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A complete list of the courses Husserl gave on ethics is given by. AloisRoth, Edmund Husserls ethische Untersuchen. Dargestellt anhand seiner Vorlesungsmanuskripte, Phaemenologica 7 (Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1960), p. x. They include three and two hour lecture courses on “Ethics and Philosophy of Law” given in 1894 and 1897 respectively.
FranzBrentano, Vom Ursprung sittlicher Erkenntnis, ed. OskarKraus (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1969), pp. 30 f. [English translation, The Origin of our Knowledge of Right and Wrong, by Roderick M. Chisholm and Elizabeth H. Schneewind (London and Henley: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969), pp. 32 f.].
OskarKraus, “Bentham, Kant und Wundt,” Introduction to Jeremy Benthams Grundsätze für ein künftiges Völkerrecht und einen dauernden Frieden (Principles of International Law), trans. C. Klatscher (Halle a.S.: Verlag von Max Niemeyer, 1915), pp. 47 ff.
FranzBrentano, Grundlegung und Aufbau der Ethik, edited by FranziskaMayer-Hillebrand from the lectures on “Practical Philosophy” in the literary remains (Bern: A. Francke Ag. Verlag, 1952), p. 22 [English translation edited and translated by Elizabeth Hughes Schneewind, The Foundation and Construction of Ethics (New York: Humanities Press, 1973), p. 24]. Though he does not apply the term ‘autonomous’ to it, Kraus (op. cit., pp. 39 ff.) denies that the system is heteronomous. So, too, does Anton Marty, who speaks of natural utility as the ultimate “authority” in moral issues, following Brentano's notions of the natural sanction for objective moral principles; see Marty's “Über Sprachreflex, Nativismus und absichtliche Sprachbildung” in Gesammelte Schriften, ed. J.Eisenmeier, A.Kastil, O.Kraus, I.Band, 2. Abteilung, Schriften zur genetischen Sprachphilosophie (Halle a.S.: Verlag von Max Niemeyer, 1916), p. 223.
The distinction is drawn, as is indicated below (pages <6, 7–9>), although less explicitly than by implication and certainly not with the sort of emphasis placed by Nicolai Hartmann upon negative freedom of the will vis-à-vis the axiological principle on which it acts; see his Ethik, fourth ed. (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter & Co., 1962), Chapters 19–21, 74, 80, 82. [English translation, Ethics, by Stanton Coit (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1932), Vol. 1, Chapters 19–21, Chapters 10, 16–18].
MaxScheler, Der Formalismus in der Ethik und die materiale Wertethik, 4th ed., MariaScheler, ed. (Bern: Francke Verlag, 1954), Part 1, Chapter 1.2; Chapter 2.B.2 and 2.B.4 [English translation, Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values, by Manfred S. Frings and Roger L. Funk (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1973.)
Nicolai Hartmann, op. cit., esp. Chapter 27 [English translation, Vol. 2, Chapter 2.]. For the history of the work, see Stanton Coit's “Translator's Preface” to the English version, p. 10 f.
It is very misleading that Husserl treats these values as belonging to a different axiological “region” or category from the values which he calls “goods.” Whatever is good in Huserl's sense can be valued as something attractive when an affect is directed toward it in such a way that it is approved just for those (non-axiological) characteristics for which it is approved as a good. But his meaning may well be that the attractive object is then not the self-same object but some object of the same non-axiological kind. Moreover, objects having the same non-axiological properties which make a given object attractive can be goods.
When determinism is rejected, as Husserl was inclined to do not later than 1920 or so (Hua XI, 102ff., 493), this feature of value enhancement implies that past occurrences will vary in their value depending upon present and future actions and their results.
Ulrich Melle, “Einleitung des Herausgebers” (Hua XXVIII, xlvi f.). Nevertheless, there are very serious reasons-see below—for Husserl later to conclude that his “categorical imperative” really has little or no relevance to casuistry.
Husserl appears to use ‘Wertsummierung’ and ‘Wertsteigerung’ interchangeably. ‘Augmentation’ or ‘increase’ translate the latter well; the more perilous yet more literal ‘summation’ probably should be used for the former but with warnings to the reader of translations.
What needs to be fended off here is exactly the sort of error in talk about values which Heidegger-in case I understand him aright—regards as likely to conceal and obfuscate more than it reveals; see his Sein und Zeit, Erste Hälfte, 6th unaltered edition (Tübingen: Neomarius Verlag, 1946) [English translation, Being and Time, by J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson (New York and Evanston: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1962)], esp. pp. 99 f.
Cf. WilliamJames, “The Dilemma of Determinism” in Essays in Pragmatism, edited with an Introduction by AlbureyCastell (New York: Hafner Publishing Company, 1957), pp. 55 f.
Goethe's Faust, Prologue in Heaven, lines 328 f.: Der Herr: ...Ein guter Mensch in seinem dunklem Drange/Ist sich des rechten Weges wohl bewußt [The Lord: ...Through their obscure impulses, the good are well aware of the right path].
AloisRoth, p. 64: “In ethics,” Roth wrote, “deciding formal correctness according to principle means at the same time deciding material correctness. The analogy with logic is wanting in a decisive point.” Edmund Husserls ethische Untersuchen. Dargestellt anhand seiner Vorlesungsmanuskripte, Phaemenologica 7 (Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1960),
Husserl's reasons for concentrating so onesidedly on formal axiological and ethical laws will probably lead to much biographical and psychological speculation from a wide range of antifoundationalists. Whatever the fact may indicate about his character he is concerned to extend the refutation of skeptical relativism by establishing distinctive formal eidetic laws for possibly true judgments in these fields as well. Ethical skepticism was even more widespread in the first two decades of our century than was Mill's radical empiricism in logic. Ethical skepticism is involved in countersense as is skepticism about analytical-logical laws, but the debate in the field of axiology and ethics had to remain on a more primitive level since historically an analytical ethics was not as yet formulated (Hua XXVIII, 245). Even Brentano did not admit until 1904 that there are a priori cognitions of goods and evils which are nonanalytic, and the admission occurred only in correspondence with Oskar Kraus (Franz Brentano, Vom Ursprung, pp. 109–112; English 111–113).
The volume contains no reference to Scheler whatsoever. Although he may have found Scheler's work equally unsatisfactory, some measure of approval for Scheler's work is indicated by the fact that the first draft of Husserl's Encyclopedia Britannica article refers only to Scheler under the heading “Ethics” in the section listing recommended phenomenological literature (Hua IX, 255).
Correct disapproval of such situations may have distracted Husserl into disapproving wrongly of any choices at all when all alternatives are ills.
Brentano himself may well have moved away from extreme consequentialism sometime between his Grundlegung und Aufbau der Ethik (342 ff.) and 1901 since he came to differentiate between moral preferences and others which lack moral character (see Vom Ursprung, Appendix VI, pp. 129–130).
J.G.Fichte, “Our Belief in a Divine Government of The Universe,” trns. by Paul Edwards in Patrick Gardiner, Nineteenth Century Philosophy (New York: The Free Press, 1969), p. 24. [“Über den Grund unsers Glaubens an eine göttliche Weltregierung,” Joh. Gottl. Fichtes Sämtliche Werke, ed. ImmanuelHermann Fichte (Berlin, 1834–1846), Vol. 5, p. 185].
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Jordan, R.W. Vorlesungen über Ethik und Wertlehre 1908–1914. Husserl Stud 8, 221–232 (1991). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00373661
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00373661