Editing Edith Stein (section)

=== The middle comparative period (1925–33) ===
Encouraged to study and compare Thomas Aquinas' philosophy with that of the phenomenological movement, Stein embarked on a translation project of Aquinas' ''De Veritate'', which was to be published in two volumes in 1932. The work, which translates Aquinas' way of thinking into a modern German idiom and restyles it as a contemporary academic treatise, occasioned that Stein engaged with Aquinas' thought as a phenomenologist, i.e. as someone interested in the matters discussed by Aquinas, as distinct from providing an interpretation of Aquinas' thought or writing in prolongation of it as a thomist. The most important works from this period are 'Husserl and Aquinas: A Comparison', in which she discusses the differing methodologies of Husserl and Aquinas and accounts for their differences, ''Potency and Act'', in which she attempts a phenomenological investigation of 'potency' and 'act' and the twin work of anthropology: The ''Structure of the Human Person''. ''Philosophical Anthropology'' and ''What is the Human Being?'' ''Theological Anthropology'' (the second volume remains a highly developed draft rather than a completed work, since Stein's lectures were canceled in 1933). During this period she also lectures on women's education and vocation and on education in general to very large audiences and to great acclaim. In these lectures, published in ESGA 13 and ESGA 16, she works out for herself the important questions concerning social type and essence, which find a fuller development in ''The Structure of the Human Person''.