Released in Amethyst series, directed by Maurizio Schoepflin, the book of Mother Cristiana Dobner reconstructs the stages of the spiritual and existential journey of Edith Stein, against the backdrop of the Nazi horrors: the conversion to Catholicism in 1422, the entrance into Carmel by the name of Sister Benedicta Cruce in 1934, the deportation to Auschwitz and eventually death in the gas chambers on August 9, 1942.
Death is addressed by Stein with hope, supported by a strong faith, which contrasts the blue world, although they appear tough and invincible, will not be eternal and that in the end "will be the only great love."
The last part of the book is devoted to the pier that had the theme of empathy, present in the reflection of Stein from the early years, the work of Emanuel Levinas, from the common training and Husserl's phenomenology.
In their work on empathy that the teacher Hussler called "an excellent scientific dissertation," Stein introduced. next to the external perception (of things) and the internal perception (of the self), a third type of perception (empathy fact) that refers to the existence and acceptance of the other or anything else.
Dobner writes that from the conversion empathy for Stein "will become the act of the personal relationship and existential I-Thou and invest the whole sphere of religious experience as expressing agape, as a gift."
It is this dimension of the gift of love, would result in Levinas for which the theoretical dimension is largely subordinate to the ethical and theological.
Stefano Cazzato
La Rocca, May 15th 2013