Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book considers different possible sources of normativity that have been proposed in both the phenomenological tradition and in recent analytic philosophy. It deals with the question of how best to understand the distinctive shift from the empirical to the transcendental that lies at the foundation of phenomenology’s study of meaning qua meaning. The book focuses on phenomenology’s long-standing and contested relationship to naturalism. It examines different ways to conceptualize the intentional agent as embedded in nature, proposing a “relaxed naturalism” in which the domains of the natural and the normative are no longer conceived as separated by an unbridgeable chasm. The book investigates the nature of the self that is capable of experiencing normatively structured meaning, with an emphasis on the affective dimensions of agency.