of daily life often intervene and make it possible for the
purely natural drives to prevail.
Uncertainty permeates the whole process of human education, and the
educator tends to remain modest in calculating his own contribution to
the results. Yet he must not yield to skepticism or despair. The
educator should be convinced that his efforts are important, even though
he cannot always measure the results of his efforts, even though
sometimes he can never be aware of them at all. He must never forget
that, above all, the primary and most essential Educator is not the
human being but God Himself. He gives nature as He does life’s
circumstances under which it comes to development; He also has the power
to transform nature from within and to intervene with His works where
human powers fail. If religious education succeeds in breaking down
resistance to divine instruction, then one can be certain about
everything else. We should also be convinced that, in the divine economy
of salvation, no sincere effort remains fruitless even when human eyes
can perceive nothing but failures.
●▬▬ஜ۩۞۩ஜ▬♥▬●▬▬ஜ۩۞۩ஜ▬▬♥▬●▬
Woman’s Soul
By Edith Stein
"Can we speak in general terms of the soul of woman? Every human soul
is unique, no one soul is the same as any other. How can we then speak
of the soul in general? But speculation concerning the soul usually
considers the soul of the human being in general, not this one or that
one. It establishes universal traits and laws; and, even when, as in
Differential Psychology, it aims at differences, it is general types
which it depicts rather than individual ones: the soul of the child, of
the adolescent, of the adult, the soul of the worker, the artist, etc.;
so it is with the soul of man and of woman. And to those who have
reflected on the potentiality of science, the understanding of the
individual appears ever more problematic than that of the general
species.
But even if we intend to disregard individualities, is there then one
type of woman? Is there something in common to be discovered in the
prototype of woman as seen in Schiller’s Glocke or Chamisso’s Frauenliebe und-leben,
and in the images which Zola, Strindberg and Wedekind paint for us? Can
the complete multiplicity which we meet with in life be reduced to a
single unity, and can this unity be distinguished from man’s soul? This
is not the place to provide philosophical proof that there is something
in the range of the existent which we can denote as species, woman’s
soul, and that there is a specific cognitive function which is able to
perceive it. Therefore, it will perhaps be more intelligible if we do
not begin by outlining this general image of the species but rather
sketch a series of types as different as possible one from the other,
and then attempt to discover if we can find a general species in them.
Since it is through poetry that the soul is most adequately described, I
shall now analyze types taken from literary works to which I ascribe a
particular symbolic value.
Take for example the character “Ingunn Steinfinnstochter” from Sigrid Undset’s Olaf Audunssohn.
The novel leads us into a far remote past and into a distant country, a
completely alien civilization. Ingunn grows up free and unshackled in a
medieval Nordic manor. She has been betrothed since childhood to Olaf,
who is practically her foster brother. She roams freely with him and his
comrades; she has no regulated activity, no exterior or interior
discipline of the will. The children look to each other for support
because they have no other. Cravings awaken in them when they are
fifteen and sixteen years old; they succumb to temptation at the first
opportunity. From that time on, Ingunn’s entire life is one of
insatiable longing. She and Olaf consider themselves insolubly bound to
each other according to ecclesiastical law. But the family opposes the
marriage, and they become separated for years. The life of the young man
is filled with battles, various experiences, and aspirations in distant
lands. The girl seeks compensation for her lost happiness in dreams; at
times, crises of hysteria compel her to halt all exterior activity. She
yields to a seducer although she yearns only for Olaf. However,
realization of her fall breaks into this somber psychic existence like a
supernatural light; and she rouses herself with astounding strength and
severs the sinful relationship. Olaf, returned home, is unwilling to
break the sacred bond which unites them simply because of her confessed
guilt. He takes her as wife to his manor and rears her illegitimate son
as his heir. But the desired happiness does not come as yet. Ingunn is
depressed through the consciousness of her guilt, and she gives birth to
one dead child after another. But the more she considers herself to be a
source of misfortune for her husband, the more she clings to him; and
the more vehemently does she crave further proofs of his love. And
although she wastes away in this life, consuming his strength as well,
Olaf yields as he has always yielded to her. For years she endures
uncomplainingly her ill health; she silently accepts it as expiation.
Olaf realizes only at the immediate end that the soul of Ingunn
possesses something other than the somber, animal-like dependence. He
realizes that it possesses a divine spark which lacked only support and a
conception of a higher world; this world had not attained sufficient
clarity to be of influence on her life. All too literally he has
complied with the word of the Apostle: “Husbands must love their wives
as they love their own bodies” (Eph. 5:28). And because of this, two
lives have been ruined.
As in other works of Sigrid Undset, the two worlds, or actually
prehistoric worlds, stand in firm opposition: the gloomy, instinctive
world of primordial chaos, and that of God’s spirit hovering over
creation. The soul of Ingunn, this child of nature, is like land
untouched by the plough. There are potent seeds of germinating power
therein, and life in them is stirred into tremulous motion through the
ray of light which comes from the other side of the clouds. But it would
be necessary that the gross clods be cultivated in order for the light
to penetrate to the seeds.
Ibsen’s “Nora” is no child of nature; she has grown up rather in the
milieu of modern culture. Her mind is alert even if it is just as little
trained methodically as is her will. She was the darling doll of her
father, and now she is her husband’s darling doll just as her children
are her dolls. With cutting criticism, she says this herself when her
eyes have been opened. The spoiled child is faced with decisions for
which she is in no way prepared. Her husband becomes severely ill, and
means are lacking for the trip which can save him. She cannot ask her
father for help because he is also ill. So she endorses a note herself
with his name as co-signer. Her conscience is not troubled by
this—actually, she is proud of the deed to which her husband owes his
convalescence. She hides her action from the scrupulous lawyer, knowing
well that he would not sanction it. But when the creditor is driven to
extremes by his own need and threatens exposure, it is not fear of her
husband’s censure which causes her despairing decision to flee. She both
fears and hopes that now the “miracle” will occur—her husband will take
her guilt upon himself in his great love. But it happens quite
differently. Robert Helmer has only condemnation for his wife; he
considers that she is no longer worthy of raising his children. Nora
recognizes herself and him for what they are in the disillusionment of
this moment, that the hollowness of their life together does not deserve
the name of marriage. And when the danger of social scandal is removed,
when he graciously would like to forgive everything and re-establish
their life again, she cannot accept his pardon. She knows that before
she is able to try again to be wife and mother, she must first become a
person. Certainly, Robert Helmer would also have to develop from the
social figure into a human being in order that their joint life might
become a marriage.
In Goethe’s Iphigenie, a bizarre decree tore Iphigenie in
early youth from the circle of her beloved family and led her to a
strange, barbarian people. The hand of the gods delivered her from
certain death for holy service in the quiet of the temple. The
mysterious priestess is honored like a saint. But she is unhappy here.
She yearns always for return to her home. She firmly declines the king’s
courtship in order not to cut herself off from this return. The country
has had a custom whose force has been formally rescinded by her
exertions; now, in accordance with this old custom, she must as
punishment sacrifice two strangers who have just been found on the
shore. They are Greeks, one of them her brother. Her longing to see one
of her own once again is fulfilled. But he is defiled by matricide,
agonized by remorse to the point of madness. He is destined for death at
her hand. The old curse of her house, from which she appeared until now
to be free, threatens to be fulfilled in her also. Faced with the
choice whether to save her brother, his friend, and herself through lies
and deceit or to abandon all of them to ruin, she first believes that
she must choose the “lesser evil.” But her pure soul is not able to bear
untruthfulness and breach of trust; she defends herself against these
as does a healthy nature against germs of fatal disease. Trusting in the
veracity of the gods and the nobility of the king, she reveals her plan
of flight to him and receives as reward the lives of those endangered
and her return home. Her brother is already healed through her prayer.
Now she will carry joy and reconciliation with the gods into the ancient
noble house. Before we proceed to look for a common species in all
three different types of women, it might be useful to discuss briefly
the relation of these types to reality. Are we not dealing here with
pure creatures of poetic imagination? With what right, then, are we able
to use them to gain insight into real psychic existence? For a solution
of this difficulty, we will first try to clarify what the poetic spirit
has intended to convey in each of these types.
Hardly anyone could conceive of Sigrid Undset’s work as L’art pour l’art
[Art for art’s sake]. Her creativity is reckless confession. Indeed,
one has the impression that she is compelled to express that which
presses upon her as brutal reality. And I believe that whoever gazes
into life as sincerely and soberly as she did will not be able to deny
that the types she represents are real, even if they are chosen with a
certain bias. There is obviously a method in this one-sidedness: she
wishes to emphasize the animal-instinct to better reveal the
inadequacies of a mendacious idealism or an exaggerated intellectualism
in dealing with earthy reality.
The figure of Nora was created by a man who wishes to adopt entirely
the woman’s perspective, a man who has made the cause of woman and the
feminist movement his own. His heroine is chosen from this point of
view—but she is precisely chosen and depicted with keenest analysis; she
is not invented arbitrarily nor constructed rationalistically. The
strength and consequence of her thought and action may be surprising in
contrast to what has previously transpired; she may be unusual, yet her
action is not an improbable or a completely impossible one.
The classical lineaments, the simple grandeur and exalted simplicity
of Goethe’s most noble female character may appear at first glance to
the modern person as most nearly removed from reality. And idealism is
certainly under consideration here; but again, this is no construction
of fantasy but rather an idealized image which is envisioned,
experienced, and empathized from life itself. From his inner depths and
free of all biased perspective, the great artist has presented in almost
sculptural form a vision which embraces both reine Menschlichkeit [pure humanity] and Ewig-Weibliches [the eternal feminine]. And we are gripped, as only total purity and eternal truth can grip us.
So much for the “reality” of these types. Do these three women have
anything in common? They come from different worlds in the writings
themselves; also, they are the creation of very different writers. No
traditional discipline shaped the soul of Ingunn, a child of nature;
Nora, the doll of The Doll’s House, inhibited by artificial social
conventions, asserts nevertheless her healthy instinct to cast off these
fetters in order to take her life into her own hands and refashion it
freely. Iphigenie, the priestess in the sacred temple, has surpassed
nature through union with the godhead and has entered into supernatural
clarity. These three women share one common characteristic: a longing to
give love and to receive love, and in this respect a yearning to be
raised above a narrow, day-to-day existence into the realm of a higher
being.
Ingunn’s dream is to live at Olaf’s side in a manor and to have many
children. In her torpor, she is unable to imagine any other pattern of
existence and consciously to choose another. And when the exterior union
with her spouse finally comes as the only fulfillment, it is the
physical side of the relationship to which she clings with all her life
energy. In so doing, she does not find the longed-for happiness; but she
knows no other way to find it or even to look for it, and she remains
with what she does have.
Nora’s real life, concealed behind her “doll’s” existence of which
she is at first scarcely aware, consists in waiting for the miraculous,
which is nothing else but the end of her puppet existence, the breaking
forth of great love which will reveal the true being of her spouse and
of herself. And as there is no response from her husband, as she becomes
aware that nothing exists behind his mask of social convention, she is
determined to make the effort alone to break through to her true being,
to its very core.
With Iphigenie, it is no longer a question of the breakthrough to
true being; she has already achieved true being, in having reached the
highest level of human perfection; she has only to put it to the test
and to allow it to have its effect. She longs that the level of being
she has reached will serve as an instrument of that redeeming love which
is her true destiny.
Do these examples suitably illustrate the essence of woman’s soul? We
could, of course, provide here just as many types of women as you like;
however, I believe, just as long as they are types of women, we will
always find fundamentally the compulsion to become what the soul should
be, the drive to allow the latent humanity, set in her precisely in its
individual stamp, to ripen to the greatest possible perfect development.
The deepest feminine yearning is to achieve a loving union which, in
its development, validates this maturation and simultaneously stimulates
and furthers the desire for perfection in others; this yearning can
express itself in the most diverse forms, and some of these forms may
appear distorted, even degenerate. As we shall show, such yearning is an
essential aspect of the eternal destiny of woman. It is not simply a
human longing but is specifically feminine and opposed to the
specifically masculine nature.
Man’s essential desires reveal themselves in action, work, and objective
achievements. He is less concerned with problems of being, whether his
own or of others. Certainly being and doing cannot be wholly separated.
The human soul is not a complete, static, unchanging, monolithic
existence. It is being in the state of becoming and in the process of
becoming; the soul must bring to fruition those predispositions with
which it was endowed when coming into the world; however, it can develop
them only through activation. Thus woman can achieve perfect
development of her personality only by activating her spiritual powers.
So do men, even without envisaging it as a goal, work in the same way
when they endeavor to perform anything objectively. In both instances
the structure of the soul is fundamentally the same. The soul is housed
in a body on whose vigor and health its own vigor and health depend—even
if not exclusively nor simply. On the other hand, the body receives its
nature as body—life, motion, form, gestalt, and spiritual
significance—through the soul. The world of the spirit is founded on
sensuousness which is spiritual as much as physical: the intellect,
knowing its activity to be rational, reveals a world; the will
intervenes creatively and formatively in this world; the emotion
receives this world inwardly and puts it to the test. But the extent and
relationship of these powers vary from one individual to another, and
particularly from man to woman.
I would also like to believe that even the relationship of soul and
body is not completely similar in man and woman; with woman, the soul’s
union with the body is naturally more intimately emphasized. (I would
like to underline the term “naturally,” for there is—as I have at one
time intimated—the possibility of an extensive emancipation of the soul
from the body, which now, oddly enough, seems to be more easily
accomplished normally in the case of woman.) Woman’s soul is present and
lives more intensely in all parts of the body, and it is inwardly
affected by that which happens to the body; whereas, with men, the body
has more pronouncedly the character of an instrument which serves them
in their work and which is accompanied by a certain detachment. This is
closely related to the vocation of motherhood. The task of assimilating
in oneself a living being which is evolving and growing, of containing
and nourishing it, signifies a definite end in itself. Moreover, the
mysterious process of the formation of a new creature in the maternal
organism represents such an intimate unity of the physical and spiritual
that one is well able to understand that this unity imposes itself on
the entire nature of woman. But a certain danger is involved here. If
the correct, natural order is to exist between soul and body (i.e., the
order as it corresponds to unfallen nature), then the necessary
nourishment, care, and exercise must be provided for the healthy
organism’s smooth function. As soon as more physical satisfaction is
given to the body, and it corresponds to its corrupted nature to demand
more, then it results in a decline of spiritual existence. Instead of
controlling and spiritualizing the body, the soul is controlled by it;
and the body loses accordingly in its character as a human body. The
more intimate the relationship of the soul and body is, just so will the
danger of the spiritual decline be greater. (On the other hand,
certainly, there is also the greater possibility here that the soul will
spiritualize the body.)
Now, after considering the relationship of soul and body, let us turn
to the interrelationship of the spiritual faculties. We see that they
are in a state of interdependence—one cannot exist without the other.
Intellectual cognition of reality is the necessary point of departure
for emotional response. The incitements of the emotions are the
mainsprings of the will; on the other hand, the concern of the will is
to regulate intellectual activity and emotional life. But the faculties
are in no manner equally dispensed and developed. Man’s endeavor is
exerted to be effective in cognitive and creative action. The strength
of woman lies in the emotional life. This is in accord with her attitude
toward personal being itself. For the soul perceives its own being in
the stirrings of the emotions. Through the emotions, it comes to know
what it is and how it is; it also grasps through them the relationship
of another being to itself, and then, consequently, the significance of
the inherent value of exterior things; of unfamiliar people and
impersonal things. The emotions, the essential organ for comprehension
of the existent in its totality and in its peculiarity, occupy the
center of her being. They condition that struggle to develop herself to a
wholeness and to help others to a corresponding development, which we
have found earlier to be characteristic of woman’s soul. Therein, she is
better protected by nature against a one-sided activation and
development of her faculties than man is. On the other hand, she is less
qualified for outstanding achievements in an objective field,
achievements which are always purchased by a one-sided concentration of
all spiritual faculties; and this characteristic struggle for
development also exposes her more intensely to the danger of
fragmentation. Then, too, the one-sidedness, to which by nature she
inclines, is particularly dangerous: unilateral emotional development.
We have attributed much importance to emotion in the total organismus
of spiritual being. It has an essential cognitive function: it is the
central pivot by which reception of the existent is transmuted into
personal opinion and action. But it cannot execute its function without
the cooperation of intellect and will, nor can it attain cognitive
performance without the preparation of the intellect. Intellect is the
light which illuminates its path, and without this light, emotion
changes back and forth. In fact, if emotion prevails over the intellect,
it is able to obscure the light and distort the picture of the entire
world just as of individual things and events and drive the will into
erroneous practice. Emotional stirrings need the control of reason and
the direction of the will. The will does not reach any absolute power
for invoking or suppressing emotional reactions, but it does adhere to
its freedom to permit or to restrict the development of mounting
agitations. Where discipline of mind and will are lacking, emotional
life becomes a compulsion without secure direction. And because it
always needs some stimulation for its activity, it becomes addicted to
sensuality, lacking the guidance of the higher spiritual faculties. Thus
given the intimate union of body and soul, it results in the decline of
spiritual life to that of the sensuous-animalistic one.
Consequently, only if its faculties are correspondingly trained will
the feminine soul be able to mature to that state conformable to its
true nature. The concrete feminine types which we have cited represent
to us not only diverse natural predispositions but also diverse
formative levels of the soul of woman. We have seen in Ingunn a woman’s
soul which was nearly like unformed matter but which still permitted
intuitions of its capacities. Another, Nora, through the influences of
chance and social conventions, had found a certain formation but not
that proper to her. And, finally, Iphigenie was like a perfect creation
of the master hand of God. This presents us with the task of
investigating what the formative powers are through which woman’s soul
can be led to the nature for which it is intended and can be protected
from the degeneration with which it is threatened."
Reference:
- Stein, Edith. “Woman’s formation.” ----. Quotidiana. Ed. Patrick Madden. 2 Mar 2007. 11 Aug 2012 <http://essays.quotidiana.org/stein/womans_formation/>.
- Stein, Edith. “Woman’s soul.” ----. Quotidiana. Ed. Patrick Madden. 2 Mar 2007. 11 Aug 2012 <http://essays.quotidiana.org/stein/womans_soul/>.
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