The present essay takes issue with the idea of moral supervenience. It is argued that this idea is subject to fatal objections that can be brought to light by utilizing the resources of a phenomenological approach guided by demands of descriptive authenticity and rational principles. This critical project is carried out by focusing on Robert Audi’s sophisticated moderate ethical intuitionism which has rightly gained prominence recently. The relevant problems are addressed by comparing Audi’s notion of supervenience with Edmund Husserl’s account (...) of foundation. The latter refers to different types of contents and their relatedness in terms of ontological dependence. Husserl’s notion of foundation challenges the view that higher-order complex intentional unities like evaluative acts could be analyzed in terms of ‘adding up’ purely descriptive and non- descriptive contents. Or : in terms of anchoring moral properties in natural properties. My main thesis is that applying the idea of supervenience to the field of morality involves a circularity problem that undermines the taken-for-granted presupposition of a clear-cut distinguishability of natural and moral properties. Appropriately specifying one’s duties in situations of moral conflicts, according to the idea of supervenience, calls for identifying all those natural properties or facts that are relevant for morally assessing the situation in the first place. This practical task of solving the problem of moral salience, however, cannot be met by referring to pure facts that could be determined in an independent manner, that is, as uninfluenced by those moral perceptions or moral assessments whose appropriateness or permissibility, as assumed, is under consideration. Though we may grant that supervenience delivers a plausible general or abstract picture of how morality can be part of the world we experience, it does not help us properly assessing moral issues in concrete situations. Rather, from a moral-practical point of view, it is a thoroughly suspicious idea. (shrink)

This essay tries to elaborate an accurate description of shame and guilt from the agent’s point of view by focusing on typical cases of such experiences. In a first step, we approach the peculiarity of a phenomenological investigation by introducing three methodical directions. All of them are formulated in a negative mode, i.e., in terms of prohibition, namely: the instruction not to adhere to a naïve notion of phenomenon, not to project reflective attitudes into the prereflectively given, and not to (...) go beyond the relevant situation of experience. Following these methodological considerations, we discuss the familiar characteristics of shame and guilt. According to a wide-spread view, we are faced with self-related feelings that are, more or less overwhelmingly, encountered as troublesome. These feelings either, in case of guilt, trigger special types of social interaction (avowal and reparation) or, in case of shame, entail isolation, an intensified self-perception and introspective embarrassment. Whether and to what extent this current picture can be sustained, will be discussed on phenomenological grounds. We take it that the social features of shame and guilt result from their inherent self-relatedness. Thereto, we try to answer, among others, the following questions: Do feelings of shame and guilt, apart from their social functions, represent characteristic modes of self-awareness? How are they correlated with specific modes of time-consciousness? Can a phenomenological description contribute to our understanding of the moral impact of shame and guilt? (shrink)

This paper pursues two aims. First, it outlines the main intentions of a recently established research project dealing with problems of subjectivity in the field of medicine. Secondly, it discusses Viktor von Weizsäcker’s Gestaltkreis with a view to what this famous physician considers a phenomenological method appropriate to the special requirements of his field of work. Considering whether his ideas make sense from the point of view of a phenomenological philosophy, we try to explain some basic correspondences of phenomenology and (...) Weizsäcker’s anthropological medicine. Doing this, we focus on two issues, namely objectivity and subjectivity, and theory and practice. Referring to the latter there are two meanings of ‚practice‘ which have to be carefully distinguished: natural experience embedded in our daily life-world activities on the one hand, and applications of (natural-)scientific knowledge on the other hand. (shrink)

Autonomy is associated with intellectual self-preservation and self-determination. Shame, on the contrary, bears a loss of approval, self-esteem and control. Being afflicted with shame, we suffer from social dependencies that by no means have been freely chosen. Moreover, undergoing various experiences of shame, our power of reflection turns out to be severly limited owing to emotional embarrassment. In both ways, shame seems to be bound to heteronomy. This situation strongly calls for conceptual clarification. For this purpose, we introduce a threestage (...) model of self-determination which comprises i) autonomy as capability of decision-making relating to given sets of choices, ii) self-commitment in terms of setting and harmonizing goals, and iii) self-realization in compliance with some range of persistently approved goals. Accordingly, the presuppositions and distinctive marks of shame-experiences are made explicit. Within this framework, we explore the intricate relation between autonomy and shame by focusing on two questions: on what conditions could conventional behavior be considered as self-determined? How should one characterize the varying roles of actors that are involved in typical cases of shame-experiences? In this connection, we advance the thesis that the social dynamics of shame turns into ambiguous positions relating to motivation, intentional content,and actors’ roles. (shrink)

Engaging with phenomenology, moral philosophy, politics and psychology, and authored by an international team of leading scholars in the field, this volume explores the ethical and social significance of a variety of human emotions.

Engaging with phenomenology, moral philosophy, politics and psychology, and authored by an international team of leading scholars in the field, this volume explores the ethical and social significance of a variety of human emotions.

The dominant view on grieving processes throughout the twentieth century was based on the idea that grief ’s purpose is to loosen and finally sever the bonds with the deceased in order to set oneself free (free to enter new relationships). An expanded view, which aims at a more complete and more complex understanding of grief, corrected the former approach by arguing in favor of continuing bonds. The expanded view certainly fits better the meaning of attachment relations in human life. (...) So-called disenfranchised grief nonetheless reveals additional normative constraints in terms of (culturally varying) social control mechanisms taking effect with regard to expressions of grief. The present paper argues that duly considering the complex and ambiguous nature of grief, as well as its transformative power, requires challenging the standard view of disenfranchised grief. I propose an expanded view that is based on the idea that proponents of the standard view have failed to inquire into the equivocal meaning of a common conversation about “coping with grief ” (getting over it vs. getting along with it). Arguing in favor of an expanded account of disenfranchised grief by following the second reading (“getting along with grief ”) then requires acknowledging the inseparability of grief ’s existential depth and social implications. With a view to this inseparability, it is argued that coping with grief is a public (or even political) affair instead of a merely private experience. (shrink)

Thomas Metzinger's self-model theory offers a framework for naturalizing subjective experiences, e.g. first-person perspective. These phenomena are explained by referring to representational contents which are said to be interrelated at diverse levels of consciousness and correlated with brain activities. The paper begins with a consideration on naturalism and anti-naturalism in order to roughly sketch the background of Metzinger's claim that his theory renders philosophical speculations on the mind unnecessary. In particular, Husserl's phenomenological conception of consciousness is refuted as uncritical and (...) inadequate. It is demonstrated that this critique is misguided. The main deficiencies of Metzinger's theory are elucidated by referring to the conception of phenomenal transparency which is compared to a phenomenological idea of transparency. The critical horizon is then enlarged by focusing on some implications of representationalism, including reification of consciousness, brain-Cartesianism and exclusion of the social dimension. Finally meta-theoretical reflections on the naturalism debate are taken up. (shrink)

This paper grapples with two objections against Max Weber’s methodology that arise because Weber borrows some ideas from Heinrich Rickert’s neo-Kantian philosophical system. The first objection (“the contradiction argument”) is raised by Julius J. Schaaf who disagrees with Weber’s claim that historical objects are constituted through retrospectively and hypothetically applied selections of value relations and that we can understand these objects. Weber’s idea that the relating ideal type constructions are also non-arbitrary—i.e., not merely subjective—and can be rectified, Schaaf maintains, contradicts (...) his own characterization of historical objects and reality. The second objection (“the incom¬patibility argument”) was made by Gerhard Wagner and Heinz Zipprian. It focuses on the conception of objective possibility. According to this, counter¬factual chains of historical events are contrived to figure out the relevant set of causes by which a certain event can be said to necessarily occur. The critics claim that it is only based on the ontological assumption of a preexisting real object that this thought-experiment can operate. That is, the pre-emptive assumption of realism is indis¬pensable for explaining the historical individual. To refute these two objections, I clarify some foundational notions and ideas of Weber’s methodology. (shrink)

Thomas Metzinger’s self-model theory offers a frame¬work for naturalizing subjective experiences, e.g. first-person perspective. These phenomena are explained by referring to representational contents which are said to be interrelated at diverse levels of consciousness and correlated with brain activities. The paper begins with a consideration on naturalism and anti-naturalism in order to roughly sketch the background of Metzinger’s claim that his theory renders philosophical speculations on the mind unnecessary . In particular, Husserl’s phenomenological conception of consciousness is refuted as uncritical (...) and inadequate. It will be demonstrated that this critique is misguided. . The main deficiencies of Metzinger’s theory will be elucidated by referring to the conception of phenomenal transparency which will be compared to a phenomenological idea of transparency . Then we shall enlarge our critical horizon by focusing on some implications of representationalism, including reification of consciousness, brain-Cartesianism, and exclusion of the social dimension . Finally, we shall take up our meta-theoretical reflections on the naturalism debate. (shrink)

Ist die Verbindung von Konventionalismus und Letztbegründung in sich widersprüchhch? Diese Frage ist zu entscheiden, indem Dinglers Sonderstellung in der Konventionalismus-Debatte auf der Grundlage einer Analyse des Begriffsapparates und des Begründungsanspruches seiner Fundamentalwissenschaft aufgeklärt wird. Von zentraler Bedeutung ist hiebei der Exhaustionismus, mit dem Dingler das Schlüsselproblem seiner Wissenschaftslehre - das Verhältnis von Theorie und Empirie - löst und zu einer differenzierten Bestimmung der Theorieabhängigkeit der Erfahrung gelangt. Das Gesamtbild von Dinglers Denken ist von der Einsicht in die Unmöglichkeit einer (...) theoretischen Letztbegründung geprägt. Dieser Einsicht verdankt sich die eigentümliche Verbindung von Konventionalismus, operativistischem Apriorismus und Willensmetaphysik, die aus der Überschreitung des Systems der reinen Synthese in die vorwissenschaftliche Lebenssphäre resultiert. Was „praktischer Absolutismus" bedeutet und was diese Konzeption leistet, wird ausgehend von Dinglers Bestimmung des Begriffs des reinen Willens ausgeführt. (shrink)

Michael Pauen defends the compatibility of freedom and determinism by way of strengthening the principle of authorship and interpreting the principle of alternative possibilities in terms of determinism. Authorship is said to be incompatible with indeterminism because the latter is unable to grasp the connection between the mental content of an agent and her action in a non-fortuitous way. Apart from authorship, there is a second minimal criterion which, according to our common sense view of freedom, must be met, namely (...) autonomy. Authorship requires absence of pure chance,autonomy requires absence of compulsion. In course of specifying his idea of self-determination, the author examines current arguments against compatibilism. The paper sets in with a terse introduction which nicely formulates the issue and, among other things, rightly stresses that every theory of self-determination depends on some idea of the self which has to be made explicit. (shrink)

Teorija samo-modela Thomasa Metzingera nudi okvir naturaliziranja subjektivnih iskustava, to jest perspektive prve osobe. Ovi se fenomeni objašnjavaju referiranjem na reprezentacijske sadržaje za koje se kaže da su međuodnošajni na različitim razinama svijesti i suodnošajni s moždanim aktivnostima. Članak počinje razmatranjem o naturalizmu i anti-naturalizmu u svrhu grubog skiciranja pozadine Metzingerove tvrdnje da njegova teorija drži filozofijske spekulacije o umu ne-nužnima . Posebice, Husserlova se fenomenološka koncepcija svijesti odbacuje kao nekritička i neprimjerena. Pokazat će se da je ta kritika pogrešno (...) usmjerena . Glavni nedostaci Metzingerove teorije osvijetlit će se referiranjem na koncepciju fenomenalne transparencije koja će se usporediti s fenomenološkom idejom transparencije . Tada ćemo povećati naš kritički horizont fokusirajući se na neke implikacije reprezentacionalizma, uključujući reifikaciju svijesti, mozgovni kartezijanizam, te isključivanje socijalne dimenzije . Konačno, primijenit ćemo naše meta-teorijske refleksije na raspravu o naturalizmu. (shrink)

First, we argue that Dummett, in his accusing Husserl of psychologism, does not pay sufficient attention to the phenomenological framework of Husserl's philosophy. This framework must be taken into account for understanding why Husserl is not a psychologist in the theory of meaning. Second, it is shown that the thoughts required by Evans' theory of understanding indexical utterances are not to be identified with mental events as understood by psychologism. We then emphasize what Husserl's and Evans' explanation of the mind (...) share, and finally argue that Dummett's anti-psychologism is based on a psychologistic view of consciousness which is not questioned by Dummett. (shrink)