Abstract

The present study offers a systematical approach to the aporia of thomistic-agustinian thinking on Edith Stein’s writing “Potenz und Akt”, which aims to clarify the solution of the author –made by her phenomenological method–, associated to the dilemma of being as certainty oscillating between potentiality and actualization by the Self as real spiritual being in the openness to eternal Spirit. The simple fact of being as last origin of the certainty of being, named "life" by Agustin, and which Thomas defines more precisely by the distinction of esse and essentia, without paying attention to the Self, is unfold by Edith Stein as the core of each person, deeply rooted in the feeling, in his three-fold matter.