ABSTRACT
This chapter sets ethnographic observations of Yapese moral experience after typhoon Sudal in conversation with the phenomenologist Edmund Husserl’s theorizing of moods. Moods are a central component of moral experience – not as something locatable in a specific act or thought, but as distributed through a situation as a form of attunement to possibilities, past, present, and unfolding. The chapter introduces Husserl and his theory of moods, paying special attention to their function in “illuminating” not only our life circumstances but also the space of existential possibilities that we may come to inhabit. The chapter then articulates the notion of “moral moods.” Considering Husserl’s writings in light of moral experiences in a Yapese context, the chapter argues that it is important to consider moods as part of moral experience, even if Husserl himself did not. Finally, the chapter discusses the importance of a conversant relation between philosophical and anthropological phenomenology.
