![Sample our Humanities journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5939/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Humanities.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
The article analyses the reception of Hume’s moral philosophy in the lectures and manuscripts of Edmund Husserl and in the published lectures of Franz Brentano, on which Husserl originally based his views. I first present the reasons that led Brentano to appreciate Hume’s sentimentalist background in moral philosophy and to criticize Hume’s relativism. I then show how Husserl, following the critique of psychologism in his Logical Investigations, builds on this starting point and attempts to show a possible contradictory nature of Hume’s moral relativism. Finally, I consider whether Hume’s doctrine contains phenomenological insights that Husserl overlooks.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 See Janoušek and Dan’s “Husserl on Hume” for a summary of this reception of Hume in Husserl and related literature.
2 Kraus, Franz Brentano 155.
3 Schuhmann 121.
4 The only dedicated text available I could find is a shorter chapter by Crespo, which compares Hume’s a posteriori and Husserl’s a priori grounding of ethics in feelings. An interesting attempt at a short general assesment of Hume’s theory from a Husserlian standpoint was given by Willard).
5 Neuhaus.
6 Hua XXVIII 390–402. In the text I follow the standard way of referring to volumes of the Husserliana. The bibliographical details of each volume are given in the list of references.
7 Ibid. 93–9, 148–70.
8 Ibid. 186.
9 Ibid. 192–4.
10 Hua XIV, Beilage XXIV 185–91.
11 Hua XXVIIII 19–35.
12 Schuhmann 13.
13 Brentano, Foundation 30.
14 Ibid. 34.
15 Ibid. 36, 64, 74.
16 For Brentano, ethics prescribes the right end for our lives consisting in “the greatest possible spiritual good for all animate beings who fall within our sphere of influence”. See Brentano, Foundation 139.
17 Brentano, Foundation 27, 34, 38.
18 Ibid. 27, 34, 38.
19 Ibid. 27–8.
20 Ibid. 34–5.
21 Hume, M 1.9. The numbers refer to the standard numbering of paragraphs in Hume’s works. T refers to Nortons’ edition of the Treatise of Human Nature, M to Beauchamp’s edition of the Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (for details see the Reference list), App. means Appendix, D means Dialogue.
22 Brentano, Foundation 35.
23 Ibid. 37.
24 See Hume, T 1.3.6.12; 1.3.5.7; T App. 3.
25 Brentano, Foundation 37–8.
26 Hume used a similar argument against Hutcheson (Letters of David Hume 39) but in his moral Enquiry he somewhat ironically claimed that our moral taste “is ultimately derived from that Supreme Will, which bestowed on each being its peculiar nature” (Hume, M App1.21). Brentano may have taken Hume’s words at face value.
27 Brentano, Foundation 44.
28 Ibid. 44.
29 Ibid. 44.
30 Ibid. 39.
31 Ibid. 74.
32 Hume, T 2.2.5.
33 Brentano, Foundation 93–4.
34 The best introduction to Brentano’s ethics and value theory remains the chapter “Brentano” in the book by Brentano’s follower Kraus, Die Wertheorie, Geschichte und Kritik. The second edition of this hard-to-find book is currently in press with Springer Publishing and should be published in 2024.
35 In Halle, Husserl taught general courses on Ethics in 1891, 1893, 1894, 1895, 1897.
36 The only text on the foundations of ethics that officially introduced Brentano’s point of view is a lecture of 23 January 1889 for the Vienna Lawyers’ Association, originally entitled Von der natürlichen Sanktion für recht und sittlich, which was subsequently published under the new title Vom Ursprung sittlicher Erkenntnis (later translated into English as The Origin of our Knowledge of Right and Wrong). This lecture is a concise summary of some of the basic points of Brentano’s ethics developed in much greater depth and detail in the “great” university lectures (a written copy of which was used by Husserl) and set in Brentano’s critique of the development of modern ethics (especially of moral sentimentalism, rationalism, and Kant’s ethics).
37 This reception of Hume, of course, takes place against the backdrop of Husserl’s very complex reaction to Brentano’s moral philosophy, which ultimately resulted in a certain departure from Brentano’s value-theory ethics at a late stage (see Peucker). Moreover, this reaction took place in the context of the development and critique of Brentano’s theory of values and ethics by his other disciples – notably Alexius Meinong, Christian Ehrenfels and Anton Marty, with whose work Husserl was also familiar (for a basic overview see Reicher Maria). Max Scheler’s ethics of draws from Brentano. Finally, the above-mentioned authors also evaluated Hume’s moral philosophy independently of Brentano – Scheler in particular may be mentioned, and Theodor Lipps as well. Due to lack of space, it is not possible to address this context in the present article.
38 Hua XXVIII 384–5.
39 Ibid. 392.
40 Ibid. 385.
41 Some of these points were defended by Brentano but not in the context of his Hume critique.
42 Ibid. 391.
43 Ibid. 397.
44 Ibid. 397. Joy and sadness are good examples of such feelings.
45 Hua XXXVII 182–6.
46 Hume, T 2.3.3.8.
47 Hua XXVIII 398.
48 Hume, T 3.1.1.19.
49 Hume, T 3.1.1.19.
50 Hua XXVIII 398.
51 Hume, T 3.1.1.22.
52 Hua XXVIII 399.
53 Hua XXXVII 186.
54 Hume, T 3.1.1.25.
55 Hua XXVIII 399–400.
56 Hua XXVIII 392.
57 Ibid. 396–7.
58 Hua XVIII § 62.
59 Hua XXVIII 384. Compare with the older version of Husserl’s highest categorical imperative – “do the best that is attainable” Hua XXVIII 221.
60 Melle, “Einleitung des Herausgebers” XXII.
61 Hua XXVIII 19–21.
62 Husserl was probably thinking of Plato’s famous passage from Theatetus 171ab, repeated by Aristotle in his Metaphysics 1009a5–15.
63 Ibid. 22.
64 Ibid. 23–4.
65 Münsterberg.
66 Hua XXVIII 24–5.
67 Ibid. 28, 31–5.
68 Ibid. 35.
69 Hua XXXVII 155.
70 Hume, M App. 1.19.
71 Hume, M 9.1.
72 Hume, M 9.1.
73 Hume, T 3.3.1.10, 3.3.1.29, 3.3.6.1.
74 Hume, T 3.1.2.4.
75 Hume, T 2.1.11.5–6.
76 Hume, T 2.2.9.6–9.
77 Hume, T 3.2.2.5.
78 Hume, T 2.1.6.9.
79 Hume, M D.26.
80 Hume, T 3.3.1.15–18, M 9.6. Hume’s theory of the general point of view has been interpreted differently. In the following, we will restrict ourselves to its most general features. For various interpretations see Cohon, Korsgaard, Taylor.
81 Hume, T 3.3.1.15.
82 Hua XLIII/2 262. Husserl borrows the term approval (Billigung) from Hume (see Melle, “Einleitung”, LXX).
83 Ibid. 270, 275, 316.
84 Ibid. 284.
85 The risk of this approach is that describing feelings becomes too “cognitive”. (see Drummond, Loidolt, Byrne).
86 Hume, T 3.1.2.4.
87 Hume, M 9.6.
88 Hua XXXVII 191.
89 See Hume, T 3.3.1.7.
90 Hume, T 2.1.11.2. It is unfair to Hume to combine various texts in which he treats sympathy in very different and not always compatible ways – and to accuse him of confusing sympathy in the sense of compassion with the transmission of feelings by emotional contagion. (Hua XXXVII 192) – but it is true that Hume speaks of sympathy in so many different meanings that it is sometimes hard to see a deeper unity among them.
91 Husserl, Cartesian Meditations 112–15.
92 Hua XXXVII 191. Husserl’s discussion also includes an interesting critique of Hume’s espousal of moral and aesthetical evaluation which must be omitted here for lack of space.
93 Hume viewed Marcus Brutus as a positive symbol of ancient republicanism.
94 Hua XXXVII 192–3.
95 In the common standpoint, “partial perspectives” of members of the same society can be synthetized in the imagination in such a way as to allow for the emergence of the basic social institutions of property, contract and government and of corresponding artificial virtues and to constitute the social world in the strict sense (for a thorough interpretation of this idea in Hume see Deleuze).
96 Interestingly, Hume’s ideas come close to some of the insights reached by Husserl in his theory of the intersubjective constitution of the objectivity of the perceived object in optimal perspectives. For a basic description of Husserl’s theory see Taipale 121–46 which also provides basic references to Husserl’s texts dealing with the intersubjective constitution of the objectively valid norms and normality in perceptual optima.