Book Review

One of the typical phenomena of the twentieth century is the event of spiritually energetic people breaking out of the dominant intellectual group in order to find the reality that has been lost. – Eric Voeglin2 n the introduction to her magnum opus, Finite and Eternal Being, Edith Stein writes, “For the self-limitation of his power as regards its external efficacy is itself act and effect of his power. God’s potency is one, as his act is one, and in this one act his potency is completely actualized. ” Stein is referring to the Thomistic concept of act and potency, explicating that God’s potency is expressed in his act, and while that act may not entail all that God could effect it is true that “there is nonetheless to God no surplus of potency vis-à-vis his act, no unactivated potency.”3 Stein’s comments provide a powerful pneumatic insight. A question, really, that simply asks, is our Free Will an expression of God’s intentional self-limitation? Well, I should like to pursue that question, but my point here is that to read Edith Stein is to be stimulated by the possibilities of truth. She is a fascinating human being, a mystical philosopher seeking order in the “bond between Reason and existential phila.” A new book, The Philosophy of Edith Stein (Duquesne University Press, 2007) by Dr. Antonio Calcagno, assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Scranton, successfully plumes the rich materials of Stein’s philosophical quest to a depth and detail that belies the meager 151 pages of the book. “She is, ” Calcagno writes, “a relevant and contemporary thinker whose ideas and insights challenge us to think through the perennial problems that are proper to philosophy.”4 Yes, she is that, and she is also one very complex human being