Da individualidade à comunidade: Edith Stein e a formação da pessoa / From individuality to community: Edith Stein and the formation of the person

This essay investigates, within Edith Stein’s philosophical anthropology, the articulation between the singular constitution of the person and their insertion into the community. It takes as its corpus volumes 5, 14, 15, and 16 of the Edith-Stein-Gesamtausgabe, reconstructing the relation between individuality (Individualität), person (Person), formation (Bildung), empathy (Einfühlung), the social being of the person (soziales Sein der Person), and community (Gemeinschaft). The essay advances the hypothesis that individuality constitutes, in Stein, an irreducible dimension of the person; the realization of this dimension, however, does not occur outside intersubjective relations and concrete forms of community. Formation (Bildung) occupies a mediating position within this articulation, since the formation of the person simultaneously involves the development of individual possibilities and insertion into social and communal relations. Through a progressive textual analysis, the essay demonstrates that the passage from individuality to community corresponds to the explication of a social structure already inscribed within the person, rather than to the transition from a self-contained reality to an exterior dimension subsequently added to it. Finally, it examines how this structure receives, within Stein’s Christian horizon, a further determination without effacing the autonomy of philosophical-anthropological inquiry.