Abstract

In[aut]Stein, EdiththeOntologysocial 1930s essays, SteinXE „[aut]Stein, Edith develops a theory of vocationVocation closely resembling Husserl[aut]Husserl, Edmund’s ethicsEthic of the “true selfSelftrue” as he was developing it in the 1920s, but may also be found in the conclusion to the 1920/24 lecture course, Einleitung in die Ethik, and in numerous manuscript studies from the 1920s and 1930s recently published in Husserliana Vol. XLII.) as well as Scheler[aut]Scheler, Max’s thought on personal destiny in the essay “Ordo Amoris\”Ordo Amoris”, by Scheler, Max”. For all three thinkers, vocationVocation is specific both to individuals and to one’s humanity in general in setting before us a particular moral calling to become who one truly is. While SteinXE „[aut]Stein, Edith’s ideaIdea of vocationVocation, here, seems to refer to an individualIndividual’s “personal naturePersonpersonal nature” and how this nature sets forth a particular course of life, nonetheless SteinXE „[aut]Stein, Edith indicates that this “personal naturePersonpersonal nature” and the particular vocational call of the individualIndividual is itself conditioned by essentially social processes. I will argue that SteinXE „[aut]Stein, Edith had already worked out the description of the constitutionConstitution of the moral self and its vocationVocation through belonging to a communityCommunity sufficient to support this later position in her early work in phenomenologyPhenomenology, and in particular On the Problem of Empathy\”On the Problem of Empathy”, by Stein, Edith as well as her Philosophy of Psychology and the Humanities\”Philosophy of Psychology and the Humanities”, by Stein, Edith. SteinXE „[aut]Stein, Edith’s argument is that the moral self is not and cannot be radically individualIndividual, nor constituted wholly individually, but is brought to givenness only in the context of a social realityReality, disclosing a constitutive connection between individualIndividual and communityCommunity in moral contexts. Finding the phenomenological resources for developing an account of the selfSelf, the in this way heads off a certain danger, potentially implicit in a phenomenological account of the moral task as a “personal” vocationVocation, to think of the moral task as radically individualIndividual, i.e. as constituted independently of one’s belonging to a communityCommunity. Likewise, Timothy Martell[aut]Martell, Timothy sees a similar problem at work in Heidegger[aut]Heidegger, Martin’s conception of the authentic self, which seems to see the authentic self as somehow independent of and in tension with social realityReality. While I take no position here, on the adequateness of these as authentic readings of either Husserl[aut]Husserl, Edmundor Heidegger[aut]Heidegger, Martin, it seems nonetheless that SteinXE „[aut]Stein, Edith’s approach to the problem of social ontologyOntologysocial and her later work on the theory of vocationVocation offers an escape from the temptation present in phenomenological readings of moral selfhoodSelfhood to take the moral self and the moral vocationVocation in purely individualistic terms.). Thus, if SteinXE „[aut]Stein, Edith can show, phenomenologically, that and how one’s moral self is constituted within a social context, then her thought can make an important contribution to the growing field of literature on phenomenological ethical theory. I will attempt to lay bare here the general outlines of SteinXE „[aut]Stein, Edith’s social ontologyOntologysocial as developed in her early works and its applicability to the discussion of the sources of personal moral identityIdentitymoral.