Abstract
Husserl’s later ethics clearly shows existentialist elements, as he is deeply concerned with the incomparable existence of the unique individual, not only as representing a theoretical topic, but also as presenting “an issue” for this very individual. It is precisely ethical reflections that represent the systematic place where these questions of existence and duty must be decided, for a whole life and for one in constant renewal. Husserl’s “existentialism” is rooted in the primal facticity of the person: the individuation of the person through a call, the question of authenticity, the moment of decision in a specific situation conceived in terms of a choice of who one is, and, finally, the impossibility of justification according to universalist standards leading to an absolute responsibility for one’s decisions. I therefore propose to speak of an “existentialist rationalism” in regard to Husserl’s later ethics, which, precisely by articulating the tensions between the rational and the irrational in the primal facticity of the person, remains obliged to the ideals of the Enlightenment.
This article is a part of a research program funded by the Czech Science Foundation (Project “Personal Identity at the Crossroads: Phenomenological, Genealogical, and Hegelian Perspectives,” GACR 18–16622S). The text is my own reworked and extended translation from the German text “Ist Husserl’s Ethik existentialistisch?” (Loidolt 2011), containing also some phrases and manuscript translations from the essay “The ‘Daimon’ that Speaks Through Love: A Phenomenological Ethics of the Absolute Ought” (Loidolt 2012).
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Notes
- 1.
Since most of the material that I quote in this text is only available in the German original, all the English translations (if not indicated otherwise by quoting a translated volume) are my own.
- 2.
Husserl knows several primal facts (the ego, the world, and the teleological movement within this relation) which are all intertwined in what he calls “the metaphysical primal fact” (Hua 15, 366): the intentional Being-in-one-another of the monads.
- 3.
“At first, essence designated what is to be found in the very own being of an individuum as the What of an individuum.” (Husserl 1982, 8)
- 4.
Husserl comes very close to Scheler’s (1973) personalist ethics here although he does not mention him.
- 5.
Karl Schuhmann is of the opinion that this sort of community would even overcome the state and classical forms of political organization. See his book, Husserls Staatsphilosophie (1988), where he argues that the state does not belong to the eidetic teleology of social ontology but is rather a historical facticity. To this extent, the community of love could potentially overcome the state as a political form of human co-existence.
- 6.
This is a passage from the unpublished manuscript Ms. F I 40, 144a, quoted in Loidolt 2012, note 59: “1) der objektive Wert, der Wert, den jedermann, jeder axiologisch Vernünftige, der den betreffenden Sachgehalt als Grundlage hat, fühlend und wertnehmend erfassen kann, originaliter; 2) derselbe objektive Wert als individueller, subjektiver Liebeswert. Nämlich, was da gemeint ist, ist dies, dass Werte sich zum wertenden Subjekt und seinen vernünftigen Akten anders verhalten als in der logischen Sphäre Gegenstände zu urteilenden und überhaupt objektivierenden Akten.”
- 7.
This passage too is from an unpublished manuscript, Ms. E III 4, 13b, quoted in Loidolt 2012, note 77.
- 8.
As Kierkegaard (2006) famously argued in Fear and Trembling, Abraham is in an existential situation of ethical decision when receiving the call of God to sacrifice his son Isaac. He cannot rule out that a demon is calling on him, while to renounce God’s demand just because of this doubt would be equally sinful.
- 9.
“No conceivable theory can make us err with respect to the principle of all principles: that every originary presentive intuition is a legitimizing source of cognition, that everything originarily (so to speak, in its ‘personal’ actuality) offered to us in ‘intuition’ is to be accepted simply as what it is presented as being, but also only within the limits in which it is presented there” (Husserl 1982, 44).
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Loidolt, S. (2022). Is Husserl’s Later Ethics Existentialist? On the Primal Facticity of the Person and Husserl’s “Existentialist Rationalism”. In: Cavallaro, M., Heffernan, G. (eds) The Existential Husserl. Contributions to Phenomenology, vol 120. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-05095-4_7
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