Reflected Lives: Edith Stein and the Philosopher

Angela Ales Bello, Professor Emerita of History of Contemporary Philosophy at the Lateran university in Rome, is among the foremost scholars and translators of Edith Stein. After decades of stimulating “frequentations”, she considers her a friend.

It is certainly not by chance that her Assonanze e dissonanze. Dal diario di Edith Stein [Assonances and Dissonances. From the Diary of Edith Stein], is published in the series Vite riflesse [Reflected Lives] by Mimesis. Beginning March 20, 2020, Ales Bello in fact started “two parallel diaries at a distance of almost a century”, these being her own, and that of Edith Stein.

In this intimate conversation, with whom the world also knows as Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, of Jewish origin, a Christian nun, a philosopher and the German mystic of the Order of Discalced Carmelites, the author addresses the protagonist of her studies directly.  Edith Stein is remembered as a victim of the Shoah, who died in Auschwitz on August 9, 1942.

Edith’s diary, who was proclaimed a saint in 1998 by Pope John Paul II and who declared her patroness of Europe the following year, overlaps with the thoughts of Angela Ales Bello.