This blog has very intentionally started with a diverse range of topics—artificial intelligence, physics, human rights, Edith Stein, forgiveness, and Franciscan studies. What is holding it together? Where is the common ground for it all? It is the philosophy of Edith Stein, particularly her realism regarding meaning.

Being is the unfolding of meaning, she writes. What is, has meaning; what has no meaning, is not. This becomes highly significant when we understand the modern scientific understanding of our nature. It has meaning, even if it is just physical.

Like all philosophical realists, she assumes a mind-independent reality—a world that we aim to discover rather than make. This is not to deny the mind’s role in probing reality and mediating our knowledge of it. While the world is thus discovered rather than made, the human person—through free and responsible action—enters into this world, interprets it, and shapes it in specifically human ways.

Meaning is not only in our actions; nature, or the context of our actions, is already meaningful. Stein, as any Christian, considers the world to be created by God. Humans, by the exercise of their will, become co-creators of being and meaning. If our will is correctly ordered, our actions will be in harmony with what God has created. It is akin to continuing an artwork already begun.

I found her philosophy of being and meaning a substantial improvement over Aristotelian metaphysics. Even though Aristotelian physics and biology are superseded by modern knowledge of nature, Aristotelian metaphysics persists. Its defenders think that it is separable from Aristotelian concepts of observable nature. I disagree, and Stein shows me how I can disagree without abandoning what pre-modern philosophers accomplished.

Our best scientific understanding of nature is not merely instrumental knowledge; it is part of what is real and part of nature’s meaning. This includes what is most troubling about our modern knowledge of nature: That human nature is not, has never been, and can never function flawlessly in our created natural state. Each individualized human nature is a mix of abilities and disabilities.

It’s the way evolution works. What is dysfunctional today may be functional tomorrow; what was functional yesterday may be dysfunctional today. At every point in its evolutionary development, any living being of a species, including humans, is a mix of function and dysfunction, of abilities and disabilities. This belongs to our nature of being human; it is not possible to be human without it.

I find this the most important insight of modern science that changes our understanding of being human. Stein’s metaphysics provides an explanation that fits perfectly with what else we know. I can’t trace the exact path through her philosophy from metaphysical presuppositions to ethical applications, but it’s easy to grasp the result. Biological organisms are meant to be a mix of abilities and disabilities. We, as humans, are meant to add to the meaning of the world. Our abilities let us help others; our disabilities let others help us. It’s important to see that each one is meant to be both benefactor and beneficiary. Now love becomes real in the world through our actions, and that’s what it’s all about.