On the Adaption of the Phenomenological Method to, and its Refinement as a Method of, Ethics

Abstract

The phenomenological method rests in a general philosophical view that Husserl stated thus in 1911 in his essay Philosophy as a Rigorous Science: ‘Every type of object that is to be the object of a rational proposition, of a prescientific and then of scientific cognition, must manifest itself in knowledge, thus in consciousness itself, and it must permit of being brought to givenness, in accord with the sense of all knowledge.... The sense of the question concerning legitimacy, which² is to be put to all cognitive acts, must admit of being understood, the essence of grounded legitimation and that of ideal groundableness or validity must admit of being fully clarified, in this manner…’.³

A paper read at the ’Internationalen phanomenologischen Studientage’, which were held from the 23rd to the 27th of April, 1974, in Berlin.