ABSTRACT
This chapter examines Lyotard's argument for incommensurability and then sketches his own second-person phenomenology of the uptake of a prescription. By second-person phenomenology, the chapter means phenomenological reflection on the experience of being addressed by a claim, experiencing oneself in the accusative, as it is sometimes described. The chapter examines few key points in Stephen Darwall's wide-ranging investigation and focuses on areas where second-person phenomenology might suggest somewhat different conclusions. It argues that what is essential to the second-personal phenomenology of normative address is the feeling of obligation. It is useful to return briefly to Darwall-specifically, to the account of guilt and shame, which involves an instructive phenomenological distortion. According to Darwall, shame differs from guilt in that the latter acknowledges normative blame. Darwall's argument depends on two points: first, that shame arises from the other's purely epistemic judgment, one that attributes to his features that the acknowledge possessing; second, that judgment does not address in the freedom.
