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Phenomenological method and contemporary ethics

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Abstract

Following a brief summation of the phenomenological method, the paper considers three metaethical positions adopted by phenomenologists and the implications of those positions for a normative ethics. The metaethical positions combine epistemological and ontological viewpoints. They are (1) non-intellectualism and strong value realism as represented by the axiological views of phenomenologists such as Scheler, Meinong, Reinach, Stein, Hartmann, von Hildebrand, and Steinbock; (2) non-intellectualism and anti-realism as represented by the freedom-centered phenomenologies of Sartre, Beauvoir, and Merleau-Ponty; and (3) weak intellectualism and weak value realism as represented by Husserl and Drummond. The paper argues that only the third metaethical view can support a normative ethics (1) that is consistent with the essential features of the phenomenological method, (2) that allows for freedom in an agent’s choosing from a multiplicity of first-order goods, including vocational goods, practical identities, and life plans, available in the agent’s factical circumstances, and (3) that provides norms governing the correctness of our actions and our obligations to others. The normative dimension is introduced, first, by the requirement that the fulfillment of first-order evaluations and choices be truthful, that is, that the (emotive) evaluations be appropriate and the actions right. Second, transcendental considerations revealed in the phenomenological analysis of intentional experience disclose a notion of second-order goods of agency that universally bind agents in their exercise of freedom and their dealings with others.

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Notes

  1. For brief summaries of the development of ethics within the phenomenological tradition see Drummond (2020a) and Loidolt (2018).

  2. Drummond (2008).

  3. Husserl (2014, p. 58).

  4. This claim needs qualification, for some phenomenologists believe—wrongly, in my view—that there are experiences that are non-intentional. Husserl (1970b, p. 572), for example, distinguishes non-intentional feelings from what he calls (intentional) feeling-acts (e.g., taking pleasure in a melody, joy concerning some event) (1970b, pp. 569–70). Non-intentional feelings, such as pains, are feeling-sensations (Gefühlsempfindungen) or sensory states—a form of bodily self-awareness—rather than feeling-acts directed toward objects. I have suggested elsewhere (2020c) that intentional feelings are a Gestalt whose moments are the varied and distinct feeling-sensations that, taken together, constitute a bodily attitude toward an object. Non-intentional feelings can, for present purposes, be put aside. They do not in and of themselves possess moral content. They can be implicated in moral experiences, especially moral emotions, but in those contexts they are implicated in intentional feeling-acts, such as compassion, callousness, admiration, or contempt.

  5. McDowell (1998a, pp. 207–212; 1998b, pp. 63–64).

  6. Husserl (2014, p. 75).

  7. Drummond (2007, p. 58).

  8. Examples include Nicolai Hartmann (1963), Edmund Husserl (1988; 2004), Alexius Meinong (2020), Adolf Reinach (1989), Max Scheler (1973), Edith Stein (1986; 1989), and Dietrich von Hildebrand (1916; 1922; 1953). Martin Heidegger is the notable exception.

  9. Strong realism regarding values is more often associated with strongly cognitivist or intellectualist positions regarding the apprehension of value. These positions view the emotions, in Martha Nussbaum’s words, as “identical with the acceptance of a proposition that is both evaluative and eudaimonistic, that is, concerned with one or more of the person’s important goals and ends” (2001, p. 41). See also Solomon (1980) and Neu (2000). These early phenomenologists, in opposition both to Kantian rationalism and the empiricistic feeling-theories of William James (1884) and Carl Lange (1887), stressed the capacity of intentional feelings to grasp objective values; see also Goldie (2000).

  10. For a contemporary view of this sort, see Findlay (1961, 1970). Anthony Steinbock frequently invokes Scheler in his work on the emotions, although his analyses of particular emotions often appeal to beliefs that appear to be constituent parts of the emotion; see, e.g., Steinbock (2013, 2014).

  11. Scheler (1973, p. 68). See also Mulligan (1998, p. 161).

  12. Scheler (1973, p. 18).

  13. Scheler (1973, p. 17). For a criticism of Scheler’s axiology, see Drummond (2013; 2020c).

  14. Scheler (1973, pp. 203ff.).

  15. Von Hildebrand (1953, p. 24).

  16. Von Hildebrand (2016, p. 14).

  17. Von Hildebrand (2016, p. 16). See also von Hildebrand (1953, pp. 34–43, 53–59).

  18. Von Hildebrand (1953, p. 42).

  19. Hartmann (1963, p. 357).

  20. Hartmann (1963, pp. 358–360).

  21. See Drummond (2018).

  22. See Drummond (2020b).

  23. Mulligan (2009, pp. 154).

  24. Heidegger is a difficult case. In the first place, he criticizes the notion of value in general, and, in the second place, it is disputed whether he commits himself to a “decisionism” (see, e.g., Tugendhat (1986) and Okrent (1999)) or a “deep deliberation” (see Burch (2010, p. 212) and Crowell (2007, pp. 55–56, 59–62; 2013, pp. 206–213)). We need note only that he develops neither an explicit theory of value beyond his discussions of Befindlichkeit nor of ethics beyond his discussions of conscience (Gewissen) and resoluteness (Entschlossenheit). While the controversy makes clear that Heidegger is no decisionist in any simple sense, it is not clear to me that it has demonstrated that Heidegger is not a more nuanced and sophisticated decisionist, and my view is that he ultimately is just such a decisionist.

  25. See Sartre (1992), Beauvoir (1948), and Merleau-Ponty (2012).

  26. Beauvoir (1948, p. 153).

  27. Merleau-Ponty (2012, pp. 464–473, 480–481).

  28. Sartre (2007, p. 24).

  29. The exception here is Simone de Beauvoir. An aspect of the non-intellectualist anti-realism rooted in freedom is to show that freedom is “concretely contextualized in terms of political struggles and historical reality”; see Crowell (2017, §3.2). Moving beyond Sartre’s position, Beauvoir claims that the freedom of others is not merely an obstacle to the exercise of my own freedom. Rather, the realization of my freely chosen projects requires that others, not impeding my freedom, exercise their own freedom in ways that cooperate and support my projects. Moreover, in Beauvoir’s view, evil is the denial of freedom. Consequently, we are obligated to protect the freedom of all agents and to guarantee the conditions of freedom for all agents, myself and others, and, in particular, to recognize and oppose oppressive forces within the situation. These two aspects of her thought establish the space in which a normative ethical theory can be developed.

  30. Crowell (2012, p. 216).

  31. Sartre (1992, pp. 76–78).

  32. Cf. Darwall (2006).

  33. Levinas (1969, p. 66).

  34. Levinas (1969, p. 215).

  35. Levinas (1969, pp. 43, 50–51).

  36. See Husserl (1989, p. 12). The term Wertnehmung is a modification of Wahrnehmung and invites an analogy with perception. Just as to perceive (wahrnehmen) is to take as true, to perceive a value (wertnehmen) is to take as valuable.

  37. Husserl (1988, p. 255).

  38. This formulation modifies Husserl’s position in the fifth investigation in Logical Investigations, §15. Husserl claimed that an intentional feeling-act was founded on what he called an objectifying act (a perception or judgment). I claim that the founding moment is not the perceiving or judging act, but the perceptual or propositional sense of the presentation of the non-axiological properties. This sense, in relation to the subject’s circumstances detailed above, motivates the intentional feeling and, when the feeling is appropriate, justifies the axiological sense presenting the object as valued; cf. Drummond (2002; 2013; 2017). Husserl later (2014, §117) changed his view and recognized that intentional feelings and emotions are objectifying, although he did not abandon his view of the founding relation. Husserl viewed emotions, in effect, as an addition to perception, whereas I am claiming that perception is an abstractive modification of a complex original experience having cognitive, affective, and practical dimensions and senses.

  39. Husserl (2014, pp. 190–91).

  40. This view is similar, but not identical, to John McDowell’s claim that value-attributes are analogous to perceived secondary qualities. McDowell (1998b, p. 143) says, “To press the analogy is to stress that evaluative ‘attitudes,’ or states of will, are like (say) colour experience in being unintelligible except as modifications of a sensibility like ours. The idea of value experience involves taking admiration, say, to represent its object as having a property that (although there in the object) is essentially subjective in much the same way as the property that an object is represented as having by an experience of redness—that is, understood adequately only in terms of the appropriate modification of human (or similar) sensibility. The disanalogy, now, is that a virtue (say) is conceived to be not merely such as to elicit the appropriate ‘attitude’ (as a colour is merely such as to cause the appropriate experiences), but rather such as to merit it.” The point of the analogy is to stress that the relation to the subject does not entail that the secondary qualities or values do not inhere as objective properties, and the point of the disanalogy is that causality is not the category in which to describe the relation between the valuable thing and the value-experience.

  41. See, e.g., (Husserl, 1970a, pp. 57–58).

  42. For a discussion of the appropriateness of feelings and emotions as well as the valuations accomplished therein, see Drummond, (2017), and for a discussion of the justification of action, see Drummond (2010).

  43. Husserl (1989, pp. 281–282).

  44. Drummond (2010, p. 420).

  45. See Drummond (2010, pp. 423–424). This move to intersubjectivity and the moral order has a similar structure to what we have seen in Beauvoir; cf. supra, n. 29.

  46. Cf. Drummond (2010).

  47. For more details, see Drummond (2006, 2010, 2013, 2017, 2018, 2020b, 2020c).

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    John J. Drummond

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Drummond, J.J. Phenomenological method and contemporary ethics. Cont Philos Rev 54, 123–138 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11007-021-09529-w

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