A quick survey of the literature reveals that authors disagree as to which sentiments are moral and which are not, they disagee as to how to distinguish between moral and other sentiments, and finally that often the same author will claim a sentiment is moral at some times but not at others. These difficulties arise, I argue, from an underlying concept of emotion that I call atomism. Viewing emotions as means of coordination among agents, rather than as psychic atoms, suggests (...) a radically different approach to the question of morality and affects, one where emotions pave the way for normative expectations. (shrink)

The concept of value is often discredited for its ambivalence: value increases and decreases, and is valid for one person but not necessarily for the next. Philosophies of value are subjectivist or contaminated by economic rationality. I show, from Gilbert Simondon, that value can be conceived of as a variable quantity without falling into levelling or axiological relativism. This implies dismissing the neo-Kantian separation of ontology and axiology, rejecting the conception of culture as a set of values and the bipolarity (...) of value oppositions, and finally thinking of value from a physical-mathematical rather than an economic analogy. (shrink)

In this paper we want to focus on Husserl’s critique of Kantian ethics and to develop the following questions. Against the merely empiristic orientation of Hume’s ethics, the Kantian foundation of ethics has an aprioristic character; but does this aprioristic character have to be identified with the origin of ethical principles in the pure subjectivity, and if not, which is its phenomenological signification? The sense of the Copernican revolution is that the structures of the objects are in accordance with the (...) universal structures of the finite subject; a contrario, Husserl refuses this Copernican principle and assumes that every sort of object determines a regulative structure in the subject; is it possible to apply this anticopernican principle to the ethical sphere? As opposed to the Kantian principle of the supremacy of practical reason, we find in Husserl’s thought a supremacy of the theoretical reason; but which is the sense of this inversion? The concept of foundation has in Husserlian phenomenology a cardinal importance: all sorts of truth of superior degree are founded on the inferior level of sensible truth; is it possible to apply this principle of foundation to the ethical sphere, so that ethical consciousness would be founded on feelings? At last the Kantian concept of liberty is not an empirical one, but a cosmological and practical idea; which is the phenomenological sense of liberty? (shrink)

In this paper we want to focus on Husserl’s critique of Kantian ethics and to develop the following questions. Against the merely empiristic orientation of Hume’s ethics, the Kantian foundation of ethics has an aprioristic character; but does this aprioristic character have to be identified with the origin of ethical principles in the pure subjectivity, and if not, which is its phenomenological signification? The sense of the Copernican revolution is that the structures of the objects are in accordance with the (...) universal structures of the finite subject; a contrario, Husserl refuses this Copernican principle and assumes that every sort of object determines a regulative structure in the subject; is it possible to apply this anticopernican principle to the ethical sphere? As opposed to the Kantian principle of the supremacy of practical reason, we find in Husserl’s thought a supremacy of the theoretical reason; but which is the sense of this inversion? The concept of foundation has in Husserlian phenomenology a cardinal importance: all sorts of truth of superior degree are founded on the inferior level of sensible truth; is it possible to apply this principle of foundation to the ethical sphere, so that ethical consciousness would be founded on feelings? At last the Kantian concept of liberty is not an empirical one, but a cosmological and practical idea; which is the phenomenological sense of liberty? (shrink)

ABSTRACT The study aimed to identify and understand, in the student's discourse, the social value and discuss it in the light of some of Max Scheler's assumptions. The senior students in Nursing take an existential place in the world, giving it meaning and sense through their opinion. The research is qualitative with a phenomenological approach. The subjects were 10 senior students from the Nursing course in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil. Data were collected from August to September, 2014, through interviews. (...) Dilthey's hermeneutics was used to unveil the meaning of the statements. The social value emerged in the discourse, expressing solidarity based on sympathy. The social value was recognized as a constituent of the axiological field that founds the profession and is essential for nursing care. It is acknowledged that the "logic of reason" and the "logic of the heart" are complementary and combine the art and science of nursing. (shrink)