The Phenomenology of Moral Normativity

The Phenomenology of Moral Normativity
Author: William H. Smith
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2013-02-28
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1136487255

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Why should I be moral? Philosophers have long been concerned with the legitimacy of morality’s claim on us—especially its ostensible aim to motivate certain actions of all persons unconditionally. This problem of moral normativity has received extensive treatment in analytic moral theory, but little attention has been paid to the potential contribution that phenomenology might make to this central debate in metaethics. In The Phenomenology of Moral Normativity, William H. Smith takes up the question of morality’s legitimacy anew, drawing contemporary moral philosophers into conversation with the phenomenological philosophy of Husserl, Heidegger, and Levinas. Utilizing a two-part account of moral normativity, Smith contends that the ground of morality itself is second-personal—rooted in the ethical demand intrinsic to other persons —while the ground for particular moral-obligations is first-personal—rooted in the subject’s avowal or endorsement of certain moral norms within a concrete historical situation. Thus, Smith argues, phenomenological analysis allows us to make sense of an idea that has long held intuitive appeal, but that modern moral philosophy has been unable to render satisfactorily: namely, that the normative source of valid moral claims is simply other persons and what we owe to them.

The Phenomenology of Moral Normativity

The Phenomenology of Moral Normativity
Author: William Hosmer Smith
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2012
Genre: Ethics
ISBN: 9780415890687

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The topic of this book is a fundamental philosophical question: why should I be moral?  Philosophers have long been concerned with the legitimacy of morality’s claim on us – especially with morality’s ostensible aim to motivate certain actions of all persons unconditionally. While the problem of moral normativity – that is, the justification of the binding force of moral claims – has received extensive treatment analytic moral theory, little attention has been paid to the potential contribution that phenomenology might make to this central debate in metaethics.  In The Phenomenology of Moral Normativity, William H. Smith takes up the question of morality’s legitimacy anew, drawing contemporary moral philosophers – particularly Christine Korsgaard and Stephen Darwall – into conversation with present-day phenomenologists like John Drummond and the phenomenological philosophy of Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, and Emmanuel Levinas. The results of this juxtaposition are surprising: utilizing a two-part account of moral normativity, Smith contends that the ground of morality itself is second-personal – rooted in the ethical demand intrinsic to other persons – while the ground for particular moral-obligations is first-personal – rooted in the subject’s avowal or endorsement of certain moral norms within a concrete historical situation. Thus, Smith argues that phenomenological analysis allows us to make sense of an idea that has long held intuitive appeal, but that modern moral philosophy has been unable to render satisfactorily, namely, that the normative source of valid moral claims is simply other persons and what we owe to them.

Normativity and Phenomenology in Husserl and Heidegger

Normativity and Phenomenology in Husserl and Heidegger
Author: Steven Crowell
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 339
Release: 2013-04-25
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1107035449

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Demonstrates how phenomenology constructively addresses problems in philosophy of mind, moral psychology and philosophy of action.

Contemporary Phenomenologies of Normativity

Contemporary Phenomenologies of Normativity
Author: Sara Heinämaa
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 295
Release: 2022-03-30
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1000553930

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This volume investigates forms of normativity through the phenomenological methods of description, analysis, and interpretation. It takes a broad approach to norms, covering not only rules and commands but also goals, values, and passive drives and tendencies. Part I "Basic Perspectives" begins with an overview of the phenomena of normativity and then clarifies the constitution of norms by Husserlian and Heideggerian concepts. It offers phenomenological alternatives to the neo-Kantian and neo-Hegelian approaches that dominate contemporary debates on the "sources of normativity." Part II "From Perception to Imagination" turns to the normativity of three basic types of experiences. This part first sheds light on the normativity of perception and then illuminates the kind of normativity characteristic of imagination and drive intentionality. Part III "Social Dimensions" analyzes the norms that regulate the formation of practical communities. It takes a broad view of practical norms, discussing social and moral norms as well as the epistemic norms of scientific practices. By clarifying the divergences and interrelations between various types and levels of norms, the volume demonstrates that normativity is not one phenomenon but a complex set of various phenomena with multiple sources. Contemporary Phenomenologies of Normativity: Norms, Goals, and Values will be of interest to researchers and advanced students working on issues of normativity in phenomenology, epistemology, ethics, and social philosophy.

The Ethics of Husserl's Phenomenology

The Ethics of Husserl's Phenomenology
Author: Joaquim Siles i Borràs
Publisher: A&C Black
Total Pages: 222
Release: 2011-10-20
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1441164405

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The Ethics of Husserl's Phenomenology aims to relocate the question of ethics at the very heart of Husserl's phenomenology. This is based on the idea that Husserl's phenomenology is an epistemological inquiry ultimately motivated by an ethical demand that pervades his writing from the publication of Logical Investigations (1900-1901) up to The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology (1935). Joaquim Siles-Borràs traces the ethical concepts apparent throughout Husserl's main body of work and argues that Husserl's phenomenology of consciousness, experience and meaning is ultimately motivated by an ethical demand, by means of which Husserl aims to re-define philosophy and re-found science, with the aim of making philosophy and science capable of dealing with the most pressing questions concerning the meaningfulness of human existence.

Normativity, Meaning, and the Promise of Phenomenology

Normativity, Meaning, and the Promise of Phenomenology
Author: Matthew Burch
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 358
Release: 2019-05-13
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1351064401

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The aim of this volume is to critically assess the philosophical importance of phenomenology as a method for studying the normativity of meaning and its transcendental conditions. Using the pioneering work of Steven Crowell as a springboard, phenomenologists from all over the world examine the promise of phenomenology for illuminating long-standing problems in epistemology, the philosophy of mind, action theory, the philosophy of religion, and moral psychology. The essays are unique in that they engage with the phenomenological tradition not as a collection of authorities to whom we must defer, or a set of historical artifacts we must preserve, but rather as a community of interlocutors with views that bear on important issues in contemporary philosophy. The book is divided into three thematic sections, each examining different clusters of issues aimed at moving the phenomenological project forward. The first section explores the connection between normativity and meaning, and asks us to rethink the relation between the factual realm and the categories of validity in terms of which things can show up as what they are. The second section examines the nature of the self that is capable of experiencing meaning. It includes essays on intentionality, agency, consciousness, naturalism, and moral normativity. The third section addresses questions of philosophical methodology, examining if and why phenomenology should have priority in the analysis of meaning. Finally, the book concludes with an afterword written by Steven Crowell. Normativity, Meaning, and the Promise of Phenomenology will be a key resource for students and scholars interested in the phenomenological tradition, the transcendental tradition from Kant to Davidson, and existentialism. Additionally, its forward-looking focus yields crucial insights into pressing philosophical problems that will appeal to scholars working across all areas of the discipline.

Concepts of Normativity: Kant or Hegel?

Concepts of Normativity: Kant or Hegel?
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 270
Release: 2019-08-12
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9004409718

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Both Kant’s and Hegel’s conceptions of normativity have shown to be extremely thorough and influential until today. Against the background of the much-disputed issue of ‘formalism’, Concepts of Normativity: Kant or Hegel? explores limits and perspectives of their deliberations.

Levinas and Analytic Philosophy

Levinas and Analytic Philosophy
Author: Michael Fagenblat
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 269
Release: 2019-11-27
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 042987006X

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This volume examines the relevance of Emmanuel Levinas’s work to recent developments in analytic philosophy. Contemporary analytic philosophers working in metaethics, the philosophy of mind, and the metaphysic of personal identity have argued for views similar to those espoused by Levinas. Often disparately pursued, Levinas’s account of "ethics as first philosophy" affords a way of connecting these respective enterprises and showing how moral normativity enters into the structure of rationality and personal identity. In metaethics, the volume shows how Levinas’s moral phenomenology relates to recent work on the normativity of rationality and intentionality, and how it can illuminate a wide range of moral concepts including accountability, moral intuition, respect, conscience, attention, blame, indignity, shame, hatred, dependence, gratitude and guilt. The volume also tests Levinas’s innovative claim that ethical relations provide a way of accounting for the irreducibility of personal identity to psychological identity. The essays here contribute to ongoing discussions about the metaphysical significance and sustainability of a naturalistic but nonreductive account of personhood. Finally, the volume connects Levinas’s second-person standpoint with analogous developments in moral philosophy.

Taking Morality Seriously

Taking Morality Seriously
Author: David Enoch
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 308
Release: 2011-07-28
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 019161856X

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In Taking Morality Seriously: A Defense of Robust Realism David Enoch develops, argues for, and defends a strongly realist and objectivist view of ethics and normativity more broadly. This view—according to which there are perfectly objective, universal, moral and other normative truths that are not in any way reducible to other, natural truths—is familiar, but this book is the first in-detail development of the positive motivations for the view into reasonably precise arguments. And when the book turns defensive—defending Robust Realism against traditional objections—it mobilizes the original positive arguments for the view to help with fending off the objections. The main underlying motivation for Robust Realism developed in the book is that no other metaethical view can vindicate our taking morality seriously. The positive arguments developed here—the argument from the deliberative indispensability of normative truths, and the argument from the moral implications of metaethical objectivity (or its absence)—are thus arguments for Robust Realism that are sensitive to the underlying, pre-theoretical motivations for the view.

The Sources of Normativity

The Sources of Normativity
Author: Christine M. Korsgaard
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 294
Release: 1996-06-28
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1107047943

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Ethical concepts are, or purport to be, normative. They make claims on us: they command, oblige, recommend, or guide. Or at least when we invoke them, we make claims on one another; but where does their authority over us - or ours over one another - come from? Christine Korsgaard identifies four accounts of the source of normativity that have been advocated by modern moral philosophers: voluntarism, realism, reflective endorsement, and the appeal to autonomy. She traces their history, showing how each developed in response to the prior one and comparing their early versions with those on the contemporary philosophical scene. Kant's theory that normativity springs from our own autonomy emerges as a synthesis of the other three, and Korsgaard concludes with her own version of the Kantian account. Her discussion is followed by commentary from G. A. Cohen, Raymond Geuss, Thomas Nagel, and Bernard Williams, and a reply by Korsgaard.