Respect as a moral emotion: A phenomenological approach

Husserl Studies

Volumn 22, Issue 1, 2006, Pages 1-27

  Drummond, John J ^a  

^a FORDHAM UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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EID: 33748858096     PISSN: 01679848     EISSN: 15728501     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1007/s10743-006-9001-z     Document Type: Review

References (65)

1. Earlier versions of this paper have been delivered at Fordham University, Boston College, Loyola College of Maryland, and the Husserl Circle. I am grateful to all those present at these sessions whose comments have contributed to the development of the paper. I am also grateful to Professor Robert Sokolowski of the Catholic University of America for comments on an earlier written draft, and I am especially grateful to Professor Steven Crowell of Rice University with whom I have had numerous conversations and written exchanges about this and related topics in moral phenomenology.
2. Immanuel Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, in Practical Philosophy, trans. and ed. Mary J. Gregor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966), 6:407. References to Kant's writings use the pagination of the Königliche Preussische Akademie der Wissenschaften edition of Kants gesammelte Schriften; this pagination is reproduced in the margins of Gregor's translation.
3. Practical Philosophy, Ibid., 6:211; cf. 6:21 In.
4. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, in Practical Philosophy, 5:74-75.
5. Practical Philosophy, Ibid., 5:75.
6. Immanuel Kant, Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, in Practical Philosophy, 4:401n.
7. The Metaphysics of Morals, 6:464.
8. Cf. also Critique of Practical Reason, 5:74, 80.
9. Cf. Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, 4:403.
10. Critiqueof Practical Reason, 5:81.
11. Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals, 4:400.
12. Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals, Ibid., 4:401.
13. Critique of Practical Reason, 5:76-77.
14. The Metaphysics of Morals, 6:462.
15. The Metaphysics of Morals, Ibid., 6:464.
16. Cf., e.g., Thomas E. Hill, Jr., Respect, Pluralism, and Justice: Kantian Perspectives (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 89.
17. Cf. Thomas E. Hill, Jr., Respect, Pluralism, and Justice: Kantian Perspectives, ibid., 89-92.
18. Stephen Darwall, "Two Concepts of Respect," Ethics 88 (1977): 36-40.
19. Cf. Hill's discussion of the reasons why we extend respect to all humans, 95. He says, "such respect is an essential aspect of the moral framework for deliberation to which we are in fact committed by our concept of ourselves as moral agents, subject to duties, once this is properly understood." What is of interest to me in this claim is the connection to duties, indicating that respect for persons is ultimately tied to the obligating law. It is not merely the fact that we are moral agents that commands respect; it is that we are moral agents subject to the law. Given Kant's notion of autonomy, of course, to be subject to the law is to be author of the law, and this capacity for authoring the law is, I believe, what specifies for Kant our respect for persons as such.
20. The Metaphysics of Morals, 6:449.
21. The Metaphysics of Morals, Ibid., 6:470.
22. The Metaphysics of Morals, Ibid., 6:463.
23. This discussion of Kant's notion of respect is indebted to John E. Atwell, "Kant's Notion of Respect for Persons," Tulane Studies in Philosophy 31 (1982): 17-30;
24. Andrews Reath, "Kant's Theory of Moral Sensibility: Respect for the Moral Law and the Influence of Inclination," Kantstudien 80 (1989): 284-302;
25. Richard McCarty, "Kantian Moral Motivation and the Feeling of Respect," Journal of the History of Philosophy 31 (1993): 421-35;
26. Marcia W. Baron, "Love and Respect in the Doctrine of Virtue" The Southern Journal of Philosophy 36 (Supplement, 1997): 29-44;
27. Nancy Sherman, Making a Necessity of Virtue: Aristotle and Kant on Virtue (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 175-81,
28. and Nancy Sherman, "Concrete Kantian Respect," Social Philosophy and Policy 15 (1998): 119-48, especially 134-39.
29. Edmund Husserl, Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. Zweites Buch: Phänomenologische Untersuchungen zur Konstitution, ed. Marly Biemel, Husserliana 4 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1952), 10;
30. Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy. Second Book: Studies in the Phenomenology of Constitution, trans. Richard Rojcewicz and André Schuwer (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1989), 12. What I am calling "descriptive" properties Husserl calls "logical" properties, that is, properties of the sort predicated in simple, unmodalized categorical propositions.
31. Hua 4, 8-11;10-13; cf. also Edmund Husserl, Vorlesungen über Ethik und Wertlehre, 1908-1914, ed. Ullrich Melle, Husserliana 28 (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1988), 252.
32. Edmund Husserl, Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität, Texte aus dem Nachlass. Dritter Teil: 1929-1935, ed. Iso Kern, Husserliana 15 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1973), 404-405. I translate " Stellungnahmen" here as "attitudes" because I think the standard translation of "position-takings" suggests that the experience has a judgmental quality to it. I understand "Stellungnahmen" in this context to refer not so much to our taking positions regarding things as to our taking a stance toward them, a possibility that leaves more open the quality and thetic character of the acts in which such stances are assumed. Taking such stances, however, underlies and can be transformed into an explicit position-taking, as is evident, for example, in the transition from valuing something to a value-judgment about that thing.
33. Ms. A VI 26, 42a. I thank Professor Rudolf Bernet, Director of the Husserl Archives at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven for permission to quote from the Nachlass.
34. The nature of aesthetic worth is, of course, a notoriously contested affair, and I do not have the philosophical wherewithal nor the time and space to enter into this controversy here. A wider sense of aesthetic value would include, for example, the beauty of the sunset. I am using the more specific formula of "artistic worth" in limiting my discussion to the aesthetic worth of works of art. In other words, while the aesthetically worthy, as in the sunset, can be purely sensory, in the case of art objects, wherein the artist is expressing in a sensible medium something of intellectual and/or emotional significance (and in the best art, it is, I think, clearly both), aesthetic worth appeals to more than the sensory. Artistic worth, I am suggesting, lies not only in the craftsmanship of the artist, but in the aptness of the sensible product to the intellectual and/or emotional meanings expressed. Hence valuing the artwork involves more than taking delight in the sensory display; it appeals to our intellect and emotions as well. The affective response to our grasp of the unity existing among the intellectual, emotional, and sensory is the valuing of the work of art. I realize that this formulation apparently leaves conceptual art outside the realm of the aesthetically worthy, not to mention the "elegance" often noted in mathematical and scientific theories. I think there are ways to handle these issues, but to do so would take us too far afield. For the moment I only want to draw a broad contrast between the pleasant, the artistic, the utile, and the (morally) good.
35. b 31-33) that pleasure is a end supervening on the exercise of the virtues, i.e., on happiness, he must be using "pleasure" in the broadest and most equivocal sense. The same is true when he contrasts the virtuous and continent characters (cf. Nicomachean Ethics, Bk. VII). Aristotle claims that both the continent person and the incontinent person know the good but want its opposite. The continent person does what he knows to be good, despite his desire to do otherwise, whereas the incontinent person gives in to his desires and is self-indulgent. The virtuous person, on the other hand, it is suggested, is the one who both knows and desires the good, such that she takes pleasure in doing what she knows to be good. It is noteworthy, however, that continence and incontinence are discussed primarily in relation to the specific virtue of temperance rather than virtue in general. While our college student knows that it is better that she tell her friend this news - an example that does not involve the virtue of temperance - it is hard to imagine anyone "wanting" to deliver this news as an object of desire, if desire is thought of simply as wishing for the sensuously pleasant. But that is precisely the notion of the pleasant that seems to operate in the discussion of temperance, continence, and incontinence. Aristotle, in suggesting its extension to virtue, must transform the sense of "pleasant," making it equivocal. This also makes equivocal the notion of giving in to our desires or surrendering to our feelings, as can be seen in Aristotle's discussion of continent and incontinent states in relation to courage. As Robert Sokolowski suggested to me, the virtuous student will recognize that telling her friend is good and will "want" to do it, even though it is unpleasant (not something anyone would want to do). The continent student will also recognize that telling her friend is good, but will not want to do it in any sense. Nevertheless, she will do it and be strong in doing so, not giving in to her own feelings. The incontinent student, on the other hand, will recognize telling her friend as a good but not want to do it. This does not mean she will necessarily fail to tell her friend, but it does mean that even if she tells her, she will fail in telling her. She will be "weak" in the telling; giving in to her own feelings, she will be all "blubbery" or hysterical.
36. Hua 28, 252.
37. For Husserl's discussions of vocation, cf. Aufsätze und Vorträge (1922-1937), ed. Thomas Nenon and Hans Rainer Sepp, Husserliana 27 (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1989), 28-34.
38. Hua 27, 28;
39. this is similar to Charles Taylor's notion of a "hypergood," in relation to which we order our life's pursuits; cf. his Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), 62ff.
40. Cf. Hua 28, 145.
41. In this account I follow Robert Sokolowski's Moral Action: A Phenomenological Study (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985),
42. to which I have suggested some minor alterations in my "Agency, Agents, and (Sometimes) Patients," in The Truthful and the Good: Essays in Honor of Robert Sokolowski, (ed.), John J. Drummond and James G. Hart (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1996), 145-57.
43. Sokolowski, 54ff; cf. also 64, 143.
44. I postpone for the moment discussion of the basis on which we recognize the moral interests in the well-being of future generations and the safety of my fellows as overriding my own use-interests.
45. For a discussion of Husserl's account of our awareness of the a priori, cf. John J. Drummond, "Synthesis, identity, and the a priori," Recherches husserliennes 4 (1995): 27-51.
46. The synthesis of like with like and the awareness of general objectivities or universals grounded therein are discussed most extensively in Edmund Husserl, Erfahrung und Urteil: Untersuchungen zur Genealogie der Logik, Ludwig Landgrebe (ed.) (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1972);
47. Experience and Judgment: Investigations in a Genealogy of Logic, trans. James S. Churchill and Karl Ameriks (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973), §§80ff.
48. Experience and Judgment: Investigations in a Genealogy of Logic, Ibid., 387; 323.
49. Experience and Judgment: Investigations in A Genealogy of Logic, Ibid., 391; 326.
50. Experience and Judgment: Investigations in A Genealogy of Logic, Ibid., 392; 326.
51. Experience and Judgment: Investigations in A Genealogy of Logic, Ibid., 389-390; 324-325.
52. Experience and Judgment: Investigations in A Genealogy of Logic, Ibid., 397; 330.
53. Experience and Judgment: Investigations in A Genealogy of Logi, 397, Ibid.
54. Experience and Judgment: Investigations in A Genealogy of Logic, Ibid., 414; 343.
55. Hua 28, 252.
56. Cf. Adolf Reinach, "Die Überlegung. Ihre ethische und rechtliche Bedeutung," in Sämtliche Werke. Textkritische Ausgabe in 2 Bänden, ed. Karl Schuhmann and Barry Smith (Munich: Philosophia Verlag, 1989), I: 295.
57. Husserl describes, by analogy with categorial intuitions, the experiences fulfilling value-judgments as "axiological" intuitions; cf. Hua 4, 9; 10.
58. For a discussion of our empathie encounter of the other in terms of appresentation and analogizing apperception, cf. Edmund Husserl, Cartesianische Meditationen und Pariser Vorträge, ed. S. Strasser, Husserliana l (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1963);
59. Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology, trans. Dorion Cairns (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1970), §§50 ff.
60. Cf. Edith Stein, On the Problem of Empathy, trans. Waltraut Stein (Washington, DC: ICS Publications, 1989), 68-71.
61. Nor do I suggest that this is a complete account of the notion of obligation. Insofar as obligation involves a felt necessity to direct our actions toward some good, that feeling can arise either out of the nature of the goods as necessary components of or conditions for the flourishing of any human being as such, or it can arise out of the questioning and criticism of those goods to which we are already committed and the consequent judgment that we "must" reorder our lives; cf. James Hart's discussion of the "ethical reduction" as a "taking stock" of our moral lives and their significance in The Person and the Common Life: Studies in a Husserlian Social Ethics (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1992), 26-34.
62. Hua 1, 142; 112.
63. On some of the patterns of identification and differentiation at work in various experiences of the other, cf. John J. Drummond, "Forms of Social Unity: Partnership, Membership, and Citizenship," Husserl Studies 18 (2002): 123-40.
64. Cf. Hua 27, 31-32.
65. Husserl discusses two axiological principles that are somewhat relevant to this discussion; cf. Hua 28, 74-80. He claims that if a whole is valuable, then its parts are necessarily valuable, and that if a real consequence of something is valuable, then that of which it is a consequence is necessarily valuable. Neither law perfectly fits my claim above. My claim is that if the exercise of a capacity can be valuable, that capacity itself is valuable (even when not well or valuably exercised).