Community and State

Abstract

Edith Stein’s investigation of community is primarily philosophical. Just as her philosophy of person contributes to the foundations of psychology, her philosophy of community provides valuable ideological grounding for the social sciences. The experience of real community structures, such as families, nations, and religious communities, which we encounter in our surrounding world (Umwelt),is the starting point for her investigation in the section of the Beiträge entitled “Individual and Community.” She sees community as uniting in itself a plurality of subjects and being itself bearer of a life which is carried on in and through these subjects. Although in daily life the individual is in the forefront, there are times when communities stand out from their concealment as unitary structures almost like individual personalities, and individuals either disappear in them or appear principally as members of the community, fulfilling one or more functions, She first considers community as an analogue of individual personality, which she examines for clues to the structure of community.¹