Husserl: Value Theory

The purpose of this project is to provide a clear and compelling account of the existence and nature of values within a phenomenological context. Values such as beauty or virtue are certainly a major part of our experiential lives. After all, what would life be worth if we could never describe a painting as beautiful, for example, or a beverage as delicious? Nevertheless, understanding what these values are on their own terms has historically been a rather difficult task. Certainly, they (...) are not ordinary objects that could be seen or heard, touched or tasted, like the physical objects to which they seem to be connected in some mysterious way. In this book, I argue that a phenomenological approach enables us to give a solid account of the role that values play in experience. Working in dialogue with Husserl and other phenomenologists and related thinkers, as well as with recent commentary, I develop my own account of values as lying on the phenomenological “horizons” of experience. This interpretation, I argue, enables us to explain how notions like beauty or deliciousness play such a dramatic role in our everyday lives without committing us to any unwarranted ontological assertions. Throughout this project, I analyze the various structures that govern our valuative experiences in order to develop a rigorous theoretical account of what all these experiences have in common. As part of this task, I investigate the various different types of values, the connection between values and subjectivity, and the link between acts of valuation and acts of the will. My aim in the project is to make clear the basic role that values as such play in the conscious life of the experiencing subject throughout our daily lives. Ultimately, I hope to clarify some of the difficult theoretical issues surrounding our experiences of values in order to clear the way for more specific investigations into particular regions of values to be carried out on the basis of this overarching model. (shrink)

There are three steps in my description of the ground-problem of value: First, Husserl’s analysis of the crisis of reason is based on the systematic loss and phenomenological recovery of the intuitive evidence of the lifeworld. But if letter symbols are essential to formalizing abstraction, as Klein’s de-sedimentation of Vieta’s institution of modern algebra shows, then the ultimate substrates upon which formalization rests cannot be “individuals” in Husserl’s sense. The consequence of the essentiality of the letter symbols to formalization is (...) that no direct reference to intuitive evidence of individuals is possible from formal structures. Second, the crisis of reason in Marx’s Capital on commodities contains a parallel analysis of the contradictory relation between formalism and evidence. The value-structure of capitalist society expels qualitative value to subjective use and imposes a homogeneous standard on social representation of value such that quantitative values are not grounded in the experience of use which entails that the system of general value becomes a mere aggregate. Third, the problem of value, or formal axiology, is the core of a teleological convergence between phenomenology and Marxism. A short phenomenological description of the experience of value shows that practical activities generate valuations that are experienced with an intensity through which they aim toward social representation. The conclusion is that the social representation of value in capitalist society intervenes into the constitution of the community by the intensity of individuals’ value-experience to reduce its system of value to an unthematized simple aggregate of value-quantities. (shrink)

In the field of contemporary metaethics, discontinuity theories that also want to defend the objectivity of moral claims tend to be broadly Kantian.While several such theories have made good use of what William Hosmer Smith labels a “narrow phenomenology” of ‘what it is like’ for agents to be confronted with what appear to be objective, categorical demands, he rightly observes that “they haven’t yet fully articulated the experiences that make this moral deliberation possible and to which it is beholden” (p. (...) xiii). Drawing contemporary moral philosophers into conversation with the “broad” phenomenological philosophy of Husserl, Heidegger, and Levinas, The Phenomenology of Moral Normativity presents an original and insightful alternative to the Kantian theories that have dominated this corner of the metaethical landscape, and in so doing, sheds new light on the value of transcendental phenomenology for metaethics more generally. (shrink)

Values exist not in isolation, but in complex wholes. Values are what they are because of the complex wholes in which they are situated. To do justice to this thesis will require a holistic ontology, a theory according to which many types of entities exist only as inseparable parts or moments of wider contexts or environments. An ontological theory of environments -- with roots in Gestalt psychology and the ecological psychology of J. J. Gibson and Roger Barker, and which is (...) related also to the theory of motivation sketched by Edmund Husserl as part of his theory of the lifeworld or Lebenswelt -- will help us to understand the ontology of values. It will help us to understand what values are. It will not, however, tell us what is good or bad. From facts of ontology, no value propositions follow. (shrink)

Steven Crowell’s rich book is an eminent advance in the interpretation of Husserl and Heidegger, in thinking about the nature of phenomenology as a way of philosophical inquiry, and in accessing the contribution phenomenology can make to philosophy in general. Just as its predecessor Husserl, Heidegger, and the Space of Meaning (2001) has not stood uncontested—the review by Taylor Carman, for instance, is very critical—Crowell’s new book on normativity is also likely to spur debate. But such debate should be most (...) welcome, because it will serve to renew discussion on the project and prospect of phenomenology no less than it will address the intentions of its past proponents. ... (shrink)

Husserl’s concept of subjectivity doesn’t bound to its logical and episte­mological aspects, but it extends to its ethic und aesthetic dimensions. The external perception constitutes the original and founding experience of transcendental life. Moreover the per­ception’s trend to a complete vision of the things moves the whole subject and explains its dynamism. This trend is just an ideal, which any kind of sub­jective effort could realize. However Husserl considers some experiences, which imply the subject’s “liberation” from the passivity of a (...) tendency to a total intuition of the objects. That’s the case of the aesthetic consideration of the images. Beside she announces a peculiar way of relationship with the world and the others, but in another way as the perception. (shrink)

Un primer aspecto concierne a la praxis no-intencional y primaria del cuerpo propio. A ello se añade su condición de sostén para los valores sensibles de la comodidad y la salud, y de trampolín para valores espirituales cuyo nivel superior se encuentra en los valores éticos de la persona. Estos puntos de vista husserlianos encuentran nuevos desarrollos en la fenomenología: M. Henry pone el acento en un "yo puedo" pre-intencional, y Ricoeur describe el cuerpo propio como "fuente" de valores propios (...) y "resonador afectivo" de todos los valores, y a la vez esboza una concepción de la felicidad que incluye temples particulares de la corporalidad. Por último, Husserl considera la ofrenda del cuerpo propio a los valores espirituales en el sacrificio como la afirmación positiva de la vida de la humanidad. J. Patocka y E. Lévinas han desarrollado esta línea de pensamiento. A first aspect has to do with the non-intentional and primal praxis of the living body. To this is added its status as a support for the sensuous values of comfort and health and a springboard for spiritual values, the highest level of which lies in the ethical values of the person. These Husserlian views find new developments in phe-nomenology: M. Henry highlights a pre-intentional "I can", M. Scheler analyzes the relationship between hedonistic, vital, and spiritual values, and P. Ricoeur describes the living body both as the "source" ofits own proper values and the "affective resonator" of all values, and also outlines a view on happiness that encompasses particular bodily attunements. Finally, Husserl considers the offering of the living body to spiritual values in sacrifice as the positive assertion of humankind's life. J. Patocka and E. Lévinas have developed this line of thought. (shrink)

El objetivo del artículo es evaluar en qué medida la primera tematización de Husserl de la conciencia afectiva logra extender el concepto de “razón” a esta esfera y determinar si el modo en que lo hace amenaza su autonomía respecto de la razón teórica. Nuestro eje será el problema de la constitución originaria del valor en los actos no objetivantes del sentimiento, tema anunciado en las Investigaciones Lógicas que adquiere un rol central en las primeras reflexiones éticas de Husserl.

The lifeworld is saturated with claims, justifications, assertions, validities, values and reasons; it is, in a manifold of senses, the very domain of right. In this brilliantly argued book, Sophie Loidolt advances the compelling thesis that these structures of right and justification, broadly construed, not only shape lived experience, but are, as “fundamentale Weisen der Welterschließung,” constitutive of subjectivity itself (p. 1).Loidolt takes as her point of departure the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl and offers a detailed reconstruction of Husserl’s genetic (...) analyses of theoretical evidence and justification found in his later writings, above all Experience and Judgment, as well as a thorough presentation of the main trends in the development of his ethical writings from 1908 to the end of his career. This project is not limited to reconstruction and interpretation of Husserl’s text, however, but has instead the goal of outlining a theory of “right thinking” (rechtliches Denken). (shrink)

Edmund Husserl, Begründer der Phänomenologie als Wesensforschung, hielt in der Zeit von 1904 bis 1910 eine Reihe von Vorlesungen die sein Schüler Martin Heidegger 1928 unter dem Titel Vorlesungen zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewusstseins veröffentlicht hat. Das zentrale Thema der Schriftensammlung war die Untersuchung zeitlicher Konstitution subjektiven Empfindungsmoments und diesem Moment zugrunde liegende Selbstkonstitution des Zeitbewusstseins.Selbstkonstitution des Zeitbewusstseins basiert vor allem auf Urimpression, Retention und Protention, und diese Prozesse bilden eine Mannigfaltigkeit möglichen Konfigurationen der phänomenologischen Zeit . Alle diese Termini (...) werde ich im Laufe der Arbeit detailliert aufgreifen und erklären. Durch die Rede über die phänomenologische Zeit ist es wichtig an eine Trennung zwischen objektiver Zeit und subjektiver Zeitempfindungzu denken - mit Zeiteinheiten wie Sekunden oder Minuten objektiv mess- und normierbare Zeit und das Bewusstsein darüber ist nicht das Objekt und Ziel phänomenologischer Untersuchung Phänomenologie will vielmehr die Subjektivität der Zeitempfindung begründen. So findet Husserl (auf Franz Brentano bezogen) das Zentrum des Zeitbewusstseins in der Phantasie.Damit bezweifelt Husserl nicht die Existenz einer objektiven Weltzeit, die reale Zeit - die Basis der Theorie ist vielmehr immanente Zeit des Bewusstseinverlaufes. Husserl bezweifelt auch nicht den Raum, der unzertrennlich mit der Zeit verbundenist. Transzendent ist für ihn nur unsere Vorstellung von Raum und Zeit, die erscheinende Raumgestalt, die erscheinende Zeitgestalt. Immanenz und Transzendenz sind bei Husserl zweideutig zu verstehen und eine detaillierte Erklärung Phänomenologie Husserls ist nicht das Thema dieser Arbeit. Ich werde vielmehr versuchen zu beantworten, ob es sein kann dass Zeitkünste unästhetisch werden können, weil sie Wahrnehmung (gr. aisthesis)als Jetztsetzung begreifen? Sind die (Ur)Impression, Protention und Retention, innerhalb der Doppelkontinuität von Ablaufsphänomenen, im Gegensatz zu der Aisthesis, für die Ästhetik der Zeitkünste nicht wichtiger? So werde ich im Schluss als Prüfstein der Problematik zwischen Zeitbewusstsein, Aisthesis und Ästhetik improvisierte Musik nehmen. (shrink)

He who sees everywhere only nature, nature in the sense of, and, as it were, through the eyes of, natural science, is precisely blind to the spiritual sphere, the special domain of the human sciences. Such a one does not see persons and does not see the Objects which depend for their sense upon personal performances, i.e., Objects of “culture.” (IV: 191).

Según se considere cuál es el ámbito de investigación al que debe circunscribirse la lógica y en qué consiste propiamente el conocimiento, tendremos una u otra idea de cómo los valores están relacionados con estos ámbitos de la actividad humana. En este artículo investigo críticamente la postura filosófica agnóstica de Wittgenstein en torno a los años en que escribió el Tractatus, las tesis neopragmatistas de Putnam y la fenomenología genética de Husserl en tanto que doctrinas relevantes para el estudio de (...) las relaciones entre la lógica, el conocimiento y el valor. (shrink)

The present paper is an attempt to study the acts and intentions which set up for the subject, and for the community of subjects, a set of values and disvalues which impose themselves as valid upon everyone, and which everyone must tend to prescribe, or to warn against, for everyone. The acts which set up a formal apophantic and ontology have been studied by Husserl in his Formal and Transcendental Logic , but he has not set out a comparable theory (...) of the acts which set up a universally valid system of values and disvalues. He has not done so because he does not believe in such a system, because his thought goes no further than the values set up for and felt to hold in a given group or society. It is my view that there is an ineluctable progress from these relativistic group-values to a set of values and disvalues holding for everyone, and that moreover in their relation to everyone, and that these values and disvalues have definite and undeniable shapes and locations, even if these shapes also have somewhat nebulous contours. The views I am expounding on this occasion are not new: they are fully set out in my Values and Intentions and my Axiological Ethics and in other writings. Ideas, however, require restatement at intervals, with a suitable change of idiom and emphasis. And I feel my views on this topic to have a claim to truth simply because, quite differently from my views on other topics, and despite constant reflection, they have hardly changed over the last two decades. The inspiration for these views was only in part Husserlian, as I do not think that the emotional and the axiological are really Husserl's strong suit. Strangely enough, that dry thinker Meinong would seem to have had a much richer emotional life and the ability to frame a theory to fit it, than the much easier and at times effusive thinker Husserl. Meinong's 1917 Austrian Imperial Academy treatise, On Emotional Presentation , recently translated for the Northwestern Phenomenology series, is a much more systematic investigation of the presuppositions of value-theory than any writing of a professed phenomenologist. What I have to say will build considerably on Meinong, always a major influence in my thought. But I have also been much influenced in my approaches to value-theory by the transcendental methods of Kant. Kant, I think, could very well have worked out a transcendental deduction of the heads of value and disvalue, a deduction much more illuminating than the dogmatic intuitionism of Scheler and Hartmann, instead of producing the arid triad of categorical imperatives that were all that he actually deduced. Imperatives, I consider, are secondary structures in value-constitution: the primary structures are the ultimate objects of necessary, rational pursuit and avoidance which Kant wrongly thought of as involving heteronomy and a corruption of pure form by matter. There is, I shall argue, nothing more free from extraneous, pathological material than the objects of the pursuits and avoidances in question. (shrink)

“Complicating Emotions”. Husserl’s phenomenological axiology is rooted in two claims by Brentano: (1) that we apprehend what is valuable in acts of emotion (Akte der Gemütsbewegung), and (2) that these emotive acts are grounded in “presentations.” This paper first summarizes Husserl’s appropriation of Brentano’s second claim, and then sketches some ways in which Husserl’s own analyses might be corrected and extended if we are to begin to account for the complexity of the emotions. The paper concludes with some remarks about (...) the moral significance of this more complex account of emotional experiences. (shrink)

Destacam-se os conceitos fundantes da Fenomenologia husserliana constantes num Manuscrito inédito, procurando configurar urna estética. As definições de obra de arte, de representação, o valor da Arte no contexto da "Estética pura", mediante a valência metodológica da redução pura, refletem afinidades aos processos "depuradores" empreendidos a partir do último quartel do século XIX e nas vanguardas artísticas de início do século XX. Salientam-se casos de protagonistas como Pierre Reverdy (poesia e ensaio), Cézanne e Mondrian (pintura) que nesse período inovador demonstram (...) analogias significativas ao nível do pensamento estético e poético e das respetivas criações. Pretende-se contribuir para a abertura de um diálogo entre a estética filosófica de Husserl (focada deliberadamente a partir do referido Manuscrito) e os pressupostos estéticos subjacentes as produções pictóricas salientadas. Focusing on the fundamental concepts of the Husserlian Phenomenology from an Unpublished Manuscript, we aim the shaping of an Aesthetic. The definitions of work of art, representation, the value of Art in context of a "pure Aesthetic", through the methodological value of pure reduction, show affinities with the "depurating" processes developed since the late 19th century and in the Artistic vanguards at the beginning of the 20th century. Concerning the study cases of Pierre Reverdy (poetry and essay), Cézanne and Mondrian (painting) we find meaningful analogies in their aesthetic and poetic thinking as well as in their art production. We plan to contribute for an opening dialogue between Husserl's philosophical aesthetic (focused deliberately in the quoted Manuscript) and the aesthetic principles inherent in the mentioned pictorial works of those artists. (shrink)

Faz-se urna análise do juízo de gosto que visa abordar o problema do subjetivismo estético. Com este fim, exploram-se as camadas passivas da experiência perceptivo-avaliativa, sob inspiração dos escritos de Husserl e do horizonte de um Gefühlsästhetik que o autor deste trabalho começou a desenvolver no seu trabalho anterior Curso de Estética fenomenológica. Argumenta-se que a experiência judicativa de gosto é baseada e fundamentada na experiência pré-reflexiva de gosto: para o nosso gosto de ser capaz de julgar uma obra de (...) arte, essa obra de arte deve aparecer previamente à consciência estética, num acto cuja natureza não é apofântica mas estético-axiológica, isto é, perceptivo-avaliativa. Defende-se que tanto a actividade perceptivo-avaliativa do ego como a actividade de juízo de gosto são baseadas e fundamentadas no domínio transcendental da experiência pré-ego passiva. É neste domínio que as proto-impressões, afectos e sentimentos ocorrem, e onde também existem necessidades essenciais e leis apriorísiticas que as regulam. Devido a tudo isso, defende-se que sentimento e afecto, que ocorrem na esfera pré-ego passiva, não são nem funções aleatórias, nem irracionais, sem forma, caóticas ou sem sentido. Pelo contrário, eles são o fundamento passivo e racional de todo o sentido e de todo o valor estético que o ego avaliativo-perceptivo pode constituir. This paper carries out an analysis of the judgment of taste which aims to address the problem of aesthetic subjectivism. In order to do so, the paper explores the passive strata of the aesthetic-artistic perceptual and evaluative experience, inspired by the writings of Husserl and the horizon of a Gefühlsästhetik that the author of this paper started to develop in his previous work Curso de Estética Fenomenológica. The paper argues that the judgmental experience of taste is based and grounded on the pre-reflective experience of taste: that is, for our taste to be able to judge an artwork, that artwork must appear previously to the aesthetic consciousness in an act whose nature is not apophantic but axiological-aesthetic, that is, perceptual-evaluative. The paper claims that both the perceptual-evaluative activity of the ego and the judgmental activity of taste is based and grounded on the transcendental realm of the passive pre-ego experience. It is in this realm where the proto-impressions, affections and feelings take place, and there are essential needs and aprioric laws that regulate them as well. Due to all this, the paper claims that feeling and affection, which occur in the pre-ego passive realm, are not random functions, neither are them irrational, shapeless, chaotic or meaningless. Instead, they are the passive rational grounding of any meaning and of any aesthetic value which the evaluative-perceptive ego can constitute. (shrink)

El artículo pretende ofrecer algunas claves interpretativas de la Axiología y Práctica materiales de Husserl. El estudio de la primera parte se centra en la cuestión de la verdad y el cumplimiento de los actos no objetivantes. La segunda parte analiza los sentidos que en Husserl tiene la noción práctica de fin y pone en conexión la verdad práctica con el imperativo categórico en su versión husserliana de actuar según el mejor saber y la mejor conciencia, aplicado tanto a las (...) acciones particulares como a la voluntad común de perfeccionamiento que las preside. Se termina con unas conclusiones valorativas. The aim of this article is to offer some interpretative keys of Husserl´s material Axiology and Practice. The study of the former focuses on the fulfilment and truth in not objectivant acts. The latter analyzes the meanings that the notion of end acquires in Husserl and connects the practical truth with the categorial imperative in its Husserlian version, that says "act according to the best knowing and the best conscience", applied to both particular actions and the common will of perfecting that presides over them. The article ends with valuation. (shrink)

Moral value as it was understood by Nicolai Hartmann and by Max Scheler belongs uniquely to volitions or willings, to dispositions to will and to persons as beings capable of willing. Moreover, as understood in this paper as well as by Hartmann, Scheler, and Husserl, every volition necessarily involves if not actual valuings then reference to retained valuings and potential valuings as well as to cognitive mental phenomena. As used here, the terms 'volition' and 'willing' denote mental traits, such as (...) lived experiences and habits insofar as they either do or can occur actively. A trait of a mind or "monad" can have moral value — in contrast to utility, for example — only (would belong) insofar as it is or can be or could have been engaged in and so performed by the person or ego to whose mind the trait belongs . The classification of lived experiences as voluntary or not voluntary cuts across the three-fold classification of mental processes as cognitive, affective, or conative. This seems to be the most appropriate way of distinguishing the voluntary from the involuntary. Voluntary mental phenomena are characterized by the engagement of the ego in some lived experience occurring in the flux of its lived experiences, i.e., by taking position. " within the text below by numbers. End notes are referred to within square brackets [] linked to the notes and these link back to the text loci. Text printed in sepia has been emended. The brief passage in the text that occurs in angle brackets and in the same color as this introductory note has been added to state more pointedly an important issue>. (shrink)

Phenomenological resources can be used to develop a nonanthropocentric theory of ecological values that gives rise to an obligation for moral agents. There is logical space in Edmund Husserl’s early theory of value that is inclusive of nonhuman animals and vegetation as members of a life community (Lebensgemeinschaft) possessing ecological characteristics. Within this legal space is a characterization of ecological obligation that is not tied to any single moral law, as it is in deontological ethics and utilitarianism, but founded on (...) the complex value nexus of a given ecological community. Rather than judging the “rightness” or “wrongness” of actions on the law-based and single-rule philosophical theories of normativity found in modern humanism, this Husserlian inspired account locates a conception of ecological obligation that is immanent to the values operative in a given environing world. This particular experience of ecological obligation arises when the valuation of the goods of individual members of the ecological community conflict with one another and the weighing of these competing goods is appropriately accomplished in light of a communal good. (shrink)

In this paper we want to focus on Husserl’s critique of Kantian ethics and to develop the following questions. Against the merely empiristic orientation of Hume’s ethics, the Kantian foundation of ethics has an aprioristic character; but does this aprioristic character have to be identified with the origin of ethical principles in the pure subjectivity, and if not, which is its phenomenological signification? The sense of the Copernican revolution is that the structures of the objects are in accordance with the (...) universal structures of the finite subject; a contrario, Husserl refuses this Copernican principle and assumes that every sort of object determines a regulative structure in the subject; is it possible to apply this anticopernican principle to the ethical sphere? As opposed to the Kantian principle of the supremacy of practical reason, we find in Husserl’s thought a supremacy of the theoretical reason; but which is the sense of this inversion? The concept of foundation has in Husserlian phenomenology a cardinal importance: all sorts of truth of superior degree are founded on the inferior level of sensible truth; is it possible to apply this principle of foundation to the ethical sphere, so that ethical consciousness would be founded on feelings? At last the Kantian concept of liberty is not an empirical one, but a cosmological and practical idea; which is the phenomenological sense of liberty? (shrink)

Starting with the ego's consciousness and emphasizing on staying at this realm, Husserl is accused of ignoring the absolute alterity of the other and reducing it to the presence of consciousness. By reducing the other he misses ethics and so embeds the violence at the heart of phenomenological discourse. Here we discuss on this criticism and then we try to defend Husserl against it. By putting phenomenology in its eidetic realm, we will try to answer these criticisms.

Can we find a phenomenological basis for the ethical 'ought'? This essay addresses this question through a reflection on Husserl's fifth Meditation. In the fifth Meditation Husserl endeavors to show the manner in which I constitute the other through an associative pairing of the other with my own subjectivity. This essay argues that this same associative pairing forces me to acknowledge the other as a person of intrinsic worth insofar as I recognize myself as one. Having acknowledged the intrinsic worth (...) of the other in this way, I cannot but acknowledge my obligation to treat the other as I would like to be treated. Thus, the ethical imperative, in the form of the Golden Rule, proves to be implicated in the very constitution of the other in his or her otherness. (shrink)

The deliberations presented in the article are concentrated around a thesis that the unchanging framework of Husserl’s philosophical thinking is based on the simultaneous occurrence of theoretical and practical-ethical motive. This thesis, together with considerations presented in the text, are the result of reflection on the aim and tasks of phenomenology as transcendental philosophy, philosophy understood as science striving for the consolidating of cognition and revealing findings that are relevant to one’s life. The practical-ethical motivation that accompanies deliberations of epistemological (...) nature influences the specificity of phenomenological philosophy, phenomenological inquiries and the change of approach. Phenomenology considered in terms of theoretical and practical motives, in the rational and critical thinking, includes the relation between the sphere of cognition and the sphere of life, between the theoretical-scientific sphere and the practical-ethical one. (shrink)

In this paper we want to focus on Husserl’s critique of Kantian ethics and to develop the following questions. Against the merely empiristic orientation of Hume’s ethics, the Kantian foundation of ethics has an aprioristic character; but does this aprioristic character have to be identified with the origin of ethical principles in the pure subjectivity, and if not, which is its phenomenological signification? The sense of the Copernican revolution is that the structures of the objects are in accordance with the (...) universal structures of the finite subject; a contrario, Husserl refuses this Copernican principle and assumes that every sort of object determines a regulative structure in the subject; is it possible to apply this anticopernican principle to the ethical sphere? As opposed to the Kantian principle of the supremacy of practical reason, we find in Husserl’s thought a supremacy of the theoretical reason; but which is the sense of this inversion? The concept of foundation has in Husserlian phenomenology a cardinal importance: all sorts of truth of superior degree are founded on the inferior level of sensible truth; is it possible to apply this principle of foundation to the ethical sphere, so that ethical consciousness would be founded on feelings? At last the Kantian concept of liberty is not an empirical one, but a cosmological and practical idea; which is the phenomenological sense of liberty? (shrink)

This paper pursues a Kantian critique of Husserl’s theory of moral consciousness as it is found in his lectures on ethics and other shorter pieces on political and moral philosophy from the interwar period. The critique centers on Kant’s conception of moral personality, arguing that Husserl fails to appreciate the force of this idea, subsequently leaving himself open to the charge of moral perfectionism. The paper ends with a positive assessment of Husserl’s thought, however, arguing that Husserl provides important resources (...) for understanding moral consciousness as a sensibility for the possible, adding an important dimension to approaches in ethics that tend to center exclusively on questions of motivation and principle. (shrink)

The thesis of this paper is that Husserl, in his later ethics, reinterprets the philosophical content that discloses itself in the Kantian conception of a “fact of practical reason”. From 1917/18 on, Husserl increasingly ceases to pursue his initial idea of a scientific ethics. The reason for this move lies precisely in the phenomenological analysis of “Gemütsakte”, through which two main features of the fact of practical reason impose themselves more and more on Husserls thought: the personal concernment/obligation and the (...) primacy of the practical with the coeval call for universal validity. Husserl recognizes that the form of ethical facticity or entanglement cannot be grasped by a science of evidence, which speaks objectively and non-personally of acts of willing, valuing or preferring. Husserl thus gets to a reinterpretation of the fact of practical reason as the philosophical nucleus of his ethics, which is now a personal and affective ethics. He bestows a texture on this fact, however not as he would have thought in the first place: not as evident laws of a material apriori of “Gemüt”. In the person and her ethical experience as absolute affection Husserl rather discovers that which is per se not objectifiable and not to be made rationally evident. By this, Husserl captures and phenomenologically explains the non-objectifiable source of obligation and the possibility of complying with it. (shrink)

Evidence is a central theme in Husserl´s transcendental phenomenology. This article investigates not only the theoretical aspects of evidence, but also tries to develop prolegomena for a phenomenological theory of moral evidence and moral truth. Nevertheless, this endeavor is based upon the theoretical insights of Husserl: the importance of intersubjectivity and the relevance of time, which are reviewed in the first two chapters. The temporal aspect, under the title of perpetuation, is crucial for the understanding of the concept of evidence. (...) But it becomes even more important when the question of moral truth is considered. Perpetuation is not only stressed in the understanding of values, but also in the unanimity of the ethical and loving person. As evidence of any kind can only be falsified by a higher evidence of the same character, moral evidence cannot be understood isolated from the living process of any prefigured moral settings of a society, moral evidence can give itself only in an interpersonal community and its moral tradition and demands the community’s own readiness for a critical habituality. (shrink)

Why do I have to be ethical? That is the essential question of a logical foundation of ethics in the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl. This article proposes to see the basic motivation of an ethical reason in the relationship between the two fundamental poles, that is the «Lifeworld» («Lebenswelt») and the «I-subject» («Ich-Subjekt»). This connection will be considered to constitute ethics in this article. This kind of ethics as a «condition of possibility» is then an a-priori ontological necessity. The article (...) will demonstrate how the composition of Husserl’s Prolegomena and his argumentation are an example of a foundation for phenomenological ethics: in this book Husserl derived logic as the first «condition of possibility». With logic’s three main characteristics — theory, normativity and praxis — it is the theoretical basis of a phenomenological ethics. (shrink)

Although cultures far away and with other languages and customs are felt to be exotic by many in one s own culture, all cultures recognize the importance of a consistent bodily praxis as a basis for ethical behavior. I show that thinkers as diverse as Aristotle, Dewey, James, Peirce, Husserl, and Merleau-Ponty all acknowledge this habitual-bodily basis as well as its deeply social character. So does Confucius, even if he emphasizes ceremonial aspects more than Aristotle, the American pragmatists, and phenomenologists. (...) Linking these thinkers is a common emphasis on the performative dimension of reliably repetitive bodily actions that engender effective social actions and interactions. (shrink)

Though Husserl tends to receive less attention than other phenomenologists, there is growing interest in his ethics. Proponents of Husserl’s ethics argue that his moral philosophy is not merely of historical interest; Husserl, they claim, can contribute positively to contemporary debates in ethics, specifically debates about the role of feelings in moral agency. This paper raises questions about this last claim. I argue that, on the one hand, Husserl’s moral psychology proves superior to some of his modern predecessors, insofar as (...) Husserl accounts for the intentionality of emotions and for their cognitive content, and for the connections between emotions and evaluation and between emotions and reasons. On the other hand, I argue that Husserl mistakenly claims that all valuing requires some feeling on the part of the person valuing. This error, I argue, is due to Husserl’s conflation of desires and emotions. I defend my critique of Husserl by reference to an Aristotelian account of rational and non-rational desires. (shrink)

This paper seeks to provide a phenomenological articulation of the Scotist notion of haecceitas, interpreting Scotus’s principle of individuation at once as an ontological as well as a moral principle. Growing out of certain suggestions made by James Hart in his Who One Is, this interpretation is meant to provide the phenomenological ethics of both Edmund Husserl and Max Scheler with a useful theoretical tool in the Scotist notion of haecceitas interpreted as a horizon of value in order more fully (...) to develop the phenomenological idea of the ethical life as a task that specifically seeks to realize as its highest goal the vocation of the person to his or her ideal, true self. The main implication of Scotus’s thought, here, for phenomenology will be the ability to further delimit haecceitas as an objective moral principle that refutes the frequent charge of relativistic subjectivism in the phenomenological theory of ethics. (shrink)

This paper aims to provide a brief presentation of Husserl’s lectures dedicated to the philosophy of Fichte, specifically the discussion of the relationship between ethics and religion that the fichtian texts develop in its intermediate phase. The course taught by Husserl, divided into three lessons and presented in the chair of Freiburg between the years 1917 and 1918, seems to clearly show the intimate connection between Husserl proposals on an absolute foundation of ethics and the theory advocated by Fichte about (...) the different stages or degrees of moral development of mankind. More than that, both idealistic philosophical positions conceive a close relation between the conception of an ethical ideal and the defense of a view about human nature that understands it as a pure acting of consciousness. In this regard, the paper aims to indicate, albeit incipiently, how epistemology, ethics, and religion appear intertwined in a systematic manner in the two theories. (shrink)

The paper aims to investigate the ethical motive which led Husserl to defend the transcendental subjectivity. The central thesis is that phenomenological attitude is more than a pure methodical and theoretical approach on human subjectivity. Husserlian’s use of the transcendental ego has a practical purpose. Considering that phenomenology always begins by the suspension of the natural attitude, the possibility of this suspension implicates a paradox: the ego must preserve his belief in reason and science in order to carry out the (...) neutralization of its beliefs concerning natural attitude. This belief is crucial in order to understand the ethical meaning of the transcendental reduction which is the beginning of an entirely new form of life. (shrink)

According to a predominant view, reflection is constitutive of personhood. In this paper I first indicate how it might seem that such an account cannot do justice to the socially embedded nature ofpersonhood. I then present a phenomenologically-inspired account of reflection as critical stance taking and show how it accommodates the social embeddedness of persons. In concluding, I outline how this phenomenological account is also not vulnerable to a number of additional challenges that have been raised against accounts that consider (...) reflection to be constitutive of personhood and what matters for responsibility. (shrink)

There seems to be a shift in phenomenology in the 20th century from an ethics based on value theory to an ethics based on responsibility. This essay attempts to show the path marks of this transition. It begins with the historical development that led Husserl to address the question of ethical objectivity in terms of value theory, with a focus on Kant, Hegel, and Nietzsche. It then explains Husserl’s phenomenology of ethics as grounded in value theory, and takes into account (...) Heidegger’s objections to it. Finally, it considers Sartre as a transitional figure between value theory and an ethics of responsibility and attempts to show in what sense, if at all, Levinas’ phenomenology of ethics could be an absolute break with a phenomenological ethics based on values. (shrink)

A Husserl-based social ethics is within the noetic-noematic field as disclosed through various reductions. The focus is how at the passive and active levels a bsic sense of will is in play as well as the "telos" of subjectivity in terms of both a "godly" intersubjective ideal "we". This is inseparable form the disclosure of the full sense of person through an "absolute ought" and the "truth of will" wherein the common world and common goods are tied to an ideal (...) community as a person of a higher order. (shrink)

My thesis is that there is a way of understanding moral knowledge in terms of Husserl's theory of the fulfillment of consciousness which may unify the main types of views held with respect to "the practicality of reason." By "the practicality of reason" I mean the claim that moral knowledge of the appropriate kind constrains moral action. This knowledge is intuitive or experiential knowledge in contrast to mere thought, intentionality or reasoning. I claim that such knowledge is possible and that (...) it places a greater constraint on action than mere moral thought or reasoning. ;The aim of the historical part of my thesis is to delimit the three main types of views held with respect to this thesis, i.e., the traditional, the Humean empiricist and the Kantian idealist, and to show that they all concede some form of "intuitive" or experiential constraint over action, but do not provide an adequate elucidation of it. In Hume's case, the attribution of selectively intentional features to moral sentiment allows for a plausible interpretation of Hume's view as consistent with, if not a concession to, the thesis. In Kant's case, his repeated, although unclarified, appeal to moral "experience" in conjunction with his ultimate appeal to reason supports our contention that he too adheres to the thesis. ;The primary "proof" of my thesis, however, proceeds by way of an independent phenomenological analysis of conscientious action. The moral intuitionism of Richard Price is refined and defended by the application of Husserl's analysis of the intuitive fulfillment of consciousness to moral experience and the will thereto in conscientious action. This analysis reveals that all thought, but especially intuitive thought, involves motivational structures with specific active tendencies. Intuitive moral thought, therefore, constrains to a much greater degree than mere intentional moral thought alone. We conclude with the observation that although the theory of moral perception is highly complex, it is in principle no more complex than an adequate theory of knowledge generally. The intuitive justification of moral knowledge may stand or fall with the intuitive justification of anything at all. (shrink)

This paper starts with an explanation of Aristotle’s conception of physis, namely as nature where the essence or form comes out of matter, but not, like techne, out of a cra sman’s thinking. en I try to point out how this conception is implicated in Husserl’s phenomenology. We see that Husserl’s phenomenological method lets us come back to the things themselves. We can experience them as physis. But what and how can the transcendental subjectivity, being what Husserl’s phenomenological method aims (...) to expose, contribute to it? (shrink)

Scheler called “material ethics of value” his own phenomenological ethics. Therefore, to clarify the concept of “value” is the most important step for a good understanding of his phenomenological material ethics of value. In the whole framework of the phenomenological movement, many phenomeno-ogists such as Husserl, Scheler, and N. Hartmann and so on developed their own ethics of value. But we can see the fundamental difference between Husserl’s or Hartmann’s ethics of value and Scheler’s one. The reason for this is (...) that they prescribed “value” differently. In Scheler’s phenomenological material ethics of value, there are two basic formulations of value: the former is the value a priori as material a priori , and the latter, the value being as a ultimately basic form of being . On the one hand, in contrast with Husserl, Scheler regarded value a priori as primal-phenomenon; On the other hand, unlike N. Hartmann, Scheler prescribed value-being as “the relative being of act”. In this sense, Scheler’s phenomenological material ethics of value is founded neither merely on the value a priori in the sense of thing-phenomenology, nor merely on emotional a priori in the sense of the act-phenomenology, but on a “material apriorism”. There are three kinds of a priori in such a “material apriorism”: value a priori, emotional a priori and the relevant a priori between fact and act. (shrink)