ABSTRACT
In previous chapters we studied Husserl's account of fundamental structures of consciousness and their correlation, in intentionality, with fundamental structures of things in the world. For Husserl, we thereby “constitute” various types of object in various forms of experience. Our experience forms knowledge of objects and of facts when our judgments are based in evident or intuitive experience. However, we “constitute” objects not only as having factual properties (species, spatiotemporal location, and so on), but also as having values. And we “constitute” actions as having moral values. In this chapter we consider Husserl's views on the nature of values, including their place in our experience and in the world. We focus on Husserl's ideas about ethics, addressing the phenomenological and ontological foundations of values in general and moral values in particular, and considering the place of Husserl's views on ethics in his overall philosophical system. On some points Husserl's ethical views are less explicit than his views on other matters, so we shall be involved in a project of reconstruction. Ultimately, we shall consider the implications of Husserlian views for contemporary “construc-tivist” approaches to ethics — in which values are somehow constructed in activities of will or reason.
