<p>Edited by Marianne Sawicki. Translated by <br>Mary Catharine Baseheart and Marianne Sawicki. <br>Edith Stein's analysis of the interplay <br>between the philosophy of psychology and <br>cultural studies, particularly psychoanalytic <br>theory and behaviorism.<br><br>"Do I have to?" is the most human of all <br>questions. Children ask it when told to go <br>to sleep. Adults ponder it when faced with <br>the demands of the workplace, the family, <br>or their own emotions and addictions. We <br>find ourselves always poised between <br>freedom and necessity.<br><br>In this volume, her most profound and <br>carefully argued phenomenology of human <br>creativity, Edith Stein explores the <br>interplay of causal constraints and <br>motivated choices. She demonstrates that <br>physical events and physiological processes <br>do not entirely determine behavior; the <br>energy deployed for living and creativity <br>exceeds what comes to us through physical <br>means. The human body is a complex interface <br>between the material world and an equally <br>real world of personal value.<br><br>The body opens as well to community. Stein <br>shows that, strictly speaking, there is no <br>such thing as a solitary human being. <br>Communities are reservoirs of the meaning <br>and value that fuel both our everyday <br>choices and our once-in-a-lifetime <br>accomplishments. This basic fact, she <br>argues, is the starting point for any <br>viable political or social theory.<br><br>The two treatises in this book comprise <br>her post-doctoral dissertation that Stein <br>wrote to qualify for a teaching job at a <br>German university just after the First <br>World War. They ring with the joy, hope, <br>and confidence of a brilliant young <br>scholar. Today they continue to challenge <br>the major schools of twentieth-century <br>psychology and cultural studies, <br>particularly psychoanalytic theory and <br>behaviorism. Here, too, is the intellectual <br>manifesto of a woman who would go on to <br>become a Christian and a Carmelite nun, <br>only to be killed at Auschwitz like so <br>many others of Jewish ancestry.&nbsp; <br></p>