Husserl develops his reflection on ethics mainly in his lecture courses. These lectures can be divided into two parts, according to a principle that is both chronological and pertaining to content, and following thus the respective editions in the Gesammelte Werke.1 The common aspect of the two different phases of Husserl’s research can be detected in the critical confrontation with Kant’s practical philosophy, starting with the question concerning the formality.

Michael Jensen made a name for himself in the 1970s–1990 s with his ‘agency theory’ and its application to questions of corporate governance and economic policy. The effects of his theory were acutely felt in the pedagogics of business studies, as Jensen lent his authority to combat all attempts to integrate social considerations and moral values into business education. Lately, however, Michael Jensen has come to defend quite a different approach, promoting an ‘integrity theory’ of management learning. Jensen now rather (...) aspires to empower students to give authentic expression to their personal values in their professional lives, and he sees the main function of management studies in assisting them in this effort. This article reconstructs the transformation of Jensen’s outlook, drawing on Jensen’s theories as an exemplar of wider trends in the current literature on management learning, away from a decidedly ‘mechanistic’ and towards a more ‘humanistic’ pedagogy of management. Jensen’s case serves to highlight developments that might make for better preconditions for the appreciation of business ethics on part of business students. On closer inspection, though, it appears that his remaining within a positivistic framework ultimately impedes the kind of progress Michael Jensen envisions for business studies. (shrink)

This paper treats of Husserl’s phenomenology of happiness or eudaimonia in five parts. In the first part, we argue that phenomenology of happiness is an important albeit relatively neglected area of research, and we show that Husserl engages in it. In the second part, we examine the relationship between phenomenological ethics and virtue ethics. In the third part, we identify and clarify essential aspects of Husserl’s phenomenology of happiness, namely, the nature of the question concerning happiness and the possibility of (...) a phenomenological answer, the power of the will, the role of vocation, the place of obligation, the significance of habituation, the necessity of selfreflection and self-criticism, the importance of sociability and solidarity, the impact of chance and destiny, and the specter of regret. In the fourth part, we establish the inextricable linkage between Husserl’s metaethics and his metaphysics. In the fi ft h part, we provide a provisional exploration of his conception of the connection between happiness and blessedness. We acknowledge that there is an extensive literature on Husserl’s phenomenological ethics, and our study has benefitted greatly from it, but we also suggest that our holistic approach critically clarifies his description of happiness, virtue, and blessedness by fully recognizing that his phenomenological metaethics is embedded in his phenomenological metaphysics. (shrink)