Phenomenology of Values: Stein on Motivation, Feelings, and Belief

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Steins phenomenology of values is characterized by a distinction between sentient or psychic causality on the one hand and motivation on the othera distinction that is of paramount importance for the phenomenological description of feelings. Feeling is, for most phenomenologists, the act in which values are experienced. For Stein, however, values are purely spiritual phenomena into which one can gain insight from the motivation felt. The motivation felt in feelings, however, have for her a causal component that can confuse us as regards the values actual motivating power: psychology studies the psyche which as the causally marked medium through which the motivation is experienced can amplify, dull, transpose, disguise, and transfer life power, easily mistaken for motivating power. Feelings in consequence make possible a group identity that is typically different from the way values make group identity possible: something that matters greatly for understanding the structure of intersubjectivity. The present phenomenology deploys Steins understanding of and insights into phenomenology in an exploration that accounts for what values are as well as for what value response contributes to constitute, by its essence and in the preference of belief that it motivates.

Author Bio

Mette Lebech is Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Maynooth University, Ireland.