The Husserlian influence on Max Scheler’s material ethics

Abstract

This article intends to show a foundation for the possibility of the values intuition in Max Scheler’s material ethics, putting light into the influences suffered by the Edmund Husserl’s phenomenological proposal. The intentionality of consciousness, developed by Husserl in Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie (1913), and the phenomenological investigations present in Logische Untersuchungen (1901) are highlighted in this article. According to Husserl, in the phenomenological relation between the consciousness and the world, the human being intuits the universal which are a priori, necessary and transcendent through the categorical intuition. This intentional consciousness is the same as that which intuits the values in the practical dimension through the schelerian emotional intuition. So, the values are a priori, universal, necessary and transcendent as well. Therefore, the discussion about the possibility of knowledge of values pervades the problem about the knowledge’s possibility of universal brought by Husserl. The development of the research takes the form of philosophical investigation in which an identifiable object is defined, the comparative study between the Husserlian and Schelerian phenomenological proposals from the approach of universals.