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)

Trust is a crucial component of the relationship between a professional and those whom the professional serves because those served often lack the past experience and specialized training necessary to adequately assess the reliability of the professional’s judgments on their behalf. This article is an attempt to enhance our understanding of the conditions under which client trust of a professional is plausible. Trust, I will explain, is an emotional attitude with a unique evaluative dimension that can lead the one who (...) trusts to anticipate that the one trusted will not betray her even when she cannot adequately assess evidence of the trusted’s reliability. It is, however, precisely because evaluating someone’s trustworthiness differs in important respects from assessing their reliability that substantive trust of a professional is implausible in cases where those served by a particular profession, for example, medicine or journalism, conceive of it as merely a commercial enterprise. (shrink)

This article demonstrates the unique value of a Husserlian phenomenological account of the affective (or “feeling”) dimension of emotional experience for realizing Aristotle’s vision of the cultivation of virtue. Through an analysis of envy, the author defends the claim that the affective dimension of self-assessment is central to the process of conceptualization by which we learn to apprehend our own emotional responses. Analytic conceptual analyses that dismiss the subjective, affective correlate of emotional experiences, therefore, fail to take seriously what is (...) involved in learning from one's mistakes. (shrink)