Towards resilience: an approach from Edith Stein’s personal letters

Abstract

The term “resilience” suffers the fate of all terms that are used in an inflationary manner: They lose meaning and explosiveness. This article aims to give the term back its fullness by means of a phenomenological view according to Stein’s eidetic phenomenology. For this purpose, Edith Stein’s resilience, which distinguished her as a person, will be analysed. In addition, the way in which she fostered and
shaped resilience in others will be highlighted. The concept of competence is used for the analysis. Four core competencies describe the sources of psychological resilience: self-competence, other-competence, fact-competence and meaning-competence, because resilience is formed in an adequate relationship to myself, to others or to otherness, to reality and to meaning. These competencies are each presented in Edith Stein’s life, in her support of others and in their relevance for the formation of resilience. The analysis keeps Stein’s philosophical or theological views in mind, but draws on her letters to individuals.
One can state that in order to make sense of life, even of the adversities in life, the perspective of meaning is needed in all individual competences. Stein can even find the connection to meaning competence in the fact competence. Sie sees it also in the orientation towards others and in the understanding for them. Self-competence must also flow into meaning-competence; then we become able to face life adequately. This is ultimately the ability of the resilient person.