Among many other virtues of this study of Stein as thinker is MacIntyre's magnificent demonstration of how any philosopher must be situated in the context of where she studied, who her mentors were and the historical moment both inside and outside the academy. A bravo performance.

Kenneth L. Woodward, Contributing Editor, Newsweek

A remarkable intellectual biography that ends, rather than begins, with [Stein's] conversion. … Edith Stein is a splendid philosophical book, whose significance over time may come to rival that of After Virtue.

First Things

Edith Stein requir[es] slow and careful reading. . . . Nevertheless it opens the eyes to the interest of Stein's early work and its context within the still too obscure world of Continental philosophy.

Times Literary Supplement

Throughout, MacIntyre has shown the appreciation of phenomenology that could have changed the course of Anglo-American philosophy had Ryle not followed up on his early review of Heidegger.

Robert E. Wood, American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly

MacIntyre gives us a meticulously researched biographical introduction.... Very enriching for the reader.... For anyone with a serious interest in Edith as a philosopher - or those with philosophical interests wanting to know more about early 20th-century phenomenology - then this will be required reading.

Food For The Journey

Alasdair MacIntyre shows how the word 'philosophical' can be said of a life as well as a doctrine. He describes the people, events, and ideas in whose company Edith Stein lived in the decade that led to her baptism in 1922, and he defines phenomenology not as a method but as a disposition to let the truth of things come to light. His study of Stein's conversion and those of Reinach (to Protestantism), Rosenzweig (to Judaism) and Lukács (to Marxism) helps us understand the difference between reason and faith.

Fr. Robert Sokolowski, Ph.D., professor of philosophy, Catholic University of America, Washington, D.C.