Moral Phenomenology and Moral Theory

Appeals to moral phenomenology—the phenomenology of moral experience—are common in moral philosophy, particularly in metaethical inquiry. But as far as we can tell, the topic of moral phenomenology has not typically been center stage—a focus of inquiry in ethics. And so, going back at least to the writings of G. E. Moore (and with some notable exceptions— see below), very little has been written about the nature and significance of moral phenomenology. This is not only the case in connection with metaethical inquiry; the same lack of inquiry is to be found among those whose main interests in ethics are in normative moral theory. As we just mentioned, there are some exceptions—and the exceptions will help us zero in on our target in what we say below. So let us mention two thinkers whose works we will use as a starting point for thinking about moral phenomenology. First, in 1938, philosopher and gestalt psychologist Wolfgang Ko¨hler published The Place of Value in a World of Facts, whose aim was to make sense of the ubiquitous notion of 'requiredness' that is common to logic, scientific inquiry, and what we may just call 'practical inquiry'. All of these fields involve requiredness or what we now call normativity, and Ko¨hler thought that the evolving naturalistic picture of the world that is presented to us by science does not clearly leave a place for normativity. His task was to find a place for it. And his method for doing so was to focus first on providing a phenomenological description of experiences of requiredness. Maurice Mandelbaum's 1955 book, The Phenomenology of Moral Experience, is less grand in scope than is Ko¨hler's—as his title indicates, Mandelbaum is concerned with our moral experiences. But the specific focus of his book is on the phenomenology of moral requiredness and, like Ko¨hler, he makes a case for the methodo-logical priority of phenomenological description in carrying out a certain philosophical project in ethics. While Ko¨hler is concerned with the