ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on Husserl’s axiological and ethical investigations. Its aims are twofold. First, it offers guidelines for understanding the complexity and specific character of evaluative and practical experiences and their functional role, status, and significance as part of Husserl’s theory of reason (sections 1 and 2.2). Second, it expounds some crucial ideas and theses Husserl presents in his lectures on ethics and value theory 1908–1914 (section 2.1), the Kaizo-articles (1923–1924), the lectures on ethics 1920–1924, and the latest research material gathered in Husserliana XLII (section 3). With a view to Husserl’s writings in the 1920s and 1930s, I focus on the topics of moral personhood, reason-guided self-improvement, and love. Husserl’s relating renderings open up a critical perspective on his earlier conception of value aggregation and value absorption. In particular, he redefines his categorical imperative by introducing the notion of an absolute personal ought (section 3.1). I argue that notwithstanding this shift towards personal values and (according to my interpretation) a moderate moral particularism, Husserl still is interested in a universal perspective. Yet, his view on how to approach it has changed. I characterize his later approach as a “universalism from within.”
