Journey to truth
St Edith Stein’s feast day is on August 9, the date of her death in Auschwitz. Even if she had not died as a martyr, Stein would have been known for her contribution to 20th-century philosophy and mysticism.
Edith Stein was born into an observant Jewish family in 1891. She became an atheist in her teens; a long intellectual journey then began, in which Stein engaged deeply with the philosophy of her mentor Edmund Husserl. Through Husserl’s phenomenological school, she was also connected to Martin Heidegger. She was a rising star of European philosophy when, in 1921, she picked up St Teresa of Avila’s autobiography. It floored her: “When I had finished the book,” she wrote later, “I said to myself: This is the truth.”
