This book attempts to open up a path towards a phenomenological theory of values (more technically, a phenomenological axiology). By drawing on everyday experience, and dissociating the notion of value from that of tradition, it shows how emotional sensibility can be integrated to practical reason. This project was prompted by the persuasion that the fragility of democracy, and the current public irrelevance of the ideal principles which support it, largely depend on the inability of modern philosophy to overcome the well-entrenched skepticism about the power of practical reason. The book begins with a phenomenology of cynical consciousness, continues with a survey of still influential theories of value rooted in 20th century philosophy, and finally offers an outline of a bottom-up axiology that revives the anti-skeptical legacy of phenomenology, without ignoring the standards set by contemporary metaethics.

This book investigates the possibility of a contemporary ethics of compassion based upon the experience of human mortality. During an age in which the traditional metaphysical guarantors of order, transcendent sources of meaning, and appeals to human rationality are becoming historical phenomena, it is important to investigate whether an alternative source of measure for human conduct can be discovered through phenomenological analysis. Marx shows how a confrontation with one's mortality, as a basic condition of human existence which is ignored or actively avoided for the most part, can transform a person's attitude from one of indifference to one of active concern for other human beings; how it can heighten one's awareness of the social nature of human existence; and how it can serve as an integrative force in the various spheres of human life. The transformation Marx outlines depends, not upon deliberation and conscious decision, or upon a demand to conform to formal rules or maxims, but rather, upon a change in one's emotional attunement toward others, out of which a more compassionate conduct emerges almost automatically. He shows how the awareness of one's limitations and dependencies as a mortal can raise sociality to an important and pervasive factor in human existence instead of a merely unpleasant or indifferent fact. Marx also shows how the development of the notion of "world" as a sphere of human concerns has been accompanied by a deterioration of the traditional idea of the world as a seamless unity or an integrated whole, and he points out that a transformed ethical awareness of others as fellow mortals helps provide a unifying meaning to the disparate worlds in which we all live.

This book investigates the possibility of a contemporary ethics of compassion based upon the experience of human mortality. During an age in which the traditional metaphysical guarantors of order, transcendent sources of meaning, and appeals to human rationality are becoming historical phenomena, it is important to investigate whether an alternative source of measure for human conduct can be discovered through phenomenological analysis. Marx shows how a confrontation with one's mortality, as a basic condition of human existence which is ignored or actively avoided for the most part, can transform a person's attitude from one of indifference to one of active concern for other human beings; how it can heighten one's awareness of the social nature of human existence; and how it can serve as an integrative force in the various spheres of human life. The transformation Marx outlines depends, not upon deliberation and conscious decision, or upon a demand to conform to formal rules or maxims, but rather, upon a change in one's emotional attunement toward others, out of which a more compassionate conduct emerges almost automatically. He shows how the awareness of one's limitations and dependencies as a mortal can raise sociality to an important and pervasive factor in human existence instead of a merely unpleasant or indifferent fact. Marx also shows how the development of the notion of "world" as a sphere of human concerns has been accompanied by a deterioration of the traditional idea of the world as a seamless unity or an integrated whole, and he points out that a transformed ethical awareness of others as fellow mortals helps provide a unifying meaning to the disparate worlds in which we all live.

The correlation between person and environment has long been a central focus of phenomenological analysis. While phenomenology is usually understood as a descriptive discipline showing how essential features of the human encounter with things and people in the world are articulated, phenomenology is also based on ethical concerns. Husserl himself, the founder of the movement, gave several lecture courses on ethics. This volume focuses on one trend in ethics-virtue ethics-and its connection to phenomenology. The essays explore how phenomenology contributes to this field of ethics and clarifies some of its central issues, such as flourishing and good character traits. The volume initiates a conversation with virtue ethicists that is underrepresented in the current literature. Phenomenology and Virtue Ethics offers contributions from prominent phenomenologists who explore the following issues: how phenomenology is connected to the ancient Greek or Christian virtue tradition, how phenomenology and its foundational thinkers are oriented toward virtue ethics, and how phenomenology is itself a virtue discipline. The focus on phenomenology and virtue ethics in a single volume is the first of its kind.

Ethics and Phenomenology is a collection of essays that explore the relationship between moral philosophy and the phenomenological tradition. Phenomenology is a vast and rich philosophical tradition which seeks to explain how we perceive the world. This, in turn, involves questions about one’s relationship to the world and how one both acts and should act in the world. For this reason phenomenology entails an ethics, even if such an ethics is not always apparent in the work of phenomenological thinkers. The book is devoted to two central tasks: Section One offers essays exploring the resources available to moral philosophy in the work of the major phenomenologists of the 20th-century, including Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, and others. Part Two consists of essays demonstrating the way that the phenomenological method can facilitate advances in our thinking through the exploration of contemporary ethical issues, including environmentalism, intellectual property, parenting and others.

This book provides a framework for phenomenological axiology. It offers a novel account of the existence and nature of values as they appear in conscious experience. By building on previous approaches, including those of Edmund Husserl, Max Scheler, and Nicolai Hartmann, the author develops a unique account of what values really are. After explicating and defending this account, he applies it to several of the most difficult questions in axiology: for example, how our experiences of value can differ from those of others without reducing values to subjective judgments or how the values we experience are connected to the volitional acts that they inspire. This provides satisfactory answers to certain fundamental questions concerning the basic structure of value-experiences. Accordingly, this book represents a novel step forward in phenomenological axiology. Towards a Phenomenology of Values will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in phenomenology and value theory.

conditions of the possibility of Experience ... must mean nothing else than all that which lies immanently in the essence of Experience ... and therefore belongs to it indispensably. The essence of Experience that phenomenological analysis of Experience elucidates is the same as the possibility of Experience, and all that which is determined in the essence, in the possibility of Experience, is eo ipso 1 condition of the possibility of Experience. Through acquaintance with Husserl's work, then, I developed my way of understand ing what, according to their very possibility, lies in conscious activities of mentally representing something, for example, by imagining or remembering it, or by viewing it in a picture, all these understood as forms of modified perception. As Husserl himself made clear, such reflective and descriptive analyses of the mental activities according to their very possibility are carried out regardless of the way they have actually come to be. However, I was also interested in developmen tal questions, especially with regard to the activity of imagining. Hence I turned to cognitive developmental psychology in order to get acquainted with the neces sary empirical material. Moreover, I conducted a pilot-study with young children that I had conceived according to phenomenologically relevant aspects concerning the difference and yet inner connection of the activities of imagining and viewing 2 pictures.