Brentano and Husserl on Hume’s Moral Philosophy

0583480 - FLÚ 2025 RIV GB eng J - Journal Article
Janoušek, Hynek
Brentano and Husserl on Hume’s Moral Philosophy.
Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology. Roč. 55, č. 2 (2024), s. 133-148. ISSN 0007-1773. E-ISSN 2332-0486
R&D Projects: GA ČR(CZ) GA20-02972S
Institutional support: RVO:67985955
Keywords : David Hume * Franz Brentano * Edmund Husserl * moral philosophy * ethics * moral relativism * relativism * common point of view
OECD category: Philosophy, History and Philosophy of science and technology
Method of publishing: Limited access
https://doi.org/10.1080/00071773.2024.2308281

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.
Permanent Link: https://hdl.handle.net/11104/0352683