the hylomorphic nun went to meet
her unmaker - she’s bitten on the hard
fruit of death her beauty caught in heat
where Jewry is transformed to ash and lard
souls - her father-in-thought ibn Gabirol
held - were matter and form derivatives
we die/ God lives was her principle
yet what life if evil has no motive
revelation is not egophanic
to this witnessed both sage and Carmelite
for presence should be as close as panic
prophecy more hidden than crime:- ” Washeit”
this object nameless in any language
must be Love’s self-limit - Weisheit’s anguish
Blackwell’s
Oxford
17 August 2018
The Jewish philosopher and Catholic convert Edith Stein (1891-1942) was a Carmelite nun, who was probably killed in the gas chambers at Auschwitz on the night of 9 August 1942. She had been a student of Husserl’s and a colleague of Heidegger’s. She had suffered from academic bullying on account of her gender. She belonged to the scholastic tradition of ontology and metaphysics. She was canonised as St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross by John Paul II.
Solomon ibn Gabirol of Malaga ( 1021-70) was a Jewish philosopher and an outstanding poet in Hebrew, and the composer of the Yom Kippur hymn ” Royal Crown”. He influenced William of Auvergne, Alexander of Hales, Bonaventura and Duns Scotus. The Jewish contribution to scholasticism needs to be acknowledged.
Edith Stein argued like ibn Gabirol, that persons have more than one form, and that spirits have matter and form. Stein insisted on matter and form, time and space as such constituents, and she argued against Thomas Aquinas that human individuation had to have a form too, as the reason why individuals come about, as well as a universal form of humankind. Matter by itself she thought inadequate to explain individuals. She regarded her religious life as one of universal expiation.
” Washeit” ( whatness) was a term Stein invented on the analogy of Scotus’ hacceitas ( thisness). Weisheit is of course, German for wisdom, an attribute of God in her writing. Her major work was ” Endliches und Ewiges Sein” ( On Finite and Eternal Being) written between 1933-37 and published in 1951.
Line 13 is a translation of a line quoting Tertullian from the funeral oration of Jacques-Benigne Bossuet (1621-1704) ” Sermon sur la mort” :- ” un je ne sais pas quoi qui n’a plus de nom dans aucune langue”.