The Ethics of Husserl's Phenomenology

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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-Borrs 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.

Reviews

"This innovative study of Husserl's thought focuses attention on two strands of his phenomenological enquiries, in which ethical considerations arrive for attention: the embedding of meaning in practices of reflection, and their derivation from a relation of taking responsibility for oneself, and for meaning. These two processes, embedding meaning in practice, and taking responsibility, are then shown to be in turn grounded in Husserl's account of a potentiality for humanity, as reflective and rational. Husserl's phenomenology is thereby articulated as a single unified structure, and a notion of the ethical emerges, which grounds the activities of making epistemological claims, and provides criteria for metaphysical claims about what there is and its modes of givenness. Intuition, as given in Husserl's principle of all principles, takes on the guise of a categorical imperative to take responsibility for making sense. This is a strong reading of the unity of Husserl's enquires, and an intriguing exploration of his phenomenological enquiries as rigorously universalist, with an absolute claim, in terms of both truth and value." - Joanna Hodge, Manchester Metropolitan University, President of the British Society for Phenomenology
'The Ethics of Husserl's Phenomenology is a thorough reading of the unity of Husserl's writings and an intriguing exploration of his phenomenological enquiries in a fundamentally universalistic framework, putting forward an absolute claim, both in terms of truth and of value.' -- Ethical Perspectives

Author Bio

Joaquim Siles-Borrs is Associate Lecturer in Philosophy at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK.