The body as Durchseelter in Edith Stein and the problem of identity formation

Abstract

In an era marked by the myth of the body and a renewed scientific interest on this subject, it is still worth exploring it in its multiple meanings to make those dimensions that still remain in the shadows insightful. For this purpose, this contribution, starting from an anthropological-educational approach, intends to focus attention on the foundational dimension that the body assumes in the phenomenological perspective outlined by Edith Stein. Adhering to a Thomistic vision, she conceives the human body as Durchseelter, namely a body permeated by the soul, an ontological principle from which it is possible to grasp the person in the relationship with the self, with the other and with its diversity. The character of originality with which the Steinian body defines the being-in-the-world of the subject opens up a privileged observation point to pedagogical research for the purpose of understanding subjective and intersubjective identity.