A place for the role of community in the structure of the state: Edith Stein and Edmund Husserl

This essay argues that Stein’s view of the state can overcome Husserl’s skepticism about the state being an authentic, intense community rooted in solidarity while not negating his hope for the advent of a genuinely ethical, rational culture. Whereas Husserl places rationality and freedom within the framework of culture proper and not in the state, Stein sees the state as an extension of persons that can give the state its own free, deliberating and rational Ich kann.