Husserl Studies 12: 165-183, 1995. 1995 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

Moral objectivity: Husserl's sentiments of the understanding

JOHN J. DRUMMOND
Mount Saint Mary's College, Emmitsburg (MD)

It is manifest great part of common language, and of common behaviour over the world, is formed upon supposition of such a [approving and disapproving] moral faculty, whether called conscience, moral reason, moral sense, or divine reason; whether considered as a sentiment of the understanding, or as a perception of the heart, or, which seems the truth, as including both. Nor is at all doubtful in the general what course of action this faculty or practical discerning power within us approves, and what it disapproves. For, as much as it has been disputed wherein virtue consists, or whatever ground for doubt there may be about particulars - yet, in general, there is in reality an universally acknowledged standard of i t . . . , namely, justice, veracity, and regard to common good. Joseph Butler Bishop of Durham 1

Edmund Husserl's recently published writings in ethics and axiology 2 approach ethical issues from a variety of perspectives. Two stand out. The first is the axiological, from which Husserl develops an analogy between formal logic and formal axiology (Hua XXVIII, 3-101): The second is the "conflict between a morality of the understanding (Verstandesmoral) and a morality of sentiment (Gefiihlsmoral)" (Hua XXVIII, 251), i.e., between the "intellectualists" (Verstandesmoralisten) and the "emotivists" (Gefiihlsmoralisten). From this perspective, Husserl develops a phenomenological description of evaluative intentionality, a description which clarifies how understanding and emotion jointly function in the axiological sphere. This paper will explore these two perspectives in order to sketch anew a phenomenological account of practical reason and of the objectivity of moral understanding. I have chosen the epigraph of this paper to indicate that the thrust of Husserl's thought, in a manner I think typical of him, (a) transcends the

166 modem disputes between intellectualists and emotivists and between intellectualists and voluntarists and (b) points toward a position in which practical cognition has an emotive content or, conversely, the emotions have a cognitive content. My concern in this paper is to develop that thrust. I aim to show that a phenomenology of moral experience grounded in Husserl's reflections discloses a view of practical reason reminiscent in certain ways of the substantive practical reason of those pre-modems for whom reason and sentiment are co-constitutive of moral judgments. Butler's expressions "sentiments of the understanding" and "perceptions of the heart" also highlight this relation between reason and sentiment in our moral judging. But whereas Butler seems to have been concemed only with what is empirically true about our moral discernments and not with providing a theoretical account of the relation between reason and sentiment, Husserl was concerned to discover the essential necessities embedded in our actual experience, including the essential relation between reason and emotion. I have borrowed Butler's expression "sentiments of the understanding" for my subtitle to underscore the particular emphasis on understanding evident in Husserl's formal axiology and his account of moral intentionality.3

. Husserl's axiological perspective intimates a view of ethics as a thoroughly rational and objective discipline comparable in its rigor and universality to logic. His intentions are to defend ethics as a pure discipline and to preserve the absolute, a priori validity of moral laws. The rival here is ethical empiricism, which he understands as a form ofpsychologism that grounds ethics in the psychology of emotion (Hua XXVIII, 12). Husserl extends his well-known criticism of logical psychologism to moral psychologism. He claims that moral psychologism has anti-ethical consequences insofar as it undercuts the universal validity of moral norms and makes ethical cognition and argumentation impossible. Just as logical psychologism cannot yield suitable notions of truth or logical validity, so moral psychologism cannot yield suitable notions of the moral good and of what we might call "moral validity" (Hua XXVIII, 12). To ground ethics in psychology (or, similarly, in biology) would reduce moral laws to those empirical laws goveming the activities of evaluating and acting rather than the universal and ideal laws governing the relations among the contents, i.e., the meanings, intentionally inherent in evaluative acts. To ground ethics in psychology would thereby undercut the possibility of any unconditional demand, of any adequate notion of obligation. Evaluative terms such as "good" and "bad" would refer exclusively to historically and culturally conditioned usages generally applicable only in

167 particular times and cultures. They would have a merely factual validity, they would refer only to the generally true fact that in a certain historical culture people feel obligated on psychological or biological grounds to act in certain ways (Hua XXVIII, 13). Indeed, the claim that ethical norms reflect only the actualities of a particular human development allows at the extreme for a thoroughly skeptical, perhaps even cynical, behavior which rejects the need to attend to these norms at all (Hua XXVIII, 16). Such claims and behavior, although not blocked in fact, have their justification withdrawn by an a priori ethics. There are, according to Husserl, norms for correct behavior that are grounded in a theoretical science whose claims about the rules governing the contents of moral thinking are absolute and universal. Husserl does not thereby deny the empirical dimension of ethics. He does not deny that religious and political authorities play a role in our moral life, although blind and unthinking obedience to such authorities leads to an inauthentic life in which agents do not think and decide for themselves, in which they exercise neither a "rational" nor "practical" autonomy.4 Nor does he deny the differences between the customs, mores, and moral institutions of different peoples and different times, nor that our moral capacities are conditioned by our psycho: physical constitution and its position within the causal nexus of the physical world. But the fact of these empirical factors in our ethical life is not sufficient to justify the claim that ethics is an empirical science, for these factors affect only how ethical principles are particularized in different circumstances and the ethical practices in which they are realized. For Husserl the theoretical part of ethics must be an a priori science. The "ethical absolutism" suggested by Husserl's notion of formal axiology is mitigated by three considerations. Consider first the very notion of formal axiology. The formal dimension of any judgment does not exhaust the judgment; every judgment also has a material content. In response to questions about how rationally to order one's life, i.e., how rationally to shape one's entire life as a good life and to attain happiness (Eudaimonia), Husserl speaks of the need "to define a system of absolute and pure principles of practical reason which, free from all reference to the empirical human and its empirica! relations, ought to take over the function of providing an absolutely normative standard for all human behavior, whether these standards are only formal or also material" (Hua XXVIII, 11, my emphasis). But the standards provided by formal axiology can only be formal. The material content of our evaluations is not and cannot be provided by a formal axiology. So, in addition to formal axiology, there is for Husserl what might be called a "material a priori" of the moral life "free of all reference to the [merely] empirical human," and this is what gives to practical reason its substantive content. We shall return below to the material a priori.

168 The second consideration mitigating Husserl's "ethical absolutism" is his characterization of the formal laws governing our moral life. The analogy with formal logic is instructive. Just as pure logic concerns itself with the formal possibilities for the combination of meanings, pure ethics concerns itself with the formal possibilities for the combination of axiological meanings. These combinations of meanings occur on a variety of levels. In the case of pure logic, for example, Husserl speaks of rules which govern the combinations of meanings in the formation of judgments; these rules constitute what he calls the "pure theory of forms of meanings (or pure logical grammar). ''5 At this level of logic, there is still no concern with the consistency of judgments or the truth of conclusions. These latter concerns define the second and third levels of logic. The second level Husserl calls the "logic of consistency" (Konsequenzlogik) or the "logic of non-contradiction," and its concern is the possible combinatory forms of judgments (Hua XVII, 58/ 53,327-30/330-33). This level constitutes formal logic as traditionally conceived. It is concerned primarily with the validity of arguments, and establishes rules which guarantee that the conclusion is not contradictory of the premises. In the case of deductive systems, which are Husserl's primary concern, these rules guarantee that the conclusion is an analytic consequence of the premises. In its exclusive focus on validity apart from soundness, the logic of consistency is not yet concerned with the truth of premises and conclusions. But insofar as logic is an art for the theoretical sciences and insofar as these sciences have a teleological concern with truth, the logic of consistency is incomplete. Hence, the third level of logic is the "logic of truth" (Wahrheitslogik) (Hua XVII, 60/55). While the first two levels of logic deal with the combinatory forms of meanings, the third connects the notion of meaning to that of truth. It is Husserl's notion of intentionality and, more specifically, his notion of evidence - notions to which we shall return - that provide the connection. If we are to take Husserl's analogy between formal logic and formal axiology seriously, we can expect corresponding levels in formal axiology. The first "grammatical" level would have to do, then, with the possible forms of axiological judgments wherein value-attributes are predicated of objects and wherein axiological meanings are brought into conjunctive, disjunctive and hypothetical relationships. These individual axiological judgments are ordered into consistent unities. Husserl believes "there must also be in the ethical sphere, in the sphere of rational practice, something like an analytic, something like a formal theory of practice OCormalePraktik), a complex of principles and laws which in an analogous sense abstract from the 'matter' of the practice and express conformities to laws of pure form, just as formallogical laws do with respect to cognition and just as they abstract from the so-called matter of cognition" (Hua XXVIII, 37). Here we would find

169 Husserl's version of a deontic logic. Adherence to its laws yields consistency in our moral beliefs and practice; the laws of consistency are laws of rational motivation. When a law claims that we must do something, say, in order to achieve some good, the necessity here is not logical or physical. The law asserts that a rational person, given a desire for that particular good, ought to do that thing. The law asserts that not to do that thing, given the desire for that good, would be irrational. However, just as in pure logic the truth of a judgment is not the same as its consistency with other judgments, the correctness of an evaluative judgment and of the actions executed on its basis do not lie exclusively in the consistency of a practical conclusion with its premises. The premises and thereby the conclusion must also be correct in the sense of true or evident or "insightful" (einsichtig). We must go beyond mere formal consistency to evident and rationally insightful judgment. An evident judgment, for Husserl, is not merely one for which reasons can be given. An evident judgment involves the intuitive presentation in what Husserl calls "categorial intuitions" of the state of affairs as judged, as intended in the judgment. In this appeal to the need for evident, rational insight, we are again led back to the material content of our evaluative and moral life. Beyond the reference to the material content of our evaluative judgments and laws found in the first two considerations, there is a third factor mitigating Husserl's "absolutism." It is a universal and formal feature of our acting that it always occurs in a situation. Consequently, our evaluative judging must always be ordered toward the situation, toward the goods that are desirable and attainable therein. The material content of the judgment must be relativized to the situation. To will, Husserl says, is impossible "without a certain conviction of attainability" (Hua XXVIII, 52). Husserl's first, formal law of morality - his categorical imperative - must therefore be formulated with a formal reference to the situation in which the willed act is to occur: "Do what is best among what is attainable" or, stated objectively, "The best among what is attainable in the total practical sphere is not only comparatively the best, but the sole practical good" (Hua XXVIII, 221). Hence, the universality of the laws governing practice is itself relativized to the practical possibilities which exist for agents; the laws governing the combinations of axiological meanings and evaluative judgments do not vary from situation to situation, but the material content of the judgments might be relativized to the extent that the goods identifiable and attainable in concrete historical and cultural situations might vary. Both the material and contextual dimensions of our evaluative judgments indicate that the absolute and universal character which belongs to the laws o f formal axiology might not belong to the concrete moral judgments we make. Those judgments have not only a formal dimension but a material one

170 (both a priori and empirical), and the material dimension is relative to the context in which the concrete judgment is made. Both the material and contextual dimensions, however, point toward the need for an analysis of our concrete intendings of goods and bads.

The valuable properties of things, according to Husserl, are disclosed by the emotions or feelings. But the experience of objects qua good, qua likable and desirable, is a founded one, and the term "founded" here has a double sense. To say that one experience is founded upon another means (1) that it presupposes something as necessary and (2) that it builds itself upon it so as to form a unity with it. The experience of objects as good is founded on the purely cognitive experience of objects simply qua objects without valueproperties. Husserl claims that objects can be presented in such purely cognitive experiences, e.g., perceptions, memories, judgments, suppositions, or theories (Hua XXVIII, 252). It is possible, he thinks, to conceive of cognitive experiences completely divorced from the emotions and feelings; I might simply notice things in the visual field, attend to their color, and register them as trees, grass, or stones. Indeed, at one extreme the theoretical sciences pride themselves on their separation from the domain of emotion and feeling and their pursuit of a "pure" cognitive truth. While such purely cognitive experiences are existential possibilities, the great bulk of our everyday experience is not of this unmixed, purely cognitive character. Even our everyday perception of objects is governed by practical interests which lead us to explore the object in particular ways and to a determinate degree. 6 While hiking I need something to hammer on a loose heel; I inspect nearby rocks until I find one that is long and relatively fiat. Upon finding one, I am satisfied. This rock is good for hammering on the heel; it has an instrumental value for me. The length and the flatness of the rock are perceptually presented. But its being a good rock (i.e., good for hammering) is not perceptually presented; its presentation as a good rock arises in my satisfaction that this rock has the properties I want (i.e., the properties that I need in order to do what I want done). It is an essential feature of our evaluative experiences that the desires and emotions combine with the senses and understanding in presenting objects qua good or valuable by virtue of having certain properties ordered to the satisfaction of our desires (Hua XXVIII, 252). The experience of the object having value necessarily presupposes the cognitive apprehension of the object and necessarily involves a moment of feeling which builds itself upon the cognitive experience of the object (Hua IV, 8--11/10-13). More precisely, we should say that

171 the value-properties belonging to the object are founded on that object's "logical" properties (i.e., the sort predicated in simple, unmodalized, categorical propositions), and the value-properties are the correlates specifically of a moment of feeling or emotion in the concrete valuing act. In our example, the value of the rock, its being good for hammering, is grounded in its being long and flat and our awareness that these properties in a rock are properties useful for hammering. In the language of Husserl's theory of intentionality, the valuing act is the "noesis" and the rock as good is the valuing act's "noema," its intentional correlate. The noema is the intended object just as intended and the intended object itself is an identity presented in a manifold of noemata. 7 Indeed, we can think of the object as an identity in a manifold of noematic manifolds. So, for example, the rock is the identity in a manifold ofperspectival presentations. I can look at the rock from above, from its various sides; I can pick it up and look at its underside. All these views differ from one another, but all are presentations of one and the same rock. In circling the rock or in turning it in my hands, what is present at one margin of the field in one view gradually moves across the visual field to the center and, finally, disappears at the other margin. This phenomenal continuity reveals the identity of the rock in its various views. But the rock is not only the identity manifesting itself in the manifold of actual views we have of it, it is also the identity in the manifold ofpossible views we might have of it. The rock is also the identity in the manifold of its actual and possible properties, in the manifold of its actual and possible relations (e.g., spatial and causal) with other objects, and so forth. Equally important, the rock is the identity in the manifold of the experiences of different subjects. I can see the same perspectival view of the rock that you now see if I move myself to your position. You can describe the rock to me so that I can pick it out from among the many rocks in front of us. The rock, in other words, and its properties are "objective" in a double sense: (1) they are not really inherent contents of the experiencing act itself and (2) they are intersubjectively experienceable and experienced. Another example will further illustrate the foundedness and objectivity of value-properties. I want a table for my computer and its various peripherals. But any table satisfying this want must be sturdy, with a certain surface area, and of a certain height so that it will (i) safely hold all my equipment, (ii) be large enough also to hold my papers, and (iii) not be too high for comfortable typing. Sturdiness, of course, would be a property desired in any table. But the desirable area and height of the table are identified in relation to the specific purposes for which the table is to be used. In examining tables, consequently, I look for certain objective, perceptible properties in order to find a good table, a table that will be good for holding my computer equipment and papers and for allowing me to work in comfort. The "logical" properties

172 grounding the value-property are objective. But the value-property, the goodness of the table, insofar as it is grounded in objective, perceptible properties, is also objective. The objectivity of the value-property can be made manifest in another way. I want a table to use as a computer table and desk. I do not yet have it; I am looking for it. But knowing the purpose for which I want the table, I know the properties for which I should look in the tables I consider. When I find a table with suitable properties, I like it and want it; I value the table as good. The feeling-moment in the experience (the "liking," my satisfaction that this table will do what I want done) is directed to the good in the table. However, my experience can - and often does - move beyond the feeling directed to the value-property. I can also explicitly judge the table as good. I explicitly express my valuing the table in the judgment "This table is good," and the logical properties which underlay my valuing the table can be identified in the statement of reasons given in support of my judgment: "It is sturdy, of good size, and the right height." My attitude has now returned to a theoretical one; I make a value-judgment. I understand the value of the table and can provide objectively compelling reasons for thinking it valuable. Even in the movement from my simple valuing of the table to the judgment that the table is good and the identification of the reasons underlying my judgment, there remains a certain emptiness to my value-intention. I have affirmed that this table has the desired properties and is thereby good. But the value of the table is a use-value, and my judgment of the table's value, of the table as good, is fully confirmed only in its use. We still require, in other words, what Husserl calls a "fulfilling" intention. We still require evidence for our judgment that this is a good table, but this evidence is not to be found simply in the statement of reasons. We here move from the axiological equivalents of the logic of consistency to the logic of truth. The evidence that the table is good is found in the direct experience of the table as good. It cannot be gained merely by looking at the table or by identifying its relevant logical properties and reciting the reasons why it is a good table. Since the table is good for use, I must use it to gain the appropriate evidence. So, should the table after three days collapse under the weight of my computer equipment, I would think the table a bad table. It would disappoint my expectations. And it would not merely fail to satisfy but would produce great dissatisfaction. It would now evidentially present itself as a bad table. In such evidential insights, I gain objective evidence about the value-property I have attributed to the object. The valued object is not merely the correlate of my desires and emotions; it is a complex of objective properties related both to my understanding and to my desires and emotions. And my value-judgment is fulfilled in an "axiological" intuition (Hua IV, 9/10) analogous to a categorical intuition. I direct myself intuitively toward the articulated state

173 of affairs in which the object as valued concretely appears to me with the value-property predicated in the judgment. I therein recognize the truth of the value-judgment (cf. Hua XXVII, 26). Our two examples make clear the central role of the desires and emotions in the evaluative experience. But there need not be an actual desire or emotion operative in order to recognize the value of an object. Values can be apprehended in an experience which includes an "as if" moment of desire. You who do not want a computer table can recognize that the table I have picked out would be a good computer table. There are reasons for valuing this table. It presents itself as sturdy, as five feet long, two and one-half feet deep, and three feet high, and thereby presents itself as good relative to the satisfaction of my desire for a work table for my computer. You, indeed anyone who has wants of the sort identified in the example or anyone who can consider the table in relation to such wants, can apprehend the perceptible properties of the table and recognize that the table would be a good computer table. Understanding, in other words, knows the value as befitting the object relative to certain wants or desires a person might have. Thus, while the complete experience of value contains an irreducible moment of feeling or emotion in which the value-property is apprehended, the complete experience of value, we can now see, contains even more important cognitive moments. The foundation of the value-predicates on cognitively apprehended logical predicates, the act ofjudging the object valuable and identifying the reasons underlying the judgment, and the rational insight into the value of an object all point to the central role of the understanding in the complete and fulfilled experience or judgment of value. Moreover, the cognitive dimensions of the experience of value ensure that the value-judgment is intersubjectively objective. The constellation of logical properties is such as to arouse a feeling, a value-reception (cf. Hua IV, 10/ 12), and the predication of the value-property to the object is subject to fulfilment or disappointment by any experiencing subject. The valued object, then, is the identity presentable in a manifold of perceptual apprehension, of desire, of satisfaction, of judgment, and of evidential insight. In experiencing valued objects, we identify (a) the object as apprehended with relevant logical properties, (b) the object as desired, and - in the complete evaluative experience - c) the object as the judged value-object, and (d) the object as the evidentially understood value-object. In short, we identify the good desired and the good known. Both of our examples have involved the use-value of objects, but the experience of value is not limited to the experience of objects' utility. However, the account of the experience of value is similar in other areas. In the aesthetic domain, for example, upon seeing the bright red of the sunset, we pass over from the simple perceptual experience, the sensory having of the red sky, to an aesthetic experience, a taking delight in the

174 brilliance of the red. We value the pleasurable object, and we judge the sunset beautiful on the ground of the brilliance of its colors. Similarly in the moral domain, in watching someone pick up another's dropped package, we appreciate an act of kindness. In knowing how someone has shared wealth with another even at some cost to himself or herself, we experience the generosity of one person toward another and take pleasure and delight in the goodness of such actions, both in themselves and in their consequences for the person aided by this generosity.

. Since the value-property itself is apprehended in a feeling-moment (or an "as if" feeling-moment) within the concrete experience of a valued object, and since feelings belong to our psychic dimension with its causal dependencies, one might still object that value-judgments are relative to particular subjects or, at least, to the wants of those particular subjects. So, for example, liking sweets, I find hot fudge sundaes desirable, but someone who is allergic to chocolate would not judge them valuable even while allowing that I could find hot fudge sundaes desirable. Or, one might object, liking to help others, you are generous, but someone who likes material goods and does not like to be separated from them might not find generosity a good, and each of these persons, recognizing what the other's desires are, might agree that, relative to those desires, generosity is a good or selfishness is a good. This possibility seems very far from Husserl's desire for a universal ethics with a strong sense of obligation, and we must consider how a phenomenology of moral experience grounded in Husserl's thought would respond. Our earlier examples were directed toward the utility of the rock and the table, and this utility is related to my particular needs and wants. Husserl would certainly agree that universal ethical principles can be erected neither on the valuing of particular goods related to my particular needs and wants nor on the value-judgments involved in the experience of such particular goods. Either path would allow that ethical principles are empirically grounded and constitute a return to ethical empiricism. Husserl avoids ethical empiricism not only through his formal axiology but also through his notion of the material a priori, and we must now investigate that notion. We must determine whether there are goods which are recognizable as such independent of our particular empirical needs and wants. We must determine whether there are goods characteristic of human nature as such. If there are, these goods would provide the content for the universal laws identified in Husserl's formal axiology and together the formal laws and a priori goods would constitute a universal ethics.

175 Two points must be noted. First, Husserl's notion of the material a p r i o r i should not be understood in such a way that the a priori is discoverable through the operations of reason alone apart from all experience. The material a priori is discovered through the exercise of what Husserl calls eidetic or imaginative variation, a method reminiscent in many ways o f a Platonic or Aristotelian dialectic culminating in an essential insight into a form. Eidetic variation begins with particulars, with an experienced instance or instances of the type under investigation. Then particular qualities, aspects, or parts are considered in their relation to the whole. If the varied component can be eliminated without a change in the type of the object, a non-essential feature o f the o b j e c t - Husserl calls it a "piece" or "independent p a r t " - h a s been isolated. However, if the varied component cannot be eliminated without a change in the type of the object, then what Husserl calls a "moment" or "non-independent part" of the object, an essential characteristic, has been isolated? This method of eidetic variation moves beyond empirical generalization to an a p r i o r i consideration, however, because in systematically varying the parts of the whole it considers possible cases as well as actual ones. The analysis considers not only empirical instances of the type, but imaginatively posits possible instances in order to move toward a set of variations in which each part belonging to the object is systematically varied so as to determine its necessity for an object of that type. This imaginative and systematic variation isolates necessary conditions for an object to be of a certain type. The analysis continues by identifying what other conditions are necessary for an object to be of that type, what other conditions are required to complete the whole. This set of conditions is a set of a priori conditions insofar as its identification no longer rests merely on a generalization from actual examples, and the set of conditions governs not merely actual cases but any past, present, or future instance - indeed, any possible instance - of an object o f that type. The goal of the method of eidetic variation is the identification of a set of individually necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for an object of a certain type. Such an identification would constitute a full and adequate insight into an eidos or essence. However, because of the limitations o f our knowledge we can never be certain that we have identified a set of fully sufficient conditions. The eidetic insights we can attain are, according to Husserl, indubitable, i.e., we have no reason to doubt that the conditions we have identified as necessary for an object to be of a certain type are in fact necessary, because we find it impossible to imagine or conceive of an object of that type without those conditions. We have no reason to think that our identification will ever be negated by subsequent discoveries. But the indubitability of our insights does not mean they are incorrigible or infallible. Again because of the limitations of our capacities for understanding, our

176 insights might very be well subject to correction, not so much by negation but in the form of refinements and qualifications. Even our confidence in our identification of individually necessary conditions must be tempered by the shortcomings of our cognitive powers. Each identification of a necessary condition might be grounded in variations which are insufficient because they either fail to distinguish relevant factors or mistake irrelevant factors for essential ones, or because the complex of individual insights might fail to take into account all the novel possibilities for the kind of object under question. There are, in other words, theoretical and practical limits to our philosophical grasp of essential structures, but this does not mean that we cannot legitimately make essentialist claims. The second point to be noted is that the materially a priori essence is not completely determinative of any particular. The eidetic reflection on the nature of the human and the human experience of goods and bads yields a material apriori of the human which is reminiscent of what Martha Nussbaum calls a "thick vague conception of the human being" and a "thick vague conception of the good. ''9 Human goods and practices must conform to the material apriori of the human to be good, but different possibilities for specifying the same good can accord with the material apriori. The discovery of the human apriori and the subsequent determination ofapriori goods for all humans is not completely determinative of the particular character those goods might take for different historical cultures or different human individuals. This does not imply that one form cannot be found better than another. But it will not be found better by an exclusive appeal to the material apriori. Other reasons which appeal to the evidence provided by our concrete experience of things and of the world - an experience which is not only philosophical but also, for example, scientific, practical, productive, artistic, aesthetic, and religious - would have to be identified. Nor is the materially a priori essence completely determinative of the practices which might be adopted to realize those principles. In different circumstances, the same good might be realized in different specifications and through different practices, but not in any specifications and practices for not all accord with the materialapriorL and among those that do accord some are for complex reasons better than others. Given our reflection on evaluative acts we can already recognize humans, at least, as thinking and desiring agents. Our reflection has also revealed a teleological dimension in evaluative acts. In valuing things as good, we tend toward the judgment and evident comprehension of them as good. This teleological dimension is present, Husserl's analyses reveal, throughout our intentional life. It is this a priori fact which provides the moral urgency at the center of Husserl's philosophy. In addition to any vocational callings to a central, material good around which we order the pursuit of goods in our daily lives, we are all as humans called to the full exercise of reason with its

177 teleological direction toward evidential understanding (cf. Hua XXVII, pp. 28-34). We are called to the authentic human life, the life of rational, free, insightful agency. This life is the chief, but not the only, good for humans. Moreover, certain conditions are necessary for the exercise of rational, free, insightful agency in the fullest degree. Some of these conditions are primarily bodily, e.g., life itself, health, and the sustenance and shelter necessary for maintaining them. These call forth the virtues of temperance, generosity, justice in the distribution of material goods, and so on. Others are not primarily bodily, e.g., education with its concern for both theoretical and practical truth, and the political freedoms of association and speech. These call forth the virtues of honesty, sociability, forbearance, good judgment, prudence, fortitude, wisdom, and the like. All these - the conditions themselves, the virtues called forth by those conditions, and the exercise of thought and agency in the fullest degree - are human goods as such. The social and political issues of how these might be best instantiated given our particular, present circumstances is a concern which would lead beyond the scope of this paper, but the identification of the best political institutions to ensure these goods would yield another set of goods, viz. those political institutions themselves. The material apriori of the human good recalls Charles Taylor's notion of "strongly valued goods." Strong evaluations, Taylor tells us, "involve discriminations of right or wrong, better or worse, higher or lower, which are not rendered valid by our own desires, inclinations, or choices, but rather stand independent of these and offer standards by which they can be judged."1 Goods which are the objects of strong evaluations make a claim upon us. They are not goods simply by virtue of being the object of my desire as, for example, the hot fudge sundae is a good. They make their claim upon us independent of our particular desires because they are a priori goods. Beyond our particular desires and goods, those goods contained in the material a priori of the human make a claim on us precisely because we must recognize the desirability of those capacities, material conditions, social circumstances, habits, and institutions without which we would no longer be truly rational, free agents at all. Moreover, since they are human goods as such, they impose an obligation upon me to seek their realization both for myself and for others as part of my good. Such goods are substantive goods and, insofar as they make claims upon us, the question of true g o o d s - as opposed to merely apparent goods - arises, and we are called upon to achieve an understanding of and rational insight into the true goods. Insofar as I recognize these goods as true goods, I desire them for their own sake - both for myself and for others - in addition to or apart from whatever pleasures or pains, beneficial or detrimental consequences might arise for me from their pursuit. The introduction of the a priori of human goods does not change our

178 account of evaluative intentionality with its fundamental identification between an objectivity as known and as desired. Just as certain features of tables were recognized as practical necessities for the table to serve as a computer table and were consequelatly desired, so certain a priori necessities for realizing our humanity in the full sense are apprehended in the course of our experience; are desired as human goods, and judged as such. Since even a fully developed conception of the material a priori provides only a schema for strongly valued goods and since these goods are understood and specified in varying ways in different historical and cultural circumstances, we must remember that our valuations are always directed to these a priori goods as concretely specified in particular historical and cultural circumstances. Insofar as these goods have a truth grounded both in the apriori and in the facts of our particular circumstances, our valuings and judgings are always open to disappointment and subject to question. The life of rational, free, insightful being, consequently, calls us to regular reflection on the truth of our concrete judgments about human goods and bads. And this investigation, given that our particular understandings and valuings are affected by the historical and cultural horizons in which we frame our judgments of value, proceeds best through a reflection not only upon our own historical and cultural understandings of these goods but also upon other historical and cultural understandings. We are called upon, in other words, to undertake an eidetic variation regarding these substantive goods, a variation which takes actually present historical specifications of the material a priori of the human good as its starting points but which also considers other possibilities (historical and imaginative). By means of this variation we clarify and, when appropriate, revise our understanding of the material a priori of the human good itself and of our concrete instantiations thereof. If all this is correct, a Husserlian-based phenomenology of moral experience would respond to the problem raised at the beginning of this section by arguing that value-judgments are relative only when they are exclusively related to the empirical, sensuous dimensions of our existence. Thus, it is perfectly acceptable that I like and value hot fudge sundaes while someone allergic to chocolate does not. But it is equally important to note that m y valuing hot fudge sundaes occurs in a context and against a standard defined by a material a priori of the human good, i.e., by strongly valued goods. I f I do value hot-fudge sundaes, I must value them only in moderation. I would not simply choose to eat hot fudge sundaes without restraint, for too many hot fudge sundaes are undoubtedly bad insofar as they do not in numbers conduce to the materially a priori good of health. This last point leads us to a consideration of the unity of the two perspectives in Husserl's moral philosophy.

179
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In our concrete historical valuings we are faced with a multiplicity of goods worthy of choice, some of which derive from or particularize the material a priori o f the human good and some of which arise from our individual capacities and desires. In many cases the choice among competing goods is relatively easy. I do not choose to eat hot fudge sundaes in excess because health is better than illness and because health better enables the pursuit o f other goods I seek. But in other cases, e.g., between the goods of parenting and those o f career (including simply keeping one's job in order to be able to provide for family) or between the good of compassion for employees and that of responsibility to the institution for which one works, the choice can be very difficult. The easy choices, however, already provide a guide toward understanding how we rationally order our lives in the face of competing and sometimes incommensurable goods. Goods are subordinated one to another, and the agent whose life and striving are rationally well ordered to the attainment of happiness must choose a life-goal or, as Husserl puts it, a vocation (Hua XXVII, p. 28). What we know about the nature of goods and the material a priori of the human good reveals that among the goods which are available for choice some are particularizations of the material a priori and these goods make a claim upon us, they call to us as goods and our well ordered vocational choices are dutiful responses to such calls. We must choose for ourselves an overarching, material good, what Taylor calls a "hypergood."11 Since there is a multiplicity o f historical, cultural, and individual particularizations of the material a priori, our choice of one particular good over another, even one strongly valued good over another strongly valued good, involves a response to our individual interests and capacities and our cultural and historicai circumstances. We again here see the interplay o f the understanding which is capable of recognizing goods derivable from the material a priori and the desires and emotions in bringing something to presence as an overarching good and in judging it valuable enough to give moral order to a life. It is at this point of our discussion that we can see how Husserl's accounts o f moral intentionality and of formal axiology can be united in a universal ethical theory. To identify a vocational good - whether making money or attaining salvation- is to identify a material good which, as the highest good, orders all other goods under it according to what Husserl calls "the law o f absorption" (Hua XXVIII, 145). This law, along with Husserl's version o f the categorial imperative, belongs to his formal axiology. We are called upon by the categorial imperative to do what is best among what is attainable. What is best is knowable by reflection on both the nature of the human and upon the circumstances which affect what is attainable, circumstances which

180 include our interests, our capacities, and our resources. Both laws operate not only at the level of our vocational choice but at the level of individual choices which arise in the course of life. All goods - even incommensurable goods, the conflicts of which can impart a tragic dimension to human life take their place within a hierarchy of goods as more or less conducive to the overreaching good. There can, therefore, be material differences among the goods towards which different individuals within different historical cultures order their lives and among the goods towards which different individuals even within a single historical culture order their lives. But all these vocational choices ought to be responses to goods which specify the material a priori of the human in a concrete historical circumstance; all these vocational choices ought to realize those goods which belong to our nature as human beings, goods from which our fulfilment as individual humans is inseparable. Moreover, among the different material, vocational goods, we find a non-manifest identity. There is a good identical to each of these manifest material goods, a nonmanifest good embedded in each manifest material good. We find the key to identifying this non-manifest or formal good in Husserl's formal axiology. Husserl speaks of laws of rational consistency governing our valuing, wishing, and willing experiences (Hua x x v i I I , 237). But rejecting the Kantian notion of the categorical imperative; Husserl thinks it insufficient to say that these laws constitute a procedure for determining the good toward which a rational agent orders his or her life. It is insufficient to say only that there is a rational criterion according to which goods and maxims for action are tested. In Husserl's ethical system there must also be both a material content for the good drawn from the material a priori of the human and a relation to circumstances. There must also be a material good which makes its claim upon us, whose goodness we have understood and insightfully grasped, and to which we have afforded an emotional legitimation in recognizing it as a vocational good. And this good must be attainable under the circumstances. Once one emot!onally, comprehendingly, and insightfully gives a material content to the notion of the 'best' in our lives, one has an overarching good which orders all those goods belonging to the practical domain under it as more or less conducive to the best, mediately or immediately conducive to the best, and so forth (cf. Hua XXVII, 31-32). Insofar as this non-manifest dimension of rationally and freely valuing what is best belongs to all manifest material goods, it follows that it is itself a goal sought in any willing of the good for humans or for a particular human being. Regardless of the differences which might exist between different material conceptions of the good, our moral activity aims at the ends mandated by the categorical imperative: rational (consistent), free (actively achieved rather than passively received), insightful (true) thinking and will-

181 ing. This non-manifest good presents itself as one which encompasses all other goods - insofar as it is realized in the very_ choosing o f those goods but which is nevertheless consistent with the identification of different material goods as the highest good in terms of which we order other material goods. Husserl speaks of this good as "authenticity" (Eigentlichkeit). But this is not authenticity in the fully voluntaristic sense that we find, say, in Nietzsche or Sartre. It is not merely a matter of choosing or willing well; it is also a matter of knowing well, of being able to give reasons for our identification o f certain goods, and of evidently knowing the good. We here return to the moral urgency at the heart of Husserl's philosophy: to decide for oneself. But for Husserl, as we have seen, to decide is both to decide about what is truly good in the light of evidence (rather than passively accept what others claim as the true good) and to decide what to do among the alternatives so as best to attain that good. This gives force to Husserl's claim that the Greeks in their discovery of a theoretical approach to the world moved beyond appeals to religious and civic authorities and discovered a theoretical autonomy. And, Husserl says, "theoretical autonomy is followed by practical autonomy" (Hua VI, 6/8). To be truly autonomous is first to gain evidence regarding what is true about the human and the world and about what goods make claims upon us independently o f our desires and inclinations. The autonomous agent wills from among these goods that one which gives a vocational direction and order to that agent's individual life. That agent also orders his or her life - or attempts to, for this is very difficult- so that everything done and every good sought conduces mediately or immediately to that fundamental, vocational good. To be autonomous in this way is to attain the non-manifest good o f authenticity, o r - t o state it in terms reminiscent of Aristotle and terms which make the point more clearly than the term "authenticity"- of thinking well (for oneself), both theoretically and practically. Whatever our vocation, then, we are all called, not necessarily to be philosophers, but to be philosophical. We are called to reflect upon our choices so that in thinking and willing we realize ourselves as rational, free beings who think, decide and act with evidential insight whatever the material or vocational goods to which we direct ourselves. We are called to reflect upon human activities and capacities and to discover the essential norms which govern them so that in our pursuit of those material goods and vocational goods which govern our individual lives we can recognize that we are living the life of the rational, free being. Many questions are, of course, left unresolved: which goods to choose, how to reconcile competing goods even when non-compossible or incommensurable, how to arrange political institutions to achieve shared, human goods while preserving the authentic autonomy and political freedom of the individual. But the answers to these questions must always be cognizant of the urgent call central to moral life, the same

182 urgent call which was at the center of Husserl' s life and philosophizing - a call to thinking and deciding truthfully, to an ethics which is both objective and universal, but neither absolute nor dogmatic.

Notes
1. Joseph Butler, Bishop of Durham, The Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, to the Constitution and Course of Nature, to which are added Two Brief Dissertations: L On Personal Identity; and 11. On the Nature of Virtue, together with a Charge Delivered to the Clergy of the Diocese of Durham, at the Primary ~sitation, in the Year 1751 (Hartford: Samuel G. Goodrich, 1819), pp. 216-217. 2. Edmund Husserl, Vorlesungen fiber Ethik und Wertslehre 1908-1914, ed. Ullrich Melle, Husserliana XXVIII (Dordrecht: KluwerAcademic Publishers, 1988). Subsequently, references to Husserliana volumes after the first reference will be abbreviated as "Hua" followed by the volume and page numbers. When an English translation is available, references to it after the first reference will be included with the interlinear reference to the critical edition; the page number of the German edition will be followed by a "/" and the page number of the English edition. 3. There are, of course, other aspects of Husserl's thought that lend themselves to a reflection on ethics. Robert Sokolowski's Moral Action: A Phenomenological Study (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985) develops Husserl's notion ofcategoriality in the moral sphere. James Hart's The Person and the Common Life: Studies in a Husserlian Social Ethics (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1992) explores Husserl's ethical views and develops especially his conceptions of social and theological ethics. R. Philip Buckley and Karl Schuhmann have also examined Husserl's social and political thought; cf. Buckley, Husserl, Heidegger and the Crisis of Philosophical Responsibility (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1992); Buckley, "Husserl's Notion of Authentic Community," American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 66 (1992): 213-227; and Schuhmann, Husserls Staatsphilosophie (Freiburg: Karl Alber Verlag, 1988). 4. For a discussion of authentic life in both the individual and the community, cf. the third and fourth of the Kaizo-articles ("FfinfAufsiitze fiber Erneuerung") in Edmund Husserl, Aufsiitze und Vortrfige (1922-1937), eds. Thomas Nenon and Hans Rainer Sepp, Husserliana XXVII (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1989), pp. 20-59; cf. also Buckley, "Husserl's Notion of Authentic Community," pp. 217-223, and Hart, The Person and the Common Life, passim. 5. Cf. Edmund Husserl, Formale und transzendentale Logik: Versuch einer Kritik der logischen Vernunft, ed. Paul Janssen, Husserliana XVII (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1974), p. 55. English translation by Dorion Cairns, Formal and Transcendental Logic (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1969), p. 50. Husserl develops the idea of a pure logical grammar at greater length in Logische Untersuchungen, Zweiter Band, Erster Teil: Untersuchungen zur Phiinomenologie und Theorie der Erkenntnis, ed. U. Panzer, Husserliana XIX/I (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1984), pp. 301-351. English translation by J.N. Findlay, Logical Investigations, 2 vols. (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970), II: 493-529. 6. Cf. Edmund Husserl, Ding und Raum: Vorlesungen 1907, ed. U. Claesges, Husserliana XVI (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1973), pp. 128-138; cf. also John J. Drummond, "Object's Optimal Appearances and the Immediate Awareness of Space in Vision," Man and Worm 16 (1983): 182-183.

183
7. Cf. John J. Drummond, Husserlian lntentionality and Non-Foundational Realism: Noema and Object (Dordrecht: KluwerAcademic Publishers, 1990), 29--32; and Drummond, "De-Ontologizing the Noema: An Abstract Consideration" in John J. Drummond and Lester Embree, eds., Phenomenology of the Noema (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1992), pp. 89-109. 8. Husserl discusses eidetic or imaginative variation in several places. See especiallyldeen zu einer reinen Phiinomenologie und phiinomenologisehen Philosophic. Erstes Buch: Allgemeine Einffihrung in die reine Phiinomenologie, ed. K. Schuhmann, Husserliana III (rev. ed., The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1976) [English translation by F. Kersten, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy. Book 1: General Introduction to a Pure Phenomenology (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1983)], 69-70; and Erfahrung und Urteil: Untersuchungen zur Genealogie der Logik, ed. L. Landgrebe with Afterword by L. Eley (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1972), [English translation by J.S. Churchill and K. Ameriks, Experience and Judgment: Investigations in a Genealogy of Logic (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973)], 87. For an account of the theory of wholes and parts underlying his discussion of imaginative variation, see Hua XIX/I, inv. 3, and for a related discussion of the different types of abstraction, see Hua XIX/1, inv. 2. Robert Sokolowski has written clearly on Husserl's theory of wholes and parts; cf. his Husserlian Meditations: How Words Present Things (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1974), ch. 1; "The Logic of Parts and Wholes in Husserl's Investigations," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 28 (1967--68): 537-553; and "The Structure and Content of Husserl's Logical Investigations," Inquiry 14 (1971): esp. pp. 333-337. 9. Cf. Martha Nussbaum, "Aristotelian Social Democracy," Liberalism and the Good, eds. R. Bruce Douglass, Gerald M. Mara, and Henry S. Richardson (New York and London: Routledge, 1990), p. 205. Both this article and her "Non-Relative Virtues: An Aristotelian Approach," Midwest Studies in Philosophy, Volume XIII. Ethical Theory: Character and Virtue, eds. Peter A. French, Theodore E. Uehling, Jr., and Howard K. Wettstein (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988), pp. 32-53 detail a universal account of the human good which nevertheless allows for historical, cultural, and individual differences. Cf. also Drummond, Husserlian Intentionality and Non-Foundational Realism, ch. 9; and Drummond, "Modernism and Postmodernism: Bernstein or Husserl," The Review of Metaphysics 42 (1988): 275-300. 10. Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989), p. 4. 11. The Sources of the Self, pp. 62ff.