Abstract
What is the perfect good that everyone has to pursue? Does it exist a universal idea of good? Is it possible to get a science grounded on the idea of good? In this paper I would like to answer these questions by a comparison between Aristotle’s and Husserl’s ethics. Indeed, taking as a reference point the Aristotelian notion of eudaimonía, I would like to discuss the connection, if any, between Husserl’s and Aristotle’s idea of good. My aim is to detect a specific notion of what good is and how it can be explained by a phenomenological research. Essentially the questions I raise are: “Is well-being a moral target to which everyone should tend? What is exactly the good and has it do with well-being?” To a certain extent, Aristotle and Husserl seem to interpret the good as one of the moral aims but it is not so clear how it can be a universal and shared value by the human kosmos. Thence to answer these questions in this paper I will work on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and on Husserl’s ethics of 1914.
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Notes
- 1.
E. Husserl Vorlesungen über Ethik und Wertlehre, 1908–1914, hrsg. von Ulrich Melle, The Hague, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1988, p. 3. (Hereafter cited as Hua XXVIII), p. 3.
- 2.
Cf. E. Husserl, Aufsätze und Rezensionen (1890–1910), ed. Rang, The Hague, Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff, 1979.
- 3.
Ibid. , p. 3, p. 36–37.
- 4.
Ibid., p. 4.
- 5.
Ibid., p. 17, 37.
- 6.
E. Husserl, Einleitung in die Ethik 1920–1924, hrsg. von Hennig Peucker, Dordrecht/Boston/London, Kluwer Academic Publishers, p. 31, (Hereafter cited as Hua XXXVII).
- 7.
We refer to the work of John Mc Dowell, “Virtue and Reason”, in Aristotle’s Ethics, Lanham, Boulder, New York, Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1999, pp. 121–145.
- 8.
For Aristotle, acting ethically is never simply a question of the good intentions (though it is that); it also involves that practical intelligence or ability which converts ideas into results. The other way that actions connect up with human ends is through the virtues or ethical dispositions (aretē). These are, he tells us, ‘states of character’ which make an agent disposed to see things in a certain way. Aretē implies a certain intuitive grasp of the ends of man, which arises through experience such that a person is ‘naturally’ (we might say) disposed to do the fair-minded thing or act in a courageous way. These dispositions enable the non-discursive apprehension of certain ends in such a way that emotional energy is marshalled in the appropriate way (for example, the fair-minded person becomes angry if they see a manifest piece of injustice). Sometimes the distinction between ordinary actions and ethical actions is marked by a reference to eupraxía (doing well—see, for example, NE 1140b 6–7 or NE 1139b 1–4). Thus we can interpret Aristotle as saying that eudaimonía consists of actions undertaken for the sake of “human flourishing.”
- 9.
Aristotle, “Nicomachean Ethics”, in Introductory Readings, tr. Terence Irwin, Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1996, p. 197.
- 10.
As for this point, it can be fruitful to read Vittorio De Palma, Il soggetto e l’esperienza, Macerata: Quodlibet, 2001, p. 29.
- 11.
Hua XXVIII, p. 37.
- 12.
Ibid., p. 31.
- 13.
We can go through this comparison in the second section of ethical lectures of 1914.
- 14.
See: Hua XXVIII, p. 38: “von alters in der Ethik beständig die Rede ist von ethischen Prinzipien, dass aber, was hier ethisches Prinzip heißt, nichts weniger als das echte Analogon dessen ist, was in der Logik unter dem Titel logisches Prinzip steht.“
- 15.
Ibid., p. 114.
- 16.
Ibid., p. 29.
- 17.
In Prolegomena Husserl outlines three stages of science in this way: “Wichtigkeit ist, nämlich dass jede normative und desgleichen jede praktische Disziplin auf einer oder mehreren theoretischen Disziplinen beruht, sofern ihre Regeln einen von dem Gedanken der Normierung (des Sollens) abtrennbaren theoretischen Gehalt besitzen müssen, dessen wissenschaftliche Erforschung eben jenen theoretischen Disziplinen obliegt“ (Hua VIII, p. 40 or §§ 14, 64; LU, I, § 42)
- 18.
Ibid., p. 42.
- 19.
See: Hua XXVIII, p. 136.
- 20.
Ibid., p. 153.
- 21.
Ibid., p. 61.
References
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Ferrarello, S. (2012). The Idea of Good in Husserl and Aristotle. In: Tymieniecka, AT. (eds) Phenomenology and the Human Positioning in the Cosmos. Analecta Husserliana. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4795-1_6
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