Abstract

This dissertation argues that the environmental consequences of

climate change, global species degradation, and habitat destruction
are tantamount to a moral crisis, but indicative of a failure regarding
moral activity itself. As the phenomena is the result of an inter-
generational set of activities organized over time by formal and
informal sets of moral customs, a Husserlian analysis of
intersubjectivity provides an explanatory model of collective moral
failure. Pulling from the Cartesian Meditations, the “Lecture on
Intersubjectivity”, and Husserl’s lecture on the “Introduction to
Ethics,” it is argued that the ontological conditions necessary for the
existence of any community (or communities as such) require(s) a
principle of harmonization embedded in the collective movements of
the community. The inter-generational continuity of activity is not
rooted in the individual intentionality of the agent, but in the
collective features of an embodied life in which the movements of
agents are paired to each other harmoniously. This dissertation
argues for a minimal moral realism in which environmental moral
failure occurs where the originating genetic principle for the passive
structures of intersubjective life become divergent from their real
basis in the embodied space(s) of the community. The climate crisis
is the result of a collective moral habitus, independent of any single
individual. Intersubjective ontology provides a foundation for
understanding how the justifiable actions of the individual can entail
environmental catastrophe for the collective in an unintentional
manner; and how the moral life of a community can come to
contradict its own intended reasons for action in the performance of
its own moral activities. The dissertation concludes with a discussion
of Husserl’s conception of renewal as well as a defense and re-
description of the future generations argument for environmental
moral theory
 Intersubjectivity and Moral Failure

An Essay on Phenomenology, Moral Failure, and the Environment

by

Mark Thorsby

May 2018

Submitted to the New School for Social Research of The New

School University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the
degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

Dissertation Committee:
Dr. James Dodd
Dr. Richard Bernstein
Dr. Simon Critchley
Dr. Jeremy Varon
©
 To Brandi,

Who sacrificed more than I, but who never stopped supporting this tireless journey.

Thank you for your love and sacrifice.

For Julien & Niya,

May this dissertation inspire you to pursue your own dreams, and provide you solace that

even arduous and seemingly endless pursuits can be had.

 Acknowledgements

This dissertation, despite its singular author, is the consequence of many conversations with

many individuals. While any failings in authorship, argumentation, or scholarship are solely

my own, the virtues of this project are in many cases reflections of my interlocutors,

colleagues, and friends. Only by the aid of their lights have I been able to write such a

document as this. Although, I can never repay them for their interest, helpful comments,

questions, and criticisms, I can in the poverty of my thought acknowledge their input and

guidance. This project could not have happened without the aid of James Dodd, Simon

Critchley, Dick Bernstein, and Jeremy Varon who served as my dissertation committee,

offering guidance and support. I want to thank the faculty and graduate students of The

New School for cultivating an important intellectual community. Many thanks are owed to

Cris Hernandez, Mitchell Thomas, Grady Watts, Lynn Watts, Thomas Forget, Maria

Sanders, Clive Lindsey, Robert Ferguson, and the faculty of Lone Star College who have

provided me many opportunities for reflection and insight. I would like to thank a number

of libraries, including The New School Libraries, the NYU Bobst Library, the University of

Houston M.D. Anderson Library, the Howard-Tilton Memorial Library of Tulane

University, and the Lanier Theological Library. I am infinitely indebted to my wife, Brandi

Thorsby, my family, Stuart and Rebecca Thorsby, Jeffrey and Anne Thorsby, Chris Thorsby,

and Jacob and Lindsey Hansard for their love and support over the years. I am also

indebted to the many students I have had over the years who have sparked my thoughts and

provided countless insights.

vi
 Table of Contents

Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................................. vi

Table of Contents............................................................................................................................... vii

Chapter I. Intersubjectivity and Environmental Moral Failure .................................................... 1

1. INTRODUCTION 1

2. CLIMATE CHANGE AS A MORAL PHENOMENON 16

3. MORAL FAILURE 26

4. INTERSUBJECTIVITY 35

Chapter II. Intersubjectivity in Husserl........................................................................................... 42

1. INTRODUCTION 42

2. THE ORIGINS & THEMES OF INTERSUBJECTIVITY 44

3. “THE INTERSUBJECTIVITY LECTURE” 49

4. THE CARTESIAN MEDITATIONS 60

5. INTERSUBJECTIVITY AFTER HUSSERL 77

6. CONCLUDING CONSIDERATIONS ON INTERSUBJECTIVITY 102

vii
Chapter III. The Intersubjective Field ......................................................................................... 104

1. INTRODUCTION 104

2. PRELUDE TO INTERSUBJECTIVE ONTOLOGY 111

3. THE SENSE IN WHICH THE INTERSUBJECTIVE IS SAID TO BE REAL 116

4. SEPARATING INTERSUBJECTIVITY AND EMPATHY 125

5. WHAT INTERSUBJECTIVITY IS AND IS NOT 132

6. INTERSUBJECTIVITY AS CONCRETE EMERGENCE 139

7. HARMONY AS THE ORGANIZING PRINCIPLE FOR INTERSUBJECTIVITY 151

8. THE INTERSUBJECTIVE FIELD 159

A. EGO GENERATIVITY 160

B. EMBODIED HABITUATION 164

C. LANGUAGE & EMBODIMENT 168

D. NORMS & INSTITUTIONS 172

9. INTERSUBJECTIVITY AND MORAL LIFE 177

Chapter IV. Morality, Value, Habit .............................................................................................. 185

1. INTRODUCTION 185

2. HUSSERL’S MORAL PHILOSOPHY 190

3. MORAL EVIL AND MORAL WRONGDOING AS INTERSUBJECTIVE PRIVATION 215

4. THE INTERSUBJECTIVE DIMINUTION PRINCIPLE 229

5. HABITS 240

6. VALUES 253

7. COLLECTIVE SEDIMENTATION 260

8. MAKING MORAL JUDGMENTS 265

viii
Chapter V. A Model of Moral Failure.......................................................................................... 270

1. A MODEL OF MORAL FAILURE 270

2. ENVIRONMENTAL MORAL FAILURE 279

A. CLIMATE CHANGE 287

B. SPECIES EXTINCTION 300

3. THE PROBLEM OF DIVERGENCE 306

4. THE INADEQUACY OF MORAL THEORY 312

5. THE VIGILANCE OF REFLECTION: MORAL RENEWAL & CRITIQUE 318

6. THE FUTURE GENERATIONS ARGUMENT 323

7. CONCLUSION 326

Bibliography ...................................................................................................................................... 330

ix
 Chapter I. Intersubjectivity and Environmental Moral Failure

1. Introduction

As in the realm of starts the orbit of a planet is in some cases determined by two suns; as in certain cases suns of
different colors shine near a single planet, and then occasionally illuminating the planet at the same time and flooding it
with colors – so we modern men are determined, thanks to the complicated mechanics of our “starry sky,” by different
moralities; our actions shine alternatively in different colors, they are rarely univocal – and there are cases enough in
which we perform actions of many colors.
- Frederick Nietzsche1

Daily practical living is naïve. It is immersion in the already-given world, whether it be experiencing, or thinking, or
valuing, or acting.
- Edmund Husserl2

All ethics so far evolved rest upon a single premise: that the individual is a member of a community of interdependent
parts. His instincts prompt him to compete for his place in the community, but his ethics prompt him also to
cooperate…
- Aldo Leopold3

An acute ecological crisis unfolds at the dawn of the twenty-first century while humanity

bears witness to a radical transformation of the Earth’s natural environmental systems upon

which all life depends. The signs of this transformation include many notable environmental

problems such as accelerated wide-spread extinction, habitat destruction, oceanic

acidification, and anthropogenic climate change. The causes for each have been traced

either directly or indirectly to the collective activity of human beings and their societies.

These transformation have become so pronounced that notable scientists such as E.O.

Wilson argue that we have entered a new geological age – the Anthropocene – in which

“humans completely dominate [the] Earth and surviving world species and ecosystems are

judged and conserved for their usefulness to our species… Living nature, as it evolved

1
Friedrich Nietzsche, "Beyond Good and Evil," in Basic Writings of Nietzsche, ed. Walter Kaufmann
(New York: Modern Library, 1992). 335-336
2
Edmund Husserl, Cartesian Meditations; an Introduction to Phenomenology, ed. Dorion Cairns (The
Hague,: Martinus Nijhoff, 1960). 152 <179>
3
Aldo Leopold, and Michael Sewell. A Sand County Almanac: With Essays on Conservation. (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2001). 171

1
before the coming of man, is dead or dying.”4 The natural environmental outlook represents

a great crisis and challenge for those living today as well as those yet to be born; particularly

as it is an acute moral problem, one related to the collective activities of communities and

social arrangements. Anthropogenic climate change, for instance, is the causal result of

human industrialized activity, having taken place over multiple generations for lots of

different particular reasons, under specific economic and sociological conditions. There is

clear evidence that the natural ecological systems across the Earth are experiencing a

widespread disruption as a result of human activity.5 Increasing evidence suggests that the

range and severity of these ecological and environmental transformations are tantamount to

an existential crisis for many of the species of Earth, including humanity. As a product of

human action, the environmental crisis represents a great moral crisis. Insofar as ethics

concerns the conduct of human action and the principled and just organization of human

affairs, and given the fact that human action has been a necessitating condition in the

development of these environmental problems, it is imperative that moral and social

philosophy offer an account and description of the problem. The crisis is not only a

description of the precarious state that natural biological systems face as a result of human

action, it also represents a crisis regarding the moral status of human activity itself. For if the

widespread collective form of normalized “moral” action in the industrialized world is one

that threatens the long-term conditions for life itself, then there is clearly a sense in which

our collective activity as a species is both practically and morally incoherent over the long

run. It represents a prima facie paradox for the efficacy of moral philosophy when one

4
Edward O. Wilson, Half-Earth: Our Planet's Fight for Life, (New York: Liveright Publishing
Corporation, 2016). Ch. 9
5
The evidence for this is widespread and varied encompassing a number of fields of study. For the
purposes of this investigation, we take it as given that human activity is playing an outsized role in the
degradation, alteration, and collapse of many ecological systems.

2
considers that individual moral action may have a collectively immoral result. On the one

hand, most of the individual actions that contribute to environmental degradation can be,

and are, morally justified casuistically; but certainly, the collective long-term result of

extinguishing natural life on a global scale can never be morally justified. In other words,

climate change (and the other environmental crises) reveal a potentially radical problem for

the efficacy of any moral philosophy that is organized along individualistic lines. Could it be

that case that individually justified actions, taken place over time for many reasons and by

many different human beings, can culminate in moral catastrophe?

The fact of ecological or environmental change does not in itself signal a moral problem

as such, however. For every ecological transformation is, in a naturalistic sense, merely a

transformation of one material arrangement into another form. Whether one recognizes

such a change as “good” or “bad” depends upon the priority and importance of the thing in

question, as well as one's vantage point regarding the value of the thing or things. In other

words, a material transformation that comes as a result of human activity does not rise to the

level of moral consideration without one first having a moral stake in one arrangement over

another; in other words, a subject who values is required. That is, moral considerations are

not features of the naturalistic world, but rather forms of cognition in consciousness about

the world and one’s place in it. Since every action necessarily includes a material

transformation of some sort, the difference between wrong and right actions cannot be

based on alteration as a fact of change. When a chemist creates a chemical reaction between

material elements, that action is not categorized, in itself, as a moral event. Perhaps if the

chemist were teaching, one might say that an experiment is a part of a moral relationship

between teacher and student, but it would be absurd to say that the material alteration itself

is morally determinative. This indicates, by reasons of consistency, that the sheer fact of

3
species extinction, ocean acidification, or habitat loss does not in itself, as a natural event,

denote a moral problem. We must get clear on what exactly qualifies an event as being

morally determinative.

Without endorsing any specific moral theory, or outlook (at least at the outset), we can

begin by first sketching out four basic characteristics indicative of the things which fall under

the domain of the moral, or ethical. First, moral considerations always concern actions in

one way or another, whether in the practical deliberations we make about how to act, or in

the judgements we make about actions already taken. Where action is not possible, negative

moral judgements are not made against the agents who cannot act, but in cases where action

is possible, moral judgements are. This indicates that moral considerations do not concern

the facts of material change, but rather the domain of how agents ought to act within a

spectrum of potential change. Secondly, a moral consideration is always normative in one

way or another in which some set standard, or norm, is applicable to the evaluations of

action. Moral deliberations and judgements always depend, in principle, on some criteria for

determining how one ought to act. The history of modern moral philosophy is testament to

the variety of possibilities and the problems associated with establishing these criteria, but

the normative dimension is essential to moral discourse. Third, a moral consideration, as a

consideration, is be a product of rational consciousness. In other words, the moral

consideration of an event concerns the deliberation and judgements associated with actions

taken in a normative context, and all of this is subject to reason and rational explanation. In

other words, moral life, or at least the consciousness of it, is to some degree a product of the

activity of reason. This does not mean that every action one might call moral is taken as a

result of a rational deliberative process. Many, if not most, of the actions people take which

are subject to normative judgement, are taken as a result of habit, or custom. Aristotle notes

4
the close affinity ethics has with the notion of custom in the Nichomachean Ethics, seeing that

the words are etymological relatives.6 But even customs, which tend to be the result of social

tradition, can be subjected to rational deliberation by virtue of their normative form. Every

custom, by virtue of traditional habituality and symbolic significance, reinforces a specific

world of experience for the members of a given community and certain preferences

regarding the harmonious organization of social existence. Customs and traditions are an

important part of the moral life of a community, but they are also subject to reason and

change according to both reason and circumstance. The history of human social life

suggests that customs always begin with reasons, although they are frequently forgotten even

as the custom continues, under the auspices of tradition. It is not by accident that people

demand explanations for the actions of others, particularly when a normative standard is

breached, or when a new standard comes into being. Morality requires action, and moral

action requires at least the possibility of rational deliberation. Ethics, if we were to draw a

very generalized distinction, is that part of philosophical inquiry which seeks a rigorous

articulation of the principles that should (or do) undergird moral life. A moral event must, at

the end of the day, be more than merely a rational exercise of dialectical deliberation – for

the climax of moral life is resolved only in the existentiality of concrete action. Moral

activity is inherently oriented towards the concrete existence of activity itself.

These generalized characteristics, that (1) morality concerns action, (2) morality is always

normative, (3) moral actions are subject to rational explanation (or deliberation), and (4) that

moral life is oriented towards the actuality of existence, can serve as a starting point for

thinking about the environmental crisis as an event of moral failure. Although these

environmental crises are the result of collective action, they originate in their materiality with

6
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Roger Crisp (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004). 1103a

5
individuals, and when inspected, the vast sets of reasons why people engage in industrialized

activity may be counted as rational and moral. Many of the activities are in conformity with

some normative standard. At the crux of the issue for problems such as climate change is the

problem of collective action, and the yet unsolved problem concerning the moral relation

between individual and collective action.7

Environmental crisis is a consequence of collective human action, not the consequence

of any individual or particular reason to act. The conventional lens of moral theory, based

primarily in an analysis of the subjective individual, is ill-equipped to help us make sense of

moral implications which are (a) relatively unintended, and (b) the result of collective actions

over the course of generations. In order to truly understand the problem one needs to

articulate the necessary conditions and principles inherent in the generative role of concerted

human action over time. What one needs is a model for describing any case in which

individual moral action can lead and generate collective ruin. I argue that the current state of

environmental degradation represents a form of intersubjective moral failure. The goal and

orientation of this dissertation is to move towards a descriptive explanation of these

phenomena.

The critical piece for understanding the environmental crisis as a moral crisis is to

consider the relationship between the material events and the agents that cause them. For a

moral crisis can only be a crisis to those capable of moral life and moral life depends upon

actions taken in the material world. Those who are capable of moral life are those who are

(1) capable of action, but also (2) capable of reflection and the alteration of their action as a

consequence of thinking. The looming environmental catastrophe is either a direct or

7
An example of the problem between individual and collective action can be seen in Garrett Hardin’s
discussion of the tragedy of the commons.

6
indirect consequence of industrialized economic activity, and is therefore either a direct or

indirect consequence of practical reasoning. This means that the crisis manifests itself as a

result of practical reasoning using action(s) that are consistent with that reasoning. So while

the action is rational and concrete, the collective effects are indirect, unintentional, and long-

term. In fact, the effects of individual action in the case of climate change, for instance, are

collectively transgenerational, but they result from individual practical reasoning. It is

noteworthy that most of the activities which are causing environmental instability are

performed in the course of other activities frequently deemed necessary for the performance

of other moral duties. The sorts of reasons a farmer might give for raising cattle (a primary

source of methane pollution) might include the ideas of feeding others, keeping their

promises, paying their debts, or providing for their families and communities, or for many

other reasons; but the farmer does not list among her reasons a desire to effect collective

environmental harm. The family that buys beef and fuels the economic consumption of

cattle, similarly have their own reasons. The problem seems to reside in how things are

organized such that the moral experience of the individual is always situated in one way or

another, always including and excluding from view various moral considerations. In some

sense, the problem bares an affinity to the problems associated with the doctrine of double

effect, in which the ecological crisis appears to be the collective result of secondary side

effects that arise in the performance of other potentially moral activities. The coal miner, for

instance, mines the Earth in order to feed his family, and in conformity with a perceived

duty. The coal miner’s actions can be considered “moral actions” insofar as they are

consistent with and informed by a normative principle. A moral activity is any activity that

is, in principle, performed with a normative reason for action. This is a very general way of

defining a moral activity, but its generality will provide a place to begin the analysis that is

7
inclusive of most forms of moral life imaginable. In some cases the side effects of an action

are known and in others they are not; so at the level of the individual’s experience, practical

reasoning is grounded in the situational moment. Collective environmental side effects of

action, which are relatively invisible in the immediate experience of the individual are easily

excluded from consideration; and when the community’s Lebensform gets predicated on

practices with those side effects, the individual’s moral consideration of the environment can

drop out of view because they fall out of reach, especially when the side effects are collective

and diffuse. The moral failure of the environmental crisis appears to occur at the level of the

intersubjective collective community and not the individual’s intentional reasons for action.

For this reason, this dissertation focusses its analysis of environmental moral failure by

considering the moral ramifications of collective unintentional activity. The environmental

crisis is not the result of intention - that is, no one (or very few) is calling for the decimation

of species, the toxification of the oceans, the stripping of lands, or the chemical re-

composition of Earth’s atmosphere - but it is happening and it is the result of human

actions that are intentionally performed. There is a deep practical paradox here. For

instance, the industrial agricultural economy produces nearly one quarter of all greenhouse

gases emitted each year as a collective consequence of intersubjective action, but also

consider that this activity consists essentially in producing food to feed people. 8 In fact, the

IPCC maintains that “[agriculture] is frequently central to the livelihoods of many social

groups, especially in developing countries where it often accounts for a significant share of

8
Smith P., M. Bustamante, H. Ahammad, H. Clark, H. Dong, E. A. Elsiddig, H. Haberl, R. Harper, J.
House, M. Jafari, O. Masera, C. Mbow, N. H. Ravindranath, C. W. Rice, C. Robledo Abad, A.
Romanovskaya, F. Sperling, and F. Tubiello, 2014: Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Use (AFOLU).
In: Climate Change 2014: Mitigation of Climate Change. Contribution of Working Group III to the Fifth
Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. [Edenhofer, O., R. Pichs-Madruga,
Y. Sokona, E. Farahani, S. Kadner, K. Seyboth, A. Adler, I. Baum, S. Brunner, P. Eickemeier, B.
Kriemann, J. Savolainen, S. Schlömer, C. von Stechow, T. Zwickel and J.C. Minx (eds.)]. (Cambridge,
United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA: Cambridge University Press, 2014). 817

8
production.”9 In other words, one quarter of greenhouse gases emitted are for morally

justifiable reasons.

There are two things here. On the one hand, environmental degradation may be a side

effect of moral activity, perhaps subsequent to something like a doctrine of double effect; on

the other hand, the natural ecological environment functions as the background wherein

moral activities take place. We can think of the natural environment as part and parcel of

the chorology of moral life, as the place where moral life occurs. 10 Its ‘value’ is given in

terms of its being the place where life occurs. It is also the place of enjoyment.11 In the way

in which a chess player does not concern their calculations with the chess board, but only

the pieces against the backdrop of the board, most of our moral deliberations do not take

the environment to be itself the object of moral consideration, but rather as a sort of

backdrop to moral life. At its worst, the documented environmental crisis today is

tantamount to a flipping of the chess board, signaling an existential threat to the very

possibility and scope of moral life going forward. If we take it that the status of a moral

action depends upon its meeting some normative criteria, and that all moral activities require

a world in which they can take place, then there can be no greater duty than to preserve the

possibility of the world. My argument hinges on the notion that every action, taken as part

and parcel of the social intersubjective harmony, is oriented towards a passive collective

habituality that organizes the happenings of life for a community, and that this

intersubjective harmony grounds our environmental moral obligations. I hope in the course

9
Ibid., 816
10
The Greek term χωρ-α, or place, may be a helpful way to situate the categorical importance for the
condition of a place for beings. See Chorology by John Sallis.
11
One of the difficulties I find with Levinas is his treatment of place. Totality and Infinity suggests an
environment experienced along an axis of enjoyment. The virtue of this thesis is that it explains the case.
The vice, however, is that it appears hopelessly anthropocentric in its orientation.

9
of the following investigations to show, using the phenomenological work of Edmund

Husserl, how an intersubjective ontology grounds the very conditions for moral life, and that

from this we can articulate a model of collective moral failure.

Inevitably, I argue that implicit in the very ontology of intersubjective life, given the

habitual structures of the community and their moral importance, there is an implicit duty to

act towards the future. There is both a causal and moral relation between people now living

and those of future generations. On the one hand, the actions we do today, however

mitigated, play a role in the causal development of those in the future. A forest extinguished

today is one absent for the persons of the future. Of course, the further into the future one

extends, the more diffuse the causal nexus becomes. On the other hand, there is a moral

relation. I do not argue one has a moral duty to fulfill the interests of future generations, but

rather that there is a duty to enable the possibility of future interests. But this duty is not

rooted in the person(s) of the future, but rather in that every action (insofar as it is

intersubjectively rooted) is recursively organized towards the future within the passive

structures of intersubjective habituality. Many have remarked that the notion of an

obligation to future generations is either absurd or incomprehensible because it ultimately

seems to make an obligation to something nonexistent, unknown, or to a group who have

no identity. 12 This is not quite right. While it is true that future humans do not exist (or that

anything in the future exists), we do know that any future human existence will depend for

its genesis on those presently living. The obligation to the future is actually an obligation

12
Although this problem has been discussed quite widely within the literature, three early philosophers who
offer forceful critiques against the future generations argument include Robert M. Adams in “Existence,
Self-Interest, and the Problem of Evil” from Nous 13 (1979), Darek Parfit in “On Doing the Best for Our
Children” in Ethics and Population (Cambridge, MA: Shenkman, 1976), and Thomas Schwartz in
“Obligations to Posterity” in Obligations to Future Generations, ed. Richard Sikora and Brian Berry
(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1978).

10
regarding the possibilities of the present. Consider that for Marx “man” is a species being.13

Taken in this way, an ‘obligation to a future generation’ is not ultimately an obligation to

nothing, but to the possibility of the present by way of the essential conditions for

intersubjectivity.

An investigation into the relationship between individual moral activity and collective

action can benefit from a phenomenological approach. Individual moral activity refers to

those actions which are governed by a coherent normative principle and these principles can

only be given in consciousness. This is generally true for all forms of moral life imaginable,

and this generality is consistent with the generality of the reasons indicative of global

environmental degradation. Secondly, the problem of collective unintentional moral failure

is one that exceeds our individual view of phenomena. Because the moral problem is

globally collective, phenomenology can offer a model of analysis that describes the implicit

experiential conditions for collective forms of moral activity, irrespective of the particular

reasons for action. Moral life needs to be understood as a highly general category such that

the generality of moral life is not a matter of particular concrete practices, but rather is given

in terms of a general cognition of experience.

Moral life occurs at the intersection between normative cognition and concrete

existence. “Morality” is not expressed as a matter of fact regarding material affairs; but

rather in terms of our understanding of those affairs.14 While moral discourse occurs at the

level of language, moral life occurs at the level of a concrete practice (or action). Given

these features, an investigation into the general form of the conditions of possibility for

13
Marx derived the term from Ludwig Feuerbach’s term “Gattungswesen.” See section XXIV on
estranged labor from the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844.
14
David Hume. “Book III, Of Morals.” A Treatise of Human Nature. (London: Thomas Longman, 1896).
468

11
morality stands to benefit from a phenomenological analysis of the ontological conditions

for collective social intersubjectivity. Resources from within the phenomenological schools

of philosophy suggest that morality is, as it were, one of the layers of sedimentation within

our experience of the world. Phenomenology is an investigation into the conditions for

experience. Since morality is normative, and this normativity is a product of consciousness,

morality concerns the experience of valuing the world in different ways; of making

preferences and judgements about the value of things in the course of lived concrete activity.

The sedimented layers of normative experience are bundled into the natural attitude of our

ordinary average everyday experience. The phenomenological researches of Edmund

Husserl indicate that the phenomenological conditions part and parcel of moral experience

are ultimately predicated on the intersubjective community. His analysis suggests a

radicalization of the problem in which the collective arrangements of the community take a

generative and foundational role in the possible experiences (and deliberations) of the

individual. In other words, the phenomenological inquiry into intersubjectivity suggests

itself as the best means for addressing the paradox of moral failure. But transcendental

intersubjectivity itself, in terms of its applicability to real living subjects, requires the

existence of an actual lived community. Therefore, the problem requires an ontological

description into the principles and conditions for collective intersubjective life. In other

words, do the requisite conditions for the existence of moral life allow for the possibility of

moral failure? And if so, how and why?

In many ways this dissertation is an attempt to grapple with the simple question of what

characterizes the type of moral failure indicative of global ecological catastrophe from a

phenomenological perspective. We are not interested in finding fault with one theoretical

system over another (placing blame or issuing moral critique), nor are we interested in

12
applying an already available moral system to the problem (proposing a solution). The task

of this study is to give an account of how and why. I intend to articulate a descriptive model

for understanding why it is we find ourselves in the current state of affairs. Before

philosophers can offer credible moral alternatives for dealing with environmental harm, it is

imperative that one first understand the nature of the problem. Many environmental

ethicists such as Peter Singer, Tom Reagan, and Steven Bullard have argued for a variety of

moral theoretical systems and principles to organize our decision making process in ways

that mitigate environmental harm, however defined. The typical approach consists in

redefining a moral principle, or widening the scope of one, to include non-human entities.

The majority of these discussions are prescriptively normative, seeking to tell us how we

should act and understand our actions. This approach consists in speculating about moral

life, where what is needed is an account of our actual Lebensform.15 Before prescription

comes description, such that a phenomenology of moral life comes prior to the prescriptive

task of making moral judgments and recommendations in practical ethics. Therefore, in

some respect, the dissertation to follow is not an essay on morality per se, but rather the pre-

conditions for moral life. I argue that at the core of collective action is an operative principle

of intersubjective harmonization, which is passively habituated into the practices of a

community over time, and that when these practices are passively habituated they both

inform the phenomenological sedimentation of moral experience but also functions as the

grounding framework for the collective trans-generational life of a community. The claim

15
I borrow this term from Wittgenstein who argues that the meaningfulness of language depends upon a
prior form of life (Lebensform) that determines the logical structure of ordinary language. I intend to use
the term in a similar sense. At the root of one’s moral life, so to speak, is a form of life that organizes the
logic moral reflection.

13
here is that the environmental crisis is partially a result of a collective habituation and moral

sedimentation. We need an account of how moral life can fail.

The fact that we can fail morally is self-evident. Consider that the activity of reflection in

ethics (when one takes pause to consider how one ought to act) requires the recognition that

there are some actions that ought not be. Normativity has both a positive and negative

prescriptive force. It is equally clear, that ethics requires the assumption that things can and

do go wrong, and that this is necessarily the case. Many thought experiments have been

offered to exemplify this, since at least the time of the Ionians. The fragments of Heraclitus

include Δίκης ὄνοµα οὐκ ἂν ᾔδεσαν, εἰ ταῦτα µὴ ἦν.16 Philosophers have been puzzled by

the relationship between normative action and the necessity of its negation well into the

modern period, some arguing that objective moral determinations, if there are such things,

require the possibility of acting wrongly. For instance, in one of my favorite thought

experiments from the philosophy of religion we are asked to imagine a world where not only

does evil or wrong-doing not exist, but that it cannot in principle.17 Even if psychological

malice existed in this hypothetical world and someone attempted to commit moral wrong, it

would be impossible. Wooden beams would be transformed into soft grass when used as a

weapon at precisely the right moment; acts of evil would be neutralized before they occur.

The only problem with the hypothetical world is that acts of causal relation cannot hold,

thereby rendering any determinations of responsibility, let alone laws of nature, moot - or at

least, incomprehensible. The immediate implication is that right-doing and wrong-doing are

conceptually necessary to each other within a real concrete world. If our world is to be

rational and we admit of moral choice, then it must be the case that the potential for moral

16
“They would not have known the name of justice if these things were not.” DK B23
17
C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain, (New York: Harper Collins, 1996), 24

14
failure is always on the horizon of possibilities. What is more, the potential for failing

morally can act as a motivational feature for action itself.

One’s individual average everyday experience of the world, in the natural attitude, as it

were, confirms that ethical action only comes about when one recognizes that moral failure

is a real possibility, my possibility. We can say that when one questions how they ought to

act, in an existential sense, they must also see wrong as a real possibility for themselves. One

of the more remarkable features of ethical and moral philosophy is that the domain of

inquiry is always existentially significant. Many people, perhaps most, live their lives agnostic

to metaphysical and logic problems, but everyone asks how they ought to act and whether

they should act otherwise, and so forth for the simple fact that action is unavoidable.

Philosophically it is significant that all humans recognize a certain dimension of activity as

being normatively circumscribed. This universal feature of human life, that we act in

recognition that some possibilities are better than others, requires a certain ontological

constitution. We shall see that this constitution, pulling from the work of Edmund Husserl,

is intersubjective. Whether or not the moral systems and the choices one employs are

correct is a separate question to which I shall remain skeptically agnostic and attend to later.

If we are to understand how moral failure is possible at a collective level, I argue that we

must first clarify the ontological conditions that enable (and perhaps even gives rise to) the

very possibility of moral life itself, let alone our moral failings. In other words, any structure

for the problem of moral failure depends for its description upon the ontological structure

for moral activity as such.

To be clear, I do not intend to offer or advance an environmental moral theory so much

as to argue for a descriptive ontological model conducive for understanding any moral failure

as such. Although I intend to give a general account of moral failure, I will pay particularly

15
close attention to problems typically associated with environmental ethics as an exemplar

case of the type of moral failure I have in mind (but the model of moral failure articulated

here has a potentially wide-range of implications for a variety of other practical moral

problems, both economic and political). In many ways, a phenomenological study of moral

failure stands as a task for the preparation of a credible environmental ethics seeking

solutions, as it were. The general crisis we have been describing is the consequence of many

distinct different acts by many different agents, all of which have a total cumulative

consequence of ecological degradation. Problems of collective action, such as climate

change, have been very difficult to pin down morally because their collectivity seems to resist

assignments of individual responsibility. In the remaining sections of this chapter, whose

goal is to introduce the overall argument and problem, I turn to (1) a discussion of how

climate change exemplifies the problem of collective moral failure, (2) a further clarification

of what counts as moral failure, and (3) a discussion of how an investigation into

intersubjectivity can yield insight into the problem. Let us now turn to the problem of

anthropogenic climate change.

2. Climate Change as a Moral Phenomenon

Climate change is just one of the many environmental challenges caused by human activity.

The ecological system that supports human existence are changing at an alarming rate in

terms of the ecological structure, the climatic make-up, and species diversification. Scientists

around the world are cataloging an acceleration in the loss of natural habitats essential for

countless species and ecological niches. For instance, it is estimated that the current

16
extinction rate for species on Earth is around 1,000 times greater than the historical norm.18

The London Zoological Society reports that

[The] main causes of extinction across all groups include habitat loss or degradation,
primarily driven by agricultural development and logging, followed by invasive
species and human overexploitation. The impact of climate change is now beginning
to be felt by many species groups. Climate change will likely be the greatest driver of
extinction this [the twenty-first] century, with an estimate of 25% of all species
committed to extinction by 2050.19
The loss of 25% of all species on Earth is almost an unimaginable transformation. One of

the primary drivers for species loss is the warming of the atmosphere by the release of co2

and other greenhouse gases which contribute to a greenhouse effect around the globe. The

most recent publication by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports that

the global changes taking place as a consequence of anthropogenic climate change are most

likely irreversible and their effect permanent.20 Anthropogenic climate change and

environmental degradation will have severe consequences for human beings as well. The

World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that climate change is already the cause of

over 150,000 deaths annually. This number is expected to nearly double between 2030 and

2050.21 There is general consensus that these climate changes are a material consequence of

industrialization and increased economic activity beginning in the nineteenth century.22

Philosophers today have a unique obligation to address and assess the moral

implications of these massive ecological transformations, especially insofar as they are a

18
see SL Pimm, et al., “The Biodiversity of Species and their Rates of Extinction Distribution, and
Protection,” Science, Vol. 344, Issue 6187, (New York: American Association for the Advancement of
Science, 2014).
19
J. E. M. Baillie, J. Griffiths, S.T. Turvey, J. Loh, & B. Collen, Evolution Lost: Status and Trends of the
World's Vertebrates, (London: Zoological Society of London, 2010).
20
IPCC. 2014: Climate Change 2014: Synthesis Report. Contribution of Working Groups I, II and III to the
Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Synthesis Report, (Geneva,
Switzerland: IPCC, 2014).
21
World Health Organization. Quantitative Risk Assessment of the Effects of Climate Change on Selected
Causes of Death, 2030s and 2050s. (Geneva, Switzerland: World Health Organization, 2014).
22
Ibid. Baillie, 63

17
consequence of rational human activity. In large measure, the antecedent cause of

generalized ecological degradation is a result of collective social arrangements. Not only is

the problem enormous, but also it is ubiquitous such that nearly everyone participates

passively with no one individual baring responsibility. Moreover, the effects of

anthropogenic climate change appear to be a result of activities deemed, on a case by case

basis, as morally legitimate from the perspective of the individual moral agent, from a variety

of moral perspectives.

Ecological and environmental degradation are primarily the result of increased and

accelerated economic and industrial developments, but this industrial activity has also largely

improved the standards of living for people in the industrialized world. Although much

attention is paid to the negative effects of industrialization and economic progress, the

overwhelming evidence is that “[where] industrialization is limited, living standards tend to

be lower, with attendant poverty, poor health, and shortened lifespan.”23 I think that it is

perfectly reasonable to see the history of industrialization as a type of collective moral

performance. Since the Enlightenment, humans have been living in a more peaceful and

prosperous world, perhaps to a world-historic level, one where there is much reduced

hostility overall. Steven Pinker has drawn attention to the fact that violence has consistently

declined since the enlightenment on a per capita basis, arguing “violence has been in decline

over long stretches of history, and today we are probably living in the most peaceful moment

of our species' time on earth.”24 The widely repeated idea that the twentieth century was

notably more violent than the acts of past generations is false.25 The reduction of violence

23
Timothy Collins, "Industrialization." In Encyclopedia of Global Warming and Climate Change, by S.
George Philander, (Thousand Oaks, California: SAGE Publications, 2008). 539-542
24
Steven Pinker, "We're Getting Nicer Every Day: A History of Violence," The New Republic Online,
March 20, 2007: 1.
25
Ibid.

18
may have other causes but the industrialization of human society is certainly a key element in

contributing to an improved quality of life for millions. So from one vantage point, the

industrial activities that are leading to climate change include activities that have moral

worth. What would this mean? The immediate cessation of released greenhouse gases

(primarily a product of industrialized activity) would likely result in deleterious effects for

millions of individuals, both in terms of living conditions and morbidity rates. Yet, on the

other hand, no cessation of greenhouse gas emissions at their current level will result in

widespread long-term ecological and human harm. In a generalized sense, the problem

appears to be a variant of the trolley problem in moral theory. Either we do nothing and

annually tens of thousands will perish or we act by denying increased economic activity and

gains in standard of living for the world’s poor.

The problems associated with anthropogenic climate change are important for a

consideration of collective moral activity since they exemplify the strains our ordinary

conceptions face within the collective context. Dale Jamieson explores the difficulties

associated with a moral consideration of climate change in his book, Reason In A Dark Time.

Unlike most moral problems, climate change presents us with a problem (or set of

problems) that are markedly different in their phenomenality from the ordinary moral

problems we are accustomed to thinking and reasoning about. He argues that climate

change cannot be easily appropriated by what he calls conventional or “common sense”

morality because it defies the spatio-temporal features typically used to demarcate claims of

responsibility and duty.26 He further describes our common sense morality as “a dynamic

system of interrelated beliefs, ideals, attitudes, emotions, dispositions, and more” instead of

26
Dale Jamieson, Reason in a Dark Time: Why the Struggle Against Climate Change Failed, (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2014).

19
being “a fixed set of commitments.”27 The argument here is not that some particular moral

system is unable to appropriate the moral problematic of climate change; but rather that our

ordinary experience of moral life is phenomenally strained when it comes to problems as

collectively ubiquitous as climate change. In a thought provoking thought experiment,

Jamieson outlines the strain that our ordinary moral intuitions endure when confronted with

climate change. By analogy, he compares the 6 following cases:28

1. Jack intentionally steals Jill’s bicycle

2. Jack is part of an unacquainted group of strangers, each of which, acting

independently, takes one part of Jill’s bicycle, resulting in the bicycle’s
disappearance.

3. Jack takes one part from each of a large number of bicycles, one of
which belongs to Jill.

4. Jack and Jill live on different continents, and the loss of Jill’s bicycle is
the consequence of a causal chain that begins with Jack ordering a used
bicycle at a shop.

5. Jack lives many centuries before Jill, and consumes materials that are
essential to the bicycle manufacturing; as a result, it will not be possible
for Jill to have a bicycle.

6. Acting independently, Jack and a large number of unacquainted people

set in motion a chain of events that causes a large number of future
people who will live in another part of the world from ever having
bicycles.

He then asks us to compare each case. In the first instance, there appear to be clear grounds

to hold Jack ethically responsible for stealing Jill’s bicycle. There is clarity regarding who the

moral agent is, what actions were taken, who was harmed, how the harm gets imparted, and

27
Ibid. Jamieson, Loc. 3068
28
Ibid. Jamieson, Loc. 3101

20
so forth. But in each subsequent case the assignment of responsibility becomes increasingly

elusive as Jamieson alters various features of the thought. In case 2, the assignment of

responsibility is confounded (though not annihilated) by the introduction of multiple agents.

Since Jack acts individually, though not alone, we can say that Jack is responsible for theft,

but not for the entire bicycle. In the third scenario, Jack is responsible for stealing an entire

bicycle, but has harmed multiple agents, none of whom have lost an entire bicycle. Here the

assignment of harm is problematized by collective action and ownership. The fourth and

fifth cases fragment our moral intuition further by introducing both a spatial and temporal

differential that separates Jack’s actions from Jill’s bicycle well beyond any ordinary

assignment of moral responsibility. In Case 4 Jack is, at most, indirectly responsible for Jill’s

stolen bicycle because he has ordered a bike online from a shop that sells stolen bikes. On

the face of it, we lay more responsibility at the feet of the actual thieves rather than Jack

despite his providing a motivational reason for the thieves to act. The difference seems to

consist in the spatial removal of Jack from the scene of the crime. By contrast, Jamieson’s

fifth scenario seems to defy any ordinary intuition of moral responsibility when we introduce

any large temporal differential into the thought experiment. Jack lives centuries before Jill

and uses the natural resources necessary to make bicycles. Not only are the time scales too

large for our ordinary sense of moral responsibility to take hold, but Jamieson contends that

it is difficult to know what sort of harm is incurred on a person not due to live for centuries

and for whom the world is an inherited objectivity. Who is to say that a different world – a

world without materials for bicycles – is really a worse world? Consider that the Romans

nearly depleted the world of red marble, should the scarcity of that resource count as harm

for those living in the twentieth-first century? It is hard to see how. Case 6 exemplifies the

combined problems in each of the previous five instances in that Jack’s actions are a part of

21
a collective of individuals acting independently but have consequences on others separated

by large distances in space and time.

In the final scenario it is difficult to define what the moral problem is in terms of the

individual responsibility and collective action because the harm caused is (i) too distant from

the actors in time and space but also (ii) results in a harm that will be de facto imperceptible

to the victims themselves. While case 1 clearly gives way to a judgment of moral

responsibility, it is difficult to assign and identify in clear terms the degree of moral

responsibility Jack’s actions incur by the time we come to case 6. This thought experiment

exemplifies the difficulty moral philosophers face in assessing climate change as a moral

problematic. As Jamieson argued in his 2013 address at the American Philosophical

Association’s Pacific Meeting, the moral problems we are accustomed to assessing occur

within our world, whereas “climate change challenges the very possibility of a world.”29

Jamieson’s moral aporia requires, I think, an account of the underlying ontological

conditions that make moral life possible within the world at all. We need to understand

what it means to live in a collective community over time, what moral experience is

constituted by, and whether or not we can give a better description of what Jamieson calls

“common sense morality.”

While it may be the case that climate change and the ethical and moral implications

thereof defy our ordinary and common sense moral intuition, I take it that the problem runs

deeper. Climate change was first hypothesized in the early 19th century by Jean Baptiste

Joseph Fourier, although the specific causal relations were unknown at the time.30 Tellingly,

29
This quote was hand written into my notes from the meeting.
30
Joseph Fourier, “Les Températures du Globe Terrestre et des Espaces Planétaires.” Mémoires De
L’Académe Royale Des Sciences De L’Institut De France, Tome VII, (Paris: Cehz Firmin Didot, 1827).
569-604

22
initial reception of his hypothesis was viewed as a positive argument in favor of

industrialization since the effect would be agriculturally beneficial given that much of the

world was still very cold. From the get go, not only was industrialization seen as a positive

force overall, but the byproducts of industrialization were seen to have a possible effect on

global atmospheric temperature. Indeed, many of the industrialists saw (and still do see)

their economic activity as itself the fulfillment of a moral duty despite a range of social ills

that may come as a side effect. In her work on the history of colonial industrial

development, Suzanne Moon records that “Supporters of industrialization did not hesitate to

mix economic promise with moral positioning, arguing that industrialization fulfilled the

colonial government’s moral obligations” related to population pressure, economic activity,

and rates of unemployment.31 Ironically, the result is that what once was seen as a moral

obligation is today recognized as a systemic moral problem. Clearly the engineers of

industrialism were unaware of the negative consequences their actions might entail or

contribute towards, but it is also clear that given the information available at the time, their

actions were arguably justified in terms of promoting the general welfare of their society.

This historical feature provides us a theoretical platform for addressing the peculiar paradox.

How can it be that a single action can both fulfill a moral obligation yet collectively

contribute to a moral failure? This raises for us a conceptual problem that I will hereafter

refer to as the problem of moral failure. By this term, moral failure, I mean to signify the

contradictory form in which an action can come to both fulfill and deny a moral reason for

action. For example, consider how different forms of reasoning can both justify and deny

specific types of activities when we compare the collective and individual. From an

31
Suzanne Moon, Technology and Ethical Idealism: A History of Development in the Netherlands, (Leiden:
CNWS Publications, 2007).

23
individual’s perspective, the promotion of industrialized development is likely to increase the

general welfare of a society over time. Additionally, the harms of industrialism are less

recognizable as harms the more they are bounded within concrete community practices, each

bundled with a multiplicity of normalized expectations. So we might say that action of

releasing carbon polluting gases into the atmosphere may be both consistent with a principle

of promoting the general welfare of a society, yet inconsistent when accumulated by others

acting in the same way. The intersubjective principle(s) that enable the embodied

harmonization of the community, a central function for the preservation of any community,

inculcates certain practices regarding the environment into the passive habituality of

normalized activity. Because industrialism really does improve general standards of living,

and because it really is consistent with many forms of moral life, practices implicit for

industrialism have been sedimented into the moral life of the individuals, but as a pre-

condition for the individual reasons for act. The moral failure of climate change is rooted in

the conditions of intersubjective collective activity, not in the individual intentional reasons

themselves. The claim here is that at the end of the day, the environmental crisis is a

consequence of the intersubjective pre-conditions for moral life when confronted with

industrialized existence. The problem is not simply a matter of incomplete knowledge either.

Some may argue that the moral problem of climate change is really just a problem of

incomplete knowledge, and therefore ill-informed action, and that the claim for an

intersubjective ontology is unwarranted. The problem with the incomplete knowledge

objection is that it infers that moral actions can only succeed if a complete set of knowledge

is available for reflection. But complete knowledge regarding both the antecedent reasons

for acting and the consequent effects of an action might never be known in total. First, the

existential nature of ethical action is such that one must act regardless of the extent of

24
knowledge available at a specific time t. Secondly, the consequent effects of an action are

similarly confined to a set of inductive predications that cannot be guaranteed. The greater

the prediction, the less reliable it is. If a lack of knowledge can get one off the hook in terms

of fulfilling one’s moral responsibility, then I am not sure how one can defend the possibility

of ethics at all. Certainly, moral activity requires some requisite set of necessary knowledge,

but whatever that is, it appears fairly minimal. Here one can distinguish between adequate

and complete knowledge. If complete knowledge is required to act morally, then one’s

reasons for acting must correspond with that knowledge. But since the nature of the future

as future is unknown by definition, any account of knowledge at a particular time t is always

provisional according to a future time t. As a result, having complete knowledge is too high

of a standard for moral life and thus fails as an objection to the possibility of moral failure.

All that is needed is adequate knowledge regarding what an action is and how it relates to

others in order for that action to be morally determinative. It is true that from the

perspective of the individual agent, or our early industrialist, their incomplete knowledge

may relinquish them of some responsibility, but at the level of the collective whole, and

especially for a society which continues its industrial activity in the face of much greater

knowledge, the action(s) appear to have contradictory role as both advancing and hindering

the general social welfare.

But even if suggestive, the paradoxical sense in which climate change seems to

demonstrate moral failure can be described from either the non-consequentialist or virtue

theorist perspective. In the first case, we can again locate moral failure in the disparity

between individual and collective action. Individuals perform actions that are meant to

satisfy the demands of their moral duties to each other. For instance, if one lives in an urban

environment like New York and lacks the ability to go elsewhere, then the situation is such

25
that in order for that person to perform their ordinary moral duties to their companions

(things like feeding their children, or keeping their promises, etc.) then they must participate

in activities which contribute greenhouse emissions to the atmosphere. Obviously, the

secondary effect of their action is a contribution to the problem of global warming separate

from their intention. But consider that from a Kantian perspective, the performance of a

moral duty must be fully rational and (in the context of the categorical imperative) universal.

But here is the problem. Factually speaking, it may be the case that the only way to fulfill a

direct moral duty is to participate in an activity that cannot be universalized. This is a

problem relating to the concrete conditions of moral life. But because of the concrete facts

of the matter (ie. that a person lives in a concrete situation), the action serves the duty of the

individual, but when conjoined in concert with the very same actions of others, collectively

we see a sort of reversal in which those actions have a negative effect. In the next section of

this chapter, I will attempt to delineate and clarify this concept of moral failure in a way that

suggests a phenomenological approach. Finally, from the virtue perspective, the moral

failure of climate change seems to rest on the impossible tension between the possibility that

an individual's moderate action can, when combined collectively with the very same acts of

other, signal a collective excess. What is virtuous at the level of the individual becomes

vicious at the collective communal level. How can it be the case that climate change is on

the one hand the consequence of human activity that is individually defensible yet

collectively indefensible?

3. Moral Failure

Moral failure will be defined as any case in which actions taken in accordance with a

reason for acting that once instituted (according to an internal principle), over time and

through iterations of collective activity, lead to a contradiction of the original moral principle

26
itself. It is important to emphasize that the problem of moral failure I am emphasizing here

is an existentially constituted problem not merely a theoretical one. The concern of our

investigation here is to give an explanatory model for why moral actions taken as a result of

moral reflection fail in the purview of real activity in the world. A moral theory can be

conceptually or theoretically non-contradictory and consistent and still fail when constituted

into existing lived activity. If we cannot come to a comprehensible understanding of how

and why our collective actions are creating this ecological calamity, then I think there is little

hope of an effective environmental ethics.

It is important to differentiate moral failure from what we might call a mere moral

failing. A moral failing refers to any act that fails to meet its own governing principle right

from the start. For instance, if a person has a moral obligation to do X but they do not do

X, then that is a case of moral failing. Or in other words, a moral failing occurs when one

fails to meet the moral standard. The problem of moral failure, by contrast, is meant to

highlight actions that do meet a moral standard initially, but dynamically give rise over time to

actions that fail the original moral standard despite a consistent reason to act. In other

words, the special emphasis here is meant to highlight the category of actions that both meet

a moral standard, but also whose continued collective performance (in one way or another)

subverts itself. This captures the tension between the normative correctness of an

individuals' action on the one hand, and the normative failing of the forms of collective

action we see with regard to climate change. There is no difference between 'failing' a moral

standard and 'failing to meet' a moral standard, as it were. At the heart of the difference is

the problem of time and its role in lived activity and ethical reflection. A moral failing is an

action that existentially fails the dictum of a governing principle whereas a moral failure

27
fulfills its governing principle initially, but whose continued collective and habituated

performance develops into practical contradiction(s).

Thus far in this introductory chapter I have referred several times to the existential

nature of my discussion on moral failure. By existential, I simply mean to refer to cases of

activity that are instituted into an existing state of affairs. The difference can be easily seen

by thinking about cases of fidelity in action. A person who advocates recycling, for instance,

and really does recycle is one who remains faithful to the claim that one should recycle.

Persons who advocate recycling but who do not recycle by choice are not faithful to their

claims. Here fidelity is an existential criterion such that we gauge one’s faithfulness by the

manner of their existing performance. If the performance contradicts the reasons given for

acting that is what we have hitherto called a moral failing. But a moral failing can only be

determined existentially. Philosophers have typically shied away from the question of

performative contradictions, because one can fail to perform for unconscious psychological

reasons. Yet, I take it as axiomatic that ethical reflection is always at bottom concerned with

this existential dimension, even if the discussion is purely meta-ethical, as it were. Socrates

was not concerned with the good life for purely academic reasons; his goal was to live a good

life. 32 The question of existential moral failure is a discourse ripe for investigation and

critical to the efficacy of moral philosophy itself. Philosophers can debate over moral

principles or the definitions for such concepts as good and bad, but all of moral philosophy

is undertaken for the purposes of determining right courses of action with the final end in

action itself. Moral failure, in contradistinction to moral failing, refers to those cases of

action that coherently conform to a principle for action but nevertheless engender

32
This same point is made emphatically by Peter Singer and other environmental ethicist who have
attempted to stress the concrete role that ethical reflection should play.

28
contradictions once instituted into an existing state of affairs. Given that the problem of

moral failure is an existential issue, only an ontological description can yield insight into the

problem.

In its general formulation, ontology can be understood as the science of being and

the relations between beings. But there are at least three senses of ontology which we would

be wise to distinguish. Iso Kern writes that “Various things can be meant by [ontology]:

(a) Formal logic and ontology (“mathesis universalis”), which contain the
formal principles of the sciences (thus functioning as a general theory of
knowledge);

(b) Material or regional ontologies, which, taken together, present a closed

unity and form the particular principles or a priori norms of the particular
positive sciences (thus playing the role of particular doctrines of science);

(c) The ontology of the life-world, which forms the basis of all a scientific
ontologies and logic.33

Ultimately, the concern of the present treatise will address ontology first in the sense of (c)

and only later in the terms of (b). That is, in order to understand the a priori conditions for

a science of normative action, one must first get a proper understanding of the way in which

beings exist in the life-world. “According to Husserl, the ontology of the life-world is the

most fundamental – the one to which all ontologies ultimately refer back in some way of

other.”34 Because the problem of moral failure, only vaguely formulated at this point, has

been formulated as a problem of being in the ordinary sense of how we live in the world

33
Iso Kern, "The Three Ways to the Transcendental Phenomenological Reduction," In Husserl Expositions
and Appraisals, by Frederick A. Elliston and Peter McCormick, (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press,
1977). 126-150
34
The problem of violence and its historical evolution cannot be understood merely by inspecting the numbers,
as it were. Past generations seemed to have had a greater regularity for cruelty in their daily affairs, notably
changing after the modern period. But the technological increase in the deployment of violence, also as a
consequence of the enlightenment period, has extended the scale and volume of destructive capacities far
beyond those ever likely even imagined. It seems as if the ethos of cruelty has been replaced by a different more
rational ethos, an ethos of techné.

29
(not how we think in the world), the problem requires an evaluation of the conditions for

existing in the life-world. Thus, the first task for an ontology of moral failure is to identify

(or offer) a descriptive account of living in the life-world. We seek to understand the

conditions that enable our conscious lived activity in the world. Secondly, and only after

establishing the ontological conditions in (c), we must evaluate the regional ontological

conditions that ground the principles of normative activity. That is, our task will be to

articulate an ontology in the sense of (b). As a result, there is a possibility of equivocation

that we must guard against. For clarity sake, Chapters 3 is concerned with ontological

questions related to intersubjectivity, while chapters 4 and 5 pivot toward a discussion of

moral intersubjective ontology in particular.

The argument pursued here is that in order to make sense of the problem of moral

failure and to properly get a handle on the moral implications of environmental problems

like climate change, and particularly their nature as collective forms of action, we need to

first articulate a model for what it means for beings to live and act together in concert.

Husserl's discussion of transcendental intersubjectivity provides the needed resources to

develop not only a social ontology which can ultimately make sense of the problem of moral

failure, but one which points in the direction of centralizing a duty to future generations.

There is a difference here between the development of an ontology and the establishment of

a moral prescription of duty. Ontology in the broadest sense of the terms refers merely to

the existing relations that beings have with each other and in themselves insofar as they are

beings. In the Cartesian Meditations Husserl discusses the relationship between ontology and

phenomenology by saying that "…transcendental phenomenology would be ipso facto the

true and genuine universal ontology, but also one that comprised in itself all regional

30
existential possibilities, and did so in respect of all the correlations pertaining to them.”35

There are two important points here. First, that phenomenology as a method uncovers,

through its analysis of the structures and correlates of intentionality, necessary forms of

eidetic being inherent in phenomena. Secondly, the ontology that gets uncovered by the

phenomenological method is a precondition and stands as a priori to the natural sciences.

Husserl says that "the total science of the Apriori would then be the foundation for the genuine

sciences of matters of fact and for the genuine all-embracing philosophy in the Cartesian sense."36

The investigation into the transcendental conditions for intersubjective existence also stand

as the a priori grounding for any science concerning normative action. In other words, the

possibility of ethics itself depends upon certain preconditions given by the very constitution

of a moral agent. Phenomenology enables us to pinpoint necessary features pursuant to

conscious experience both within the life world and necessary for moral life. As such,

phenomenological description yields a negative description, an outline if you will, of various

necessary ontological structure(s) conducive to consciousness and ultimately the world. The

late Husserl ultimately distinguished between two forms of methodical eidetic reduction: (1)

static phenomenology, and (2) genetic phenomenology. He held that a static analysis of the

individual subject's phenomenal process can only be derived, in the final analysis, from a

genetic account of transcendental intersubjectivity, such that static phenomenology could

only lead into the genetic method. As such, intersubjective ontology via genetic

methodology provides a pathway for not only understanding the ontological conditions that

ground collective action as such, but also a correlating account for the meaning of

justifications given by an individual. In fact, Husserl claims in The Crisis that the

35
Edmund Husserl, Cartesian Meditations; an Introduction to Phenomenology. Translated by Dorian Cairns.
(The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1977). <181> 155
36
Ibid.

31
investigation into transcendental subjectivity must necessarily include the investigation of the

intersubjective:

But the full concrete facticity if universal transcendental subjectivity can

nevertheless be scientifically grasped in another good sense, precisely
because, truly through an eidetic method, the great task can and must be
undertaken of investigating the essential form of the transcendental
accomplishments in all their types of individual and intersubjective
accomplishments, that is, the total essential form of transcendentally
accomplishing subjectivity in all its social forms.37

Whereas ontology is the study of being and the relations between beings,

phenomenology is essentially taken up as a method towards this end because consciousness

(as a particular manifestation of being) reveals certain features of being. Indeed, all being is

given (and I use this word with some trepidation) through modes of consciousness.

Berkeley’s dictum esse est percippii reveals something important, namely that the knowledge I

have of existence, that beings have being, is always temporally preceded and accompanied by

perception, or an act of cognition. Where there is no perception, there is no being given.

This means that perception and the attending structures of consciousness are a necessary

condition for knowledge of being, but not necessarily a sufficient condition. Being is given

through perception in the form of conscious intentional acts, but the reduction of being to

perception is a form of equivocation. For if being and perception were identical then

solipsism is the only rational result, absurd as it is. Indeed, the history of Husserlian

phenomenology has been severely criticized on solipsistic grounds and interestingly this is

precisely what motivates the necessity for articulating genetic phenomenology. But a

problem looms still, and it concerns the way in which perception and being differ.

37
Edmund Husserl. The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. Trans. David
Carr. (Evanston: Northwest University Press, 1970). 177

32
 If being is always veridical (necessarily true) as a being while perception is not and

yet being is given through perception, then shouldn’t a science of being be impossible?38 In

response, I council the reader to consider that necessary structures in perception reveal

ontological limitations for consciousness. Phenomenology, taken as a method, is to be

understood as epistemologically negative when it comes to making ontological claims.

Indeed, I argue that all ontological claims are inherently negative in their formulation in the

sense that phenomenology establishes principles of being based upon the impossibilities of

intentional experience. Although phenomenological formulations may be stated in positive

terms, the analysis of phenomenology essentially moves by ascertaining what is not the case

for consciousness. There are a number of reasons to take this as the case. First, consider

Husserl’s employment of the transcendental epoché (or bracketing procedure).

Consciousness is made a field of investigation by means of exclusion (or temporary

negation). Husserl sees that the capacity for parenthesizing judgments, objectivity, or

anything posited by consciousness enables one to explore the a priori features of

consciousness independent of a particular mode or state of consciousness. Husserl argues

that in performing the phenomenological epoché “I am not negating this ‘world’ as though I

were a sophist; I am not doubting its factual being as though I were a skeptic; rather I am

exercising the ‘phenomenological epoché’ which also completely shuts me off from any judgment

about spatiotemporal being.”39 Thus, the method Husserl describes is neither a form of doubting

nor a form of denial, but a temporary suspension in the range and type of judgments one is

allowed to make or consider. He writes, “I must not accept such a proposition until after I

38
One possible line of argument might be to say that a perception is veridical insofar as it is a perception (the
hallucination is a true hallucination), but this line of thought is ultimately bankrupt either because it a
tautological truism or it fails by confusing the application of truth in question.
39
Edmund Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy. First
Book. Translated by F. Kersten. Vol. 1. (Boston: Martinus Nijoff Publishers, 1983). 56 <61>

33
have put parenthesis around it. That signifies that I may accept such a proposition only in

the modified consciousness, the consciousness of judgment-excluding.”40 Despite Husserl’s

worry about the language of negation, his ‘judgment-exclusion’ is a form of intentional

negation, but it is not a negation of the world or the factual nature of the world, but rather a

temporary negation of the intentionality of the investigator. Not only is the method of

phenomenological reduction and eidetic investigation essentially negative for consciousness

(though not in the sense of a sophist denial), but ontological structures can only be given by

the discovery of what cannot be excluded.

Secondly, ontological structures are derived by tracing the structural limits for

consciousness by outlining the limits of exclusion and effecting a type of double negation.

Husserl calls these ontological traces the phenomenological residuum. He writes:

We shall therefore keep our regard fixed upon the sphere of consciousness
and study what we find immanently within it. First of all, without yet
effecting the phenomenological judgment-exclusions, we shall subject it to a
systematic, though by no means exhaustive, eidetic analysis. What we
absolutely need is a certain universal insight into the essence of any
consciousness whatever and also, quite particularly, of consciousness in so far as it
is, in itself, but its essence consciousness of “natural” actuality. In these
studies we shall go as far as is necessary to effect the insight at which we are
aiming, namely the insight that consciousness has, in itself, a being of its own which in
its own absolute essence, is not touched by the phenomenological exclusion. It therefore
remains as the “phenomenological residuum,” as a region of being which is
essential necessity quite unique and which can indeed become the field of a
science of a novel kind: phenomenology.41

The idea here is that what cannot be excluded reveals a necessary structure in immanent

consciousness. This structure cannot be given through ordinary perception or

consciousness, but nevertheless plays a definitive role for consciousness. As such, these

features of consciousness can be termed transcendental structures. These structures cannot

40
Ibid. <57> 62
41
Ibid. <59> 66 my underline

34
be the object of an intuition (insofar as they enable intuition); therefore, they can only be

rendered by descriptive deduction. Consequently, phenomenological reduction does not

render ontological “content” so much as it outlines ontological “form”. Phenomenological

investigation renders ontological knowledge by distinguishing necessary eidetic features

negatively. I join Sartre’s insistence (although not his system) that “For negation is a refusal

of existence. By means of it a being (or a way of being) is posited.”42 Ontological

descriptions are rendered by determining the limits for consciousness via phenomenological

reduction, not by intuition. In our extended discussion on Husserl’s conception of

intersubjectivity, it becomes clear that the transcendental structures for individual subjective

awareness are predicated upon intersubjective transcendental structures. Moral failure will

require an understanding of the ontology of collective action (intersubjectivity), i.e. the

transcendental structures that undergird collective communal life.

4. Intersubjectivity

Moral failure occurs only where moral life is constituted existentially in the lifeworld

– a site for involvement in practical and moral activity. But a problem emerges regarding the

phenomenological method. The method of phenomenological reduction with a purview of

illuminating the subjective structures of consciousness does not sufficiently explain the life-

world I am actually engaged in. Husserl comments that the type of phenomenology

regarding singular consciousness is one, which may “further be defined as the systematic

development of the universal logos of all conceivable being. In other words, a systematically

and fully developed transcendental ontology… would be a solipsistically restricted

egology.”43 But a complete ontological explanation of the life-world requires an explanation

42
Jean Paul Sartre. On Being and Nothingness: A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology. Translated by Hazel
E. Barnes. (New York: Washington Square Press, 1956). 43
43
Edmund Husserl, The Paris Lectures, Trans. Peter Koestenbaum, (The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1975). 38<38>

35
of my ordinary experience of living in the world with others. As Husserl continues in the

Paris Lectures, “After that, through expansion, comes the intersubjective phenomenology, but

in a generality which first of all deals with universal questions, and them ramifies itself into

the a priori sciences.”44 Whereas static phenomenology investigates the ontological

conditions for eidetic acts and intuition fulfillment, the second type of phenomenology –

genetic phenomenology – explores how things come to be. As a being in the world, I

emerge as an intersubjective being. Thus, in order to account for moral failure, one must

first understand the ontological conditions for intersubjective life. Seeing as we have defined

moral failure as that situation in which actions fail morally over time and in the course of

lived communal activity, a genetic analysis is required. Suffice it to say that genetic analysis

or intersubjective phenomenology will enable a discussion of ethics. But what exactly do we

mean by intersubjectivity?

In its most simple formulation, intersubjectivity refers to the connected links in

consciousness and lived activity that enable communities to develop and exist over time. A

static phenomenology cannot address intersubjectivity because it interrogates the

phenomenological constitution of the investigator in isolation. Communities are more than

a mere collection of individual egos in isolation, for they also have a generative effect on the

consciousness of the individuals. Husserl refers to the intersubjective in terms of a harmony

among monads and that a community is a collection of monadic egos in dynamic harmony.45

The conditions for intersubjective life are what constitutes this harmony. Whereas static

phenomenology investigates the monadic ego, genetic phenomenology helps us clarify how

these dynamic harmonies between agents emerge over time. As Janet Donohue has written:

44
Ibid.
45
Husserl, Edmund. Cartesian Meditations. Translated by Dorian Cairns. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff,
1977. 120 <149>

36
 …genetic phenomenology provides an account of the individual ego’s
historicality by indicating the ego’s development as an individual. This
means that genetic analysis describes the development of the habitualities
and capacities of the individual… with concrete objects that give themselves
to the concrete ego with the sedimented history of the ego’s previous
experience.46

In essence, the genetic method allows us to paint a picture of the intersubjective conditions

that ground the development of the individual own ego by tracing the temporal development

of consciousness, both actively and passively. Understanding the ontological features that

intertwine me with others is a necessary precondition for evaluating the specificities and

peculiarities of moral life. I argue that the very possibility of ethical life is predicated upon

these intersubjective conditions.

It is very important to highlight that intersubjectivity is to be understood as

something real and existing, not merely a nominological label. Despite having ‘subject’ in its

name, intersubjectivity indicates the space between or wherein subjects exist with one

another. Intersubjectivity has an existential register. By existential, we are saying that the

concept refers to a specific form(s) of being in which we are with others. The notion of

intersubjectivity I employ here is one in which intersubjective relations are concrete forms of

social activity and consciousness. My thesis is that intersubjectivity is a real feature of the

world and that this reality is given by something more than just the accumulated totality of

individual acts, but is given in materiality as repetitious patterns of coordinated movement

among subjects. The existence of intersubjectivity is given in space through time and

consists in the regulated and meaningful embodiment of the subjects themselves. By

uncovering the ontology of intersubjectivity, we can develop a model of description for

understanding cases of environmental moral failure.

46
Donohoe, Janet. Husserl on Ethics and Intersubjectivity. Amherst: Humanity Books, 2004. 31

37
 In general, I maintain the overall thesis that an ontological analysis of

intersubjectivity yields an explanatory model for understanding cases of moral failure and

that several consequences follow:

1) Intersubjectivity is a necessary ontological condition for moral life.

2) Intersubjective communities are monadic harmonies
3) Intersubjective communities ontologically establish passive norms of
behavior in practice as habits of activity.
4) Habits are the generic existential deployment of moral reflection
5) Values are constituted as a structural element within the
intersubjective form of life.
6) All moral theories are susceptible to moral failure

At its core, my central argument is that moral failure occurs when the lived conditions of an

intersubjective community that are instituted through the habit formations of that

community diverge (or become disharmonious) from the originating moral principle. As the

analysis progresses, I argue that moral wrongdoing, or evil, has a specific intersubjective

characteristic of disharmony, or communal privation. Since the intersubjective conditions

are genetically necessary for the development of the subject itself, we can say that ill exists

whenever and wherever the constitution of the intersubjective community is disrupted or

disintegrates, or prompts a disintegration. As Husserl himself puts it, “… the constitution of

the world essentially involves a ‘harmony’ of the monads: precisely this harmony among

particular constitutions in the particular monads; and accordingly it involves also a

harmonious generation that goes on in each particular monad.”47 Wrongdoing has the

structural correlate of an active disharmony. Indeed, given this structural definition, we can

easily describe the difference and unity that resides between such concepts as moral and

natural evil. Thus, the ontological conditions of intersubjectivity are proto-conditions for

47
Husserl, Edmund. Cartesian Meditations. Translated by Dorian Cairns. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff,
1977. <138>

38
moral activity. In this manner, I want to ground the overall investigation of moral failure by

identifying the structural conditions necessary for all communities, despite their moral

impetus.

Additionally, intersubjective communities constitute themselves through a

habituation of existence that gets cemented into the activity and ethos of the said community

– what Jamieson called our common-sense morality. Central to the investigation of moral

failure is the role of habits and passive communal moral habituation. I argue that an analysis

of habits will yield the intriguing meta-ethical result that values are a structural element

within a given habit formation of lived existence. A real value aligns with the principle(s)

that organize the collective habitualities of a community, or individual. Moral values are

existentially constituted in the manner and means of a lived community; that is, they are

more than mere concepts and are not subjectively determined. Given this, I argue that

moral failure occurs where the habituated (and mostly unthought) values of communal

activities rigidly remain in operation despite a divergence of situational circumstances such

that actions are can both meet and fail a moral principle. Critical to the account is that

habits are instituted (and thereby values) according to the specific forms of reasoning that a

moral community adopts. But once adopted, these habituations repeat through time and

often quite unconsciously. In other words, in a successful moral performance, the reasons

for acting may drop out of view even as the actions get passively habituated again and again

over time. Over time, the habitualities, despite having had a rational justification, slowly

diverge from their originating circumstances. When a reasoning procedure for action does

not take into account the habitual forms of previously instituted values, then moral failure

becomes inevitable for the reason that a ‘dis-harmony’ will naturally creep into the

community as the divergences widen.

39
 In the chapters to follow, I argue that an ontological analysis of intersubjectivity a la

the Husserlian genetic method, provides an explanatory model for understanding the

problem of moral failure. This first chapter has attempted to introduce the problem of

moral failure as regards environmental degradation and the subsequent study of

intersubjectivity. Chapter 2 offers a review of the general literature on intersubjectivity soas

to situate the relevant scholarship for the analysis of moral failure. Chapter 3 turns to the

topic of intersubjectivity proper and attempts to provide a methodologically clarified

description of the ontological conditions that make moral life possible. Chapter 4 returns to

the investigation of morality, habit, and value and attempts to connect the ontological

conditions for intersubjectivity to moral life. Finally, chapter 5 offers a description of the

ontological structure of moral failure as an explanatory model for understanding the

accumulating environmental crisis, concluding with an argument relating intersubjectivity

and the moral obligations we have to future generations.

By articulating the ontological conditions for moral failure I believe that we can gain

insight into a whole range of moral problems, and especially those problems related to

ecological degradation and climate change. On the one hand, an account moral life that sees

intersubjectivity as the crucial ontological feature for ethics can enable us to explicate moral

problems of the sort Dale Jamieson sees with climate change and are relevant for collective

action in general. Intersubjectivity redefines the moral problem in non-egoistic (non-

individual) terms and can enable an explanatory model for collective moral activity. Part of

the failure of our ordinary moral intuition, I contend, is given by a misunderstanding of the

relationship one has with others in the life-world that sees moral life as centrally solipsistic.

We make a mistake when we frame moral activity as always something that originates in

subjects alone. The moral problem of climate change – a problem created through collective

40
action - cannot be illuminated so long as we lack a clear view regarding what collectivity

means. The problem of moral failure (not moral failings) requires a robust articulation of

intersubjectivity itself.

41
 Chapter II. Intersubjectivity in Husserl

I experience other minds as real, and not only do I experience them in conjunction with nature, but as interlaced into one
whole with nature… I experience the world not as my own private world, but as an intersubjective world, one that is
given to all human beings and which contains objects accessible to all.

-Husserl, “The Paris Lectures”48

I am aware of external awareness because of empathy.

-Edmund Husserl, 1908 Supplement 49

In the factual world, embodiment facilitates the communications of all human beings with respect to their “inner lives.”

-Edmund Husserl, “Basic Problems of Phenomenology50

1. Introduction

The problem of environmental moral failure is a problem concerning the collectivity

of engaged and interacting moral agents. There must be principles which undergird the

formation of collective interactivities that formally organize the type of habitual collective

activities endemic of environmental catastrophe. This chapter seeks to contextualize a

phenomenology of moral failure by examining some of the central problems and debates

historically related. Although there has been a flurry of work on the problems of

intersubjectivity in recent years, this chapter focusses primarily on the foundational work on

of Edmund Husserl, with some treatment to other thinkers. Almost all contemporary

conceptions of intersubjectivity have their roots in the work of Husserl, although he was not

the first to consider the problem, coin the term, nor is his account perhaps the most radical.

But in Husserl, we find a rigorous evaluation of what intersubjectivity is and how it can be

conceptually derived.

48
Edmund Husserl and Peter Koestenbaum, The Paris Lectures, 2nd ed. (The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1985).34
49
Edmund Husserl, "Einfühlung Von Fremden Bewusstein Und Göttliches Allbewusstein (1908)," in
Husserliana: Zur Phänomenologie Der Intersubjektivität: Texte Aus Dem Nachlass Zweiter Teil: 1921-
1928, ed. Iso Kern. (The Hague, Netherlands: Martinus Nijoff, 1973). 8
50
Edmund Husserl, Husserliana. “The Basic Problems of Phenomenology: From the Lectures, Winter
Semester, 1910-1911", vol. XIX trans. Ingo Farin and James G. Hart. (Dordrecht, The Netherlands:
Springer, 2006). 156 [229]

42
 Over the course of Husserl’s career, intersubjectivity would continually play an important role in

his philosophy, from his early writings on the topic in 1905 to the intricate arguments of the Cartesian

Meditations in the late nineteen-twenties. 51 Over the years there were various iterations and clarifications

of his thinking on intersubjectivity, but there is also a clear continuity and consistency regarding the way in

which Husserl considered intersubjectivity to be central to the account of transcendental subjectivity.

Husserl describes the consciousness we have with others as a monadology of subjects (distinct and

separate) that inter-relate at the level of consciousness. Each monad has its own subjectivity, operating

independently yet each has a synchronicity with other monads. This synchronicity forms the basis for the

possibility of objectivity. A central element in his account is that of empathy (Einfülung), which describes

the phenomenological state, or process, by which subjects can have a real experience of each other, yet

remain ontologically distinct. The basis of a community is therefore understood by Husserl as a harmonic

monadology of intentional intercourse and that the basis of culture is itself a form of embodied collective

action.

Not only is empathy an important element in Husserl’s understanding of the other,

but also in terms of the very foundation for objectivity itself. The point is quite salient. In

order for things to be considered as naturally (corporeally) apart of the world, they must

have a phenomenal unity in the consciousness for multiple individuals, and be given as the

same despite the specificity of experience to each agent. The possibility of an intersubjective

ontology appears to be a condition for objectivity. Our experience of the natural world is

rooted in the intersubjective phenomenological synchronicity we have with others. To some

extent, nature is a product of the intercourse that logically precedes and organizes the

comprehensibility of individual experience. This does not mean that nature is merely the

product of social agreement, but rather that nature stands at the threshold of the availability

of shared consciousness. What will prove particularly important is Husserl’s account of the

51
See the editor’s Introduction to HUA VIII, by Iso Kern

43
body’s role for intersubjectivity since it is an essential element in the coordination and

collectivity of intersubjective agents. How can intersubjectivity exist, except through the

corporeal manifestations of bodies harmonized in action collectively, over time? It is also the

case that the litany of environmental catastrophes discussed in the previous chapter are all

the consequence of collectively embodied activities.

The following chapter begins with a brief overview of the conceptual origins of

intersubjectivity in the work of Johannes Volkelt and James Ward, followed by a more

detailed accounting of intersubjectivity in Husserl’s early and later work on the subject (the

“Lecture on Intersubjectivity” and the Cartesian Meditations). Afterwards this chapter reviews

how the concept of intersubjectivity has been developed further by later philosophers. But

first let us trace out some of the general themes of intersubjectivity by exploring the origins

of the concept.

2. The Origins & Themes of Intersubjectivity

The notion of intersubjectivity (viz. that there is such a thing as “existing between

conscious minds”) dates back to the nineteenth century following a nexus of philosophical

problems related to perception, objectivity, and consciousness.52 Indeed, within the larger

philosophical literature, the concept itself is a rather recent one first having appeared in 1885

within Johannes Volkelt’s Erfahrüng und Denken.”53 In that text, the concept of

“intersubjective” is used to refer to anything “that is directly apprehensible to everyone in his

consciousness.”54 This first rendering of the concept has been called clumsy in that it appears

52
"intersubjective, adj.". OED Online. June 2015. Oxford University Press.
http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/98368?redirectedFrom=intersubjective& (accessed August 08, 2015).
53
Jahannes Volkelt, Effahrüng und Denken: Kritische Grundlegung der Erkenntnistheorie. (Hamburg:
Verlag von Leopold Voss, 1886). 42
54
Bertrand Bouckaert, “The Puzzling Case of Alterity in Husserl’s Logical Investigations. One Hundred
Years of Phenomenology: Husserl’s Logical Investigations Revisited, ed. Dan Zahavi, and Frederik Stjemfelt.
(Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2002). 187

44
to centrally concern an epistemic state rather than a relation between subjects, but it captures

some important elements which have blossomed in the later literature on intersubjectivity.55

At one level, the Volkelt conception recognizes that intersubjectivity must have a relation to

objectivity insofar as that which is objective appears the same for all. To call something

objective is to make a theoretical judgement about the content of an appearance. Secondly,

Volkelt situates intersubjectivity as a condition regarding consciousness. From this first

instantiation of the term, we discover a twin problematic relating to both the objectivity of

nature and to consciousness. Intersubjectivity is first situated between the cleavage of the

subjective and objective, straddling the recognition that all knowledge appears in subjective

consciousness, but that subjective consciousness is of a world that transcends subjectivity.

The objective givenness and independence of the world is epistemically rooted in a feature

of social and cognitive agreement, and not in the external independence of the object itself.

Intersubjectivity points to the apprehension of a world that is available consistently in

consciousness as being the same for everyone. In many ways, Volkelt’s coinage of the term

foreshadows the central themes of Husserl’s own phenomenological rendering of

intersubjectivity.

The English usage of the term appears a little over a decade later in the writings of

James Ward (1899). In Naturalism and Agnosticism, he argues that “intersubjective intercourse

secures us against the solipsism into which individual experience by itself might conceivably

fall, but it does not carry us beyond the wider solipsism… of Kant’s consciousness in

general, Bewusstsein überhaupt.”56 Here Ward situates intersubjectivity as a modest solution to

55
Ibid.
56
James Ward, Naturalism and Agnosticism: The Gifford Lectures Delivered Before the University Of
Aberdeen in the Years of 1896-1898, Vol. 2, (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1899). 197

45
the problem of transcendental solipsism. While intersubjectivity may secure a social and

practical objectivity of sorts (and one which is extremely important in a psoteriori

consciousness), it cannot fully secure one from the potential conclusion of a transcendental

solipsism. In other words, intersubjectivity refers to the type of objectivity about the

experiences one has in the world (available at the phenomenal level), but intersubjectivity

cannot touch the philosopher’s stone of noumenal objectivity. One of the important

differences we see in the definition by Ward, as opposed to Volkelt, is an emphasis on the

intersubjective as being a formal relation, an intercourse between agents. This suggests a

distinctly different orientation. For Volkelt intersubjectivity suggests a feature regarding a

correspondence among subjects, whereas for Ward it appears as a relation between subjects.

For Ward, intersubjectivity refers to a dynamic relation, an intercourse (which can arise in a

variety of ways). There may be many different types of intercourse that subjects can have,

but Ward suggests that the most important form of intersubjective intercourse is language.

Language also straddles the objective and subjective divide, both in the world but not of it -

both symbolic and material. Again, the themes and problems of intersubjectivity suggest a

phenomenological approach because the meaningfulness of language can only function in

consciousness and phenomenology seeks to uncover the laws for the structures of

consciousness. The possibility of environmental moral failure must also fall under the

confines of these same laws. When Ward discusses this “intercourse” in his discussion of

communication and language he suggests that “without this intersubjective intercourse

mankind would remain a herd; with it they become a society.”57 Intersubjectivity, insofar as it

enables, or is, a symbolic intercourse between subjects, enables a specific social (and ethical)

relation between subjects, insofar as intersubjectivity might require certain conditions. This

57
Ibid. Ward, 168

46
suggests that language likely plays an incredibly important role for the intersubjective life of a

community. It is also noteworthy here to remember that language, insofar as it may

symbolically rise above the confines of the material world, is in its actual manifestation

something that is completely dependent upon the embodied subject. In fact, the objectivity

of a language depends upon how other subjects, in their own embodied form of

communication, coordinate linguistically with one another in an embodied and social

existence. Intersubjective intercourse suggests a dynamic relation of activity and not simply a

static correspondence of understanding. I think that Ward’s suggestion that intersubjectivity

allows a community of subjects to rise beyond a herd of animals into a community of

persons, suggests the importance that the intersubjective intercourse of subjects plays in

enabling the norms and morals of social existence. Intersubjectivity is more than a mere

postulate to avoid the dangers of solipsistic ideals, but also refers to a positive characteristic

of communities as such. Ward’s distinction between a community and a herd captures the

idea that there is a qualitative difference between a multiplicity of individuals and a

community of persons, and that this qualitative difference concerns a relation of activity in

language.

James Ward had raised the concept of intersubjectivity in an attempt to address the

problem of solipsism in British idealism. Because the idealist holds that the nature of reality

is only given as an ideation of consciousness, then the intersubjective intercourse of subjects,

from this perspective, is epistemically rooted in a form of eidetic experience. Ward described

three separate forms, or levels, of experience. The first and primary form of experience is

what he called “intersubjective intercourse.” He conceived of this as a causal interaction

created between the movements of subjects. He describes in his XIX Gifford Lecture that

regarding intersubjective intercourse, “...I know that my fellow-man is determined or

47
influenced by my action, as I, in turn, am determined or influenced by his. Society,

civilization, and science are the result of such interaction.”58 Ward’s description of our

experience of others aims to articulate intersubjectivity as a constituted condition in which

one has an intercourse of movement with others. It is so fundamental, that it grounds such

institutions and practices for the sciences themselves. He further held that a material and

casual intercourse between subjects, an intersubjective intercourse was partially sufficient in

rejecting solipsistic idealism.59 His book Agnosticism and Naturalism, beginning from a

Cartesian standpoint, grounds objective knowledge to an apparent causal “intersubjective

intercourse.”

These themes suggest a number of important avenues of research, including the

relation of intersubjectivity to morality and the role that language plays in existence of the

community. Husserl’s approach to intersubjectivity is historically situated as a response to a

larger set of problems for transcendental and idealist philosophy writ large. Although

Husserl does not reduce intersubjectivity to causal interactivity, Husserl’s account recognizes

that the empathy of others depends upon the coordinated movements of the body in space.

This forms his conception of the concrete nature of intersubjectivity. The causal interactivity

of Ward’s view suggests a similar theme for a phenomenology of intersubjectivity. So from

the very beginning, when one inspects, even generally, the historical development of the

concept, intersubjectivity refers to something foundational for social existence, to the

notions we have of objectivity, and to the collective embodied activities we have with others.

58
James Ward, “Lecture XIX: Nature as Teleological,” Naturalism and Agnosticis, Vol. 2, (London: Adam and
Charles Black, 1899). 239
59
Ward goes on to explain that even his notion of materially causal intersubjective intercourse is insufficient to
counter specific Kantian problems regarding the epistemological skepticism regarding noumena.

48
Each of these themes is addressed explicitly by Husserl in both his earlier and later work. We

now turn to his treatment accordingly.

3. “The Intersubjectivity Lecture”

During the winter semester of 1910-11, Husserl delivered a series of lectures entitled

The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, in which he laid out the central elements of

phenomenology that would later be refined in his later work. Iso Kern tells us that Husserl

would continually go back to this lecture throughout his career and referred to it as his

“intersubjectivity lecture.”60 The structure of the lecture is familiar to those who know

Husserl’s work and recursive approach as it begins with a general discussion of

phenomenology and phenomenological reduction, and then moves systematically in a step-

by-step methodical way through a flurry of important questions. The discussion is organized

into six chapters which introduce the central elements of phenomenology and take students

through the stages of his investigations. Unlike other renditions of his work, intersubjectivity

figures as a central concern throughout the lectures, whereas in his more well-known texts,

intersubjectivity is typically a concern summarily dealt with at the end or left out altogether.

The lecture begins with a systematic evaluation of the natural attitude and the lived spatio-

temporal surroundings of the ego. Husserl asks his students to examine the meaningfulness

of their ordinary natural experience, while attempting to describe the necessary features of

their given experience. Accordingly, he offers a series of descriptions for the various aspects

of of the natural attitude. One critical piece of element that cannot be easily explained is the

experience of other living conscious beings. In §4 of his text, quite early on, Husserl begins

by describing our experience of the others as beginning with the body. He writes, “[every] I

finds in its surrounding, and more often in its surrounding of immediate interest, things

60
See the editor’s Introduction to HUA VIII, by Iso Kern

49
which it regards as lived bodies but which simply contrasts to its “own” body as other lived

bodies.”61 From the level of the natural attitude, the experience one has of other subjects

begins with the body and is fundamentally related to the spatio-temporal localization and

concrete embodiment of the ego. But the experience of the other is not simply reducible to

the experience of another spatio-temporally located body, another physical object within the

visual or tactile field. That is, one does not experience simply the manifestation of a body in

their apprehension of an other, but of a living body and of the “actual consciousness, its

dispositions, its character traits and which likewise comes upon its own thingly surrounding,

including its own body as its own.”62 The other is experienced according to a reciprocity of

position, such that when one sees the other they recognize them as also having a reciprocal

form of consciousness (of being in the world) but in a different, though coordinated, spatio-

temporal localization. Husserl notes that the other is given at a different point in space, but

always at the same time. The recognition of the other explicitly situates an experience that is

“in one and the same world-time (Weltzeit).”63 The explicit experience we have of an other’s

consciousness is called empathy (Einfühlung). He argues that empathy cannot be the mere

analogizing or the other’s body into a postulation of consciousness for the other. Husserl’s

primary attack against a theory of analogical empathy is principally directed against towards

eminent psychologist Theordore Lipps. For Lipps, the other’s consciousness is the product

of an analogical projection of the subject’s own psychological experience mapped onto, or

into, the other person. The would entail that the experience we have of others, is in

61
Husserl, The Basic Problems of Phenomenology: From the Lectures, Winter Semester, 1910-1911. 5
[115]
62
Ibid. Husserl, 6 [115]
63
Ibid.

50
actuality, a form of self-experience. But as commentator Louis Agosta notes, the projection

of consciousness onto the other invites the problem of solipsism:

There is no delicate way to say it. Regarding the philosophical problem of other
minds, Lipps just doesn’t get it. He discards the argument from analogy and
embraces empathy as a way of building the bridge to the other. But it is a bridge too
far. He ends up in solipsism…The problem of other minds is not solved by
projecting one’s consciousness and experience onto the other individual. That is not
solving the problem; rather, it is exchanging it for the problem of solipsism. Under
this approach, nothing “out there” exists except oneself.64

For Husserl, Lipps had offered something of insight regarding the visual appresentation of

the other in consciousness, but the pure projection of the subject’s consciousness onto the

other ultimately becomes incoherent because the experience one has of the other’s conscious

state is ultimately a predicate of their alterity, not one’s own. In other words, the analogizing

of consciousness fails to take the experience of alterity, or otherness, seriously. There is an

analogical role in the appropriation of the other’s body in consciousness though, but which

is insufficient for the account of otherness. This does not mean that Husserl downplays the

role of the body, or simply discounts Lipps. In fact, Husserl comes again and again to the

notion that our experience of the other is always rooted in the experience of the lived body –

the difference though is that the other is not reducible to being just a body.

After framing the natural experience we have with others, Husserl’s turns to some of

the usual discussions he offers in delimiting the field of the natural sciences, as he

differentiates the phenomenological from the psychological, and formal and natural

ontological propositions. Husserl makes a fervent argument that the validity of the natural

sciences themselves depend upon an investigation into the a priori conditions of the natural

attitude. Further, an ontology of nature depends upon first making sense of these conditions.

64
Louis Agosta, A Rumor of Empathy: Rewriting Empathy in the Context of Philosophy, (New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).

51
The natural sciences are themselves ill-equiped for such an analysis because they already

operate on the assumption of a natural world given in empirical experience. In other words,

in order to avoid the circularity of begging the question, the natural sciences require a

determined a priori validity:

For then, we do not claim what constitutes the nonsense in the first place, i.e., that
humans or beings endowed with essentially the same lived-body, etc., could come
upon such a world and could scientifically come to know it, or that natural science,
the science founded on the basis of the natural world-concept, the science which,
with its first words, so to speak, posits things, space, time, etc., would be forced to
relinquish the natural world-concept through experience.65

This indicates that an ontological description of intersubjective life and collective activity

cannot be sufficiently articulated from within the domain of the natural sciences, including

those sciences which presume a naturalistic stance such as psychology and sociology. A

sufficient account of intersubjectivity must begin by uncovering the ontological conditions

that hold a priori for the experience of others, and ultimately nature itself. This effects the

study of environmental moral failure because it means that a deeper account of

environmental moral failure must rest in conditions that are not within the province of the

ecological sciences. Environmental moral failure requires an understanding of the a priori

conditions for sociality and collective action in a generalized formal sense.

The 19010-11 lectures also include an articulation of Husserl’s phenomenological

method of reduction. He maintains that it is only through the method of phenomenological

reduction that the a priori conditions for the meaningfulness of experience can be

apprehended. The essence of experience is identified by determining the limits for the forms

of experience we have with others in consciousness, but this essence cannot be identified

through the presupposed empirical datum of experience. Thus, phenomenology must begin

65
Ibid. Husserl, The Basic Problems of Phenomenology: From the Lectures, Winter Semester, 1910-1911,
28 [138]

52
by first “disengaging” the empirical veracity of the natural attitude. But what does this mean?

Every experience of the corporeal world in the natural attitude is a perception of

something that is taken to be existing within the world. For instance, when one recognizes

the other, they take that experience to be telling them something about the consciousness of

the other that is “externally” there before them. In other words, one treats the other as being

really there in the world. One can therefore distinguish the structure of experience from the

object of experience. The object is assumed to exist, but the structure of the experience also

has an immanent form of existence insofar as it represents a being of perceiving. By

suspending the empirical veracity of perception (ignoring the existence of the object in

experience), one can render the perception of a perception. In suspending existence, the field

of experience does not disappear, but becomes a display of phenomenal immanent flows of

consciousness. This suspension indicates a methodical means for reducing, as it were,

specific experience into an index of descriptive forms and modalities of consciousness.

After reduction, the experience of the other is no longer an apprehension of an

other, but of a type-specific mode of perception for the subject – a perception of the

perception of the other. Husserl calls this method a new kind of attitude, saying, “[we] can

assume for ourselves a new kind of attitude that disengages every empirical transcendent

attitude. Thus, from now on we accept no object which is posited in the empirical attitude as

reality… We put brackets, as it were, [on] every empirical act”.66 When intersubjective

experience gets reduced in the phenomenological attitude, the alterity of the other also gets

recued to a modality of self-same consciousness; in other words, the other gets baked out of

the equation. This raises the problem of solipsism for Husserl and it is no accident then that

he immediately turns to the problem.

66
Ibid. 39 [148]

53
 “Is phenomenological research solipsistic research?” Husserl asks at the beginning of

Chapter 3. His answer is no, as he refers to solipsism as a “nonsensical epistemology”.67

What exactly is his argument? The difficulty, he says, hinges on a confusion between

“psychological immanence” and “phenomenological immanence”.68 A solipsist holds that

the only genuinely existing thing in the world is the singular I (or ego) of experience - the

psychological ego - and consequently nothing else beyond the immediate ego be known to

exist. In other words, the solipsist argues that the psychological immanence of experience is

epistemologically exhaustive. But psychology presupposes the empirical datum of the world

and therefore refers to a mode of immanence given by empirical datum. By contrast, the

method that Husserl puts forth reduces the specifics of experience into an index for

describing modalities of immanent consciousness that transcend empirical datum. Husserl

maintains that reduction is a mode of suspending judgements that enables an analysis of

phenomenological and eidetic law, and is therefore not a psychological description in the

conventional sense. Demarcating phenomenology strictly from psychology, he writes:

We need only say that phenomenological research can and must speak of all that
which it finds within its attitude. And if this attitude finds that the natural world with
its things and persons along with world-space and world-time stands in brackets and,
consequently, is not there as existing for it, and the something like a pure I as pure
time and whatever is given and is to be posited, well, that this is something
phenomenological.69

The charge of solipsism makes a claim about the existing world of the psychological ego, but

this proposition cannot be an inference of phenomenological reduction. His argument seems

to be that the charge of solipsism functions by a false equivalency. Whereas psychological

immanence might imply a conclusion about an empirical solipsism, phenomenological

67
Ibid. 47 [154]
68
Ibid.
69
Ibid. 48 [155]

54
immanence renders the a priori conditions necessary for empirical experience. The goal of

phenomenology is to articulate a knowledge of the absolute via the bracketing of existence; it

is through the consideration of the form of one’s stream of consciousness that it becomes

possible to articulate the absolute and necessary conditions conducive to natural experience,

and ultimately the natural sciences. In other words, phenomenology can yield an

transcendental and ontological description for experience. The bracketing procedure, as a

parenthetical device, does not actually deny the existential possibility that there are others.

Husserl, in this early lecture, seems to suggest that the problem of solipsism is the result of a

misunderstanding about phenomenology itself. But apart from this general denial of

solipsism, how does Husserl develop an account of the other?

First, phenomenological reduction yields a consciousness of immanent being – the

being of being conscious, as it were – and this is an intuition of the transcendental ego.70 By

description, this ego is a point within a temporal “continuity of flowing points.”71 The

transcendental is a Now-point within a stream of happenings. So the modes of givenness by

which the apprehension of experience unfurls are received in the free retention of the

memory. By reduction, Husserl contends that we gain access to the entire field of layered

experiencing within a “phenomenological stream of consciousness.”72 Additionally, every

experience can undergo a double reduction. First, the phenomenologist can reduce the

experience itself to pure immanent seeing. Secondly, the phenomenologist can enact a

reduction “on the experienced intentional content and object.”73 Accordingly, one can

distinguish both a foreground and background of intentional analysis.74 What this entails is that

70
Ibid. §32
71
Ibid.
72
Ibid. §33
73
Ibid. 74
74
Ibid.

55
our natural experience can serve as an index for the pure contexts of consciousness.75 In his

defense of the method, Husserl points to both Hume and Mill as proto-typically embodying

the phenomenological method in their own examination of empirical experience. It is at this

early juncture that Husserl first uses the term “intersubjective” to describe the sciences.

Science itself is an intersubjective whole. The suggestion raises a profoundly

interesting issue, along with a potential ambiguity. First, it is clear that the sciences overall,

from Physics and Chemistry to Sociology and Economics, each have their own distinct

objects of inquiry and domains of knowledge. There is an intersubjective reciprocity between

the scientific disciplines at a macro level. But secondly, and perhaps more importantly to

Husserl’s point, every science, insofar as it is a science, can and should only describe what

can be objectively known a la that science. Since what is objective is always that which in

principle holds true for all others (thereby indicative of something that goes beyond, or

between, subjectivities), the entirety of all sciences are in the whole intersubjective. But the

account of intersubjectivity for our experience of other begins with a consideration of

empathy.

Husserl writes that empathy is a special form of empirical experience in which one

has a consciousness of others.76 He is careful to warn his readers that they should not

confuse the experience of another’s consciousness with the experience of living that same

consciousness. There is a difference between experiencing another person’s consciousness

and living out your own conscious experience. The temptation to conflate the experience of

consciousness with the experience of living out a specific conscious comportment is a

second mistake leading to solipsism, because it treats all forms of consciousness as being

75
Ibid §35
76
Ibid §38

56
self-same from the very outset. This means that the other is experienced as more than just a

picture. If all one were to have was the image of another person then the other ego could

only be an analogical product.77 At an experiential level, there does indeed seem to be a

difference between the picture of another, say in a photography museum, and the

experiencing of seeing the real person. In the museum, the figures of the photographs are

mysteries and their emotions can only be extensions by analogy of our own, unless we are

told something about them (in language). Yet when the experience of the other is put into

the foreground of phenomenological analysis, it seems clear that an analogical extension is

not sufficient to explain the process. Analogy does not capture alterity. Husserl thinks that

within pictorial consciousness, an analogizing relation does occur with regard to the subject

of a picture.78 But this operative function is insufficient because alterior consciousness is not

treated as alterior, but the product one’s own self-consciousness. But one does not

experience their own state in the face of the other, but that of the other. This signals a

categorical distinction. As an example, Husserl imagines an angry person. It would be absurd

to say that an experience of the other’s anger was actually an experience of one’s own anger.

A explanation of analogy appears incomplete. One experiences the emotions of other as

differentiated them from their own, precisely in perceiving them as alterior. There must then

be a different principle at work in the experience of empathy, if not analogy. Husserl

describes the experience of empathy as being direct and immediate in consciousness: “For

we intuitively ascribe (ein-schauen) the other person his lived experiencing, and we do this

completely without mediation and without consciousness of any impressional or imaginative

77
Ibid. 83
78
Ibid.

57
picturing.”79 Thus, the experience of empathy can itself be the object of another

phenomenological reduction, bringing it into the foreground.

In the phenomenological reduction of empathy, an important distinction can be

drawn. On the one hand, empathy is an experience within a temporal background, but on

the other hand, it is an experience “about an empathized consciousness”.80 This means that

the “empathized datum” and the empathizing experience “cannot belong to the same stream

of consciousness.”81 But, the empathized other is still experienced in the same time horizon.

Husserl disentangles the temporal unity of the other’s consciousness as conjunctive to one’s

own while maintaining its qualitative alterity. This differentiation hangs together only

because of the temporal simultaneity of the other as given through the body. Husserl says

specifically that the “relation to the objective time of the lived body and the world of things

mediates this identification.”82 This means that the synchronicity of the body is something of

a precondition, or co-condition, for the experience of empathy. One cannot experience the

other if they are not first embodied in the same world. Of course, in a movement of double

reduction, one can also suspend the existence of time and this would result in both

experiences of consciousness getting reduced to the same phenomenological I.83 Thus, the

experience of empathy can be reduced to an index for consciousness that refers to the

surrounding bodies in the world. But it is also affirmatively an experience that has its

transcendental source in subjectivity. He adds, “[Thus] nature is an index for an all-inclusive

normativity, encompassing all streams of consciousness that stand in an experiential relation

79
Ibid. 84
80
Ibid. 84 [189]
81
Ibid. 84-85
82
Ibid. 85 [190]
83
Ibid.

58
to one another through empathy.”84 The transcendental ego, as a Now-point, within the

flowing stream of consciousness includes two very different modalities of experience. On

the one hand there is an experience of the body and, on the other hand, the mind; both are

interwoven in a synthetic unity of the other. The two “combine to form a unity of one

experience; and that unity of an experience goes hand in hand with the temporal unity of

what is experienced. With this is found the principle, that constructs the unity of the stream

of consciousness.”85 The experience we have of the other’s body establishes a temporal unity

for the empathy of consciousness. Each temporal now-point of this index “is an index for a

completely definite law-like coordination that puts… each I-monad in relation to each

other.”86 The objectivity of experiences is therefore tied to the bodies of others and the

intersubjective harmony that is possible for each monad, or consciousness, within the

community. This is true not only in Husserl’s analysis of the immanent experience of the

Ego, but also for the domain of the sciences as well. Husserl writes that “[what] is true must

in principle be knowable for everyone. Every person must be able to come to the conclusion

that what has been asserted and justified as true is indeed so, provided that he proceeds

correctly”.87 Husserl appendix on the intersubjectivity of the sciences shows that he was

consciously aware of the dual ambiguity in his analysis of intersubjectivity – that is,

intersubjectivity is both descriptive of the community of others engaged at in experience, as

well as being nominally descriptive of the objective sciences themselves. The discussion of

scientific objectivity as being intersubjectively had an explicit influence on the philosophers

of science of the era, including both Rudolph Carnap and Karl Popper. The early lecture on

84
Ibid. 86 [191]
85
Ibid. 82
86
Ibid. 86 [191]
87
Ibid. 133 [214]

59
intersubjectivity demonstrated that Husserl was actively thinking about intersubjectivity and

returning to the idea throughout his career. Now, let us turn to Husserl’s late thinking on the

topic from the Cartesian Meditations. We shall see that while many of the same themes and

issues occur, his later though organized the problem of intersubjectivity in a more specific

manner.

4. The Cartesian Meditations

Although the discussion of intersubjectivity in Husserl begins with the problem of

solipsism, Husserl has a far more radical place for it than merely as an affirmation of

otherness. In the more mature writings of the Cartesian Meditations, and to some extent the

Paris Lectures, as well as the Appendices on Intersubjectivity in the Husserliana, the

consciousness of the ego is seen to presuppose an intersubjective community for its

genesis.88 Instead of situating the objective as merely a function of intersubjective agreement,

the objectivity of intersubjectivity leads one into the manifold of an ideal transcendental

intersubjectivity. Husserl contends that intersubjectivity leads to a “radical clarification of the

sense and origin.. of the concepts: world, Nature, space, time, psychophysical beings, man psyche, animate

organism, social community, culture, and so forth.”89 When one recognizes that the other plays a

necessary role in the constitution of consciousness, it becomes clear that the concepts of

nature, space, time, and community each point towards the existential other for their

objectivity. Phenomenology, which begins with the apodictic ego, points to a genesis that is

concretely tied to the beings of others for its own constitution. Husserl suggests an

ontological turning from the priority of the subject and towards the priority of the

88
See Husserl, Edmund. “Zur Phanomenologie Der Intersubjetivitat” Husserliana Band XV. Heraugegeben
Iso Kern. (Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1973).
89
Husserl, Edmund. Cartesian Meditations. Translated by Dorian Cairns. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff,
1977. 154 <180>

60
intersubjective other(s). He argues for a “universal concrete ontology” in which the passive

structures and sedimentations of the intersubjective community are essential (and essentially

present) as necessary components for the singular monadic ego. He writes, “[the] intrinsically

first being that proceeds and bears every worldly Objectivity, is transcendental

intersubjectivity: the universe of monads, which effects its communion in various forms.”90

With respect to the problem of environmental moral failure, Husserl’s ontological

prioritization of the intersubjective as a priori to individual consciousness, provides a

framework for thinking about collective action that avoids the pitfalls of a moral evaluation

that begins and ends with particular agents and their intentional action. The failure of

conventional moral thinking, for such problems as climate change, is rooted in the

assumption that moral responsibility is essentially egoistic, thereby presupposing an ontology

that situates the community as merely a function of the individual. In Husserl, the individual

subject is ontologically a function of the intersubjective. This signals a reversal of sorts in

which the ontological conclusion has an inverse relationship to the methodological starting

place of the bracketed ego. Husserl was aware of this major repositioning of metaphysics,

calling it a “Copernican” shift.91 The effects of this shift are not insignificant to ethics. He

adds, “within the de factor monadic sphere and (as an ideal possibility) within every

conceivable monadic sphere, occur all the problems of accidental factualness, of death, of fate, of the

possibility of a ‘genuine’ human life demanded as ‘meaningful’… We can say that they are the

ethico-religious problems”.92 The ethical problems of living in the world have their

meaningfulness in the concrete ontology of the intersubjective. If environmental moral

failure is a failure of the collective existence of a community, and not the moral failure of an

90
Ibid. 156 <182>
91
Ibid. 147 <173>
92
Ibid.

61
individual’s intention to act, then the problem is rooted in the intersubjective ontology of the

community. By getting clear on the details of that intersubjective ontology, we can perhaps

sketch a more complete description of environmental moral failure. Accordingly, Husserl’s

articulation of intersubjectivity is consistent with the problematic at hand. Let us now turn to

the particulars of the Cartesian Meditations, and the fifth meditation in particular.

i. Solipsism & Methodology

The problem of solipsism for Husserl is tied to the method of phenomenology itself.

Unlike the work of 1910, Husserl found a limitation for his earlier phenomenological

method. As a form of transcendental description, the phenomenological method enacts

various reductions and alterations of intentionality to outline the a priori laws, modes, and

structures that refer de facto to the consciousness of the subject. But if the analysis is of

consciousness, then, it can be said there is an epistemological limit to the phenomenological

method such that nothing outside of the consciousness can be rendered. The problem is

ultimately a variant of the same problem that plagues Descartes’ Meditation on First Philosophy

except cast in the shape of phenomenological reduction. Husserl’s approach to the problem

in 1910 was to distinguish phenomenological immanence from psychological immanence.

But his worry persisted into the later work: “When I, the meditating I, reduce myself to my

absolute transcendental ego by phenomenological epoch do I not become solus ipse; and do I

not remain that, as long as I carry on a consistent self-explication under the name of

phenomenology?”93 At first blush, there seems to be a real possibility of transcendental

solipsism because the phenomenological method begins with the a priori apodicicty of the

ego.94 Beginning around 1913 Husserl begins working out a secondary methodology to

93
Ibid. <121>
94
Ibid. 139 <166>

62
counter the methodological limitation fueling the solipsistic critiques. 95 He would come to

refer to this second method as the genetic (or eidetic) method. Let’s take a moment to

explain the differences between the earlier static method from the later genetic form.

First, genetic phenomenology differs from the earlier methods of the Logical

Investigations and the first book of the Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and a

Phenomenological Philosophy in that it articulates the conditions by which the ego develops over

time, hence the name - genesis. Every method is organized by the domain of a purpose. The

goal of the genetic method is to give an account of phenomenal consciousness as it takes

place, unfolds, and develops over time. By contrast, the earlier static method treated the ego

as wholly and already constituted in its bracketing of immanent intentionality. By enacting a

reduction and suspending the postulate of existence, the subject’s own phenomenal field was

put into a sort of analytic stasis, whereby the antimonies and structures of intentionality

could be described. Thus, static phenomenology excludes, or is indifferent to, the historicity

of the ego since the existence of intuition fulfillment in perception is bracketed out to

perform the noetic investigation. In the Cartesian Meditations, Husserl argues that both forms

of method, the phenomenological (static) and eidetic (genetic) method are necessary and, fall

under the general heading of transcendental phenomenology. The general method, or meta-

method, of “transcendental phenomenology, must proceed in two stages…

In the first stage the realm accessible to transcendental self-experience (a tremendous

realm, as we soon discover) must be explored – and, at first, with simple
devotion to the evidence inherent in the harmonious flow of such experience, while
questions pertaining to an ultimate criticism, intent on apodictic principles
governing the range of evidence, are set aside…

The second stage of phenomenological research would be precisely the criticism

of transcendental experience and then the criticism of all transcendental cognition.96

95
Janet Donohoe. Husserl on Intersubjectivity on Ethics: From Static to Genetic Phenomenology. Toronto:
Toronto University Press, 2106. 31
96
Ibid. Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, 29 <68>

63
The first stage of transcendental phenomenology is the effective description of immanent

experience after having enacted various reductions. The second stage of criticism is a higher

level of analysis concerned with more than the postulates of self-experience, but is

concerned with gaining a fuller account for transcendental cognition. In may be helpful to

think of both the static and genetic methods as species of the overarching transcendental

method and which accordingly employ the same two-step process. The difference, however,

consists in the types and forms of reduction.

The static methodology, by virtue of the methodical bracketing of existence, and a

determination of foreground and background, enables an analysis of immanent subjectivity

in an undetermined horizon. Consequently, the static method “is lacking, above all, self-

understanding with respect to my primordial essence, my sphere of ownness in the pregnant

sense, and with respect to what, within that sphere itself, becomes constituted as an Other in

experiencing someone else, as something appresented but essentially non-given within my

primordial sphere.”97 Static phenomenology yields results about transcendental subjectivity

precisely because it flattens out the pregnancy of consciousness, rendering the experience

open to a structural criticism. As mentioned above, this seems to leave Husserl’s open to the

charge of a formal solipsism in which transcendental knowledge can only be rendered as

subjective. As Frederick Elliston has written, “The philosophic problem of others is thus

particularly acute for Husserl because the aim of his inquiry requires its solution yet the

procedure he employs appears to preclude it.”98 The development of genetic phenomenology

follows the insight that a full account of the transcendental subject requires an articulation of

97
Ibid. 150 <176>
98
Frederick Elliston, and Peter McCormick, Husserl: Expositions and Appraisals, (Notre Dame: Notre
Dame University Press, 1977). 214

64
the laws that govern the genesis of the subject’s horizon of phenomenal awareness over

time.

Genetic phenomenology begins in the Cartesian Meditations with the recognition of a

‘gap’ in his phenomenology. He writes, “Now, however, we must call attention to a great gap

in our exposition…

The ego is himself existant for himself in continuous evidence; thus, in himself,
he is continuously constituting himself as existing. Heretofore we have touched on
only one side of this self-constitution, we have looked at only the flowing
cogito. The ego grasps himself not only as a flowing life but also as I, who live
this and that subjective process, who live through this and that cogito, as the
same I.99

The phenomenological description of identity is possible because the “I” is not simply

“empty,” but is filled with a whole series of experiences in consciousness that are

synthetically unified. Husserl gives the example of the way a judgment can persist over time

and effect the pregnancy (or object-filled nature of) consciousness. Even if one changes their

mind, reverses their judgment, the original judgment remains synthetically linked to the

subject in terms of their past and identity-history. Even though one may change their

judgment about climate science, previous judgments remain apart of one’s memoric history

as a person. This indicates that judgments (among other things) have a role in the genetic

ordering of identity, such that when a judgment is made, it has the temporal significance of

organizing consciousness in a manner that can persist long after the original reasoning is

forgotten. So in the process of making a judgement, a sort of short-hand for future cases

gets created and this plays a role in the synthesis of ego’s identity. As Husserl puts it, “…the

act process vanishes but the decision persists”.100 Judgments become habits of thought and

99
Ibid. Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, 66 <100>
100
Ibid. 67 <101>

65
action that are more than just previous now-points in the retention of memory, but have a

continued generative effect on future horizons in consciousness. Husserl argues that “by his

own active generation, the Ego constitutes himself as identical substrate of Ego-properties, he

constitutes himself also as a “fixed and abiding” personal Ego”.101 The goal of genetic

phenomenology is to uncover the laws of genesis according to which the synthesis unity of

monadic identity is given.

Every monad is a “flowing multiformity of… intentional life, along with the objects

meant – and in some cases constituted as existent for him – in that life… the abiding

existence and being-thus are a correlate of the habituality constituted”.102 Unraveling the laws

that govern this process requires a method for identifying the eidetic elements of synthetic

genesis. Whatever elements of genesis there are, insofar as they play a synthetic temporal

role, they must be present throughout the entire synthesis. This means that a given

phenomena, when taken eidetically, must adhere to the principles corresponding to its

genetic development. This means that the method is essentially a form of eidetic description

that seeks to articulate the attributes that persist under all cases, and are therefore present for

every moment of the ego’s development. Husserl’s articulation of the method can be

summarized in three steps:

1. Consider the type of intentional process under investigation as an intentional performance with

respect to both its noesis and noema.

2. Bracket the actuality of the object so as to move it into the realm of pure possibility. Within this

realm one can compare it to other deviations of possibilities given throughout the

generative process of the performance. Husserl calls these compossibles. By

101
Ibid.
102
Ibid. 68 <102>

66
 comparing the universal features of the compossibles, one can describe the eidetic

universality of a said object. This universality is taken as a form of eidetic law.103

3. Identify universal eidetic attributes through descriptive explanation. These eidetic attributes, as

universal, reveal what is prior and yet structurally necessary to the concepts or

perceptions under investigation.

The genetic method consists in extrapolating the necessary eidetic features for the object of

phenomenological investigation. Insofar as these eidetic features are present under all

compossible conditions, they must also be consistent throughout the stages of the Ego’s

development, and are therefore essential to the genus of the ego’s identity. Husserl further

distinguishes passive and active forms of genesis.

Active genesis refers to the principle that allows the ego to actively and consciously

generate itself through its subjective processes. “In active genesis the Ego functions as

productively constitutive, by means of subjective processes that are specifically acts of the

Ego.”104 . It corresponds to the process whereby the monad constitutes “new products” for

habituation within its identity structure. For instance, making a judgement is an active

process of genesis. Passive forms of genesis are, however, presupposed by the active.105 One

can think of the passive forms of genesis as those which organize, frame, contextualize, or

stand as a background condition for the active processes. All active processes take place

under the context of passive backgrounding conditions. Tellingly, Husserl comments that

On the Ego side there becomes constituted a consequent habituality of continuing

acceptance, which thereupon is part of the constitution of the object as simply
existing for the Ego: an object that can always be seized again, be it in reiterated
producings, with synthetic consciousness of the same objectivity as given again in
‘categorial intuition’, or be it in a synthetically apparent vague consciousness. The

103
Ibid. 72 <106>
104
Ibid. 77 <111>
105
Ibid. 78 <112>

67
 transcendental constitution of such objects (cultural objects, for example), in relation
to intersubjective activities, presupposes the antecedent constitution of a transcendental
intersubjectivity.106
The cultural products of consciousness presuppose an intersubjective synthetic unity and

passive genetic condition. It is precisely through the synthesis of passive and active

generation that allows the Ego to develop because it forms the basis for the objectivity of

categorical intuition.107 Needless to say, Husserl’s later work on the difference between static

and genetic phenomenology signals a deepening of his understanding of intersubjectivity and

a more pronounced answer to the problem of solipsism.

The fourth Cartesian Meditation represents Husserl’s mature discussion of genetic

phenomenology - eidetic description - which forms the basis for the ontological

monadology. Regarding solipsism, it is instructive that in his 1929 Paris Lectures, Husserl

responds to the problem with a description of the intersubjectivity:

Before we decide and seek help ourselves with useless dialectical arguments, we must
engage in the broad and systematic phenomenological task of exploring how, in the
ego, the alter ego manifests and confirms itself as an experienced presentation. We
must ask what kind of constitution is necessary for another self to appear as an
existent in my realm of consciousness and in my world… I experience other minds
as real, and not only do I experience them in conjunction with nature, but as
interlaced into one whole with nature. Furthermore, I experience other minds in a
unique manner. Not only do I experience them as spatial presentations… but I also
experience them as experiencing this selfsame world which I experience… not as my
own private world, but as an intersubjective world, one that is given to all human
beings and which contains objects accessible to all.108
From the outset, we can see that Husserl recognizes that the goal of investigation is to make

transparent the experience of being with others in an ordinary sense. Husserl describes

intersubjectivity as an experience of being in a world with others, both distinct and

accessible. If the challenge of solipsism is not overcome, then the most brute consequence

106
Ibid. 78 <111>
107
Ibid.
108
Edmund Husserl, The Paris Lectures, Trans. Peter Koestenbaum, (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers,
1967). <34>

68
would be the nominalization of intersubjective experience. While there is no question that

we live our ordinary lives (in the natural attitude) experiencing the world in an

“intersubjective” sense; the problem is whether this experience refers to something that is

actually real. Paul Ricoeur articulates the problem for Husserl as a paradox between “the

tension between the two requirements of constituting the Other in me and constituting him

as Other.”109 Thus, in order to articulate Husserl’s understanding of intersubjectivity as an

ontological monadology, we need to trace how Husserl works through this aporiatic puzzle,

and then describe his final conception of intersubjectivity.

ii. From Subjectivity to Intersubjectivity

Husserl begins by noting that the experience of the other is a noematic-ontic content

in consciousness. In Ideas I, he had distinguished between the “components proper of intensive

mental processes and their intentional correlates and their components.”110 Since consciousness

is intentional, the phenomenologist can either analyze/describe how we experience an object

of consciousness (noesis) or analyze the object in consciousness as an object (the noema).

While the noesis refers to the quality of an intentional object that is phenomenally perceived,

the noema refers to the what of an object, or the essence of the content of the perception of

a phenomenal object. This means that the content of the other begins in the noema of one’s

perception of the other. If the experience of the other is not solipsistic, then it cannot be

accounted for just in terms of the Ego’s identity alone. Thus, Husserl begins with an eidetic

reduction to what he calls the “sphere of ownness.”111 By effecting a phenomenological

109
Paul Riceuor, Husserl: An Analysis of His Phenomenology, (Evanston: Northwestern University Press,
1967). 116
110
Edmund Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy: First
Book, Trans. F. Kersten, (The Hague: Martinus Nijoff Publishers, 1983). <181>
111
Ibid. Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, <124>

69
reduction to only consider the noematic content of the other within the sphere of one’s own

intentional horizon, the other is constituted in consciousness as an alter ego extrapolated

through an extension of pre-eminent intentionality. But the alter-ego of the other does not

fully capture the alterity of the other in experience. Husserl writes, “[the] ‘Other’ is a

‘mirroring’ of my own self and yet not a mirroring proper, an analogue of my own self and

yet again not an analogue in the usual sense.”112 By articulating what is “peculiarly [one’s]

own” in the experience of the other, one can also extrapolate what is not peculiarly one’s

own.113 There is a strong continuity between this approach and Husserl’s handling of the

issue in his lectures from 1910-11, except that in the Cartesian Meditations Husserl offers a

methodical analysis to show that the resources of the singular ego are insufficient to account

for the experience of the other. As Ricouer comments, “the ownness sphere is actually the

residue of an abstractive operation. But this residue is at the same time the first link of a

chain of significance following along which the ego can first say ‘me’ ego and then the ego of

the ‘Other.’”114 In other words, the eidetic of “the sphere of ownness” reveals a residue of

alterity that cannot be accounted for by anything other than the presence of another subject.

The sense of the other as “alien” means that the other’s intentional life is not given to the

ego in experience. So the domain of the other is precisely that which remains as mysterious

and unknown, yet disclosed. The perception of the other is given through an analogical

similarity to the ego in body, but the other is not analogically available in a direct sense.

There is a fine line between the analogy of the other and the experience of the other as such.

The rendering of the other analogically involves a mirroring process. What gets ‘mirrored,’ as

it were, is not the contents of one’s own conscious life but an inverted potential horizon for

112
Ibid. <125>
113
Ibid.
114
Ibid. Ricoeur. 121

70
the other’s intentional life against the background condition of a shared objective world.

Husserl suggests that the other’s body serves as a “motivational basis” for the analogical

recognition that the other is an animate body. Because the other has a body analogous in

some respects to one’s own, aspects of the ego’s horizon for intentional possibilities get

mirrored into the apprehension of the other. The entire process depends upon a paring of

movement that treats the world as being there and being the same, albeit from different

vantage points that are in principle objectively the same for all. The background condition of

objectivity does not beg the question for Husserl because one can “retain a unitarily coherent

stratum of the phenomenal world, a stratum of the phenomenon that is correlate of continuously

harmonious, continuing world experience.”115

Husserl argues that within the sphere of ownness, one recognizes the other as an

animate organism to which one “ascribe[s] fields of sensation” kinesthetically synchronized in

[the] field of experience. 116 Structurally, all of this happens in accordance according to an

overarching law of association such that the other’s synchronized embodiment triggers an

associative analog of the other. The consciousness that is extended to the other is not a

presentation of the other’s consciousness, but rather an appresentation of that

consciousness. Husserl calls the central feature of this analogous appresented associativity of

the other a pairing. Specifically, he says that “[pairing] is a primal form of that passive

synthesis which we designate as ‘association’, in contrast to passive synthesis of

‘identification’.”117 Pairing captures the duality of both (a) maintaining a mutual distinction

and (b) retaining a “unity of similarity” between oneself and the other.118 Husserl describes

115
Ibid. Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, <128>
116
Ibid.
117
Ibid. <142>
118
Ibid.

71
this pairing through a description of the spatio-temporal features of common experience and

says that it must be reciprocal with the other. It is important to differentiate the “pairing” of

the other via a concrete embodiment as distinct from the experience of empathy. Pairing is

still indicative of the appresentation of the other from within the sphere of ownness. The

association of a pairing occurs as a passive synthesis over time and is thus structured by

specific laws of genesis. The means by which one comes to recognize the other as distinct

yet similar reveals a genetic law of association; but Husserl is keen to add that the ego’s

recognition of the Other as alter ego belongs to a higher genesis.119 This higher genesis falls

under the heading of empathy. In both cases, however, we can see that an association is

passively constituted and that over time the other is habituated as alter ego based upon a

familiarity of embodiment.

iii. Empathy

Husserl’s account of empathy concerns the phenomena of being able to directly

recognize the other’s consciousness and to see the world from the other’s perspective. But

empathy has a restricted denotation insofar as it is a transcendental operation; empathy is

not the psychological feeling one has for the other. While it might be true that a psychology

of feelings does depend on the transcendental operations of empathy, the concept of

empathy here needs to be understood in phenomenological terms. Husserl argues that the

“true sense” of empathy in phenomenology is that it is a transcendental theory, involving the

a priori conditions of consciousness.120 As transcendental, empathy needs to be understood

as the requisite and related conditions of experiencing the other as other and that without

119
Ibid. <112>
120
Ibid. 147 <173>

72
these conditions the “ego as such is unthinkable.”121 To begin, empathy refers first of all to

the experience we have in ordinary concrete practical life in which “I experience other minds

as real, and not only do I experience them in conjunction with nature, but as interlaced into

one whole with nature…

Not only do I experience [other minds] as spatial presentations psychologically

interlaced with the realm of nature, but I experience them as experiencing this
selfsame world which I experience. I also experience them as experiencing me in the
same way that I experience them, and so on. In myself, I experience everything
whatsoever. But I experience the world not as my own private world, but as an
intersubjective world, one that is given to all human beings and which contains
objects accessible to all. In it other exist as others, as well as for each other, as being
there for anyone.122
So to begin with, empathy requires specific transcendental functions for its fulfillment in the

natural attitude. Husserl says that empathy refers to the “thereness-for-me” of others.123 The

“thereness-for-me of others” is at one level a function of the ego’s consciousness, but also

that “these experiences of others appear in a secondary sense, as ‘co-experience,’ in the

mode of a unique perception of similarity. These experiences show consistency in their

indices and in this manner confirm themselves unanimously.”124 This consistency of the

other, given through the analogue of pairing, is not voluntary and cannot be a derivative

product from the sphere of self-same consciousness. This indicates that the consciousness of

the other is experienced as an other that is also present in consciousness. The only way to

make sense of this experience is to posit a transcendental alter ego.125 For Husserl, the

analysis of the other can only be comprehensible given the a priori condition of an other as

transcendentally present for consciousness. This is why Husserl describes the subject as

121
Ibid. Husserl, The Paris Lectures, 29
122
Ibid. 34
123
Ibid. Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, 92 <124>
124
Ibid. Husserl, The Paris Lectures, 35
125
Ibid.

73
ultimately a transcendental monad within a transcendental monadology. Husserl’s

intersubjectivity tries to both capture the subjectivity of the subject and the objectivity of the

other through monadic intersubjectivity. As such, intersubjectivity – particularly given its

effect on the consciousness of concrete nature – is a precondition for the subjectivity of the

ego. This represents a radical prioritization of intersubjectivity over subjectivity.

Intersubjectivity is thus an ontological monadology mediated by empathy in which a

community of monads are present to each other in conscious existing life. When we

consider the problem of unintentional collective moral action, a central epistemic ingredient

for this possibility depends upon the pairings of bodies in intersubjective space. But the

pairing of the embodied monads is only given when there is a consistent synchronicity in the

objectivity of the “natural” world for the interacting monads. The conceptualization of

nature that is available to any monad is also a function of the intersubjective sedimentation

and social namings of things. Every monad has a different place that is, in principle, possible

for other monads to occupy. The synchronicity of pairing movement reveals an embodied

intersubjective harmonization. For instance, the movements and gestures between persons

in ordinary experience are governed by what is intersubjectively intelligible, and then

habitually harmonized in the embodied movements of the community. If a community fails

morally, then it will do so in accordance with whatever intersubjective harmony exists for the

embodied agents. Husserl’s articulation of a monadology is not surprising when we consider

that his phenomenological project bares a strong similarity to the metaphysics of Leibniz and

his monadology. Like Leibniz, a community of monads is structured upon a principle of

harmonious synchronicity. And for Husserl, this is an absolutely necessary condition for the

objectivity of the world. He writes,

74
 The Objective world has existence by virtue of a harmonious confirmation of the
apperceptive constitution, once this has succeeded: a confirmation thereof by the
continuance of experiencing life with a consistent harmoniousness, which always
becomes re-established as extending through any ‘corrections; that may be required
to that end.126
Thus, the principle of an intersubjective harmony is what distinguishes the normal and

abnormal. He observes that “Brutes are essentially constituted for me as abnormal ‘variants’

of my humanness”.127 Because the sense of normal is constituted passively by the monadic

community and activated in empathy, then the natural attitude of the transcendental subject

is constituted first by the community of the subject.

The process of pairing is distinct from the object of empathy; for one empathizes

with the other, not simply their body. “Pairing” is an associatively constituent component of

experience.128 Husserl writes that the ego and alter ego are always given in an original

pairing.129 The pairing is a form of passive synthesis, and as such, it is an associative property.

Husserl writes that the “characteristic feature is that… two data are given intuitionally…as

data appearing with mutual distinctness, they found phenomenologically a unity of similarity and

thus are always constituted as a pair.”130 In other words, when an ego and alter ego are in

relation, the stream of phenomenal experience is given as a pair into a unified experience for

both. Husserl calls pairing a primitive property of the passive synthesis for experience and

that it first arises when “the Other ends my field of perception.”131

In a state of empathy, the body plays a critical role. In Ideas II, Husserl writes that full

experience of the other’s lived experience can only come about “to the extent that the

126
Ibid. Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, <154>
127
Ibid. <155>
128
Ibid. 112 <142>
129
Ibid.
130
Ibid.
131
Ibid. 113 <143>

75
empathy accomplished as one with the originary experience of the Body is indeed a kind of

presentification, one that nevertheless serves to ground the character of co-existence in the

flesh.”132 It is on the basis of the body and empathy, grounding in the associative function of

pairing, that Husserl distinguishes pre-social and social subjectivity. And at the level of social

subjectivity, in the experience of others, empathy plays a motivational effect on

consciousness in which the one can direct the other’s intention, and vice versa. “In empathy,

consciousness is posited in relation to consciousness, and my will and that of the other are

posited in a determinate milieu of consciousness, and in a somewhat modified way here one

act motivates the other, as occurs in the individual consciousness.”133 As a motivation

association, empathy is therefore an integral component for the life of the community. The

pairing of the body in association is not sufficient for an analysis of social collective action

because social communities are more than just paired together in their analogical

approximation of each other. Rather, communities include interactions between the

individuals of the community. For Husserl, empathy explains (at least descriptively) how

communities forge themselves through an intercourse of intentional motivation. Through

empathy cultural worlds come into existence. James Dodd highlights the role that empathy

plays in the constitution of the cultural world(s) by saying that

Empathy (Einfühlung) here revolves around the question of a familiarity with a

certain style of the world (which is different, presumably, in different cultures); and,
again, such a familiarity is historically constituted. (Thus “empathy” is not a question
of comparing my “body” or even my “ego” to that of the other and discovering
similarity, thus deducing a unity of type. Rather, what I “empathize” with is the
experience of the other, the life of the other, thus of a certain manner of style of the
world.134

132
Edmund Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy:
Second Book, Trans. R. Rojcewicz, and A. Schuwer, (Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1989). 208 <198>
133
Ibid. Ideas II 247 <236>
134
James Dodd, Idealism and Corporeity: An Essay on The Problem of the Body in Husserl's
Phenomenology. (Boston: Kluwer Aacademic Publishers, 1997). 111

76
It is through empathy that the inter-monadic worlds of specific communities open upon the

subject. It is also true that some communities (and their worlds) can remain alien. This

indicates that the familiarity one has with a community, the greater an empathic experience

can be. When conditions become alien, empathy gets strained. Over time, the intersubjective

community, constituted through empathy and concrete embodiment, plays a passive role in

the sedimentation of the normative moral concepts specific to that community onto the

subject. In this sense, Husserl’s theory of empathy leads to the necessity of an a priori

intersubjectivity that comes as a prerequisite for the moral and normative development of a

community and its collective activity.

5. Intersubjectivity After Husserl

Edmund Husserl’s conception of intersubjectivity was formulated, over a span of

decades, and his work places intersubjectivity as taking a very prominent position in the

structural theory of phenomenological philosophy and the development of the self (or

ego).135 Intersubjectivity has been seen as fundamental to the development of our categories

of perception and understanding regarding the way the world is. In his concluding remarks

from the Cartesian Meditations he writes:

[In] apriori transcendental phenomenology, all apriori sciences without exception

originate with an ultimate grounding, thanks to its correlational research… this
universal concrete ontology would therefore be the intrinsically first universe of science
grounded on an absolute foundation. In respect of order, the intrinsically first of the
philosophical disciplines would be ‘solipsistically’ regarded ‘egology, the egology of
the primordially reduced ego. The only would com intersubjective phenomenology,
which is founded on that discipline… this total science of the Apriori would then be
the foundation for genuine sciences of matters of fact and for a genuine all-embracing
philosophy…136

135
Husserl is fond of using the term “ego” derived from the Greek pronoun for self, εγο. I shall use the term
‘self’ in a synonymous fashion.
136
Ibid. Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, 155 <181>.

77
While the beginning of phenomenology begins with an evaluation of the consciousness of

the individual (the ego or monad, top use Husserl’s language), the next phase of

phenomenological investigation must be intersubjective and therefore non-egoistic.

Historically, Husserl’s work on intersubjectivity led to a proliferation of work on social

ontology and there appear to be distinct phases for the radicalization of intersubjectivity. If

one conceives of Husserl’s argument as the trunk, a variety of branches of intersubjectivity

have emerged each moving higher towards a higher radicalization.

a. Edith Stein

The first important work on intersubjectivity that is most closely associated with Husserl

himself, was the investigation of empathy by Edith Stein. Using the language and style of

Husserl, Stein argues for a further radicalization of the experience of the other in which the

empathy is understood as a qualitative determination in experience. Writing under Husserl,

Stein explored the conception of empathy using his eidetic method of investigation. Stein

sees empathy as fundamentally a problem of how it is we experience other minds. Roughly

falling in line with the primary doctrines of Husserl’s phenomenology, she employs a

reduction methodology which enables her to conclude that “empathy is a kind of act of

perceiving [eine Art erfahrender Akte) sui generis… [empathy] is the experience of foreign

consciousness in general, irrespective of the kind of the experiencing subject or of the

subject whose consciousness is experienced.”137 This marks a theoretical departure from

Husserl. Stein argues that empathy is not a composite of associative and analogical

operations, but something that is uniquely its own. Much of Stein’s work is meant to clarify

137
Edith Stein, “On the Problem of Empathy,” The Collected Works of Edith Stein, Trans. Waltraut Stein. 3rd
edition, (Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 1989). 11 <11>.

78
the intentionality of this sui generis experience of other minds. As Kris McDaniel of Syracuse

University comments, for Stein

empathy is an irreducible intentional state in which both other persons and the
mental states of other persons are given to us. In an empathic experience, we are
presented with not mere bodies in motion, but rather with persons, nor theoretical
posits or unobservable entities – they are objects which we have something akin to
perceptions.138
Conversely, empathy should not be considered a form of imitating the other, but of (and this

is my language, of) accessing the other. She defends a view of empathy in which the other’s

consciousness is given and not merely represented. She also demarcates her view as distinct

from other leading theories. In particular, she argues that empathy cannot be explained by a

theory of (1) imitation, (2) association, or (3) analogy. Stein also criticizes Theodor Lipps for

advocating that empathy is imitation and projection.139 Stein’s primary objection to a theory

of imitation, similar to Husserl, is that empathy would not be an experience of a foreign

consciousness at all but rather an experience of myself.140 Empathy construed as imitation is

merely an experience of myself personified and mapped onto the actions of another. The

theory of association is also not sufficient however. Empathy by association situates the

relation of the other conscious entity as a function of the associative elements first given in

the categorial intuition of the other. The explanatory value of association was that it linked

the experience of the other to the associative paring of the other’s body. But association in

this sense seems to raise the spectre of physicalism that Husserl definitively rejects. Husserl

claimed that

[the] universal principle of passive genesis, for the constitution of all objectivities
given completely prior to the products of activity, bears the title of association.

138
Kris McDaniel, “Edith Stein: On the Problem of Empathy.” Ten Neglected Philosophical Classics, Ed. Eric
Schliesser, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014).
139
Dan Zahavi, Self & Other: Exploring Subjectivity, Empathy, and Shame, (New York: Oxford UP, 2014).
112
140
Ibid. Stein, 24

79
 Association, it should clearly be noted, is a matter of intentionality… It designates a
realm of the “innate” Apriori, without which an ego as such in unthinkable.141
Association therefore corresponds to a transcendental operation necessary to the

constitutive structure of intentionality. So for Husserl, the experience of empathy arises as a

condition of transcendental associativity. But empathy cannot however be explained by

association, according to Stein, because it still begs the question. She writes, “association

itself requires an empathic act, thus does not suffice as a principle to explain empathy.”142

That is, if empathy as an experience of foreign consciousness, then any associations made

towards the others first depend upon the recognition of the foreign entity so as to make an

association. In other words, empathy by association lacks a description for the real alterity of

the other. A third option for explaining empathy that Stein rejects is the theory of analogy.

On this view, empathy is explained as a means of analogizing the other. Her views here are

exactly consistent with Husserl’s own arguments. She writes, “this theory maintains that we

see nothing around us but physical soulless and lifeless bodies”143 and our perception of

them as living is the function of an analogical inference. Her primary objection to analogical

empathy is that, again, a theory of analogy does not allow a perceiving subject to experience

the other; instead my knowledge of the other as other gets reduced to a probability of

inference and egoistic projection; if the other is given by means of analogy then the other is

never directly perceived. Stein argues that empathy is its own operation irreducible to other

intentional operations like association and analogy. What then is empathy?

In her positive account of empathy, Stein says that it is con-primordial. That is,

although the experience of the foreign other is not primordially immanent in the same sense

141
Ibid. Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, <114>
142
Ibid. Stein, <27>
143
Ibid. <29>

80
that one experiences their own “internal” consciousness, as it were, the experience of the

other is possible only if the other’s consciousness and body have their own primordial

orientation (though distinct from our own). “The living body cannot be separated from the

givenness of the spatial outer world…

When I now interpret it as a sensing living body and empathically project myself into
it, I obtain a new image of the spatial world and a new zero point of orientation. It is
not that I shift my zero point to this place, for I retain my “primordial” zero point
and my “primordial” orientation while I am empathically, non-primordially obtaining
the other one. On the other hand, neither do I obtain a fantasized orientation nor a
fantasized image of the spatial world. But this orientation, because the living body to
which it refers is perceived as a physical body at the same time and because it is given
primordially to the other “I”, even though non-primordially to me.144
The alterity of the other, while foreign, has a primordiality all to its own and this feature is

significant for a non-solipsistic intersubjective framework. On her view, empathy is the

condition of the possibility for the constituting of our own individuality.145 Because empathy

is not “unidirectional”146 the other also recognizes my primordial immanent intention too. It

is along this basis then, that the intersubjective community exists. Stein’s discussion of

empathy lays the groundwork for a clarification of the reciprocity we have with others; such

that both the I and the other recognize in each other a reciprocal intentional consciousness

immanently and primordially given. For this reason, one can recognize the position of the

other as a potential position for oneself. So the empathy one has for others is not a uni-

directional projection towards the other, but maintains a degree of reciprocity such that the

other can re-direct one’s own intentional directedness and an interplay ensues. Stein work

suggests itself as a primordial dialectic exchange. Stein’s differentiation of the levels of

empathic accomplishment (Vollzugsstufen) suggest the possibility of distinct phases of

144
Ibid. <69>
145
Ibid. <70>
146
Ibid. Zahavi, 137

81
empathic experience. Commentator Dan Zahavi offers the example of a child in distress.

When I see that a child is in distress, their bodily expressions act as a cue. Although I can

recognize the child’s distress it is not that I experience that distress, nor is it a projected

analogy of a previous distress I have felt. “No, it is throughout given to me as the other’s

distress, as a distress lived through by the other. This is precisely what is peculiar and distinct

about empathy, and this is why Stein continues to label empathy as a sui generis kind of

experience.”147

Empathy can therefore be taken as constituting a formal condition for the possibility

of the intersubjective collective action insofar as empathy is a grounding condition for one’s

own subjectivity and a grounding condition for the life of any community. Her account

offers a critical bridge for thinking about the ontological independence of intersubjectivity.

Even in those cases in which one is unable to comprehend the other or understand them, it

is only on the basis of potential empathy that one can demarcate the meaningful gestures

from the meaningless.148 Building from a clear Husserl-ian framework, Stein’s work on

empathy provides a structural addendum for how the experience of others is an experience

in which the other’s alterity can remain intact. The other is not just an experience of a

representation for the other (in some form or another), but is an interplay of an alterior

intentionality.

One must also distinguish the intersubjective community from the primordial

empathic acts of consciousness. Empathy is the title of the sui generis operation that allows

a familiar recognition of the other as alterior but familiar in consciousness, but empathy is

not a description of the intersubjective state of affairs themselves. Stein’s ‘empathy’ provides

147
Ibid.
148
Ibid. Stein, <97>

82
a phenomenological description that tries to keep the other as foreign yet distinctly available

to one in terms of con-primoridality. But Stein’s revision on empathy still seeks an

articulation of the intersubjective from the vantage point of the subject.

In looking at the case of moral failure we will need to sketch out a theory of

intersubjectivity that is subject-neutral as it were. That is, we are less interested in an

articulation of the mechanisms which allow our own personal experiences of the

intersubjective, and more interested in understanding intersubjectivity insofar as it might be

independent of the subjective phenomenal experience. Stein’s thesis helps augment the

framework of intersubjectivity through the preservation of the other’s alterity as con-

primordial, but it still seems to render the intersubjective as a derivative condition of

subjectivity. The analysis of moral failure, however, needs to situate the conditions for

intersubjective life that can explain the collective activities of the community in a non-

intentional way. A dialect of empathy can explain how the fabric of intentional interrelations

get stitched together and evolve over time, but empathy does not fully render a complete

picture of the conditions necessary for a living community. Something more radical is

needed.

b. Martin Heidegger

Perhaps the most prominent impact of Husserl’s discussion of intersubjectivity

resides in its influence on Heidegger’s reworking of phenomenology in Being and Time.

Although “intersubjectivity” is not a concept that Heidegger carries over into his own

philosophy out right, it is also clear that in many ways, Heidegger’s account of Being-in-the-

world and being-with-others has a conceptual lineage leading back through to

intersubjectivity. There are a number of points of departure between Husserl and Heidegger,

83
but it is best to state from the outset that while there is a basic agreement regarding

phenomenological method, there is a major break in emphasis and orientation between the

thinkers. Whereas Husserl’s work tends to be geared towards fundamental questions

regarding the nature of phenomenology itself, Heidegger centralizes the problem of being as

the primary concern in his work, with phenomenology only playing a methodological role.

While Husserl employs the language of a post-Kantain transcendental idealism, Heidegger

offers a radical departure in his terminological language that tries to capture the shift of

emphasis towards being. In many ways there two philosophies are radically different, yet

both tend to articulate many of the same insights. If we conceive of intersubjectivity as a

thematic field beginning with Volkelt and coming through Husserl and Stein, we can situate

Heidegger’s account of being-with-others as a radical extension of intersubjectivity.

Intersubjectivity, for Husserl, was the result of a long exposition away from the problem of

solipsism. If one uses the Ideas as a model, it is clear that in Husserl’s philosophy first comes

subjectivity and only then later does one come upon the need for a transcendental

intersubjectivity as a passive genetic condition for the constitution of the ego. But while

intersubjectivity has a secondary appearance in Husserl’s work, he also argues, somewhat

unconvincingly, that intersubjectivity actually has the logical priority. We can begin by

situating Heidegger’s work as taking Husserl’s final insight seriously. Thus, for Heidegger,

Dasein is first and foremost a being-in-the-world, not an isolated ego in need of

transcendental buttresses to find its way to the world, as if through a dark tunnel. But in

order to begin a discussion of being-in-the-world that does not assume an a priori posture

that splices being into subject/object categories, a new language is needed. So, let’s begin by

first contextualizing the shift of language we see in Heidegger’s work.

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 First, an implicit problem in Heidegger’s account regarding the question of being

(Seinsfrage) concerns what he calls the covering over of being. Heidegger argues that one of

the reasons we do not have a clear account of being is because the “question of being” is

that we do not have the available philosophical resources (in terms of language) to ask or

inquire about being in a credible or comprehensive way. Heidegger thinks that this lack of

language is a consequence of a historical process in which philosophy has developed a

matrix of theoretical distinctions which, in their cumulative effect, have neutralized the

question from the outset. Heidegger’s insight is to offer an entirely new set of terms and

ways of speaking so as to perform an end-run around the limitation of conventional

philosophical terminology. What this entails is that the language of intersubjectivity continues

a constitutive philosophical error by adopting a model of subjectivity and related theoretical

categories. Heidegger’s pursuit of a theoretical destruction of the history of metaphysics

requires a completely new rendering of philosophical categories. As such Heidegger rejects

the language of intersubjectivity in favor of a radical re-positioning and re-thinking of the

other. At the heart of this re-positioning is an investigation into a more originary account of

our being in the world. For Heidegger, this is point number one in the repositioning of

philosophical phenomenology – namely that Dasein must always be understood as a being-

in-the-world. This means that while Husserl’s focus is ultimately limited to the atomic

element of the singular monad, Heidegger offers an account in which Dasein is always a

being that is actively engaged in and with others in the world. One might say that

Heidegger’s approach treats the monads, not as isolated and closed off from each other, but

as always in a state of relational movement with the other entities in the world.

Second, and perhaps most importantly, the orientation of Heidegger’s entire analysis

of others is contextualized in Sein und Zeit by the priority of clarifying the meaning of the

85
question of being and developing an analytic of Dasein. Heidegger’s approach is not

theoretical speculation but consists of the phenomenological description of Dasein’s various

comportmental structures. The overall state of Dasein’s existence is described as “Being-in-

the-world.” This represents a first critical departure from Husserl’s work. While Husserl

always begins his phenomenological investigation by prioritizing the supremacy of immanent

subjective experience in distinction from the world, Heidegger reverses the entire approach

in situating the existence of Dasein as already rooted in the world from the very beginning.

The distinction between the ready-at-hand (zuhanden) and present-at-hand (vorhanden)

suggests a similar point of departure. Both concepts point to differing qualities, or

characteristics, of intentional/existential states possible for Dasein. The ready-at-hand, for

instance, is characteristic of those forms of intentional being in which one treats the entities

encountered in the world according to instrumental use and availability. But the concept of

use presupposes a worldliness; for without a world in which usefulness can manifest, then

there is no useful encounters at all. A description of this basic state can only follow an

ontology that begins with the fact that Dasein is most fundamentally a being-in-the-world.

Heidegger breaks down the analytic of Being-in-the-world into the three part analyses of (1)

Worldhood, (2) Being-With, and (3) Being-In. Although Heidegger does not use the

language of “intersubjectivity”, the components of his analysis that directly relate fall under

his discussion of (2) Being-With, or Mitsein. Heidegger argues for a type of priority of others

over the individual, in which the self is dissolved into the other of the “they.”

The analysis of Being-With begins with the descriptive reminder that Dasein is

“fascinated with its world. Dasein is thus absorbed in the world” and that this absorption is

86
essential to the sort of Being that Dasein is.149 The ready-at-hand shows that Dasein, in its

everydayness, primarily encounters other entities in terms of their usefulness to the projects

of Dasein. Accordingly, Heidegger contends that an understanding of Being-with (and

ultimately being with others) requires the phenomenological description of Dasein’s

everydayness in order to better explain the “who” of Dasein. One cannot understand the

role that others play without first understanding who the players are from the outset, and

what their existential determination might be. This discussion requires an explication of (a)

what the existential dimension of “who” is, (b) what it means for Dasein to be with others,

and (c) the everyday Being-one’s-self and other (the “they”). Let’s take each in turn. First, the

“who” of Dasein, as Heidegger writes, “indicates an ontologically constitutive state”.150 This state

is frequently characterized by an “I”, a “subject”, or a “Self”. Thus, the problem of who,

leads to the question of what is the ontologically constitutive state of that thing one calls the

self? He writes, “[the] “who” is what maintains itself as something identical throughout

changes in its Experiences and ways of behavior, and which relates itself to this changing

multiplicity in so doing.”151 So, the “who” of Dasein refers to a principle of existential and

phenomenological unity for Dasein. The proximity and givenness of this unity occurs

phenomenally as already within the world. To give an example of how this approach

radicalizes the Husserl-ian model, consider that if one were to try and imagine the “who” of

Dasein as the phenomenological Ego that is solus ipse, then the very intelligibility of Dasein’s

“who-ness” becomes incomprehensible for existential description. The unity of Dasein is

149
Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, Trans. John MacQuarrie, and Edward Robinson. (New York: Harper
& Row, 1962). 149 [114]
150
Ibid. 150 [114]
151
Ibid.

87
given proximally only in the context of a world.152 For Heidegger, “man’s substance is not

spirit as a synthesis of soul and body; it is rather existence.”153

The existence of Dasein indicates that Dasein is, at a fundamental level, a being-with-

others. In the daily activities of using things, the ready-at-hand reveals a domain in which

Dasein is always and essentially involved with other beings, appearing as a condition of its

existential facticity. But Heidegger notes that in its encounter with Others, Dasein discovers

something which is neither ready-at-hand nor present-at-hand, but rather “they are there too,

and there with it.”154 In other words, the encounter with the Other is categorically distinct

from the other encounters that Dasein has with other entities. Heidegger suggests that

instead of thinking of the other, or others, as a conjunctive confrontation of subjectivities,

one should describe the way in which the others are among Dasein, and not distinguished

from Dasein. He adds that “[by] ‘Others’ we do not mean everyone else but me – those over

against whom the “I” stands out. They are rather those from whom, for the most part, one

does not distinguish oneself – those among who one is too.”155 The integration and close

relation of Dasein to others is so complete that Dasein must be considered as a being that is

fundamentally with others. “Thus as Being-with, Dasein ‘is’ essentially for the sake of Others.

This means that others are always and already disclosed in Dasein’s existing structure. Dasein

exhibits a comportmental structure towards others, in a way that levels out Dasein authentic

modalities. This means that the being Dasein primarily has with others, in terms of its

relation to itself, is one that is inauthentic. Dasein has a tendency to understand itself

according to the other. Heidegger calls the inauthentic generality of others, the “They” (Das

152
Ibid.
153
Ibid. 153 [117]
154
Ibid. 154 [118]
155
Ibid.

88
Mann). The “They” signifies a special relationship that Dasein has with Others where Dasein

subordinates itself to Others through distantiality. “Distantiality” is an existential description

referring to the way in which Dasein can be put at a distance from itself. He writes, “Being-

with-one-another has the character of distantiality… this distantiality which belongs to

Being-with, is such that Dasein, as everyday Being-with-one-another, stands in subjection

[Botmåassigkeit] to Others.”156 Heidegger’s notion is that others play such a central role in

the existing life of persons, that ontologically, the relations of Others onto Dasein are so

constitutive, that they supersede the individual. This supersession is not to any one other,

but to the Other categorically – the “They.” He further argues that

This Being-with-one-another dissolves one’s own Dasein completely into the kind of
Being of ‘the Others’, in such a way, indeed, that the Others, as distinguishable and
explicit, vanish more and more. In this inconspicuousness and unascertainability, the
real dictatorship of the “they” is unfolded… The “they”, which is nothing definite,
and which all are, though not as the sum, prescribes the kind of Being of
everydayness.157
It is against this backdrop of the “they” (Das Mann) that Heidegger unfolds his further

analysis of Dasein temporality and historicity. But the point here is that for Heidegger, the

notion of the subject is already completely fused, in its everyday existentelle, with others to

the point of subjection. Compared to Husserl, Heidegger radicalizes the relation of the other

as an even greater constitutional feature for the existence of the “I”. The dissolving of the

subject into the other, as an existential description of Dasein’s ontology, does not indicate a

contradiction. In his commentary on Being and Time, Steven Mulhall explains, “Heidegger

sees no conflict between his claim that Dasein’s Being is Being-with and his earlier

characterization of Dasein’s being as in each case mine…

156
Ibid.
157
Ibid. 164 [126]

89
 To go on to claim that the Being of such a being is Being-with does not negate that
prior attribution of mineness; for to say that the world is a social world is simply to
say that it is a world Dasein encounter as ‘our’ world, and such a world is no less
mine because it is yours. Our world is both mine and yours; intersubjectivity is not the
denial of subjectivity but its further specification… This understanding of the relationship
between subjectivity and intersubjectivity determines Heidegger’s characterization of
Dasein’s average everyday mode of existence.158
Heidegger’s view of the community and of intersubjectivity, from the perspective of

Dasein’s analytic, reveals the potential that the collective activity of the ‘they’ precedes the

individual insofar as the individual’s own ontology directs them towards a subjection of the

‘they’ and others. This signals the need for a philosophy of intersubjective moral failure to

see the problem of collective action as preceding, and as a condition of possibility for,

individual action. In other words, Heidegger’s analysis suggests that environmental moral

failure may be descriptive of something more fundamental than merely a conjunction of

individual intentions to act. The totality of the collective whole and its determination for

Dasein’s being-in-the-world suggest a potential ontology in which the intersubjective is what

characterizes individual intentions to act, not the other way round. Environmental moral

failure needs to be contextualized and premised upon a social ontology in which the

collective action of the group (the “They”) is seen as a fundamental determining feature of

individual intentions to act. The is but one element in the discussion of Heidegger’s work on

sociality, but it represents an important theme for understanding the development of the

concept by phenomenologists.

c. Jean-Paul Sartre

A subsequent figure in the literature on intersubjectivity is Jean Paul Sartre. While his

thinking evolved over time, Being and Nothingness provides a sustained discussion on the

158
Stephen Mulhall. The Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Heidegger and Being and Time. (New York:
Routledge, 1996). 67. My Italics.

90
phenomenology of the other as well as an explicit critique of both Husserl and Heidegger’s

thinking on the subject.159 Not unlike Husserl, Sartre’s own thinking on the problem begins

with his phenomenology of the Cogito of consciousness. He explicitly defines the cogito as the

“ontological structure [that] is ‘mine’,” and exists for-itself.160 But the experience of others

suggests, for Sartre, that the for-itself of one’s own being actually refers to an ontology of

for-others. He offers the example of shame. “By the appearance of the other, I am put in a

position of passing judgement on myself as on an object, for it is as an object that I appear

to the other.”161 Shame, for instance, reveals an ontology of the individual that is structured

towards recognition. One cannot have shame without an essential structure in which the

other can recognize the shameful. In a not too dissimilar fashion from Husserl, Sartre also

suggests that the body plays an absolutely vital role in the mediation of recognition between

subjectivities. He adds, “My body [is] a thing in the world and the others body are the

necessary intermediaries between the other’s consciousness and mine.”162 Again, we see that

embodiment plays the role of an anchor for the intersubjective mediations between

ourselves and others. Sartre conceives of each subjectivity as reciprocal substances that

communicate with each other through the mediation of a common and embodied world. Yet

when one considers that all of the experiences of the world and the other, however

embodied, are functionally dependent in the first place on the presence in the consciousness

of the cogito, then the questions gets begged regarding what embodiment really means.

Solipsism is ultimately a doubt about the concrete embodiment of one’s experience.

159
See Being and Nothingness, pp. 315-339
160
Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, Trans. Hazel E. Barnes. (New York: Washington Square
Press, 1984). 301
161
Ibid. 302
162
Ibid. 303

91
 A potential hypothesis for explaining the phenomenological process of experiencing

the other is analogy, but Sartre contends that it is unclear “how we arrive at this

hypothesis.”163 If the presentation of the other’s conscious presence is an analogical function,

and the other is alterity, then upon what is the analogy based? Analogies function as

comparative parallel relations such as “x is to y” as “p is to q.” The hypothesis of analogy,

put simply, holds that “consciousness is to your body” as “consciousness is to my body”. In

this regard, the other is a probabilistic form of knowledge; but, such a description does not

remain faithful to the phenomena. The experience of the other also includes a dimension of

alterity – of an otherness that is irreducible to one’s own. Sartre asks, “It remains always

possible that the Other is only a body. If animals are machines, why shouldn’t the man

whom I see pass in the street be one?”164 The core problem is that the analogy of the other is

always incomplete because of the reference to the other’s alterity.

While Sartre agrees with Husserl and Stein that analogy fails, he also thinks that a

theory of empathy fails for similar reasons. While the theory of empathy may provide a more

detailed description of our experience of the other, analogy fails to resolve solipsism because

it does not “put the debate on its true ground.”165 The real problem is that the other’s

existence remains conjectural, even when the conditions of empathy are fulfilled. The

problem is, however, not a problem of noumenal knowledge, from the Kantian perspective.

In fact, Sartre is quite critical of the Kantians on the problem of otherness. He notes that the

Kantians are more concerned with the universal laws of subjectivity, but not with an

ontology of persons.166 The problem of solipsism ultimately concerns the phenomenal

163
Ibid. 305
164
Ibid.
165
Ibid.
166
Ibid. 306

92
knowledge of a social world. The Other is given in more than one ways. First, “the

appearance of the Other… is manifested by the presence of organized forms.”167 Consider

the experience of recognizing another person in a dark room as your eyes adjust to the lack

of illumination. The Other is given through an organization of phenomenal forms that

become present in consciousness. The organization of the Other, however is not merely

accidentally, but is rather presented as having a unity outside of one’s own subjective

experience. Secondly, the Other comes to organizes one’s subjective experience.168 When the

person in the dark speaks, they capture my attention, and can strike fear or comfort me. The

presence of the other captures subjective experience. And here is where the problem of

solipsism can be made clear. There is an apparent contradiction between the idea that (a) the

Other organizes my consciousness, and (b) that the Other’s presentation in consciousness is

organized by my consciousness. Well which one is it? Experience seems to suggest both –

namely, that the Other is an organization of my consciousness and that my consciousness is

organized by the Other. As Sartre says, in effect “[the] Other is not only the one whom I see

but the one who sees me.”169 In order to solves this problem, Sartre argues that we first need

to get clear on what the Other is not.

To begin, the Other is neither a constitutive concept, nor is the Other a regulative

concept. Experience suggests that what we are referring to by the word “Other” is not a

concept at all, but rather a real subject. So how is the problem of solipsism overcome? In

other words, upon what grounds can one recognize the reality of the Other’s subjective

consciousness if not through analogy or empathy? When one perceives the Other as

conscious, they perceive that the Other has their own emotional states, for instance. At the

167
Ibid. 307
168
Ibid.
169
Ibid. 308

93
phenomenal level, one recognizes that the gestures of the body represent specific states. This

means that in the experience of the Other, there must be a “relation of agreement between

these two phenomena.”170 But the alterity of the Other’s consciousness can never be

presented in a positive way and always remains openly hidden, as it were. For Sartre, this

signals that negation is the constitutive structure of the being-for-others. The Other is the

self that is not myself.171 At an embodied level, there is also the negation of the Other in

terms of space. Sartre offers a description of intersubjective experience as a network of

spacing:

A total system of representations – i.e., each monad – can be limited only by itself
and so can not enter into relation with what is not it. The knowing subject can
neither limit another subject nor cause itself to be limited by another subject. It is
isolated by its positive plenitude, and consequently between itself and another equally
isolated system there is preserved a spatial separation as the very type of exteriority,
This it is still space which implicitly separates my consciousness from the Other’s.172
The suggestion of spacing is particularly helpful. A community exists, from this vantage

point, as a confluence of spacings between monads. The condition of embodiment for the

mediation of the Other, means that an experience of a community depends upon a well

regulated habituality in the movements of bodies. The movements of the body are also

derivatively functions of the spatiality of bodies. Perhaps we can think of the community as

the spacings between the individuals of the community. But the negation of the subject in

spaces does not entail a duplicate denial of community. Rather, the community exists and

has a reality in these spacings. Collective action has its localization within these spacings.

In his discussion of Heidegger’s conception the “They” (Das Mann), Sartre adds that

a theory of mutual recognition is insufficient for explaining the mutual organization of

170
Ibid. 312
171
Ibid.
172
Ibid. 313

94
consciousness that the Other represents. He argues that “[our] relation is not a frontal

opposition but rather an oblique interdependence.”173 When Sartre considers Heidegger’s

argument that others play a fundamental role in the ontological constitution of Dasein’s

character as a being-with-others, it becomes clear that a social ontology must be more than a

description of how subjects interact, but also takes the inter-relations between subjects as the

primary objects of inquiry. Sartre argues that while Heidegger offered an indication of the

solution to the problem of solipsism, what is needed is an account of concrete being and the

co-existence of the Other which does not totally exhaust the resources of subjectivity.174 “If

my relation with the Other is a priori, it thereby exhausts all possibility of relation with

Others.”175 This indicates that a solution to the problem of the Other requires an account in

which one encounters the Other and “does not constitute” the Other.176 In other words, an

account of intersubjectivity must be more than a story of how the Other usurps subjectivity

or how the Other might be dominated by subjectivity. “The multiplicity of ‘Others’ will not

be a collection but a totality… since each Other finds his being in the Other.”177 In other

words, intersubjectivity must be conceived of as something that is its own, rather than being

a function of the individual(s). Sartre notes two major consequences that follow. First, the

totality of intersubjective relations is not a point of view that can be adopted, in principle, by

the subjective individual. Second, the totality of intersubjective relations is a “detotalized

totality” in the sense that the totality of relations also includes “a radical refusal of the

173
Ibid. 331
174
Ibid. 334
175
Ibid. 335
176
Ibid. 336
177
Ibid. 339

95
Other.”178 This means that the intersubjective community cannot be homogenized into a

unified totality.

Sartre’s discussion of the experience of others suggests a further point of

development. Intersubjectivity refers, on his grounds, to a totality of dynamic interactions.

Since it is not possible to adopt a point of view from the perspective of the totality itself, this

means that the objective description of the intersubjective must concern the movements of

embodiment, insofar as they ground the conditions for the objectivity of the Other. The

intersubjective exists on the concrete plane of embodied intercourse among subjects. The

detotalitization of the intersubjective suggests that there can be no one homogenized

intersubjective state, but that the intersubjective is a reality that is flowing and always

undergoing dynamic change. From this vantage, the embodied and dynamic intersubjectivity

of the community, and the collective forms of activity that occur in that community, provide

a potential model for thinking about nonintentional collective action. Before one can even

talk about collective moral failure, one must first understand what kind of collection is being

discussed. In this case, the intersubjective is a detotalized totality of concretely embodied

movements between and among subjects.

d. Emmanuel Levinas

A final figure noteworthy for the phenomenology of intersubjectivity is Emmanuel

Levinas. In many ways, Levinas completes the arc of radicalism. For Levinas, the alterity of

the other is the fundamental problem of philosophy itself and the ethics of the other takes

its place as first philosophy. A discussion of intersubjectivity from the perspective of Levinas

begins with the experience of the Other’s face. A few central insights from Totality and Infinity

178
Ibid

96
suggest themselves as noteworthy for a phenomenology of intersubjectivity. First, Levinas

makes a distinction between the Same and Other. The Same refers to the self-sameness of

the interiority of subjective life and its existential comportment, while the Other refers to

that which is exclusively not of the Same. The problem of other minds is a problem

regarding how Otherness and Sameness relate. In experience, the Other is encountered as a

phenomenological presentation in the Same, but insofar as the Other is alterior, it resists

Sameness. Levinas situates the basic ontology of sameness in terms of the enjoyment of

sensation. Classic phenomenology (Husserl-ian phenomenology) operates through a

description of intentionality after phenomenological reduction and bracketing of existence.

Levinas sees a limitation of this approach because it flattens out the existential content into a

pure formal intentional directedness. Consequently, an analysis of intentionality also flattens

out the concrete nature of the encounter of Others. Levinas writes that “[the] idea of

intentionality has compromised the idea of sensation by removing the character of being a

concrete datum.”179 In his view this leads to a descriptive analysis that fails to recognize the

qualitative character of sensibility as enjoyment. Sensation itself reveals an encounter with

otherness because “sensation recovers a ‘reality’ when we see in it not the subjective

counterpart of objective qualities, but an enjoyment ‘anterior’ to the crystallization of

consciousness, I and non-I, into subject and object.”180 That is, a phenomenology of

sensation overcomes the solipsistic theorizing that comes into play in the classic model of

subject opposing object because it implicitly includes a conception of that which is alterior

and a source of enjoyment. I think Levinas is consistent with both Husserl’s insight

regarding the primacy of transcendental intersubjectivity, and even more so with Heidegger’s

179
Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff,
1979). 187
180
Ibid. 188

97
notion of being-in-the-world. To enjoy is to be in an existing relation with something outside

of oneself. But what about the experience of the Other person? Here is where things get

radical.

The encounter with the Other represents an absolute alterity that cannot be captured

from the perspective of the Same (the subject, or ‘I’). For Levinas, the alterity of the other

reveals something which infinitely transcends the resources of the Same. Levinas uses

Decsartes’ conception of infinity from the Meditations as a model. In the second meditation,

Descartes argues that the conception of perfection and infinity is positive and not simply the

negation of limit, or the negation of the imperfect. In other words, Descartes suggests that

he has a positive conception of the infinite that he himself could not be the author, seeing as

he is not infinite. For Descartes, this means that only an infinite and perfect God can be the

author of a positive conception (or intuition) of infinity. But without following the Meister,

we can also see that the positivity of the idea of infinity suggests that there must be a

corresponding alteriority. Infinity is the Other. In just the same way that the infinite cannot

be exhausted by consciousness, the alterity of the Other cannot be exhausted and stands in

an infinite relation to Sameness. The Other’s alteriority transcends the Same to an absolute

degree, and this is captured by the positive conception of the infinite. Levinas writes that

“[in] returning to the Cartesian notion of infinity, the ‘idea of infinity’ put in the separated

being by the infinite, we retain its positivity, its anteriority to every finite thought and every

thought of the finite, its exteriority with regard to the finite.”181 In other words, a positive

conception of the infinite captures the relation of transcendence between the Other and the

Same.

181
Ibid. 197

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 For Levinas, the infinite alterity of the Other is mediated through the recognition of

the face. For Levinas, the face does not refer simply to the bodily feature of the face, but

refers to the recognition of the Other’s embodied alterity. The Face opens up an experience

of a transcendental infinity between the Same and the Other. This relation is functionally

dependent on the possibility of language. He writes that “[absolute] different, inconceivable

in terms of formal logic, is established only by language… Language is a relation between

separated terms… The word that bears on the Other as a theme seems to contain the

Other.”182 His view is that discourse founds language (not the other way round) and

objectivity is a product of language. Language is a concrete form of mediation between the

Same and the Other. It is only through language that human communities have come to

exist as communities after all, complete with symbolic meanings, histories, moralities, and

the like. Language enables a relation with the transcending infinity of the Other. The way in

which Levinas situates language suggests the possibility that the essence of the

intersubjective community is bound up with language. If the intersubjective community

exists in terms of the embodied movements of relations between persons, then language is

that which links the intersubjective detotalized totality to the individual subjects. The

collective actions of a community are likely modulated and conditioned by the relation of

language members of a community share with each other. It is likely that language effects

the collective unintentional activities of a community and that the collective unintentional

activities of a community act as a passive precondition for the type of language (and

reception) possible.

182
Ibid. 195

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 The central insight for Levinas is that upon the gazing of the Other, and

subsequently through the use of language, the alterity of the Other opens up a relation of

ethical dimension. When the dimension of the Other is opened up, the relation between the

Other and the Same is characterized as being asymmetrical. That is, when presented with the

infinity of the other’s alteriority, the finite resources of the Same are simply ill-equipped to

engage in a reciprocal relation. The effect is that an encounter with the Other invites a

situation in which the Same is infinitely overwhelmed by the Other. Given the foundational

ontology of sensation and enjoyment, this infinite asymmetrical relation creates an inversion

of sorts, in which the Other resists the grasp of the Same. He adds that

the resistance to the grasp is not produced by insurmountable resistance, like the
hardness of the rock against which the effort of the hand comes to naught, like the
remoteness of a star in the immensity of space. The expression the face introduces
into the world does not defy the feebleness of my powers, but my ability for power.
The face, still a thing among things, breaks through the form that nevertheless
delimits it. This means concretely: the face speaks to me and thereby invites me to a
relation incommensurate with a power exercised, be it enjoyment or knowledge.183
The power of the Same to seek a fulfillment of Desire in enjoyment is superseded by the

power of the infinitely Other as presented by the gaze of the Other. Effectively, the

asymmetry of infinity initiates an inversion whereby the Other’s Desire becomes a

subordinating condition for the Same. Levinas cashes this out in terms of the categories of

ethical responsibility. But for Levinas, one is not responsible for the abstract edicts of a

universal law; no, ethics begins with the absolutely infinite other that stands in relation to the

Same. It also leads Levinas to invert the typical descriptions of ethical relation into one’s that

emphasis the transcendental totality of the Other. All of this means that the first point of

departure for metaphysics is the infinite relation one has with the Other such that one

becomes infinitely responsible for the Other.

183
Ibid. 244

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 For our discussion of intersubjectivity, Levinas’ phenomenology suggests that

whatever the intersubjective space is, it is one that is fundamentally characterized by ethical

relations. He writes, “It is my responsibility before a face looking at me as absolutely

foreign… that constitutes the original fact of fraternity.”184 The link between ethics and

intersubjectivity here is fundamental and not a secondary characteristic. In other words, to

live in a world with others is to automatically be involved in a concrete form of life of

infinitely overflowing responsibilities. Levinas’ posture stands in stark contrast to the

intersubjectivity of Heidegger in which the community is a treated as a set of reciprocal

coexistents, ultimately subordinate to the ontology of Dasein’s individuality of being-in-the-

world. He writes that “for Heidegger intersubjectivity is a coexistence, a we prior to the I and

the other, a neutral intersubjectivity.”185 Yet when we take the infinite Other into account,

the intersubjective community must be seen as an ethical community, not simply a neutral

coexistence between subjects. Intersubjectivity, if it refers to the community of multiple

alterities, is grounded in an ethical relation of love and fraternity towards the other whose

face holds one hostage.

For the purposes of our investigation into moral failure, Levinas’ work suggests that

the collective interactions of a community of persons are, from the very start, indicative of

the ethical relations between individuals. This suggests an argument that the collective

actions that have led to environmental catastrophe occur essentially out of an already-

existent ethical relation between individuals. That is, the intersubjective forms of life that

occur (and which have led to the environmental catastrophe), have occurred for reasons that

are neither neutral nor the happenstance of individual intentional interest. The

184
Ibid. 214
185
Ibid. 68

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environmental catastrophe is a consequence of existing mediated ethical relations that

already exist between individuals; each seeking their ownmost Sameness through the

enjoyment of the sensibility of the environment. The problem of collective unintentional

action is fundamentally a moral problem insofar as it refers to a linguistic intersubjective

network of faces. Levinas’ view suggests a reason for understanding why an ethics of the

environment is so difficult to get off the ground, because an encounter with the

environment is not an encounter with a face, nor is it modulated by a language. Nature has

no voice, or as Heraclitus is to have said, “nature loves to hide.”186 Environmental moral

failure may be derived from the very conditions for intersubjective ontology itself.

6. Concluding Considerations on Intersubjectivity

We have discussed a number of figures central to the phenomenological literature on

intersubjectivity. The primary discussion has centered on the working out of intersubjectivity

by Husserl, for whom intersubjectivity was first and foremost a transcendental condition

indicative of the genetic constitution of subjectivity. Intersubjectivity was in his view an

embodied monadology of reciprocal relations through empathy. Husserl’s early work saw

intersubjectivity as an essential element in the description of natural experience while his

later work renders intersubjectivity from the genetic phenomenological method. A core

element in Husserl’s phenomenology of intersubjectivity is the idea of a principle for the

monadic harmony between subjects. Later thinkers tended to build off of this basic

departure point, but with increasing radicalism. Edith Stein recasts empathy as a qualitative

distinct and irreducible condition in consciousness. Heidegger, through his own Copernican

shift, reorients the discussion on Others in terms of the ontologies of average everyday

186
Heraclitus. Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker: Griechisch und Deutsch. Ed. Hermann Diels, and Walther
Kranz. (Weidmann, 1964). 22 B 123

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forms of existence. In Sartre, we see a further argument towards the irreducibility of the

intersubjective and a parallel critique that it must also be something more than a mere

coexistence between monads. Intersubjectivity always points to the centrality of embodiment

and the embodied nature of intersubjective experience. Finally, with Levinas we have seen

how the intersubjective refers to an ontological relation with others that is fundamentally

ethical in its nature, infinite, and non-reciprocal. Ultimately, what we have seen is that there

is a historical shift away from an emphasis on the subjective dimension of intersubjectivity

towards an account which focuses on the ontology of inter-relations between subjects, the

intersubjective. The goal of this chapter was to offer a review of the literature, themes, and

arguments related to intersubjectivity within the phenomenological tradition so as to orient

the subsequent investigation into environmental moral failure. The themes of this analysis

serve as the starting point for our orientation to the topic of moral failure. The next chapter

offers an original phenomenological account (rather than a historical account) of the

intersubjective conditions that form the basis for the problem of collective moral failure.

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 Chapter III. The Intersubjective Field

1. Introduction

We have set out to provide a robust explanation and model for understanding the

problem of moral failure, especially insofar as it is exemplified by the problem of

environmental crisis. From the outset we can see that grand social moral problems like

climate change, rapid species extinction, are the result of collectivities of action among many

(diverse) agents acting both independently yet in consequential concert with each

other. Some of these actions are consciously taken while others (likely the majority) depend

upon more passive forms of activity and habituation. We need to understand in much finer

detail a number of things, including in general what the intersubjective principles are that

bound and define collective forms of action and how an ontology of intersubjectivity

underpins moral life structurally. Essential is the need to articulate a model of social

ontology that is unbounded from the domain of conscious moral intention. On the one

hand, it is clear that the moral phenomena we have described from the outset under the

heading of environmental moral crises are the result of agents acting with their own

intentions, interests, and background conditions. Moral theory has typically organized its

conceptual landscape according to boundaries of duty and agent capacity. In like manner,

the phenomenologists of intersubjectivity have principally organized their analyses around

the epistemological articulation of an empathic understanding and conscious awareness of

others. It is not surprising then that moral phenomenological philosophy has emphasized

the moral intentionality of agents.

This phenomenological route of analysis follows the general outlines of Husserl’s

phenomenological approach in the reduction and suspension of the actuality of phenomena

perceived. There is a methodological dilemma, however, in which the routes of analysis may

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create distortions in how we prioritize and organize the results of phenomenological

reduction and investigation. The problem of environmental moral failure requires an

explanatory model that is in principle independent of our personal moral intentions for its

description and thereby independent of how phenomena are perceived by agents. In other

words, the analysis of intersubjectivity we seek is a restricted one. Rather than rely upon an

‘intersubjectivity’ organized around the epistemological problem(s) of solipsism, we seek a

more fundamental and concrete conception of intersubjectivity that holds regardless of how

the individual agents recognize (or see) their moral life and their intentions to act.

In the following chapter I set out to articulate a unique conception of, what I am

calling, the concrete intersubjective field. I argue that the grounding of moral life depends

upon certain concrete intersubjective conditions, which left unfulfilled make collective forms

of action incomprehensible, perhaps even impossible. As Husserl argued, both the

conditions of objectivity and (transcendental) subjectivity are grounded in the

intersubjective. Further, the objectivity of nature is grounded, tethered as it were, to the

materiality of embodied agents. If we ignore the streams of empathy in our experience of

others, the intersubjective consists of a marvelous dance of bodies in motion amongst and

with each other; this is the intersubjective field and it is given in the concrete. That is, when

we describe our natural experience of intersubjective life, while simultaneously enacting a

reduction that brackets out the experience of the empathies we have with others, we are left

with a collective flow of embodied motion. For instance, consider the experience of a busy

market place. The experience of the other shoppers certainly does include an awareness of

their otherness, but they are also given as beings filled with subjective intents. But the entire

empathic experience is grounded in the objectivity of their having an embodied spatio-

temporal location within the same world. If we ignore all the streams of empathy, we still

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have an experience of the bodies and movements of the surrounding shoppers. This one

walks this way, the other that way. The shoppers do not run into each other and frequently

stop to let the each other pass. They stand in a certain way towards each other, they even

speak with one another in language. But even their language is tied to the embodied motion

of the tongue, the voice, and a demeanor of stance. For the most part, the entire field is

repetitive and recursive in its motion and intercourse. The description of the intersubjective

offers us a way of describing the collective action of the community that is not dependent on

an analysis of the subjective intents to act.

The conditions which enable concrete intersubjective life include those that

guarantee the continued possibility of an intercourse of collective embodiment. The

intersubjective field is not a mere state of mind, but a material reality governed by a principle

of harmony. The balancing and tension of alterity between subjectivities are mapped to a

corresponding balance between the flows of movement between bodies. I argue though that

we must take the intersubjective field as something that is real all its own, and that the

principles of the intersubjective cannot be reduced to the individuals alone, as it is an

emergent phenomenon. In other words, the intersubjective is more than the sum of its parts

(subjects); the community is more than the sum of its persons. Although the terms are

closely related they do not mean the same thing. Terminologically, a “community” is

something that exists, is particular, localized, and concrete, while the “intersubjective” here

refers to the essential structure(s) of any community whatsoever. Every community exists

insofar as it maintains an intersubjective ontology. I further argue that chief among the

various features of the intersubjective is the habituality of embodied action. Husserl

determined that habituality, along with association, was a key form of the passive syntheses

of consciousness. I argue that the habituality of embodied activity is a chief ontological

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feature and organizing force for the intersubjective field. Without the habituality of bodies,

the intersubjective cannot ground the harmonic interplay between agents. Without the

habits of the body there is no glue to bind the collectivity of action as a collective harmony

of practice. The principles of intersubjectivity, insofar as they are necessary conditions for

community life itself, are also necessary conditions for moral life. Although the next chapter

explores the moral dimension in greater detail, I conclude this chapter with an argument

regarding the degree to which the intersubjective field is a necessary ground for moral life in

general. To be clear, my argument is not that this analysis will yield a specific species of

moral philosophy per se, but rather give us a model for understanding what universally

grounds the comprehensibility of collective moral action. In Chapter 4 we shall address the

problem of moral life directly by exploring wrongdoing and evil in particular so as to

cultivate a model for getting a better understanding of how collective agency seems to defy

our grip on moral recognition and responsibility.

Central to the argument to follow is the thesis of materiality; namely that the ethical

sphere is ontologically organized as material. For too long, moral philosophers have focused

on the intentionality of moral life, always from a first-person perspective. This, however is

an incomplete picture of moral life because moral life depends upon the being of materiality

as a field for the activity of agents and communities to act. The intentionality of moral life

taken alone is ultimately an insufficient explanatory model for ethical life (and consequently,

for understanding ethical and moral failure) because the form of environmental ethical

failure we are attempting to understand is both unintentional and the result of intentionally

directed action. What this means is that the active agency of someone wanting to do good

and actively choosing their vocation accordingly is not a sufficient foundation for a social

moral ontology, especially when we consider that intentions are generally organized around

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individual conflicting interests. Hardin’s tragedy of the commons problem demonstrates

this. When individual interests collide in a field of social equality, the social commons gets

locked into a state of tragic decline. In addition, moral philosophy as it is primarily

practiced today has effectively abandoned the idea of moral objectivity beyond agreement

and certainly the idea of a moral realism. There are, however, certain ontological conditions

necessary for the existence of a community as such. The very materiality of a community is

so obvious a point that one might overlook it as a necessary condition. Communities do not

exist where persons cannot, in some way form a material relation. But, if the regional

ontology of the intersubjective community requires materiality, then there exists some base

line set of pre-moral ontological conditions absolutely essential for any community. A thin

moral realism may be possible such that the generality of environmental moral failure may be

decipherable by articulating an equally general criterion as such.

The problem of environmental moral failure is a problem regarding the concrete

collective actions of many agents over time. The actions of each are taken for a whole range

of reasons that are concretely tied to the situation(s) at hand. Many, perhaps even the

majority of these actions are taken for individually justifiable reasons. But taken as a

collective, the actions of a typical person in the industrialized world, have a disastrously

collaborative effect, to the point of global catastrophe. For instance, take the problem of

ocean acidification. This is a problem that is largely a consequence of collective human

activity resulting in anthropogenic climate change effect in which oceans are absorbing over

one third of all CO2 emissions, radically altering the pH of the ocean waters. Although

much of the ocean’s water chemistry is still largely unknown, we do know that chemically

the excess CO2 dissolves into hydrogen ions and bicarbonate icons that are altering the ph.

of Earth’s oceans and depleting oceanic habitats. The emerging chemical composition of

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the Earth’s oceans today has not been present on the planet for an estimated 100 million

years and there is significant concern that marine life and marine ecosystems will be unable

to adequately adapt to the new conditions. There is a high potential for widespread

extinction and ecosystem collapse looming on the horizon. Yet the effects of environmental

catastrophe are not themselves intended at all. Consequently, we have a situation in which

the justified actions of individuals cannot be justified at a collective level. If we assume the

very worst, then the threat to the environmental stability of Earth’s natural systems

constitutes an existential threat to humanity and subsequently the very possibility of moral

life itself. The reverse tension may also appear to be the case. If individuals curtail their

actions in the face of a possible collective ruin, they must also mitigate, change, or ignore the

forms of individual moral responsibility they would have otherwise taken on. It is not only a

moral problem, but it also signifies an ontological problem.

There are two levels of the problem and each level corresponds to either an

individual ontology or a collective ontology. Husserl distinguishes between formal and

regional ontology. While formal ontology (the highest level) is the “eidetic science for any

object whatsoever” and explicates the a priori formal and essential conditions of being writ

large, regional ontology refers to the a priori essential conditions for specific localized

concretums. A region is the “highest generic unity belonging to a concretum.” Husserl

argues that a regional ontology “determines ‘synthetical’ eidetic truths, that is to say, truths

grounded in it as this generic essence, but that are not mere particularizations of truths

included in formal ontology.”187 This means that our two propositions, the one about the

individual, and the other about the collective, refer to different regional

187
Husserl, Ideas I, 31 <31>

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categories. Individual action depends upon specific ontological conditions for its possibility,

actualization, and comprehensibility. The moral judgements we make about the actions of

others also depend upon these conditions. The problem of environmental moral failure

reveals a tension between two forms of action, but at different regional ontological

levels. Thus, in order to avoid a potential equivocation in our comprehensibility of the

problem, we must clarify what the regional ontological conditions for collective action and

intersubjective life are. An immediate moral appropriation of the problem, without first

understanding the ontological groundings for collective actions, would appropriate

ontological assumptions about collective action which may not actually hold. In fact, I think

that the problem of moral failure reveals the disparity and insufficiency of applying moral

categories and frameworks (which assume an individual ontological stance) to problems of

collective action. The result of this equivocation is namely the obscurity and

incomprehensibility of the problem itself. What Jamieson has called our ‘common sense

morality’ is simply ill-equipped to make sense of the problem. We should note that Jamieson

describes the difficulty of climate change as a moral problem by altering the spatial and

temporal features of the actions that his imagined example of Jack and Jill. But the

conditions he changes are precisely those conditions relevant in an ontology of the

individual. At the core of the issue is the theoretical centrality of the individual and the

prioritization of subjective intention. Accordingly, a moral philosophy that treats the

individual as the primary unit of analysis will lack the appropriate resources to effectively

cognize a collective moral problem as an adequate extension of individual moral

responsibility. In essence, what is required is a different account of collective action; or in

other words, a different ontology. In what follows, I attempt to outline the structure of an

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intersubjective ontology that is concretely and materially constituted by embodied subjects

but irreducible to those subjects.

2. Prelude to Intersubjective Ontology

There is a methodological difficulty in Husserl’s overall phenomenological project that we

must remain cognizant of. Static slices of intentionality from a first person perspective

inevitably lead to the priority of an intersubjective ontology because of its generative effect

on the constitution of the ego as is argued for in the Cartesian Meditations. This means that

the logical ordering of phenomenological descriptions do not coincide with the logical

orderings of being that are disclosed phenomenologically. That is, the order of our

investigatory epistemology need not sequentially mirror the ontological orderings of the

phenomena themselves. This raises a number of questions regarding what the ontology of

intersubjectivity really concerns and as a consequence, we must take time to render a

provisional understanding of what a suitable intersubjectivity consists of, delineating the key

categories and concepts. In addition, we need to say something about what it means to talk

about being in general. What is ontology?

Every investigation must begin somewhere, so let our launching point begin with a basic

review of Husserl’s conception of ontology. There are a couple of key points. First, we

need to recognize that instead of ontology we should speak of ontologies. As we have

already said previously, ontology roughly refers to the relations of beings that hold for given

objects and matrices of objects. Husserl distinguishes formal and material ontology. He

writes:

Let us make this clear. Let us attempt the maximum possible exclusion of the eidetic
and consequently a like exclusion of all eidetic sciences. To each regionally
delimitable sphere of individual being, in the broadest logical sense, there belongs an

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 ontology. For example, an ontology of Nature belongs to physical nature; an
ontology of psycho-physical being to the psychophysical. All of these disciplines,
whether already developed or merely required, undergo reduction. In contrast to the
material ontologies, we find "formal" ontology (united with the formal logic of
significations produced by thinking), to which the quasi-region, "any object
whatever," belongs. If we try to exclude in addition <formal ontology>, doubts arise
which will, at the same time, concern the possibility of an unrestricted exclusion of
the eidetic.188

Here Husserl is distinguishing the relation between the ontological correlates to the

methodological reductions in phenomenology. A formal ontology ultimately refers to the

formal properties that any eidetic object has regardless of its material particularity. Dan

Zahavi adds that, “formal ontology is the name for the discipline that investigates what it

means to be an object.” Husserl insists in the passage above that formal ontology has a

priority for the reason that its exclusion would result in the exclusion of eidetic

comprehensibility itself. The difference between formal ontology and material ontology is a

difference of level. Formal ontology renders the relation of forms that hold between objects

at the level of pure logic and pure mathematics. Husserl says explicitly that “anything and

everything is an object in the sense proper to formal ontology.” These formal ontological

relations hold universally and are applicable to all eidetic essences insofar as they are mathesis

universalis. By contrast, material ontologies refer to the specific ontological datum available

for articulation given a specific eidetic field of analysis and correlating reduction. The

different sciences explore different regional ontologies. “In contrast, material (or regional)

ontology examines the essential structures belonging to a given region or kind of object and

seeks to determine that which holds true with necessity for any member of the region in

question.” Husserl frequently uses the distinction between the natural sciences and the

logical sciences as an example of the difference. Physics explores natural objects and their

188
Husserl. Ideas I. 135 <112>

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principles of motion while logicians and mathematicians engage in a science that neutralizes

all empirical content, thereby reducing the field of inquiry to merely formal

properties. Formal ontology comes prior to material ontology in terms of its universal

function such that formal ontological relations will hold for any object whatsoever when

‘emptied’ of their content. Husserl cautions that although this means there is some

coordination between formal and material ontology, they are not related in a one-to-one

correspondence per se. It is equally important to recognize the difference between

formalization and generalization, both of which are investigatory procedures. Generalization

refers to the process of taking an individual filled-in essence, as it were, and extrapolating

towards the species and genus essence. Formalization, works the other way by extrapolating

the logical form of an eidetic essence when emptied of its content. Dermot Moran describes

the difference by saying that

Generalization is the process whereby one moves from the individual to the species
and the genus. Beginning with an individual physical object (e.g. a stone), one moves
to the species ‘spatial, material thing.’ Formalization, on the other hand, abstracts
from the material properties of a given entity and focuses on the object in terms of
pure, empty, categorical forms. Thus, for example, a physical object will be
formalized as ‘an entity’.189

Yet, it is equally clear that the material ontology has its own sort of priority given that its

being is a real essence. Husserl himself declares this in the second book of the

Ideas. Accordingly, there are a plethora of possible material ontologies. This plurality can be

differentiated by distinguishing an ontological region.

189
Dermot Moran, Husserl's Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology,
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012).

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 Husserl introduces the organizing principle of a region (and hence, a regional

ontology) to help organize the system. He writes that, “[to] each region there corresponds a

regional ontology which comprises a number of regional sciences either self-sufficiently

closed or perhaps based one upon another corresponding precisely to the highest genera

which are united making up the region.”190 The relation between formal and material

ontologies must run parallel with each other, since they coincide imminently in

experience. This means that the domain of a regional ontology is fortuitously grounded by

certain formal ontological features, but that the particulars of a region are determined by all

concepts which delimit the domain of objects for that region. Husserl calls this the

‘universal rule’ for the fundamental clarification of all regional concepts - namely, that the

means of investigating a regional ontology depends upon fixing certain regionally delimiting

eidetic constraints.

At this point we should delimit our field of inquiry and specify in what sense our

conception of intersubjectivity is to be ontologically distinguished. Because the overall

problem of collective environmental crisis concerns an acute form of non-intentional action,

and because a moral problem is by its very nature more than just a formal problem (a

content-filled object), the intersubjective ontology we will discuss here is delimited by the

exclusion of specific intentional reasons for action. Rather, we must go even further and

exclude any first-person reason for action in our exploration of intersubjectivity and its

relation to moral activity for the reason that every ‘first-person reason for action’ always

signals a series of particular intentions and interests. Our task is to understand the

grounding features of intersubjective life so as to fashion a model for describing the

190
Ibid., Husserl, Ideas I, 162 <134>

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ontological structure of our failings and naive environmental philosophy. By restricting the

ontological regions that concern first-person reasons for action from the intersubjective

field, we are left to imagine intersubjective life in a way that requires us to ignore the

individual intentionality that mix and coalesce in any community by structures of

empathy. Much of our intersubjective experience consists in understanding each other - not

through a system of signs and representations - but ultimately as fellow beings, both distinct

yet alike. Daily life in a community requires that we recognize others and understand them

as beings in relation to ourselves, but this aspect of intersubjective individual recognition in

intentional consciousness is precisely what we shall ignore here, at least in a temporary and

restricted sense. We will seize upon the ontological characteristics that are constitutive for

any intersubjective community distinct from the reasons for action that individuals of those

communities have. That is, what ontological features must a community have regardless of

their particularity, ignoring their given history, and excluding any given moral customs as

such? In this sense, we are interested in the ontological properties of the intersubjective

field. If we make this reduction though, what remains? We are accustom to thinking of

communities, societies, and cultures as nominal categories manifested only by individual

operations of consciousness. But when we bracket out the individual consciousness that

others have for each other, we are able to recognize a plethora of phenomena that remain

materially. Phenomenologically speaking, the study of intersubjectivity is an ontological

analysis of the regional complexity for the intersubjective. The intersubjective can be treated

as a material genera in which a variety of different senses of being are at play. Each of the

different senses at play belong to this single material region, and our goal is to identify the

implicit conditions and principles at work accordingly. In particular, we are interested in

isolating the conditions for non-intentional action, as well as those non-individualistic

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conditions that trigger a domain of collective responsibility. We can differentiate both a

formal intersubjective ontology and a material intersubjective ontology that run in parallel, but our

emphasis is on the latter. When the first person perspective gets bracketed out of

consideration, the intersubjective field that remains is something given in the material

embodiment of the community rather than the immanent connections of empathic

intentional distribution. The intersubjective community exists in the movement of

materiality and interlacing forms of interaction that exist between persons. Even though a

complete conception of intersubjectivity must include an explanation of intentional empathy,

the scope of our environmental problem frees us from this concern for the present

moment.

3. The Sense in which the Intersubjective is said to be Real

What exactly does it mean then to talk about an intersubjective ontology? What does

it mean to say that a community has being or existence? In what sense is an intersubjective

community something real? Clearly, members of a community have a sense of who they are

and of what their community is, and one might say that the community has an existence in

the consciousness of that community. But given that we have formally bracketed out the

consideration of first person intentionality, then we must explicate the sense in which we say

a community is a real thing. What remains of a community if we drain away the ideas of the

community? And in order to answer this, I would like to offer a provisional distinction of

what, I think, it means to say that something is real.

In the phenomena of our experience, we categorize and distinguish different sorts of

things as real which are not equivalent one to another. For instance, the Galapagos Islands

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and my conception of the Galapagos Islands are both equally real, but in distinctly different

ways. The conception I have of the islands has its reality as being a fact of my immanent

consciousness whereas the islands have a material and substantial quality that make them real

regardless of my consciousness, (all of this being a process in consciousness) or at least this is

how we conceive of a natural reality. The experience of the material islands as objectively

external to my consciousness is given through sets of experiences that form a synthetic unity

in consciousness. The objectivity of a thing, in terms of its substantial reality is

fundamentally related to its givenness and continued identity in space and time. Husserl’s

pure transcendental phenomenology represents an important philosophical attempt to lay

bare the structures of consciousness, differentiating a variety of syntheses and the eidetic

ontologies. But the phenomenology of intersubjectivity, and especially moral

intersubjectivity, is not a pure phenomenology and I do not think we need to concern

ourselves with an account of how reality is compiled in consciousness. Instead, let us

proceed from a more pedestrian position and ask ourselves what it means for something to

be real in an average and everyday sense - in the same sense in which we encounter others in

the world and at the same level in which our intersubjective activities exist. I contend at the

‘objective’ and ‘shared’ level, real existence can be differentiated by either a conception of

substance or form.

There are two general ways in which something is recognized as having being, as

existing, of being real. The first most obvious manner in which I treat something as real, as

existing and having being, comes from the substantial quality of a thing - the fact that it is a

thing in the world (in space and time) as I, though qualitatively and numerically

distinct. Husserl describes the manner in which we recognize things in the world as being a

part of the formal and most general structures of the life-world. He writes:

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 The world is pre given thereby, in every case [as certain], in such a way that
individual things are given. But there exists a fundamental difference between the
way we are conscious of the world and the way we are conscious of things or
objects… though together the two make up an inseparable unity. Things, objects…
are ‘given’ as being valid for us in each case (in some mode or other of notice
certainty) but in principle only in such a way that we are conscious of them as things
of objects within the world-horizon.191

In this passage we get a description of the way in which ‘things’ are taken as being a part of

the ‘natural’ world. The first manner in which I take things as being things, is

substantial. This form of existence we shall call substantial existence, or substantial

reality. The natural sciences take it for granted that the world is populated with

substances. In the natural attitude, ‘substance’ is a purely abstract term; for we encounter

substances in the world not as ‘substances’ but as keys, hats, persons, animals, etc.…; that is,

we experience substances as the entities they are. Husserl discusses the notion of substance

in detail in the second chapter of Ideas II. He writes that when we direct ourselves to the

totality of “real things” we find that the world is populated with natural ‘things’ that are

either material in nature (at the lowest level of analysis) or living. Material things are given in

consciousness as extended in space and time. “Every thingy being is temporally extended, it

has duration, and with its duration it is fit within Objective Time in a strict manner.”192 But

Husserl argues that we must also distinguish between the temporal duration of a thing and

its “real” nature as it is given in worldly space. “The thing is moveable in space, in virtue of

the corporeal extension which belongs to it by essence and is exclusively proper to it, and

which can constantly alter its location in space. These propositions can be understood so

universally that they hold in fact a priori for every thingy being whatever." 193 He goes on to argue

191
Husserl. Crisis §37
192
Husserl. Ideas II §12
193
Ibid.

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that as a corporeal substance, material things have extension in space. Extension reveals the

possibility of fragmentation. In other words, objects that are extended in space, are not

space themselves, but exist insofar as they have the possibility to fragment as parts within

space. Every material object must have, in so far as it is a material and corporeal substance,

a composition. One should not, however, worry over the fact that substances are

themselves composed. Every student knows that matter can be broken down ad infinitum

(composed of molecules, which are in turn composed of atoms, and then electrons, quarks,

etc.). Some reject the real nature of substances because every substance can decompose

infinitesimally. But if there are no substances, then to what does a substance decompose

into? Substances are postulated as real according to a specific regional ontology and the

problem of composition here seems to demonstrate the nominal postulation of substance -

real in the world but ontologically weak at a higher region. There is also the problem that if a

substance is the only way of recognizing reality, then how is it we can recognize formations

(and relations) of substances and the relations between them? The problem is related

epistemologically to the transcendental function of negation in consciousness and it is a very

old problem stretching all the way from Parmenides to Sartre.

On the topic of reality, Husserl offers a helpful distinction between that which is

‘real’ in the conventional spatiotemporal sense from that which is ‘irreal’. Both the real and

irreal are implicitly related to the conditions of objectivity. In Experience and Judgement,

Husserl comes to the topic by way of a discussion regarding the objectivities of

understanding and, specifically how the objectivity of a proposition can exist. The puzzle for

him concerns the distinct modes of temporality given in the predicative judgment. He writes,

“A proposition is not like a real object, individuated in an objective point of time; rather, it is

an irreal object which, so to speak, is everywhere and nowhere. Real objectivities are joined

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together in the unity of an objective time and have their horizon of connection,” but, “a

plurality of irreal objectivities… does not have for consciousness such horizon-intentions

referring to a temporal connection.”194 It is clear that propositions do have objectivity, but

their objectivity differs in an important way. On the one hand, the ‘real’ concerns that which

has a material individuation in space and time, while the irreal concerns a certain synthetic

unity over the course of time, that once intuited are recognized as an objective

unity. Importantly, Husserl says that at the base of our most general conception of reality is

the concretum. The irreal does not only concern the making of propositional judgements,

but also to “cultural objectivities” that include things like “works of art, books, cities, and so,

are also real objects and things in the broadest sense.”195 This means that cultural existence,

for Husserl, ultimately corresponds to an irreal objectivity. Unlike the objective corporeal

thing, irrealtities are independent of the material objects which make them up. The sonnets

of Shakespeare are independent of the material books in which they are written, and their

objectivity is not given by a specific point in the space-time continuum; rather, their

objective reality consists in their having an identical temporal ordering, though in differing

material concretions. Further, the domain of the irreal extends to cover the constitution of a

state, where the social agreement has an objective temporal presence in terms of its

repeatability of obligations onto new individuals. So this distinction between the real and

irreal offers a potential horizon for thinking about the objectivity of a collective form of

action. The central criteria for observing an irreal objectivity is that it can “appear in

different realities as identical – not merely as similar.”196 For instance, Shakespeare’s sonnets

194
Husserl. Experience and Judgement. 259
195
Ibid. 265
196
Ibid.

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appear identical regardless of which book one reads them in. But is intersubjective life truly

an irreality?

First, there is a difference between the intersubjective life of a community and the

irreal concepts used to describe that community. The function of embodiment is crucial for

the grounding of intersubjectivity, and this embodiment takes its place among a diverse

patterning and network of pairing movements between bodies. The irreal objective

identification of a community, or one of its practices, occurs where an identical temporal

ordering can be found that is not localized to a natural object as such. The temporal ordering

itself is nothing other than an eidetic form. But in the case of the intersubjective

community, given its materiality, the form must also be present with the movement of the

body; and the existence of a community requires the continual movement of these bodies.

This movement, and its harmonic intercourse, is an objective necessity for the identification

of the irreality of the intersubjective community. But the movement itself is not irreal, but

embodied, localized, and substantial. The form of the movement’s principled repetition is

where irreality comes into play. I think this is an important difference; namely that there is

both a material form of movement and the substance which moves. Husserl advances a

further distinction that is instructive. There are both free idealities and bound idealities. The

free idealities are “pure essential structures of every kind”197 while the bound are tied to the

concrete in some way. This means that the irreality of the intersubjective community is a

bound ideality, and it is linked to the motion of the body.

It is important to clarify that we are not postulating a theory here for what it means

to be, but rather what general conditions exist in our ordinary way of being that when

197
Ibid. 267

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fulfilled, we predicate reality in some way. There are ‘things’ which we recognize as having

existence, but do not have a substance exactly. For instance, we can ask ourselves what it

means to talk about having an ‘economy’. It’s clear that much of the environmental crisis

and the sorts of collective action we are interested in uncovering here concerns ‘economic

activity’. But what is an ‘economy’ exactly? We must look to the ways in which we describe

an ‘economy’ as being a ‘thing’ in our shared world. It is not one thing though, but rather

many things, situations, and relations - it is an entire schema of material and intentional

interactivity. Imagine persons coming together in a market to exchange goods. The

‘economy’ does not refer to any particular exchange - not to this or that transaction - but

rather as a characterization of the whole at a more general level. The generality of an

economy does not negate its status as a real thing in the world. The ‘economy’ consists in a

specific form of relations (a specific composition) among substances. Multiple formations

and encounters are possible. The economy, therefore, has a formal irreality rather than a

substantial reality. To be clear, we are not talking about the form of the object, but rather

the form of its being qua ideality. In other words, ‘things’ can be temporal forms rather than

spatial substances. It is clear that from the perspective of the natural attitude, every formal

relation requires a substance (in the broadest sense of the term) in order to be a real relation,

but is also equally true that every substance has a formal temporal structure. The same ad

infinitum problem that we saw with substantial reality (namely that every substance is

composed of other substances) is reversed and we can see the distinction is co-

extensive. There is no formal irreality without substantial reality and there is no substantial

reality without a formal irreality. In other words, something is said to exist if it is either a

form of some sort or a substance and the distinctions are irreducible. We can thus

distinguish two basic types of existence - (1) formal irreality and (2) substantial reality.

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 Articulating the difference between substantial and formal existence is a helpful

exercise for our discussion of intersubjectivity. We argued above that our particular study of

intersubjectivity was to parenthesize and bracket out the individual’s reasons for action and

articulate the inter ontology between the subjects of a community. This distinction becomes

something of a model for us. Husserl’s language of the intersubjective as a monadology

formally centralized the idea of the monad as the empathic source for the constitution of any

community whatsoever. The transcendental register of the “intersubjective” should be

sharply distinguished from the language of the community. Intersubjectivity is a description

of the transcendental condition(s) for the possibility of the community. The analysis of the

intersubjective begins methodologically with a description of the substantial composition of

the community where every individual is recognized as being a substance. Every social

group is composed of individuals, in principle. Intersubjective ontology concerns the

principles that govern or structure the group as a whole. But, and this is very important, the

intersubjective is something in its own right - it has a real existence, in terms of the relations

between monadic substances. The intersubjective has a material existence in terms of the

forms of monadic activities and effects. We are reminded of Husserl’s distinction between

(a) intentional relations and (b) real relations. An intentional relation is a relation given in

consciousness between and Ego and an Object given. A real relation is a causal relation

between an Ego and an Object in the world. In order to be a real relation, it is necessary

that the object exist in the world substantially. He writes, "The real relation collapses if the

thing does not exist; the intentional relation, however, remains."198 Now, while Husserl's

investigations of intersubjectivity are primarily characterized in terms of spirit, Moran and

Cohen note that

198
Husserl, Ideas II, 227 <215>

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 Husserl employs the term ‘sprint’ (Geist) and the ‘spiritual world’ (die geistige Welt)
in the usual German sense to mean broadly the domain of the ‘mind’, ‘soul’, but
especially intersubjective ‘culture’, in contrast to the realm of nature. Spirit
encompasses human cultural achievements, understood as the products of collective
human conscious of mental activity… the correlate of 'spirit' is 'nature', the world
understood through the approach of modern natural science. The world of spirit is a
world of persons interacting with one another as persons and not merely as objects
of nature.199

This does not mean that the realm of spirit and nature are dualistically opposed, but rather

interconnected. The world of spirit stands in a founding/founded relationship to the world

of nature. On the one hand, the objective of nature depends upon the intersubjective (i.e. the

spiritual), and on the other hand, the spirit of intersubjectivity depends upon the fact of

nature. For Husserl culture is an achievement (Leistung) of transcendental subjectivity, and

ultimately transcendental intersubjectivity. The world of nature is not merely given, but is

always already subsumed under the horizon of the spiritual and them sedimentation of

cultural irrealities. The intersubjective is understood in its completeness as spiritual – as

something occurring in consciousness - insofar as the intersubjective is a function of

transcendental monads interacting with one another.

In our analysis, we have sought to bracket out the empathic intentionality of

individuals and have been left with a consideration of intersubjectivity that delimits the

spiritual, in terms of ignoring the motivations of the monadic agents. Our bracketing

procedure does not leave us with nothing whatsoever, but rather with a phenomenological

residuum in which the intersubjective has an existence (as a bound ideality) to corporeal and

substantial matter. The intersubjective has a natural reality and a spiritual irreality. By

199
Dermot Moran, and Joseph D. Cohen, The Husserl Dictionary, (London; New York, N.Y.: Continuum,
2012). 305

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bracketing out the strains of empathy, we are not describing culture, but the bare-bones

baseline conditions necessary for transcendental intersubjectivity to arise. There is a way in

which this phenomenological move leaves us with a realism of sorts. As Henry Pietersma

has noted in his study on the topic of realism in Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty,

"…one may nevertheless be inclined to credit them with having freed realism from its own

incoherence and restored it to the status of a viable philosophy. The know-ability of the

object of knowledge has been restored by their phenomenological analysis and

description."200

There is, I think, a very important consequence in making this clarification and

demarcating the intersubjective as something we predicate reality to - namely, that we can

now demarcate the community as distinct from the individuals in the community. This is of

course, a synoptic way of recognizing in Husserlian terms a difference in regional

ontologies. This also means that the eidetic properties of one do not necessarily belong to

the other. Clearly, every intersubjective community is compositionally dependent on the

presence of individuals (substances) - collective agents - but the intersubjective is

ontologically distinct from the individual as such, communities have their own form of being

in the world.

4. Separating Intersubjectivity and Empathy

Thus far, we have characterized our analysis of intersubjectivity in a manner which

takes Husserlian phenomenology as its point of departure, but seeks an articulation of

intersubjectivity which signals a clear deviation from the tradition. For Husserl, the

200
Henry Pietersma, Phenomenological Epistemology, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000). 170

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intersubjective is treated as a spiritual artifact. While we do not dispute that a complete

conception of intersubjectivity can be so characterized, our particular analysis has been

barred from an articulation which in principle depends upon the intentional correlates of the

individuals who make up a said community - our task is to articulate the residuum of

intersubjectivity with the hope of constructing a model for understanding collective activity

and its moral ontological dependencies. The formal relations between the material bodies of

these individuals will act as our clue. But a preceding task is required in which we must first

articulate the extent and relation of individual intentional activity to the community. The

structural mechanism for understanding the bridge between the individual and the

community is empathy (Einfühlung). In order to fully understand how the present analysis

of intersubjectivity differs from the fuller Husserlian treatment, we need to review the place,

conception, and function of empathy. Although we shall not deny or quibble with Husserl

over his account of empathy in any significant way here, the goal of the present section is to

offer a preliminary characterization of a phenomenology of intersubjectivity after empathy.

Empathy structurally identifies, in the Husserlian framework, the dependent mechanics

for the experience we have of others and the a priori laws that hold for the apperceptions we

have of others in and of our world. It is important to say that while Husserl’s account of

empathy does provide an explanation for the emotional bonds we have with others, it

extends much further for general experience as such. Notably, Husserl’s account can be

applied to non-human animals and therein provides an important potential resource for

phenomenological environmental ethics. Ultimately, empathy functions as a model for

recognizing how our experience of an other’s consciousness, or subjectivity, is possible. A

couple of key elements are worth recording here.

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 Let us begin by demarcating what Husserl’s view is not; and there are two important

points to begin with. First, the consciousness of another person is not immediately or

directly accessible to perception. The point is simple enough. The exploration of

consciousness via phenomenological method depends, for its epistemic basis, on the direct

presentation and inevitable description of intentionality as it is imminently given. The only

intentional experience I can have immediately and direct access to is my own, by

necessity. In an odd twist, if I were to fully experience the intentionality of another I would

see things from their eyes - but this would require the evacuation of my own intentional

activity such that I would effectively lose the sense in which I could see things. The

experience we have of others under conditions of 'empathic' experience does not entail that

we co-inhabit another's experience in a direct form as we do our own. This is the difference

between experiencing the other’s consciousness (and the motivations for their action(s)) and

living out those experiences oneself. If the immediate direct experience of the other were

required to explain our experience of the other, one would consequently lack any sense of

the other as other. This is a naïve view of empathy. Naïve, not in a pejorative sense, but

naïve insofar as this view is phenomenologically ill-informed. There is a sense, however, in

which there stands between two individuals a grand epistemic divide. At some level, the

other continually escapes the grasp of the same, to use a Levinas-ian phrase. Empathy does

not remove the mystery of the other, but under paired harmonious conditions, the other and

the I can indeed experience each other directly. This divide has been expressed a number of

different ways by differing philosophers, especially within the rationalist

tradition. Descartes’ discussion of animality and automata is an acute and well-known

example of what happens when we force the conditions of our own immanent experience as

a condition for having an experience of the other. For Descartes the question of subjectivity

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is a question regarding whether immanent thought - the cogito - could be recognized as

present in other beings. He writes in his “Letter to More”, dated from the fifth of February

1649, that, “we cannot prove there is any thought in animals… because the human mind

does not reach into their hearts.”201 But despite the apparent similarity in our perception of

other persons being bound to the sensibilities of the body, Descartes held that human

animals could be reckoned as thinking things because of (a) the use of “language”, and (b) an

apparent use of reason. Avita Avramides notes that (b) overlaps with (a) because some

(though not all) conditions for the recognition of reason depend upon the use of language

but also the body. For Descartes the question of subjective recognition is an argument from

signs. The interweave between the language and bodily movements of another signals the

conscious thought of another being. In other words, any argument for the knowledge of

other minds would seem to be, in effect, a form of inference. Husserl stands in clear

opposition to this view. Empathy is not a matter of inference but a direct experience of the

other through some mechanism other than sensible perception.

For Husserl, the problem is not without its theoretical complexity. On the one hand,

anything outside the immanently given sphere of my own intentionality is exterior by

definition - it is other; and on the other hand, empathy allows for a direct experience of an

other’s cognitive and/or emotive states. Empathy is not an inference I have about the other,

nor is it a direct perception, but rather an apperception in which one is able to 'perceive'

something beyond the 'perception itself'. He writes that, “So also in the apprehension of a

man very much is already included. From self-experience we know already that implied here

is the possibility of a double apprehension: as Object in nature and as person… In the first

201
Rene Descartes, The Philosophical Writings of Descartes: Volume 3, The Correspondence. Trans. John
Cottingham, Robert Stoothodd, Dugald Murdoch, and Anthony Kenny, (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1991). 365 <276>

128
case, what is comprehended is nature; in the other, spirit."202 But empathy is not a form of

intellectual reasoning one has about another, but is rather bound up and integrated into the

experience we have of others as a direct experience as such. So the basic model is one in

which I sensibly perceive the other as given substantially in nature, but simultaneously I

apperceive the accumulated comprehension of what it means to be a person which then is

compositely paired to the being one sees. The apperception of the other's existence as a

subjective being has its own motivational causality. Unlike physical causation which is the

study of the natural sciences, motivational causality refers to the relation that an intentional

object can have where the "Object 'intrudes on the subject' and exercises stimulation on it

(theoretical, aesthetic, practical stimulation.)”203 In effect, the other's consciousness is

presented apperceptively and Husserl refers to this positive account as a

presentification. This model can explain the 'direct' experience we are able to have of

another's consciousness as a form of compounded intentional memory. Thus, empathy is

not conditioned by a recognition of language or reason, nor is it an inference we make of

another; rather empathy is conditioned upon an analogical perception, for there must be a

cue for the apprecentivity of another. The analogy begins with the other's living body:

The similar reminds me of the similar, and by analogy with what was given with the
similar on the one side, I expect something similar on the other side. It is associated
with it and 'reminds' me of it, though as analogon of something remembered in the
usual narrow sense.204
The point of contact for the analogon of the other's consciousness resides in the body

such that the other's body is given as an analogy of my own interiority. Husserl lays this out

quite nicely and succinctly in the Cartesian Mediations:

Let us assumed that another man enters our perceptual sphere. Primordially
reduced, that signifies: In the perceptual sphere pertaining to my primordial Nature a

202
Husserl, Ideas II, 240 <228>
203
Ibid.
204
Ibid. 237 <226>

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 body is presented, which as primordial, is of course only a determining part of
myself: an 'immanent transcendency'. Since, in this Nature and this world, my
animate organism is the only body that is or can be constituted originally as an
animate organism (a functioning organ), the body over there, which is nevertheless
apprehended as an animate organism, must have derived this sense by an
apperceptive transfer from my animate organism, and done so in a manner that
excludes an actually direct, and hence primordial showing of the predicated
belonging to an animate organism specifically, a showing of them in perception
proper… that body over there with my body can serve as the motivation basis for
the 'analogizing' apprehension of that body as another animate organism.205

The structure of empathy is dependent on a capacity for 'pairing' the other's body to one's

own as a ground for its actualization. Pairing is an "associatively constitutive component of

my experience of someone else"206 and this stands as a primary antecedent condition for the

possibility of a community of monads to interact with each other. My contention here is

that the intersubjective field, from the position of our experience, is dependent on the bodily

pairings we have with others. Not only does the function of 'pairing' play a critical role for

the constitution of empathy, but also it is materially constituted in the concrete movements

of bodies. We can give whole ranges of descriptions to manifold of bodily pairings that get

actualized within the life of a community. We shall argue, for instance, in the next chapter,

that the sense in which one can talk about morality, values, and habits are functionally

dependent on these bodily pairing that get concretized into the life of a community.

An additional feature of empathy that is worth considering here is that for Husserl,

multiple levels of intersubjective nature are articulable. At the base level, intersubjectivity is

constituted through the bodily organism of the other. Because the other has a Nature (a

body) that is the Same nature as I am, then the first level of intersubjective nature is the

body. He writes, "…this natural body belonging to my sphere appresents the other Ego, by

virtue of the pairing association with my bodily organism," and later,

205
Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, 110
206
Ibid. 112

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 What I actually see is not a sign and not a mere analogue, a depiction in any natural
sense of the word; on the contrary, it sis someone else. And what is grasped with
actual originariness in this seeing - namely that corporeality over there, or rather only
one aspect of its surface - is the Other's body itself…207

Accordingly, the first level of intersubjective nature is the corporeality of the inter-

subjects. Using Husserl's language of the concretum, we can say then that intersubjectivity

begins with the concretum of the Other's body. At higher levels of phenomenological

analysis, the intersubjective community corresponds not to the concretum of the Other's

body, but to the sociality of the Other Ego. Adding later,

On the basis, however, of community in the last sense acquired, it is easy to

understand the possibility of acts of the Ego that reach into the other Ego through the medium
of appresentative experience of someone else and, indeed, the possibility of specifically personal
acts of the Ego that have the character of acts of mine directed to you, the character
of social acts, by means of which all personal communication is established.208

It is at these higher levels of synthesis that an intersubjective community becomes a society,

as it were, in which persons engage and communicate among one another as each

other. Multiple levels of intersubjectivity mean that moral life is another one of these levels.

Having thus obtained a general description of empathy and its founding role for

intersubjectivity, it remains for us to clarify the sense in which intersubjectivity corresponds

to the object of our analysis. Previously, we argued for an intersubjective investigation that

begins with the suspension, or bracketing out, of the first-personal. Accordingly, we can use

Husserl’s model to organize our path and, in particular, the clue that intersubjectivity has

multiple levels of synthesis. We shall restrict our analysis of intersubjectivity to the first level

- and consider the concretum of the body as the threshold differentiation. Since the Other’s

body is the analogon and basis for the structure of empathy but remains distinct from the

207
Ibid. 123
208
Ibid. 133-135

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operation of empathy itself, we can use this as our point of departure. It should be noted

that our suspension of higher levels of empathy is not an investigatory negation of those

syntheses. Husserl makes clear that these levels of syntheses are essential for sociality as

such. Rather, our task is to understand and articulate a phenomenology of intersubjectivity

that is restricted to the movements of the body. Thus, the small corner of intersubjective

ontology we have restricted ourselves to is an intersubjective field given through the

coordinated movements of the body. The scope of our analysis is therefore the embodiment

of a community. This will have the consequence of allowing us to articulate a conception of

moral life that is (a) focused on the body and (b) unconcerned with the specific personal

moral perceptions of individuals as such. This should enable us to structurally articulate a

model of moral life that enables us to understand how collective actions without collective

intents are ontologically organized.

5. What Intersubjectivity Is and is Not

There remains, I think, an important point worth meditating upon - namely, that

intersubjectivity is not a mere state of mind. In many ways, this signals an important

phenomenological departure from Husserl’s conception of intersubjectivity as essentially

spiritual. For Husserl, transcendental intersubjectivity is the basis of culture, and culture is a

matter of the spirit (Geist) rather than nature. And this makes some sense if you agree to

Husserl’s language. That which is natural is given in corporeality while what is spiritual is

given through the mind in consciousness. So, our experience of a community is certainly

spiritual, but the intersubjective basis of culture is something also given as real in the bodily

movements of monads. It is in view of my mind’s eye, as it were, that I understand, from a

first-person perspective, my cultural world, and it is also at this level of synthesis that I

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experience the activities of the Other as being social activities. But we can also think about

the way in which bodies play a corporeal role in the constitution of intersubjective space;

because the clue for the analogizing appresentation is the body, this must mean that the

body’s corporeality plays a founding role in the production of the intersubjective field. We

can easily think here about the way in which our sense of intersubjective community

depends upon certain movements of the body, in some cases we are aware of these and in

other cases they are merely habitual and routine. In this way we can situate a concrete

intersubjective field that is not bound, in principle, to a specific subject. Our problem is not

about how we can be aware of Others, but rather what must necessarily follow when we do

in fact exist with others. One such necessity is the general condition of embodiment.

We shall say more about the body later in this chapter, but I think we can say here then

that intersubjectivity is not a mere state of mind. Put another way, intersubjectivity has a real

nature that can be logically differentiated from its “spiritual” description. In order to explain

what we are denying here, let us begin by articulating what it would mean to say that

intersubjectivity were a state of mind. A state of mind can be articulated as something purely

derivative for its reality, on the presence of a mind. If intersubjectivity were a mere state of

mind, then intersubjectivity would be functionally dependent upon their being minds which

participate and cognize the intersubjective relations at any given time. In other words,

intersubjective reality would be confined to being a mere product of the appresentative

faculties of the mind. But this neuters the intersubjective space as something whose

existence is merely mental. We should not confuse Husserl’s investigations for how the

intersubjective community enters into the field of phenomena with the ontological

underpinnings for those conditions. Intersubjective sociality as a mere state of mind leads to

its own absurdity because a mere state of mind cannot function as something generative for

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consciousness. At the close of the Cartesian Meditations, Husserl is led to the conclusion that

the Ego is not ipso facto solipsistic because the Ego is generated constitutively by

transcendental intersubjective conditions that get filled in with the concrete intersubjective

community at hand. Husserl writes there that

[The] illusion of a solipsism is dissolved, even though the proposition that everything
existing for me must derive its existential sense exclusively from me myself, from my
sphere of consciousness retains its validity and fundamental
importance. Phenomenological transcendental idealism has presented itself as a
monadology.209

Intersubjectivity cannot be a 'mere state of mind' because if it were then the role of the body

should be superfluous. To the contrast, the corporeal body serves as the anchor for our

experience of others. If we were to eliminate the corporeal body from its role, systematic

havoc would ensure and consciousness gets unmoored from the conditions of its own

generation. Accordingly, we can say the intersubjective community has a transcendental

ontology characterized by the occurrence of concrete embodied activity. We are not denying

the role of the mind in intersubjective affairs; rather, we are trying to articulate an ontological

point of departure that will allow us to move outside the confines of moral theory dependent

upon an agent’s state of mind. Moral failure, as we have sketched it previously (and we will

address this fully in the next chapter) is a form of collective activity in which the bodies of a

community materially and corporeally interact to create environmental effects that are not

intentionally products. The intersubjective is not merely a state of mind because it must

refer to a bodily way of being in the world. There is a sense in which the effects of

intersubjective life, the cultural beliefs a community shares, are qualitatively distinct from the

bodies of the community.

209
Ibid. 150 <176>

134
 Secondly, intersubjectivity is not the additive sum of individual plurality. The

intersubjective field enables a community to exist and this is a qualitative leap beyond the

mere individual. There is a tendency, I contend, in the history of philosophy, to treat the

concept of the community as an additive sum of individuals and this can result in our

confusing the ontological features of the individual with the ontological features of the

community. For instance, social contract theory, the main stay of political theory today,

highlights this tendency. Stemming from the time of Hobbes, contractualists have typically

adopted an ontological model of radical individualism and have thereby seen society as the

equivalent of individuals added together. In our vernacular, we can say that the social

contractual theories of Hobbes and Locke have tended to treat the intersubjective as a

nominal condition of simply having more than one Ego. Hobbes systematic schema rests

upon the individual’s equality of need and lack of power organized by egoistic interests

alone. Locke’s political system organizes itself along the lines of individual property

ownership. In both cases, contractualism has simplified the domain of the community to a

structural formation of private interests. Institutions, halls of government, and covenants are

all taken as forms of mediation between individuals. In the most narrow perspective, this is

predicated upon an ontological prioritization of the individual over the society. The

community and the intersubjective field get fixed as dependent additive products of

individuals. But what this view lacks is an ontological conception that can make sense of the

reciprocity between individuals and the communities - the fact that I am as much a product

of my community as my community is of me. I think that we get a much more nuanced and

interesting view from the contractualism of Rousseau, especially in his conception of the

General Will. For Rousseau, the problem of majority rules (the fact that a majority could

enslave or mistreat a minority) ultimately comes down to a misunderstanding of what a

135
collective will even means. He makes the important distinction between the will of all and

the general will.210 The will of all is the summation and totality of all interests within a

society, private or otherwise. The general will, by contrast, is defined by Rousseau as “the

sum of differences” among the private interests of individuals.211 Where the will of all

articulates a will of private interests, the general will refers to the delimited field of “common

interests.”212 The general will functions as a marker for the positive collectivity of the

community as such and this signals an important point of departure that distinguishes the

researches of Rousseau. Consider also that for Rousseau the general will is not equivalent to

what the community thinks, intuits, or intends as the collective will. This is why in his

discussion on whether the General will can err, Rousseau takes pains to emphasize that while

it cannot in principle, it can be destroyed or dissolved if individuals are no longer able to

think for themselves and recognize their natural common interests. Rousseau has an intuitive

moment in the course of recognizing the ontological constitution of the community as

something more than, though necessarily related to, the added accumulated interests of

monadic individuals alone. The individualism of his social contract is not the radical form

displayed by his English counterparts that leads to the axiomatic declaration that the majority

rules rightly. Using Rousseau as a historical example, we can see that what one needs is a

conception of the community that is logically distinct from a mere collection of individuals.

Earlier we employed a convenient trope in our investigatory description as one concerned

with the ‘inter’ of intersubjectivity as distinguished from the first-person perspective of the

same. Accordingly, we can also parenthesize descriptions of the intersubjective, which are

descriptions of the subject’s awareness of the intersubjective. For instance, the

210
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract, (New York: Penguin Books, 2006), Bk. 2, §3.
211
Ibid.
212
Ibid.

136
phenomenology of alterity that we are given in Levinas’ description of otherness, is not a

description of the intersubjective per se; but rather, I think, it is a description of the subject’s

situation in the presence of the Other. This unfortunately will not suffice in conceptualizing

the way in which communities are logically distinct from mere collections of

individuals. Our task is to highlight how the intersubjective can be given in a mode of being

that is independent of any subject particular comportmental stance. There is a clue,

however. Instead, we must follow up on the idea that the form of intersubjectivity that is

given to all by all.

We need to begin the task of bringing the idea of materiality to bare on the intersubjective

field and see if we can sketch in positive terms what the implications are. To begin,

intersubjectivity begins with the simple affirmation that there are more than one, a plurality

of 'monads' (to use the Husserlian locution) living in relation and that this relation has an

existence quite distinct from the individuals themselves. A further designation for this

relation is to say that an intersubjective community has a material communion and discourse

that cannot be sourced in the individual alone. While intersubjectivity can be investigated in

terms of the way subjects think about each other, perceive and anticipate one another, all of

this falls under the heading of empathy. In reference to our overall goal of articulating the

problem of moral failure it is critical that we articulate an ontological schemata that allows a

structural independence from the considerations of moral intentions. Empathy largely refers

to the way in which we apperceive the states of mind of others. This means that the only

form of intersubjectivity that can remain is the material corporeal concretion of the

intersubjective. What is that exactly? We can begin to answer this question first by re-

associating ourselves with the notion of the concrete itself. That which is concrete is given

as an absolute self-sufficient and differentiated essence. For instance, as you read, pick up an

137
object, perhaps a pen, and inspect the experience. On the one hand the individual object is

given as an idea in the mind – “It is a pen” – but on the other hand, it is also given in the

immediacy of experience as something outside of subjectivity, and which cannot be retained

in memory. The fact that the pen is concrete is what differentiates this particular pen from

all other essences encountered, as well as my imaginings about the pen. This means that the

concretum is a fully differentiated essence. In Ideas I, Husserl states that "[we] have originary

experience of concrete physical things in 'external perception', but no longer in memory or

in forward-regarding expectations.”213 Husserl calls a non-self-sufficient essence an

abstractum. A concrteum is a fully differentiated essence and an individuum is an individual

concretum. "A This-here, the material essence of which is a concretum is called an

individuum."214 Later he refers to the concretum as an eidetic singularity and that all such

singularities are either concrete or abstract. Ontologically, the reality of the intersubjective is

given through the movement of concrete individua. But the question remains, what fully

differentiates ‘intersubjectivity’ if we take it as a material essence? How can that which

depends upon a multiplicity of individuated concretum itself be individuated and materially

differentiated? To begin, the concrete nature of the intersubjective occurs in the motion of

concrete things. This means that the intersubjective is subsidiary upon the concrete

movements of the individual monads. But insofar as these motions can be said to fall under

a singular localized principle, then the motion can be treated as a totality differentiated from

other forms of motions, other intersubjective forms life. In this way, one can learn to

recognize different individual communities, insofar as they have distinct differentiated forms

of harmonic movement between the concrete bodies of individuals. In other words, the

213
Husserl, Ideas I, 8
214
Ibid. 29

138
intersubjective is a bound ideality to the concrete. We can take the collection of concrete

movements that occur under a harmonic principle to be concretely intersubjective.

6. Intersubjectivity as Concrete Emergence

In the previous section I argued that the intersubjective field should be considered as

something concrete and as something having its own self-sufficient essence and ontological

particularity. I anticipate that many may object to this thesis and counter by pointing out

that it remains to be seen how this can be the case if the intersubjective requires individual

monads for its existence. In other words, how can the intersubjective be self-sufficient when

it depends upon there being thinking individuals who participate in that community? If you

take away the individuals, the community would cease. But it is equally true that if we see a

community go out of existence, we mean something more than just the loss of a collection

of individuals. A culture, a heritage, a collective memory, an aesthetic sense, a language itself

can go out of being and this is something that cannot be strictly traced to the individuals

who participate in those practices. To lose a community is to lose a world. What is at stake

here is for us to articulate if and to what degree the intersubjective field can have its own

ontological validity as formally concrete. Having restricted our analysis to the concrete and

embodied sense of the intersubjective, we have delimited our field of concern accordingly so

as to focus upon the forms of movements between and amongst the individuals of a

society. In order to meet the challenge I offer the argument that we must understand an

intersubjective community according to the logic of emergence.

The problem of how we can conceive of a community's being in the world depends upon

how we understand the relations of wholes and parts. Timothy Stapleton notes that

139
phenomenology as a science is intimately bound up with the relationship between wholes

and parts:

Phenomenology… whether transcendental or not, as an eidetic science, will limit itself

to the description and explication of wholes vis-a-vis their dependent parts. These
parts, of course, always lead us back to the wholes of which they are parts. Such
wholes, in turn… can themselves be parts and correlatively can bifurcate into pieces
(concreta) and moments (abstracta)…215

He goes on to add that

What Husserl claims is that our analyses cannot remain within the domain of the
dependent ad infinitum. At some point the relationship between moment and that
of which it is a moment (a relative whole, or concretum) must terminate in an
independent object. This might be a piece of some other object, but it must, in
principle, be capable of independent existence and presentation to consciousness.216

In fact, Husserl recognizes the importance of the question of the whole/part relation and

spends significant time offering an account in the third of the Logical Investigations. In saying

that the intersubjective is an emergent phenomena, we are advocating the idea that there are

some properties of the whole (the intersubjective community) which cannot be reduced to

the properties of the parts (the individuals) and that the essence of a community emerges

from out of but irreducible to the individuals of that community. What gets lost in a

vanquished community is an emergent essence and our claim here is that this emergence is

ontologically significant.

In order to put more meat on the bones of this argument let’s begin by giving a

general account of Husserl’s conception of wholes and parts and then turn to the

implications for our analysis of intersubjectivity and moral failure. Husserl’s discussion of

wholes and parts played a role in the second of his Logical Investigations. In that text, Husserl

215
Timothy J. Stapleton, Husserl and Heidegger : The Question of a Phenomenological Beginning. Suny
Series in Philosophy, (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1983). 61
216
Ibid.

140
countered the view of abstraction offered by the British Empiricists. His fuller treatment

comes in the third investigation in which he sets out to clarify the logic of wholes and parts,

which he sees as central to scientific reasoning. Although Husserl’s remarks on the logic of

wholes and parts is not directly applied to the problem of intersubjectivity, it is clear that the

intersubjective does correspond to a whole/part schema. The immediate treatment we see

for the whole/part logic is directly related to the phenomenological process itself because

noematic analysis is distinguished methodologically by the description of constituting parts

of consciousness that get blended into a whole and unified experience. Indeed, I think that

the whole/part logic is an especially foundational discussion because it goes to the heart of

any scientific enterprise. At bottom, what the logic of wholes and parts has to offer us is a

structural description for making sense of how the intersubjective is a blend of parts. Let us

begin by outlining the basic schema.

Every object is either simple or complex.217 A simple object is one that has no

parts. For instance, prime numbers are simple objects insofar as they are not divisible by any

other number except one and themselves; in other words, prime number lack the parts (or

partitioning) for complex divisibility. A complex object is one that has composition and is

definitely composed of parts. So, by contrast, the number 6 has definite parts of

divisibility. Husserl further differentiates the parts of a complex object as either (i) a

moment or (ii) as a piece.218 A moment refers to a part that is blended or permeated into

and with other parts such that the part cannot be self-sufficiently presented in the

object. For instance, consider the color of grey pollution over an industrial urban

landscape. The color grey is a part of the object perceived, but it is permeated with the other

217
Husserl, Logical Investigations, 4
218
Ibid. 41-45

141
parts (or characteristics) of the smog. Moments require other parts for their constitutive

presentation. An important feature of a moment is that the permeation of the part is

grounded in the part itself and is not arbitrary as such.219 He describes moments as being

parts that have their own internal rules that reference and require the other requisite

parts. In contrast to a moment, a piece is non-permeable such that the pieces do not require

each other for their presentation.220 Husserl writes that a piece is a part that is independent

of other parts.221 For example, an industrial plant’s smoke house is not a part that permeates

the other parts of the plant as a whole. A piece is not a part that must sufficiently be

blended with another part for its comprehension. It is important to notice here the effect of

our own intentional directionality such that it is possible for a part to be taken as a moment

in one respect and as a piece from a differing perspective and in relation to a different

‘whole’.222 One of the more striking features of Husserl’s discussion of wholes and parts for

our analysis here is that we find an articulation for the distinction between the concrete and

abstract. The difference between the two requires no reference to consciousness as such, in

contradistinction to the British empiricists.223 A concretum is any object that can be taken

as a whole whereas an abstractum is any object that can only be presented as a moment

(where parts are dependent). Something abstract is “a moment that must be completed by

further dimensions.”224 Husserl gives a much fuller treatment of the logic of wholes and

parts than we have space to discuss here, but it is interesting to recognize the far-reaching

implications for scientific discourse. It is not surprising then that the idea of emergent

219
Robert Sokolowski, "The Logic of Parts and Wholes in Husserl's Investigations," Philosophy and
Phenomenological Research 28, no. 4 (1968): 537-53. 539
220
Husserl, Logical Investigations, 6
221
Ibid. 5
222
Ibid.
223
Ibid. 10
224
Sokolowski 139

142
properties has been a concern for contemporary philosophical theories of science and

systems theory. Our thesis here is that the intersubjective field or the community is

qualitative distinct from the individuals themselves. This is why communities cannot be

understood as the mere aggregate of individuals. Rather, when individuals come to exist in

communities, their participatory interactivity gives rise to certain emergent effects in

being. The ontology of the community is an emergent phenomenon irreducible to

individuals alone, and yet structurally dependent on individuals.

The question of emergence and whether emergent properties are conceivable at all

has been the subject of much debate, primarily within the philosophy of science by such

authors as Paul Humphreys, Mark Badau, Tim Crane, and John Searle among

others. Although there are many ways of delineating the discussion of emergence, our

primary concern is to articulate in what sense the intersubjective can be said to be an

ontological emergent property. We shall define an emergent property as any property of a

complex object that is irreducible and is not present as a property for any of the constitutive

parts, whether those parts are moments or pieces of the whole, yet remains essential to the

whole itself. Humphrey notes that an emergent property is essentially a novelty. He writes,

“Novelty can mean many things, but the simplest and crudest, interpretation is that a

previously uninstantiated property comes to have an instance.”225 Ontological emergent

properties are properties of being which apparently come into being in a way that must be

related to the parts, but are not reducible to the properties of parts; a novelty of being, as it

were. In saying that intersubjectivity should be understood as an emergent phenomena, we

can begin by highlighting a fascinating sociological phenomena discovered some time ago.

225
Paul Humphreys, "Emergence, Not Supervenience," Philosophy of Science 64 (1997): S337-S45. S341

143
 The question of emergent properties irreducible to the aggregate individualism first

became known when Francis Galton published a short article in the journal Nature

describing a statistical anomaly he observed after attending the 1907 West of England Fat

Stock and Poultry Exhibition in Plymouth, England.226 At the livestock show a weight

judging competition was conducted, not unlike similar contests in most US malls, in which

members of the public could guess the weight of a chosen ox after slaughter. As a

mathematician and eugenicist, Galton had a rather sour view of the intellectual capacities of

the average person and did not think that the average person would fair very well in the

competition.227 After the contest, Galton obtained the entire index card guess set and then

conducted a statistical analysis. He calculated the statistical median for all guesses and

compared it with the deviation of any one individual guess. Galton tabulated the

distribution of the 787 entries onto a distribution curve, calling the middle point the “vox

populi”. He then compared the normal curve to the actual guesses made and what he found

surprised him. The average of all of the actual estimates was only 0.8% off from the actual

observed weight – an error rate of less than 1%. So as a group, the mathematical average

guess was very close to actually being correct. But what surprised him was that this

statistical percentage was not mirrored in the individuals themselves (who only had a

probable error of 3.1%). In other words, the aggregate group estimate was ‘smarter’ than the

guess of any one individual where the whole seemed to exhibit an emergent property beyond

the individual parts.

226
Francis Galton. Inquires into the Human Faculty and Its Development. 2 ed. (Everyman, 2004; 1907).

227Galton writes that, “We cannot but recognise the vast variety of natural faculty, useful and harmful, in
members of the same race, and much more in the human family at large, all of which tend to be transmitted
by inheritance. Neither can we fail to observe that the faculties of men generally, are unequal to
the requirements of a high and growing civilisation.” (216)

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 This story, about the aggregation of information in groups, was popularized by

James Suroweicki’s The Wisdom of Crowds, and it raises a number of important questions. But

rather than see this as evidence for the wisdom of democratic perspectivism, as Galton

suggests, we can see this as a case of emergent holism and that in “some system.. The whole

has some properties that its parts lack”.228 We cannot explain the vox populi by looking at

any one member or individual. The idea of holism is profound when you consider that

general implications here. I cannot understand the whole of a film, book, landscape, or

building by looking at one static shot, word, picture, or side alone. From out of all these

moments, the whole emerges into view. The notion of emergence is that the whole is

something more than the mere addition of parts. We can define emergent holism as the idea

that, “these properties of the whole cannot be defined by properties of the

parts.”229 Something emerges from the whole that is irreducible to the parts.

Using phenomenology as methodology, we must suspend our judgment regarding

what we already think ‘emergence’ is (or might mean) and we ask rather how is emergence

experienced? What description for emergence can we give? How can things appear to

emerge out of being? Whatever description we give, that which emerges is correlated to a

new intentional comportment in consciousness. When we recognize a new emergent

property out of the field of the familiarity of being, that emergent property can only be

recognized (in lieu of the laws of recognition) by a new intention. Jean Paul Sartre’s theory

of negation is helpful here. He held that consciousness is intentional insofar as it is always

directed towards something (a la Husserl), but that the act of intention was better

understood as a form of negation. Consciousness is not a “grasping” - a ‘grabbing ahold of’

228 Laird Addis, The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy. Ed. Robert Audi. “Holism.” 335-6
229
Ibid. “Semantic Holism”, 724

145
- but rather a means and system of differentiating what something is not. Thus,

understanding always includes the correlate of that which is not to be conceived. So the act

of cognizing an emergent effect can be described as a new form of intentional

differentiation. The differentiation is linked to a relation between the parts that is irreducible

to the parts.

The phenomenological claim that relations are primary to their relata is an important

consideration here and perhaps the way forward in offering a realistic account of

“emergence.” In the Philosophy of Arithmetic, Husserl explores various theories of relation,

before offering his own view. He rejects the views that the nature of collective

combinations are (1) a matter of belonging to one consciousness, or that (2) the “unification

of the contents” is a mediation by “special acts of consciousness”, or that (3) a collection can

be explained by distinction theory alone.230 The problems with each approach can be

summarized by saying that (1) lacks an appropriate account for the ways in which separate

and specific parts are noticed within the whole. The second approach (2) fails because if time

is a “psychological precondition of number” then the recognition of the whole is already

governed by a unified set of principles, not a separate and qualitative different act of

consciousness.231 And finally, the third view (3) fails because his earlier analysis showed that

not all acts of distinguishing can be “acknowledged to be the synthetic acts that are relevant

for collectivity and number.”232 Thus, Husserl sets out his own theory in which a collection is

treated as a special type of combination. Every combination gets treated as a totality with

distinct parts, and these parts have relations amongst each other. He specifically denies that

230
Husserl, Edmund. Philosophy of Arithmetic: psychological and logical investigations with
supplementary texts from 1887-1901. Trans. Dallas Willard. (Dordrecht: Springer Science+Business
Media, 2003). 68
231
Ibid.
232
Ibid.

146
the identity of the relata can serve as the “glue” for the synthesis of the collection because if

the identity of the parts were the criterion then every combination collectivity would

presuppose an act of comparison. But he says, “In thinking the totality of clock, ink and

pen, for example, we need not first compare these contents.”233 In order to avoid these

problems, Husserl distinguishes between primary and psychic relations. A primary relation is

a relation among the primary contents of an object. He repeatedly aligns the notion of

primary relations to “physical phenomena.” He writes:

The characteristic difference between the two classes of relations can also be marked
by saying that primary relations belong in a certain sense among the representational
contents of the same level as their terms [Fundamente], which cannot, however, be
said of the psychical relations. In the first case, the relation is immediately given
along with the representing terms, as a Moment of the same representational
content. But in the second case, that of the psyhcial relation, in order to represent
the relation there is first required a reflexive act of representing bearing upon the
relating act. The immediate content of this latter is that act instituting the relation,
and only through that does the representation bear upon the terms. The related
contents and the relation thus form, as it were, contents of distinct levels.234

So the primary relations are given immediately by the collection, while the other (psychic)

relations bring into view a multiplicity of levels of relation. Husserl also distinguishes

between simple and complex relations. The point is fairly obvious in that a complex relation

is a multiplicity of simple relations, while simple relations have an irreducibility to them as

being immediately given in the combinational totality. The next question of consideration is

whether or not the combining relations in a collective totality are primary or not. In

answering this question, Husserl offers the claim that the relations themselves signal

something “more” than the totality. He gives the example of a rose. When one sees a rose,

they first grasp an immediate whole, and then upon analysis they can grasp the parts,

233
Ibid. 69
234
Ibid. 73

147
properties, and eventually the relations amongst them that combine in the totality of the rose

– the leaves, the stem, the color, etc. The intuition that these parts and properties combine

through relations into a totality signals something more than was originally given in the

original perception of the totality. The disparity of intuition between the given totality and its

primary parts are “joined by means of the psychical act holding them together. It is only

within the content of that act all perceptible unification is lacking.”235 Which comes first then,

the relation or the relata? On the one hand, relations are dependent on their terms (or

relata), the variable complexity of the combinational whole suggests that a relation within a

collection can hold even when the parts, or the relata, are varied. He writes that “with the

collective combination any term can be varied completely without restriction and arbitrarily

and the relation still remains.”236 Consequently, the relations are primary to their relata. This

signals for our inquiry, and insofar as the intersubjective field is a collection of material

moments, the relations of the monads are primary to the relata of the monads themselves.

The irreality of the intersubjective field is consistent with Husserl’s claim that the collective

unification “has its subsistence only in certain psychical acts that embrace the contents of a

unifying manner” that is repetitiously identical over time.237 Emergence, as we have rendered

it for intersubjectivity does not refer to an emerging substantial being, as it were, but as a

description of the irreal form of being given over time. Because the “relation of distinctness

in the broadest sense” operates under the same conditions, we have a potential theoretical

account for how the identification of a specific intersubjective field can be made.238 Given

the previous forms of reduction argued, we can say that the psychic relations rest upon the

235
Ibid.
236
Ibid. 76
237
Ibid. 77
238
Ibid. 76

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relations of movements between bodies. Accordingly, there is a sense in which the whole is

greater than the parts, for the whole is its relations, not merely the conjunction of its parts.

Let us now briefly review the notion of emergent supervienence.

An emergent property is an irreducible difference of the whole as compared to the

part. We must distinguish between epistemological emergence (emergent properties that

arise in the process by which we come to know) and ontological emergence (emergent

properties in existence as such). Because the act of consciousness is an act per se, a mode of

existing, phenomenal emergence must relate to the structure of what exists. Three key

philosophers who write on this problem of ontological emergence are Brian McLaughlin,

Timothy O’Connor, and Paul Humphreys. McLaughlin for instance, holds a view which is

typically referred to as synchronic supervenience. The idea of synchronic supervenience is

that emergent properties are the result of layers and layers of meaning (differentiated

consciousness) that supervene over time. He writes “If P is a property of w, then P is

emergent if and only if (1) P supervenes with nominological necessity, but not with logical

necessity, on properties the parts of w have taken separately or in other combinations; and

(2) some of the supervenience principles linking properties of the parts of w with w's having

P are fundamental laws.”239 The idea of synchronic supervenience could be pictorially

represented as a series of circles that supervene over time. Within each slice of the

categorical circles exist member properties that supervene. This theory suggests that an

emergent property occurs when distinct member components interact with the distinct

properties of other class categories. Accordingly, an emergent property occurs when distinct

member components (or properties) interact. The logic of each individual slice remains the

239
Brian McLaughlin, “Emergence and Supervenience,” Intellectica, 2, (1997) 25–43.

149
same, the “emergence” arises from a nominological necessity. There is a second theory of

emergence we should also consider. Timothy O’Connor takes a different view, primarily in

objection to the use of time as the supervenient relation and favors a causal interrelation

between the multiple properties. As a philosopher of biology he is primarily interested in

understanding the ontological relations of parts within living organisms. He writes:

In calling some phenomenon ‘emergent,’ we intend to express the idea that it

introduces a qualitatively new, macro-level feature in the word… we may express this
requirement by saying that an emergent property is nonstructural.. [And] it is equally
plain that a second feature of emergence is that the property causally influences an
object’s or system’s behavior.240

This is known as the dynamic theory of supervenient emergence.

A third theory of emergence comes from the philosopher Paul Humphrey. He

argues that the supervening relations fuse distinct categories given the specific property

relations of interaction. But when two or more categories “fuse” then other properties

available to the categorical parts (to the individual slices within a stack) are suspended. This

explanation of emergence has the virtue of explaining why the emergent property of the

whole has a defining matrix such that the attributes of some parts seemed nullified by the

emergent property.241 A fourth position from Philosopher Mark Bedau of Reed College

who endorses a pragmatic pluralism to the question of emergence and contends that

multiple forms of emergence can be identified along a continuum of possibilities and that we

should avoid the temptation to reduce all emergent phenomena into one unitary form.242

This may be a particularly apt model for thinking about intersubjectivity. A purely

240 Timothy O-Connor, Persons and Causes: The Metaphysics of Free Will, (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2000). 111. See
also O’Connor’s “Emergent Properties,” American Philosophical Quarterly 31 (1994), pp. 92-104
241
See Paul Humphreys, Emergence: A Philosophical Account, (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2016).
242 See the recent paper presentation by Mark Bedau at the 2014 American Philosophical Proceedings in

Philadelphia Conference Proceedings.

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synchronic conception of supervenient emergence does not maintain descriptive fidelity to

the actual conditions if it treats all supervenient relations as synchronically

homogenous. O’Connor’s argument for the causal relation of emergence fascinating and

clearly relatable to the material implications of our analysis here, but I do not see what is

gained by employing a causal thread through the parts to explain the emergent whole simply

because cause and effect relations are themselves temporally structured.

To return to our primary subject and reverse our digression into emergence, we can

say that from the Husserlian perspective, intersubjectivity is itself an ontological emergence

fused from the moments and pieces of individuality that coalesce into a

community. Because of our bracketing procedure and focus on the embodied materiality of

the intersubjective, we can say that the emergence of intersubjectivity concerns a formal

relation between material that could not exist otherwise. These forms of being take place in

the most mundane of ways - the movements of our bodies which when layered

diachronically over time initiate and fuse into larger systems of interactivity. Intersubjectivity

is descriptively a form of the concrete emergence which arise from the ‘moments’ of that

community which arise from the ‘moments’ of that community.

7. Harmony as the organizing principle for Intersubjectivity

The intersubjective field is for us the space, indeed the place, where the material

possibilities of bodily engagement unfold between the persons in a community. Importantly,

the intersubjective field is not something static but rather given through time in terms of

diachronic formal arrangements. In the previous section we wagered for a description of the

intersubjective as a form of ontological emergence utilizing the dictum that relations are

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primary to their relata. These reflections have provided us a provisional answer to the what

of intersubjectivity. The how of the intersubjective remains unclear; that is, in what sense can

we characterize the structure of concrete intersubjective relations? Put into the context of

our broader thesis on environmental moral failure, the difference corresponds to the fact

that a collective community is not only composed of individuals but also manifests concrete

forms of embodied movement that are not the result of intentional moral volition by the

individuals that make up that community at all, and yet they have a concrete manifestation

that collectively is causing deleterious environmental effects. The question of how these

embodied inter-relations are organized remains our next task. In this section we will make

the primary argument that the intersubjective field is organized by a principle of harmony.

First, the intersubjective field must have an a priori organizing principle. Sociologists

and historians offer episodic and structural glimpses into how the relations within a

community concretely unfold over time in the field of the actual. Philosophically, our aim is

to say something about what principles lie at the heart of the phenomena of an

intersubjective community, given our methodological commitments. In other words, what

principle might account for the concrete embodied relations between individuals such that

we have an emergent intersubjective constitution among a multiplicity of subjects? Where

the problem of emergence concerned the way in which a community gets constituted in

terms of wholes and parts, the how of the community can best be understood as a tension

between opposites. If the community is understood as an organizing field of embodied

inter-activities, then the oppositional nature of the community consists in a plurality of

oppositions. A community is populated with individuals each of whom inhabit their own

subjectivity that is irreducible to the others in terms of its immanent presentation (this was

the reason for why empathy was categorized as a form of apperception by Husserl). Thus,

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between each individual there is an opposition of alterity at work. The work of Emmanuel

Levinas is a striking examination of alterity and its metaphysical effect on the same. For

Levinas, the very relation between the same and the other is both metaphysical and ethical

but it is one which always gets articulated from the first-person perspective. Thus, the

alterity of the other is cognized as an alterity that overflows infinitely the totality of the

same. But given the constraints and bracketing of the first-personal perspective, the

Levinas-ian treatment is not directly available for the description of intersubjectivity we seek

here. How then should we characterize the intersubjective relations between individuals

after de-personalizing our field of inquiry? In other words, how can we describe the relation

between two anterior objects that still stand in a relation to each other?

Between two alterior objects, any relation can be characterized as a tension.243 Each

person has their own subjective appresentation of the other (Husserl) that does not fully

capture the other’s conscious intentional states despite a direct experience of the Other and

this inaugurates an infinite alterity between the two persons (Levinas), but that alterity while

not perceived the same for each, is equally distributed insofar as it is the relation between the

two. So even when we take Levinas seriously, we would have to contend that a relation

between two alterior subjects (from a non-first-person perspective) must be a two-sided

infinite relation with a two-sided infinite demand, at least structurally speaking. In other

words, there is an infinite tension between the two. The word ‘tension’ is originally derived

from the Latin tensionem (the nominative tensio) which refers to the notion of being

stretched. Even more interesting, is the fact that the Latin tensio is related to the Latin tempus,

243
‘Anterior’ denotes a characterization of alterity, or otherness. To speak of two anterior
objects is to refer to two objects both of which are, in relation, appear as an ‘other’ to the
other.

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or time. In music, a harmony is a tension that exists between two objects over time. So

phenomenologically, our characterization of the intersubjective relations might preliminarily

indicate the manner in which individuals stretch each other in a community over

time. Anytime two individuals come into contact, their relationship modifies each other in

some respect (yet leaves them remaining separate) and the ‘stretching’, or effects of the

relations on the individuals, indicate some structure of modification. Again, the

modification has two sides. When two individuals meet face to face and become

intersubjectively entangled, on the one hand a modification of each must occur, but on the

other hand, that modification cannot be such that it negates the essence of the

differentiation between the two and thereby cancel the relation out itself. A tension between

two subjects is a relation which both modifies yet leaves things where they stand, so to

maintain the relation itself. It is from out of these tensions that the community enfolds but

in an embodied sense. In its concrete manifestation, the tensions are likely to unfold

differently in a whole host of differing ways. The relations between subjective concrete

embodied motion is a connecting tension within the collective multiplicity.

A tension that maintains its relationality between two (or more) poles over time is a

tension in harmony. From the out-set a harmony should be understood as a structural

relation between poles that is able to maintain the tension. A mere tension is not necessarily

harmonious if it results in the overcoming or diminution of the tension. Instead, a tension is

harmonious if its structural relations remains balanced insofar as it can maintain the relation

over time. The earliest discussion of the philosophical conception of harmony beckons back

to the ancient city of Ephesus and its meister of obscurity, Heraclitus. He is to have said:

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 Παλίντονος αρµονίη Kόσµου ‘όKωσπερ λύρης Kαι τόξου.244

The Heraclitean fragments offer us a preliminary insight for thinking about the ways in

which relations of tension play a constituting role. Kirk, Raven, and Schofield explain that

“[each] pair of opposites thus forms both a unity and a plurality. Different pairs are also found to be inter-

connected.”245 For example, consider the relation between two opposites such as cold and

hot. “[Certain] opposites are said to be essentially connected… because they succeed, and

are succeeded by, each other and nothing else. So… the hot substance and the cold form

what we might call a hot-cold continuum, a single entity (temperature).”246 In his 1926

summer lectures on the topic, Heidegger specifically looked at the question of

oppositionality and unity in Heraclitus’ fragments. Commenting on fragment 56, Heidegger

notes that

what is not to be seen or grasped as a being, as something present-at-hand, but can

be apprehended only in the understanding and is different from all beings. Everything is
opposition and tension; therefore oppositionality is not to be avoided in order to
fasten onto one of the members. Instead, the entire oppositionality itself…
everything becomes its opposite… everything is harmony.247

For Heidegger, an opposition is not something that gets grasped as being in its own right

and his interpretation is that all things have their existential character from out of a

relationally of tensions.248 Existence is a continuum of mediated tensions, as it were, by a

principle of harmony. Heidegger adds that “the problem of opposition is his [Heraclitus’]

“The cosmos works by harmony of tensions, like the lyre and bow.” Heraclitus,
244

Fragments 56.
245
G. S. Kirk, J. E. Ravem, and M. Schofield. The Presocratic Philsophers. 2nd. ed. (Camrbidge:
Cambridge University Press, 1983).190
246
Ibid. 189
247
Martin Heidegger, Basic Concepts of Ancient Philosophy, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
2008). 49
248
Heidegger argues in ¶9 of Being and Time that “ontologically, exestentia is tantamount
to Being-present-at-hand” and that he would use the expression “‘presence-at-hand’ for
the term ‘existentia’.”

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accomplishment. In opposition there is negativity, nonbeing, and thus opposition itself is

not being. Heraclitus has taken nonbeing itself ontically and has understood this notice

determination as an ontological one.”249 In other words, part of the importance of

Heraclitus’ thinking about opposition is that because opposition is itself not an entity, the

relations of opposition must have an ontological sense that are rooted in a concept of

harmony. Opposition itself is a characterization of the relation between two poles, the

ontological determination of the relation is one in which something emerges between the

two poles and this is what harmony is.

Let us bring the analysis back into our own language. If the intersubjective consists

of a plurality of poles of opposition that stand in relation to each other but maintain their

relationally without overcoming each other, then the relation is understood by a principle of

harmony. Husserl argues for this in the Cartesian Meditations when he writes that

The Objective world as an idea - the ideal correlate of an intersubjective experience,

which ideally can be an is carried on as constantly harmonious - is essentially related
to intersubjectivity )itself consist sited as having the ideality of endless openness),
whose component particular subjects are equipped with mutually corresponding and
harmonious constitutive system. Consequently, the constitution of the world essentially
involves a ‘harmony; of the monads: precisely this harmony among particular constitutions
in particular monads; and accordingly it involves also a harmonious generation that
goes on in each particular monad.250

For Husserl, the objectivity of the world (as intersubjectively constituted) is given through a

harmonious system of inter-relations between persons. While Husserl focused on the

harmonious operations of consciousness and the harmonious generative effects of the

intersubjective on the individual and the structure of empathy, we can say that the embodied

movements of a community which maintain the community relations must be organized by a

249
Ibid. 51
250
Husserl, Cartesian Mediattions, <138>

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similar harmonic principle. The harmony between individual monads is an a priori necessity

for any embodied community because its absence would mean the dissolution between a

relation of opposites, or the reduction of the community to the totality of a single

perspectives. The thrust of our thesis of embodiment indicated that the intersubjective

embodiment of a community requires for its principle a harmony between the bodies of the

community. Material embodiment within a community, and the individuality of the

community members, must be mediated through degrees of bodily expectations in practice

and reciprocal movements. The structure of empathy at a basic level is predicated upon

such a bodily mediation, and at a higher level enables the cognition of others directly in

immediate experience.

A helpful means for cognizing the principle of intersubjective harmony is to explain

it through the notion of consistency and simultaneity. Two non-identical propositions are

said to consistent if it is possible for each proposition to be true at the same time given the

truth functional possibilities for both propositions. If two propositions really are consistent

then they must also exist simultaneous with one another. In Kant’s third analogy we find

some helpful remarks. “Things are simultaneous insofar as they exist at one and the same

time”251 and a little later, “The word ‘community’ is ambiguous in language, and can mean

either communio or commercium. We use it here in the latter sense, as a dynamical community,

without which even the local community (communio spatii) could never be empirically

cognized.”252 Now, it is clear that Kant is employing his discussion here in a very different

manner from our own, but his remarks remain helpful regardless. For him, the cognition of

empirical perceptions have a dynamic interactivity that make sense of the community of

251
Immanuel Kant, Critque of Pure Reason, Translated by Pual Guyer and Allen Wood. (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1998). A211
252
Ibid. A213

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interactivity in empirical perception. Using Kant as an explanatory analog, we can say that

the principle of harmony is that which allows for the reciprocal interactivity among

embodied monadic agents. The “harmony” is such that the relation between two monads

remains in a special tension that maintains the relation as a relation and this is the notion of

consistency we have in mind. Each individual remains an individual with purview to the

other and that this structural consistency is materially grounded in the activity of a

community.

The notion of a harmony between monadic agents automatically conjures the work

of Leibniz who articulated a metaphysical monadology in which through a pre-established

harmony, each monad operating under their own rules was harmonized with all other

monads. This metaphysical schema allowed Leibniz to maintain the strict autonomy of each

substance, while still being able to explain relationally and causation. But where the pre-

established harmony of Leibniz was grounded in the notion of God, for us the harmony is

merely a descriptive principle for embodied intersubjective relations, not a concrete fixture

of the world itself. Where for Leibniz the harmony of monads was directed by an all

knowing God, the harmony of the intersubjective here is treated as a principle which is

derived from the descriptions of intersubjective life and its continuity. Disharmony, which

will be discussed more fully in the next chapter, describes the degree to which a principle of

harmony lacks. This means that the basis for harmony (and disharmony) are ultimately

contingent possibilities of the world. The intelligibility of the intersubjective depends upon

harmony, but that intelligibility does not signal an ontological necessity related to the

world. We can think of the principle of harmony as the organizing principle for the relations

between subjects. Disharmony depends upon harmony for its intelligibility. So, while

localized forms of intersubjective life may be harmonious or disharmonious by degree, the

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priority of the description always rests with the harmony itself. So while a God does not

justify the positing of harmony as it does in Leibniz, the intelligibility of the intersubjective

justifies our recourse to the harmonic. Without some sense of a harmony, it is difficult to

imagine how any community could be sui generis. Our next task will be to apply the

principle of harmony to the sense of embodiment we have sketched thus far.

8. The Intersubjective Field

We must begin our analysis of intersubjectivity by first defining its characteristics,

principles, and limitations. In the following section I want to use the language of an

intersubjective field, rather than just the term ‘intersubjectivity’. I take it that a characteristic

feature, indeed an essential feature in some sense of intersubjectivity, is that intersubjectivity

is fundamentally spatial. We can talk about the spatiality of intersubjectivity in two

ways. First, our relations with others constitute a spatiality of intentional comportment with

directionality in fields of involvement. The intersubjective field is dynamically constituted by

varying degrees of involvement along the contours of a spatial organization through

time. Indeed, the spatial organization of the world gets disclosed according to the patterns

of involvement particular to a given situation. Heidegger’s discussion of Dasein’s spatiality is

instructive here. He argues for a de-serverent character in the mode of Dasein’s being and

for a conception of spatial existentiality. The second way of talking about spatiality for the

intersubjective concerns the ways in which intersubjectivity is corporeally

constituted. Husserl discovered that transcendental subjectivity ultimately led to the

necessary postulation of a transcendental intersubjectivity that grounds our ordinary notions

of objectivity. But unlike transcendental subjectivity which need not begin with a materiality,

the intersubjective requires it. Given the spatialization of the material and intentional

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intersubjective field, we must go further in specifying the way in which the intersubjective

field is constituted as an embodied relation. In what follows let us take up the work of

exploring the embodiment of intersubjectivity in terms of (a) the generation of the ego, (b)

embodied habituation, (c) language and embodiment, and (d) a general outline of norms and

institutions.

A. Ego Generativity

First, let us begin with the notion that intersubjectivity plays a critical role in the

generation of the individual ego. This was a central observation in Husserl's

phenomenological analysis. So, it seems clear that we should begin by offering a basic

outline of Husserl’s argument regarding the manner in which the intersubjective field plays a

generative role in the constitution of a given Ego, or monad. Secondly, we need to consider

the role of the body in the generation of the Ego. If we can understand how the ego is

generated in terms of its embodiment, then we should be in a better position to articulate the

moral implications of collective non-intentional moral activity later. Part of the difficulty of

environmental moral failure lies with the fact that the individuals of a community can be

generatively inculcated into practices that get fused as norms into the concrete identity and

material activities of individuals. By focusing on the feature of the embodiment of the

individual as a moment in the larger community, we hope to articulate a model or

explanation that might help us understand the normalization and often times passionate

defense of environmentally irresponsible activities that collectively engender the sorts of

problems we have been describing as moral failure. Remember our notion of moral failure

refers to the paradoxical situation in which persons acting in the performance of a moral

standard fail the moral principle in their very performance of following out the moral

principle in practice. For instance, we should not forget that persons working in coal

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factories do not set out to exacerbate the climate crisis, but rather to create a better life and

standard of living for themselves and their immediate communities. The collective moral

failure of climate change is a result of a certain form of intersubjective activity. Let us now

turn to the general outline of the ego’s embodied generation within the intersubjective field.

To begin, Husserl argues that the intersubjective community is first established on

the corporeality of the natural body. He writes in the Cartesian Mediations that the “first thing

constituted in the form of community, and the foundation for all other intersubjectively common

things, is the commons of Nature, along with that of the Other’s organism and his psychophysical Ego,

as paired with my own psychophysical Ego…

The other organism, as appearing in my primordial sphere, is sort of all a body in my

primordial Nature, which is a synthetic unity belonging to me and therefore, as a
determining part included in my own essence, inseparable from my myself. If that
body functions appresentatively, then, in union with it, the other Ego becomes an
object of my consciousness - and primarily the other Ego with his organism…253

So we can see that the community of the intersubjective first begins with the analogizing and

associative recognition of the other’s body, this of course requires the perceived corporeality

of the Other's body. This entails the idea that the body plays a founding role in the

intersubjective empathic process, without which the pairing of the ego's consciousness could

not be associatively obtained. Furthermore, the intersubjective community plays a role in

the generation of the transcendental Ego. We need to say a bit more about what we mean

by generation here. Keeping in mind the distinction between static and genetic

phenomenology, we are reminded that while static phenomenology articulates static

structures (time-slices) of eidetic and ontological relation, genetic phenomenology explores

the way in which the Ego’s phenomenological constitution unfolds. Static analysis treats the

subject as something essentially complete whereas the genetic recognizes the unfolding

253
Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, <150>

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nature of the subject over time. In static analysis the priority of investigation is the

constitution of the Ego's conscious intentional structures in relation to specific regions of

investigation. But for genetic phenomenology, the intersubjective community has a logical

priority in terms of its constitutional role of the. Even though Husserl begins his analysis

with a reduction to the sphere of 'owness' in the Cartesian Meditations, we also recognize that

without the intersubjective community certain features of the Ego’s own generation become

inexplicable. The appresentation of the Other's ego is intimately mixed with a whole range

of other co-present apperceptions about the world and our place in it. “The intrinsically first

being, the being that precedes and bears every worldly Objectivity, is transcendental

intersubjectivity: the universe of monads, which effect its communion in various

forms.”254 (Note that Husserl speaks of transcendental intersubjectivity as a being) The ego

is the product of a generation from out of the inter-monadic community. Phenomenological

moralist, Janet Donohoe, writes that

[The] originally transcendental intersubjectivity is revealed through the process of

inquiring back to the deepest level of time, the streaming present. At this deepest
level, primal level of the subject, we discover certain drives that indicate a
relationship between the ego and the Other, which testifies to an intersubjective
coincidence at the most fundamental level of subjectivity. The dark core of the ego
is the unthematizable foundation of the concrete ego’s habitualities and drives.255

The phenomenological analysis of the Ego reveals structures of habitually and empathic

drive systems which require the Other’s presence for their concretization. No person is an

island constituted merely for, by, and in themselves. No person invents their own

language. No person is born, grows, and matures without the guidance of an

Other. Indeed, our perceptions of the world are already constituted by a world and language

254
Ibid. <182>
255
Janet Donohoe. Husserl on Ethics and Intersubjectivity : From Static to Genetic Phenomenology.
(Amherst, N.Y.: Humanity Books, 2004). 107

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given to us by others. An acute concrete example is, of course, parenting. The subjective

field of the child is passively organized, in their generation, by the relations of alterity that

the parent brings to bare on the child's development. But the intersubjective alterity of the

community extends much further than the localized activities of the parent. The generation

of the Ego's identity is defined, in part, by its fixture into the world that surrounds. Every

Ego has inherited a plethora of concrete features that are only cognizable given the priority

of an antecedent Other. In other words, the Ego is constituted by the presence of the

Other. This is why Husserl contends that the Other is intrinsically first.256

In his article “Developing open intersubjectivity: On the interpersonal shaping of

experience,” Matt Bower explains that intersubjectivity provides a structural explanation for

the “enabling conditions” of constituted subjectivity:

Genetic phenomenology takes these [enabling conditions] into account insofar as

they tell us something about the sub- and quasi- rational motivations for conscious
experience… An associative connection that brings about a particular perceptual
experience may not secure the intentional act epistemically, but it does explain why
the act comes about…257

A motivation can be characterized as a previous intentional experience or eidetic cognition

that gets sedimented into the apperceptive experiences we have of objects that are associated

with those sedimentations. Motivation is the primary law governing spiritual relations for

Husserl. For instance, when I go to a forest the previous associative experiences I had of

previous forests get bundled into our immediate experience and cognition of the trees before

me. I do not see a just the visual trees, I see the Pine trees I am familiar with and have

resonance to my current cognition. Husserl remarks that “[a] thought ‘reminds’ me of other

256
Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, <124>
257
Bower, Matt. "Developing Open Intersubjectivity: On the Interpersonal Shaping of Experience."
Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 14, no. 3 (2014): 455-74. 464

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thoughts and calls back into memory a past lived experience, etc. In some cases it can be

perceived. In most cases, however, the motivation is indeed actually present in

consciousness, but it does not stand out; it is unnoticed or unnoticeable

(‘unconscious’).”258 A motivation can either be passive or pregnant (active). We can

therefore trace entire systems of motivational relations to Others and the intersubjective

field for the most simple and mundane of experiences. But the role of the intersubjective is

not only important for thinking of intentional activity itself, but also for the constitution of

the transcendental ego. The ego is not only constituted by a system of drives and instincts,

but also by a “higher level” capacity for rational motivation.259 The intersubjective

community helps constitute the objectivity of these rational motivations over time, given the

fact that language and reasoning are operations of the community that environmentally

surround and bring context to the developing ego. Another important, and we shall argue

key, element of consideration here is the idea that not only do motivations organize the

apperception of individual subjects within a community, but so do habits.

B. Embodied Habituation

The concrete existence of a community is fundamentally linked to the potential

harmonization of its material interactions. Think of the play and nuance between our bodies,

facial expressions, even the movements of the wrist, or the placement of our eyes can

communicate volumes. These are all examples of the distinct forms of material

harmonization we have with each other. Within the confines of a living community, we take

these embodied activities mostly for granted, fallaciously treating them as purely

natural. While the movements of the body do correspond to the activities of a natural

258
Husserl, Ideas, 223
259
Ibid. 253

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object, the motivations structures which lead to our expectations are, properly speaking,

cultural (spiritual) objectivities. We also know from the foregoing section that these

structures play a role in the generation of the ego and its ultimate sense of the world. By

narrowing in on the concrete nature of the intersubjective field, we can temporarily ignore

the motivational structures and recognize that there must be a second genetic principle at

work concerning the way in which these motions develop over time. This principle is

fundamentally expressed by the repeatability of motion. Embodied harmony is ultimately an

expression of an embodied tension(s) between material monads, such that the tension(s) do

not exhaust each other but remain in tension over time. If the repetition of motion between

two subjects were impossible in principle, then it would also be impossible for any tension to

exist beyond the limit of embodiment. There are only so many ways that the bodily interplay

between subjects can actually unfold. In addition, without repetition the comprehensibility of

action becomes equally impossible. Harmony requires recursion over time. This means that

the potential for embodied repetition is a necessary condition for intersubjective harmony.

But repetition alone is not enough of a principle however, because repetition is not always

possible under new environing conditions, and clearly the intersubjective does exist under

many localized environing conditions. The fact that there can be bodily disharmony within

an intersubjective community also suggests that repetition can only be part of the story. At

the concrete level, we might express such a principle by saying that the harmony of the

intersubjective field requires repetition plus synchronic alteration. In other words, what is required

is the habituation of bodies over time to each other under changing conditions. Habits are

repeated over time, but they are also pliable enough to fit new conditions. In the Cartesian

Meditations habituality was considered as a passive synthetic structure for the transcendental

ego; it also is a passive synthetic structure within the intersubjective field for the generation

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and continuance of any localized community over time. Without these forms of embodiment

and their continued existence it is impossible to identify any particular community. Indeed,

this answers our earlier question regarding how a particular community can be identified or

differentiated over time. The means of identification is bound to precisely these bodily

repetitions. These repetitions also ground the possibility for the motivational structures of

empathy. It is on this basis that we can both differentiate cultures but also recognize the

gradation of cultural practices from an embodied perspective. Consequently, a central feature

of the intersubjective field is collective embodied habituation.

First, we can say that there must be a material harmonization among the embodied

members in the intersubjective field. Each subject is inculcated into the whole through a

process of ego generativity, where the possibility of monadic pairing also points to a material

harmonization. Over time, that harmonization gets infused through sets of material

repetitions, recursions, and habituality. Habituality plays a fundamental role in grounding

the continued possibility of a community beyond the static time slice of the subject’s

awareness. This habituality is properly speaking an intercourse between subjects that

extends beyond mere individuals. We must also distinguish the habits of the intersubjective

from the practices of the intersubjective. Although every practice requires the soft touch of

habituality, there is an important difference between the two. For Husserl, practices refer to

discreet rational activities that fall under a larger domain. So, for instance, there are

technological practices, scientific practices, political practices, and so forth. One might say

that a practice is an activity that is undertaken by subjects in an active sense, for specified

reasons, such that while a practice is being undertaken it becomes the object of the

intentional interest of the subjects who participate in that practice. By contrast, habituality

refers to activities that are undertaken passively, and which largely fall outside the view of

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intentional awareness. Every activity presupposes the passive, and in this sense every

practice also includes its own habitualities and structures of passivity. For this reason, the

embodied habituality of the intersubjective comes prior to the activities of a practice. They

are, of course, intertwined in everyday existence. Institutions themselves are composed of

discreet purpose driven practices, and those practices presuppose a form of habituality. In

fact, institutions are especially prone to be organized along these habitual recursive means

because they typically exist independent of any single subject. If we were to negate the

possibility of embodied habituality from the intersubjective field, it would quickly become

clear that such things as communal practices or institutions, could not exist. Thus, the

embodied habitualities of a community constitute one of the principle enabling conditions

for the harmonization of the community.

Clearly the habitualities of the intersubjective field have their effects on subjective

consciousness and the development of the ego itself. If a child were born into a city where

everyone (her community) litters, she will come to see that as apart of the material

constitution for her community because of its habitual instantiation. An institution that

habituates specific values and practices, will eventually gain a related history and cultivate a

culture organized around those same values. The conception of tradition, that Husserl

discusses, is a dependent function of embodied habituality. For it is through the recursive

nature of habituality that the harmonization of the community can extend over time through

generations of collective activity. The mechanics of a culture's development over time rest

with its embodied habituation. In order to properly situate the problem of collective action

in environmental ethics, we must begin by situating ourselves to the fact that collectivities

exist through embodied habitualities. Some, many, maybe even most are unknown to us for

precisely the reason that as habitualities, they are not frequently subjected to change, and

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therefore escape our conscious intention. For in many ways, the embodied habituations of a

community form the ground upon which empathic relations can exist.

C. Language & Embodiment

Our argument is that the embodied harmonization of the intersubjective requires a

habitual manifestation because habituality provides a formal grounding upon which the

subjects of a community are able to interactively engage over time. A central form of this

embodied habituation is constituted in the language of the community. We are accustomed

to thinking about language in language and this leads us to the conceptualization of

language. But the concepts of language first begin with the movements of the body. The

materiality of language is a central element to the concrete immanency of language. The

point is so obvious and fundamental that it is primarily an invisible feature to the speaker

living in the natural attitude. Merleau-Ponty emphasizes the importance of the gestural

signification when he writes,

Through speech, then, there is a taking of the other person’s thought, a reflection in
others, a power of thinking according to others, which enriches our own
thoughts. Here, them, the sense of words must ultimately be induced by the words
themselves, or more precisely their conceptual signification must be formed by
drawing from a gestural signification, which itself is immanent in speech…260

Even from a purely physicalist view, we can say that language is not tantamount to, but

requires necessarily, a materiality of signs. These signs are largely seen and heard, though

other forms exist. We are also firmly aware of the centrality of language for human culture,

its significance and centrality as a medium. The material embodiment of language is

ultimately tied to the habituality and the use of signs. When people speak a language and

converse they engage in a material harmonization of signs; they subjectively experience

260
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Donald A. Landes. Phenomenology of Perception. (Abingdon, Oxon ;
New York: Routledge, 2012). 184

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language on the order of empathy, words are no longer signs but ideas (objects with eidetic

content).

Emmanuel Levinas's phenomenology of exteriority postulates an asymmetrical

relation between the same and the other. This is a metaphysical relation characterized by the

notion of infinity. From this metaphysical situation, ethics becomes first philosophy. The

alterity of the other opens up an infinite horizon of ethical responsibility amidst a

background of enjoyment. Although Levinas emphasizes the importance of the face (as the

immanent threshold for the alterity of the other) functionally, language allows the structural

connection for interfacing with the Other. So language plays a crucial role in his

metaphysical account of ethics. By contrast, our analysis remains silent on the question of

this asymmetry because of our suspension of the first-personal. But we can, I think, say

something here about the importance of language in Levinas and how it relates to the

embodiment thesis. For Levinas, language ultimately formed the means by which the

infinite alterity of the other can be bridged as at least comprehensible. He writes:

The word that designates things attests their apportionment between me and the
others… Objectivity results from language, which permits the putting into question
of possession. This disengagement has a positive meaning: the entry of the thing
into the sphere of the other. The things becomes a theme. To thematize is to offer
the world to the Other in speech.261

The language of the Other calls our ability to possess the world (for our enjoyment) into

question. When a person speaks to another, their language, insofar as it is a medium for

thought, disrupts the singular flow or train of one’s thoughts. The language of the other has

the effect of disrupting and reordering the intentional flow of one’s experience. For Levinas,

261
Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, (The Hague; Boston: Martinus
Nijhoff, 1979). 209

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this negativity has a positive meaning because it allows the entry into the sphere of the

other. Our thesis regarding the habituality of the body can explain why the asymmetrical

ontological relation of an Other's infinity can be bridged by language.

Early theories and discussions on the objectivity of scientific language by Husserl

and Popper specifically relied upon a conception of intersubjectivity, and for good reason. A

conception of the ’objective' relies upon a conception of the other for its

comprehensibility. Some things are objective insofar as they are 'natural' objects. Natural

objects have corporeal extension and are understood along the lines of the 'natural

attitude'. The epistemological condition for knowing an object in a natural 'objective' sense

is that it be the same for everyone, at least in certain ways. In the scientific attitude, the

natural gets aligned with the corporeal. Intersubjectivity appears to be an enabling condition

for objectivity itself. This leads to the idea that the 'objectivity' is grounded (or only occurs)

in (or as) intersubjectivity.

There is another way of seeing the problem - scientific 'objectivity' ultimately consists

in the neutrality of subjectivity therefore, whereby things remain fixed and open to all. The

embodiment of language in terms of its recursion (a necessary feature) enables the fixing of

'objectivities' within local concrete cases. Language is also apart of the habituality of the

material intersubjective field. Even though we use language to see and describe our world,

there is a habituality to our language of which we are mostly unaware. The fact that

different cultures have different accents (keeping in mind, that an accent is a material

habituation at the level of the very muscles of the throat) indicates the material habituation

of language in its raw form, for instance. From the perspective of the individual, these

details are small in the course of daily intentional activity are treated with no concern, but

these same details make up the very fabric of the linguistic community. These collective

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habitual interrelations in language help enable and generate the concrete formation of the

community.

Our ultimate concern is geared towards the comprehensibility of environmental

moral failure. The habituality of language offers us a very important clue for making sense

of how morality relates to intersubjectivity and our harmonization thesis. The passive

habitual structures of language have a passively constituting role for the habitual structures

of intentional thought. The language of a community plays a number of fundamental roles,

one of which includes the articulation of moral values and concepts. Language is a material

medium for the collective interchange among individuals in a community. The moral

concepts of a community are embodied both in terms of certain forms of activity, but also

through the habituality of their use in language. Indeed, language is precisely not private

because of its generative effect for consciousness. Every community has a moral dimension

and this dimension is instantiated through the habitualities of the body, including the

tongue. Because every community exists as a collective irreality, not as a fixed substance, the

habitualities of language and the conceptual landscapes they convey, exist as (or through)

modalities of bodily movement paired and related to each other. All moral concepts depend

upon this dance of bodies between individuals within the community. The moral language

of a people is necessarily correlated to the unfolding collective harmonization. So the moral

language of a people, their moral concepts, are like fossilized records of an intersubjective

form of being. Because a community is something necessarily collective, it must exist

independent of any one member. The moral concepts of a community depend upon a

collective linguistic habituation that extends beyond the individual. Language is a collective

artifact despite its subjective presentation. The intersubjective field can be topologically

understood through the crisscrossing network of concepts we convey through our moral

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language. These concepts get embodied in the way communities exist and intersubjectively

relate. Over time this embodiment plays an important role in the sedimentation of

experiences in consciousness. Perhaps, the environmental moral crisis today does not feel

like a moral crisis in part because we have moral habitualities (collective in nature, that are)

instantiated by the material activities responsible for the crisis, and all of this becomes

sedimented into the consciousness we do have of the crisis. Words have objective meaning

when they are intersubjectively embodied in a collective habitus and this embodiment is

ultimately a pre-requisite for moral language too.

D. Norms & Institutions

Let us take a brief moment and extend our analysis to the discussion of norms and

institutions. Our central thesis here is that one crucial aspect of collective communities

consist in their repetitive and recursive uses of the body, these are known as habits. The

habits of a community enable the conditions for the empathic pairing between

individuals. When we negate the role of the individual’s phenomenal experience, we can see

that the harmonization of the collectivity of the community is its habituality structure. So

the community exists materially, but its material consists in a certain regulation of the bodies

of individuals. The habitualities which extend collectively and are not the result of

intentional activity, but come about as a result of the generative effect of the intersubjective,

are the very substance of the intersubjective. The form of any given community unfolds

along these channels of recursive activity which repeat over time in differing

situations. Passive habitualities, in turn, help enable and ground the practices of a

community. The moral language of a people is as much conditioned by these habitualities as

are the other features of the intersubjective form. There are two points worthy of our

consideration here. First, there must be a relationship between the norms of a community

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and their habituality index, as it were. Second, institutions themselves can be seen as forms

of intentionally regulated collective practice - and if this is the case, institutions play a

structural role in the establishment of communal norms. Practices over time tend to

converge with the habitualities of a community. Let’s start with the first idea.

First, let us say a word to help clarify the role of habituation and norms. Let’s pin

down our language. Keeping in line with the Husserlian theme of analysis, we can start with

Husserl’s conception a norm. Husserl distinguishes norms from laws when he writes that

“…norms, tell us what shall or should be,” whereas laws “tells us what is.”262 Norms include

within them the sense of prescription whereas laws are purely descriptive. Husserl

emphasize that this sense of prescription is not necessarily moral.263 Some norms do

presuppose certain moral valuations, however. So what do norms have to do with the

passive habitualities that occur in the concrete life of a community? Because the embodied

habituation of the community is a necessary precondition for any social norms, it stands to

reason that an operative norm must be consistent with these habitualities, and at least not

contradictory. If a norm contradicted the harmonized habitualities that enable the collective

community to persist through time, then the successful implementation of the prescriptive

would become tragic and impossible. This seems to also follow with practices in general. If

practices contradict the structure of habituation within the intersubjective field then that

practice must either remain distinct from the general from of life. Norms also require their

recursive repeatability. By the very fact that a norm is prescriptive, it organizes future

activity by its prescriptive allotment. Not only do norms organize future activity, but they

organize future multiplicities of communal activity. In other words, an operable norm is one

262
HUA XVIII, 40, ENG 34
263
Ibid. 41

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which must in principle remain compatible to the forms of habitual life of a

community. Now clearly, there are also moral norms that get fixed into the life and activity

of a community, but these moral norms depend first upon more basic habitual

conditions. We should keep moral norms separate from the structural norms a community

may inculcate into their practices in the order of our analysis. The upshot is that social

norms are collectively organized by acceptable thresholds of embodied habituality.

Not only do we see the necessity for habituality in the social norms that help make

up a community, but habituality extends formally as an aspect to social practices and

institutions. While habits condition the norms established in practices or by institutions,

there is a sense in which the latter two are formalized by explicit procedures related to

specific purposes. But insofar as practices and institutions relate to the normality of

collective action, they also impart their own habitualized structures for inculcation. Social

institutions are important examples of intersubjective collective activity. First of all,

institutions are clear examples of collective action that extend beyond the moments of the

individual. They are generally structured to collectively harmonize the activities of its

collective members in such a way as to fulfill a given purpose, or tells. The organs of an

institution are typically bureaucratic in nature because the system of interactions must be

harmonized by consistent processes. What this means is that the functioning institution will

recursively patternize the material interactions, both in word and deed, according to the

collect purpose. The very processes of an institution function as the formal habits of the

institution itself. We can perhaps even designate a difference between the soft and hard

habits of an institution. A hard habit is an institutional requirement (a law or rule of the

institution) where a soft habit is one that develops in a given localized context. Indeed if we

take nearly any institution, a University for instance, and then bracketed out the individual

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intents of the institution’s members, we would be left with these habitual processes and

patterns. Over time, habits and practices all work together to cultivate the very culture of an

institution.

Further, we can say that the embodied habituality of the intersubjective is a founding

element for the distinction between what counts as normal and abnormal within a specific

community. In Ideas II, Husserl writes:

We already know that a certain sameness in the totality of the manifolds of

appearance is a condition for the possibility of mutual understanding and that
consequently differences are possible in certain directions only. Such differences
come to the form in the exchange of descriptions; on the basis of the intersubjective
harmony of experience discordance stands out, and only in that way can it be
manifest.

Thence proceeds the guidelines for the possible and familiar distinctions between
“normal” human persons versus abnormal. This normality is related to a multiplicity
of persons in a communicating association, persons who, on the whole, in
conformity with a predominating regularity, agree with one another in their
experiences and consequently in their assertions about experience, versus other
persons of the same association who make deviant assertions about the surrounding
world… Furthermore, from here proceed the guidelines for the constitution of
physicalist thing-Objectivity in intersubjective research into nature.264

The sameness and totality of the manifolds of appearance for the intersubjective first

depends upon the general pairing of embodied habituation. This means that over time, and

from within a specific localized community, practices and activities that are considered

normal are conditioned by a synchronicity of habits between the members of the

community. Since the harmony of the intersubjective is predicated, in part, on embodied

habituation, then we can say that normality signals a sort of threshold for the identification

of collective action itself. While normality is distinct from normativity, and does not denote a

moral category as such, it is also clear that normality is one of the contributing conditions for

264
Husserl, Ideas II, 217 <207>

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the intelligibility of the normative. In this sense, normality adds to the harmony of a

common world. In terms of environmental moral failure, we can also see a potential

valuable explanation – namely, if a community habituates, normalizes, practices and

institutions that are environmentally disruptive, those disruptions will seem normal and

effectively contribute to the normative dimension of expectations thereof. In other words,

normality offers us a potential horizon for understanding how the activities of

environmental moral failure might become either invisible or nearly insurmountable for the

people internal to that community.

This means that the intersubjective field of habituality describes features indicative to

a whole range of potential situations. If individuals are ‘moments of the intersubjective field,

then perhaps institutions are like pieces of the intersubjective field. Institutions are also

organized by an intersubjective harmonic principle localized and fired to a specific concrete

situation. The goal of an institution is to foster its concrete mission harmonically within the

society both in space and time. Since an institution is a piece of the intersubjective field, it

does not function on the same horizon as the individual does. Since an institution is a

formal entity, it conforms to, creates modifies, and/or maintain certain formal norms

accordingly to its prescriptive purpose. The teleological completion of an institution

ultimately depends upon the dynamic unfolding of habituality. So, while we have not

rigorously explored moral discourse proper, we can already see that the mechanics of

habituality, as being part and parcel of intersubjective concretion, will play an important role

in understanding the moral ontology of collective action. The environmental crisis of our

own day suggests we keenly evaluate the structures of habituality which form the basis of our

material social norms.

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 9. Intersubjectivity and Moral Life

In this final section of the chapter, I would like to argue that given the results of the

investigation of embodiment, harmonization, and habituality we can conclude that

intersubjective ontology as thus described is a necessary and sufficient condition for moral

life. Intersubjectivity is both (1) a necessary condition of possibility for the constitution of

moral life, but also (2) it is a sufficient condition for its actualization. The intersubjective

field has been characterized as the harmonic movements embodied in agents. A harmony is

a strained tension between moments that maintains itself recursively. Upon this basis the

intersubjective field is thoroughly characterized by forms of habituation that mark out the

forms of normality that a community can come to embody. Therefore, the intersubjective

field is an organizing condition for any existing concrete community. “Moral life” can be

described in a number of different ways. Ordinarily, we might describe “moral life” from a

first-person intentional perspective and say that it refers to the dimension of life in which

actions can and should be taken for normative reasons. In a description of moral life we

would include our reasons for action, desires, intentions, etc. But in all cases, whatever we

describe we always do so under the auspices of a perceived normativity. At this juncture, we

can say that normativity just refers to the idea that we perceive some constraint regarding

how we should act. Intersubjectivity from this vantage appears to be a situational criterion

for individual action and largely irrelevant in the sorts of actual considerations we actually

bring to bear. But in our case, we have already bracketed out the individual intentions from

our analysis and they are no longer available. In the ordinary sense, the reasons for action

that characterize the normative depend upon the existence (or perceived existence) of ideal

objectivities. Although a community cannot have its own intentional awareness and

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therefore can have no conscious objectivity in mind; a community’s harmonic movement

does presuppose certain objectivities – namely, whatever the environing conditions are that

dictate the continued harmony itself. In order for the harmony to continue against the

background of its environing conditions (which also includes the intentions of the agents

themselves), there is an implicit difference between acts that maintain the harmony and

those which sow disharmony. Upon this spectrum, grounded in objectivity, are thresholds

which are best characterized as being normative. In the intersubjective field, “moral life”

refers to the presupposed relation between the embodied harmonic and the environing

world, and all the possibilities of interaction. Those interactions which maintain the harmony

can be treated as normative. Of course, some interactions are potentially better than

others. In this sense, the intersubjective field is not only a necessary condition for the

“moral life” of individual agents with intention, but is also its own sort of moral

actualization. Further, if there is no actualization of the intersubjective field then moral life

is not even possible at the individual level. Intersubjectivity is a necessary condition for

objectivity and normative actions at the individual level presuppose objectivities. Therefore,

if there is no intersubjectivity then there can be no moral life at all. Our claim here is that the

intersubjective field is both necessary and sufficient for moral life; necessary as a condition

of its possibility and sufficient in terms of its normative constitution. In other words, where

an intersubjective field exists, then moral life is automatically posited. It also means the

reverse too - where moral activity exists, there too an intersubjective field exists. Simply put,

in saying that intersubjectivity is a sufficient and necessary condition for moral life, we mean

to endorse the idea that moral life occurs if and only if an intersubjective field is

present. Without some recourse to the intersubjective then the possibility of a moral

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engagement will not arise. That which is necessary is opposed to contingency. Husserl

writes that

[the] concept opposed to this [empirical] contingency is that of a priori necessity…

concepts whose constitution does not thus depend on the contingency of the
element actually given as the point of departure and its empirical horizons. These
concepts do not envelop an extension which, as it were, is open merely after the event,
but beforehand a priori.265

We can differentiate therefore two types of necessity: contingent empirical necessity and a

priori transcendental necessity. The first concerns the ways in which contingent events

require antecedent (also contingent) events. For instance, climate change is preceded by

some contingent antecedent event of atmospheric greenhouse gases. An antecedent

anthropogenic event correlates to a human activity that can be said to ‘cause’ a consequent

occurrence. The necessity between the two events is given, as a material reality, by the

material sciences in the form of material causation. By contrast, transcendental necessity refers

to an a priori non-contingent formal necessity, these conditions can be articulated through

transcendental deduction and phenomenological investigation. Given the genetic analytic

requisite to intersubjectivity, a transcendental necessity here is given according to the

immanent genesis by association. Therefore, an intersubjective transcendental necessity

concerns a necessity of genesis a priori.

Our view is that intersubjectivity is a transcendental necessity for moral normative

activity. There are a number of reasons. First, because the ego is transcendentally

constituted by the intersubjective dimension in which it emerges, the ego must be situated

within an intersubjective community in the first place. This may indicate the necessity of the

intersubjective for moral normative cognition, but it does not demonstrate the sufficiency of

265
Edmund Husserl, and Ludwig Landgrebe. Experience and Judgment; Investigations in a Genealogy of
Logic. (Evanston,: Northwestern University Press, 1973). 417

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intersubjectivity towards moral life. Before turning to the theme of sufficiency, a second

reason for the necessary condition of intersubjectivity can be situated - language. We take it

as axiomatic that language is a concrete product of the intersubjective field. Not only do all

communities use language, but language appears to be a fundamental necessity for moral

cognition itself. At the heart of moral cognition is the frame of normative opposition

between how one should act and how one should not act. Regardless of the local moral

concepts, the ontological structure of intersubjectivity requires that certain baseline

conditions be met, given the principle of harmony. Moral reflection occurs as a use of

language and is therefore logically dependent upon the community that uses and shares the

language. In other words, without the linguistic shared product of a communal language,

the activity of moral reflection could never occur in the first place. This means that if we

deny intersubjective ontology, then it would be impossible to activate the moral cognition of

the individual. So moral life seems to presuppose an intersubjective ontology.

The second idea here concerns the notion of sufficiency and, in particular, the

principle of sufficient reasoning. In contemporary philosophy, the notion of a grounding

has been used in place of the principle of sufficient reason, so let me briefly define the

principle and then relate it to the notion of grounding. In its simplest form, the principle of

sufficient reason, best articulated by Leibniz, corresponds to the idea that for every bivalent

assertion, there must be a sufficient reason why, even if it is unknown. Leibniz writes:

Our reasonings are grounded upon two great principles, that of contradiction… And that of
sufficient reason, in virtue of which we hold that there can be no fact real of existing, no
statement true, unless there be a sufficient reason, why it should be so and not
otherwise, although these reasons usually cannot be known by us.266

266
Leibniz. The Monadology and Other Philosophical Writings. Translated by Robert Latta. (Oxford:
Claredon Press, 1898). §31

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 Leibniz places the principle up to the level of non-contradiction in its importance. The

idea is simple enough. Not only does reasoning itself require a principle of non-

contradiction, but it also requires a principle of sufficient reasoning such that propositions

have, in principle, a sufficient antecedent reason. But the devil is in the details and the

principle of sufficient reason has been the subject of vigorous debate. For instance, in the

Critique of Pure Reason Kant regards the principle of sufficient reason as “the ground of

possible experience, namely the objective cognition of cognition of appearances with regard

to their relation in the successive series of time.”267 Schopenhauer argues that there are 4

modalities for the principle of sufficient reason, including its being a moral principle, a

physical principle, a mathematical principle, and a logical principle. For Heidegger, the

principle of sufficient reason is the principle of principles insofar that “[nothing] is without

real all that is has a reason. This proposition itself ‘is’, and thus requires a reason… ‘The

principle of reason is the reason of the principle’.”268 Without digressing into Heidegger’s

discussion, the principle of sufficient reason is ultimately the ground of Being itself. More

contemporary authors such as Dasgupta argue, in line with Heidegger, that the principle can

be formally delineated in terms of grounding rather than causation: “For every substantive

fact Y there are some facts, the Xs, such that (i) the Xs ground Y and (ii) each one of the Xs

is autonomous.”269 In other words, everything has an autonomous grounding which can

serve as its explanation. Given our thesis on intersubjectivity, we can either say that the

intersubjective ontology (and its grounded principle of harmony) is a sufficient explanation

267
Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, A201
268
Martin Heidegger, The Principle of Reason, Trans. Reginald Lilly. (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1996).
269
Shamik Dasgupta, "Metaphysical Rationalism." Nous 50, no. 2 (2016): 379-418.

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for moral life. Although we have adopted Husserl’s argument that intersubjectivity enables

the generation of transcendental subjectivity, we do not hold that intersubjectivity ‘causes’

moral life, but rather grounds it possibility and a certain dimension of its actuality. The

upshot of this analysis is the radical implication that “moral life,” or some degree of it, is

independent of conscious intention. An asymmetry opens up between what “moral life”

means for the individual and the community. Ordinarily a moral being is said to be that

being which can have moral intentions, desires, duties, etc. – in other words, the moral being

has agency and that fortuitously requires conscious intention. But our argument suggests that

there is another moral being (in the form of the community) and that although it does not

have a unified sense of agency or collective intention, it is morally relevant.

If we remove the intersubjective field as a possibility of existence, then we should be put

into a position in which moral life would appear ungrounded and unexplainable in principle.

Consider the well-known literary example of Robinson Crusoe and let us imagine a person

marooned on an island with no immediate intersubjective community. Of course, this

example is still not radical enough, for the removal of Crusoe from an immediate community

does not yet withdraw him from the transcendental groundings of an intersubjective

community. For the man still has his memories and the relative habitual customs of the

community from whence he came. In addition, Crusoe has transported the English language

to his island and in this sense the products of an intersubjective community remain as a

trace. It would be entirely intelligible for Crusoe, even if alone, to have moral sentiments

and habitual customs of the kind we typically associate with moral activity. For instance, as a

Christian, Crusoe might think that suicide is not an acceptable alternate to his predicament

despite a potential temptation to end it all. Whether we agree with this sentiment or not

makes no difference, for in his consideration of suicide, he would be articulating a normative

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stance regarding how he ought or ought not act. The Crusoe we get from Defoe remains a

moral agent in this way. But if we go further and imagine an impaired Crusoe, perhaps as a

result of his shipwreck he suffers an intense injury to his head and loses access to his

previous episodic and procedural memories it becomes difficult to ascertain in what sense he

might be capable of moral considerations. For in losing his access to memory, the impaired

Crusoe can no longer remember his habitual customs, his language, or his home

community. Under these conditions, our imagined character no longer bares the trace of the

intersubjective. Now ask in what sense can Crusoe credibly engage in moral life or be said to act

morally? While we shall discuss the problem of morality in much detail in Chapter 5, we can

say from the outset that morality is the articulation of normative standards regarding how

one should act. Yet an impaired Crusoe who no longer has access to language will

necessarily loose his ability for rational consideration and conceptual identification. Under

these conditions, not only would he be unable to ascertain how he should act, but he would

lose his capacity for recognizing the field of his very situation, let alone any consideration of

how he ought to act. Crusoe would likely be so impaired, that if he were to survive for any

manner of time it would likely be seen as a miracle. If such a man were rescued and his

situation fully known, we would also restrict our moral judgments upon such a

wretch. When we compare the first and second Crusoe, it looks like the possibility of moral

life depends upon the necessity of the intersubjective, particularly given the absence of

language. If we were to hold the impaired Crusoe morally responsible, we would lack a

sufficient reason for doing so. In other words, it appears that any moral dimension we

attach to Crusoe requires an intersubjective ontological grounding and that this is both a

necessary and sufficient reason. Conversely, this means that the first Crusoe, even if utterly

alienated and alone, is still a moral creature capable of moral considerations, and normative

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action. Indeed, when we read Daniel Defoe’s Crusoe, what we discover is a moral treatise

that emphasizes the importance of Crusoe’s intersubjective heritage. He is considered first

and foremost a moral being and this does not become apparent until Crusoe recovers the

sacred religious text of his home community. Even in the midst of his most malign

loneliness, Crusoe is wrapped by the religious considerations part and parcel of his

community:

But while I was going to return God thanks form my present fate, something seemed
to shock my mind as if it has thus said, Unworthy wreath! Can you pretend to be
thankful for a condition from which you would pray to be delivered; Here I stop; -
and though I could not say, I thank’d the Divine Majesty for being there, yet I gave
God thanks for placing to my view my former wicked course of life, and granting me
a true knowledge of repentance: And whenever I opened of shot the Bible, I blest
the kind Providence that directed me my goods without my order, and for affecting
me to save it from the power of the raging ocean.270

Crusoe, or any other imagined person, is simply unimaginable without intersubjectivity. The

intersubjective ontology of a harmonic community, that enables the generation of

transcendental subjectivity, language, and normality is itself a necessary and sufficient

condition for moral life and moral consideration.

270
Daniel Defoe, The Life and Most Suprising Adventues of Robinson Crusoe, (Edinburgh: Bookseller,
1792). 55

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 Chapter IV. Morality, Value, Habit

1. Introduction

The field of engagements we have in our daily lives, whether on the order of

perception, actions, or reflections are derivatively organized by the intersubjective field we

inhabit. It is a description of non first-personal ontological features that condition our

presence of interaction with others, and ourselves. At the center of the intersubjective field

is a principle for the material and formal harmony among the embodied activities of a

community. This material principle is apparent in both the embodied practices of

individuals and the linguistic life of a community. It informs the material harmony between

embodied agents that enable the very possibility of an intentional life between members of

that community. Social consciousness is predicated upon these passively attuned conditions

of the living body. The harmonic principle, as a precondition for empathy, necessarily

extends beyond any one member of the community and enables the objective

comprehension of activities between agents. It is the site where our activities are made

meaningful for both ourselves and others, and is a base-line organizing feature for the

comprehension of our moral imperatives and norms. For moral life requires this concrete

intersubjective harmony as an antecedent condition for both practice and the

comprehension of normative activities. The harmonic principle structurally limits the

possible demands of normative action and undergirds the entire field of moral activity.

Following this insight, this chapter argues that the moral field of normative activity can be

understood along a contrast between the harmony and dissonance of a community’s material

harmony. Wrong-doing, and the various dimensions and grades of evil, can be understood

as the privation of the harmonic order undergirding the material interactions of a

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community. From Augustine, I argue that the privation of a community, understood in

terms of a relation in its material harmony is a normative evil in a very real sense. The

destruction of the intersubjective community can be considered a wrong. From this vantage

its clear that tradition and culture are organized along normative standards that maintain the

intersubjective existence of the community. Husserl highlights the importance of the

passive habitual structures of intersubjective life, thereby indicating the existence of a moral

habitus embodied in the relations we have with others. Through a process of collective

sedimentation, whole normative schemas get passively rooted in the relations we have with

others. Importantly, the sedimentation of collective moral activity also organizes our moral

intuitions and the comprehension of moral phenomena. Intersubjectively indicates an

ontology that can allow minimally objective moral judgements about collective action. If we

are to articulate a model for understanding and describing environmental moral failure, then

we need an explanatory model that extends our moral vocabulary to that of collective

agents.

Some remarks about moral realism are in order. Moral realism is understood differently

by different philosophers. One such philosopher, Michael Smith, argues that moral realists

believe “that some sentences we use when we make moral claims - sentences like “Torturing

babies is wrong” and “Keeping promises is right” - are capable of being either true of false,

and, second, the belief that some such sentences really are true.” 271 But what does “really

true” mean, if nothing other than objective? Since objectivity is itself always grounded, or

appears as a function, of intersubjective existential agreement, then the conditions upon

which something is true are based in what is existentially coordinated between the members

of a community. These “agreements” are expressed in the language of a community.

271
Michael Smith, Ethics and the a Priori (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 181.

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Language is the medium, rooted in the passive paring of subjects, by which objectivity is

expressed and made comprehensible. Recall Husserl’s remark in Ideas II that

It is clear that the apprehension of the Body plays a special role for the intersubjectivity in which all
objects are apprehended ‘Objectively’ as things in the one Objective time and one Objective space of
the one Objective world. (In every case the exhibition of any apprehended Objectivity whatsoever
requires a relation to the apprehension of a multiplicity of subjects sharing a mutual understanding
[Wechselverstndingung ].) 272

The ontological conditions of the intersubjective are the real basis for the assessment of the

truth conditions for some types moral statements. The ‘objectivity’ of a moral judgement

depends upon the concrete embodied conditions, not the perception of a moral judgement

alone. The intention of the agents can be misaligned to understanding the actual concrete

embodied conditions of the community. This is a minimal moral realism, in which objective

judgements are in principle general. One can also distinguish between two types of realism

here - a meta-moral realism in which certain moral principles can be said to have a real basis

and a much broader moral realism that advocates for the truth functionality of specific

concrete moral propositions. The moral realism advocated here is of the first kind, not the

second, because of the generality of the moral principle for wrongdoing adopted. The

moral realist holds that moral language can describe features about the way the world is. 273

The community is also apart of the world in an existential and material form. Every

community is localized in a specific place where the concrete intersubjective conditions

necessitate different forms of organization. Specific, or better put - local moral claims, like

the ones cited by Smith, do not reference real objects, but rather the concrete intersubjective

frame in which they are made. In other words, the concrete moral judgments we actually

make are referential to the local intersubjective conditions we have adopted. Talk about

wrong and right can refer, in some minimal sense, to real conditions about the way things

272
Husserl, Ideas II, 86.
273
Smith, 181.s

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really are in the world, but the greater the specificity the less intelligible it becomes. Can a

moral realism be defended from purely phenomenological grounds?

The topic of moral realism has been of some interest in phenomenological circles,

usually cast under the language of constructivism. Instead of viewing the objectivity of

moral judgements as dependent upon a metaphysical substrate for their objectivity, one

should rather view objectivity as something practical. Following Kant, Christine Korsgaard

argues that under constructivism, that “a normative concept refers systematically to the

solution to a practical problem.”274 The constructivism of Korsgaard and others leads to a

minimal form of objective moral “realism”. There are broad disagreements however. In The

Phenomenology of Moral Normatively William Hosmer Smith writes that “[what] we need is an

ontology of the self and a corresponding account of intersubjectivity that can, on the one

hand, account for the normatively of particular moral obligations and on the other, account

for the intersubjective scope of morality - that is, account for others as self-originating

sources of valid moral claims.”275 His evaluation of the problem of accounting for moral

normatively comes in the context of a comparative rejection of the moral realism of

Korsgaard and the Husserlian metaethics of Drummond. He argues that Korsgaard fails to

give a sufficient account of the first personal dimension of moral normatively while

Drummond is epistemologically unable to give an account beyond the constraints of the

first-personal. Smith’s own approach is to take a fusion of Heidegger and Levinas. He

writes, “The moral community, on our theory, functions onto levels: the moral community of

das Mann and the ethical community of the face-to-face encounter”.276 Our investigation of

274ChristineM. Korsgaard, “Realism and Constructivism in Twentieth-Century Moral Philosophy,” Journal

of Philosophical Research, 28 (Supplement): 99-122.

275
William Hosmer Smith, The Phenomenology of Moral Normativity, (New York: Routledge, 2012), 158.
276
Ibid 176

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the intersubjective has provided us, at least hypothetically, with a model of intersubjective

relations independent of the first personal empathic account, but how does our form of

moral realism compare with Korsgaard? In Creating the Kingdom of Ends Korsgaard offers a

Kantian version of moral intersubjectivity. She writes that “We hold one another

responsible because this is essential to our interactions which each other as persons; because

in this way we together populate a moral world…

To view people theoretically, as objects of knowledge, is to view them as part of the world that is
imposed upon us through the sense, and to hat extent, as alien. But insofar as we are nominal, or
active beings, we join others in those intersubjective standpoints which we can occupy together into
the standpoint of practical reason, and create a Kingdom of Ends on earth.277

Korsgaard’s Tanner Lectures indicate a further commitment to certain naturalistic explanations

of the self and agency. 278 Smith contends that Korsgaard’s view breaks down on solipsistic

grounds and that “she can account for the normativity or universality of moral obligations,

but not both.”279 At issue here is the role of first personal deliberations and the

volitional/intentional activity of moral agents. The form of meta-moral minimalism this

dissertation advocates avoids the problem Smith accuses Korsgaard of because the account

of the meta-moral principle for normatively is not derived from the rational deliberations of

individuals, but in the material interactivity between agents. Indeed, the problem of

collective environmental moral failure is indicative of a functional suspension of first person

moral deliberations about the wider environment by individuals.

The aim of this chapter is to bridge the connection between a general understanding

of intersubjectivity and moral philosophy so that we can get a clear view of the type of

social ontology that could help us understand the collective environmental failure of the sort

277
Christine Korsgaard, Creating the Kingdom of Ends (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996),
212.
278
See “The Sources of Normatively” by Christine Korsgaard (1996)
279
Smith, 17.

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our societies now find themselves confronted with. Towards this end, this chapter first (1)

situates its thesis as being consistent with Husserlian moral philosophy generally, and that (2)

an intersubjective dimunition principle enables a generalized moral realism in which (3) evil

and wrong-doing are understood as the concrete privation of the intersubjective field. The

(4) passive habituality of a community enables a moral habitus at a collective level, so that (5)

the communal values of a community are understood as a structural principle for concrete

normative activity. The values of a community can be objectively identified in the concrete

manifestations of actual lived activity, rather than in the particular forms of valuations that

community, or set of individuals, might make. Accordingly, (6) this collective moral habitus

organizes the moral phenomenology of a community through a process of embodied

sedimentation that spans beyond generations. Activity is largely habituated in an

unintentional manner, and as it is sedimented into the life forms of a community, it takes on

the function of a normative standard. Because these moral norms do not require the active

intents of agents to be inculcated in an embodied form of life, they can persist long and

deep within and throughout the social life of a community, even to the point of their

becoming divergently dissonant within the real life of the community. Finally, this chapter

argues that (7) this explanatory model for moral failure entails us the ability to make

objective moral judgements about the collective practices of communities independent of

the relative understanding they may have of their activities.

2. Husserl’s Moral Philosophy

Husserl’s published ethical writing (primarily in the form of his lectures) have been

divided by his various commentators (Donohoe, Ferrarello, Moran, and Cohen) into two

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distinctive periods, the early and late. The early period of his work centers on the discussion

of ethical universalism, objectivity, and its relation to logic. While his latter work on ethics

centers on the problems of ethical renewal, critique, the individual, community, and the topic

of love. Unfortunately, most of his writings on ethics and moral thought were articulated in

the context of his lectures on the history of philosophy and should not be treated as an

exhaustive treatise on the subject. Accordingly, the remarks we have to draw on, tend to be

made from within the confines of his analyses of the history of philosophy, rather than

being a systematic evaluation of moral concepts alone. Sources for these writings include

Husserl’s lectures in Göttengen on axiology and ethics (1902, 1908-09, 1911, and 1914), his

lectures on ethics in Frieburg (1920 and 1924) and his essays on renewal (found in the

Japanese journal, Kaizo). The bulk of this work has been published in HUA XXXV and

HUA XXVII respectively. Despite the periodicity of his focus, Husserl's ethical writings are

consistent and successive in nature.

Husserl seems less interested in articulating an ethical moral system, so much as applying

the lessons of phenomenology to the problems of moral philosophy, as per his other

investigations at the time. In the early years, Husserl's confrontation with ethics was

primarily organized around the problem of objectivity and the universalism of ethical

judgments. Ethics is seen as having a relationship to the good in the manner in which logic

is related to truth. It is perhaps no surprise then that his work focuses on ethical problems

acutely present in the works of his mentors, Kant, Fichte, and Brentano - although the

central topic is Kant’s categorical imperative. Despite being critical of Kant's formalism,

Husserl articulates his own 'formula' for the categorical imperative in which he advocates

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that one must "Tue das Beste unter dem Erreichbaren"280 - do the best that is attainable. The

universality of the categorical imperative applies as an ideal of reason, but Kant has not

formulated it in a practical sense. Husserl seeks a version of the formula that structurally

includes the idea that one can only do what is possible. The problem with the Kantian

version of the categorical imperative is its overly formalistic approach, such that with it one

aims to articulate maxims of activity for all possible scenarios. Given this approach, the

categorical imperative fundamentally advocates maxims that may not actually be possible to

fulfill given the practical constraints that agents find themselves in. For in the daily life of

living agents, the spectrum of possibilities present never includes all possibilities as such,

only discrete domains of possibility can persist at any one time. When confronted with the

practical dilemma of how I ought to act in a particular scenario, I may find that a gulf exists

between the universal maxim of the categorical imperative and what is actually within my

means to accomplish; but this does not imply that the categorical imperative is

fundamentally flawed, merely that it must be revised to include, or recognize, the implicit

limitation of practicality as such. We should avoid outstripping the real possibilities that are

available for acting agents, letting the perfect become the enemy of the good. Accordingly,

the categorical imperative that awakens each agent to their measure of responsibility includes

the notion that one must act in the best way that is available to them; they must act to do

their best. But in order to do one’s best a number of things must become available to an

agent.

Husserl indicates that the accomplishment of this categorical imperative involves three

stages. First, an agent must determine what is practically possible. Second, they must

280
Edmund Husserl, Grenzprobleme Der Phänomenologie: Analysen Des Unbewusstseins Und Der
Instinkte. Metaphysik. Späte Ethik, ed. Rochus Sowa und Thomas Vongehr (New York: Springer, 2014),
390.

192
determine alternate possibilities available to them. And finally, the agent must select the

highest (or best) action and then order the remaining possibilities accordingly. In order to

describe how this process can be accomplished in phenomenological terms, Husserl employs

the law of absorption.281 The idea here is that once the highest possibility is determined, the

other possibilities fall under the highest, or are absorbed into a schema of ordering. The law

of absorption is quite simple therefore as an operation of reasoning. Higher values organize

lower ones in terms of their instrumentality towards the higher. But the ordering of

possibilities is not a mere instrumentality or consequentialism. The notion that one should

do their best in achieving the best constrains the means-end logic to do what is expedient

over what is right in his version of the imperative, at least from a practical standpoint. The

moral life of a person seeking to achieve their best is a life organized by the consciousness

of values.

Values, for Husserl, are ideal entities subject to acts of cognition by agents. In this

regard Husserl was primarily concerned with the consciousness of values in terms of

valuations made by agents. He writes that some values are “constituted by our intending in

acts of rational willing or love.”282 While it is true that one does not perceive value in the

same manner in which they perceive a material object, values are cognitively accessible

through acts of intentional cognition. But a value is also distinct from the act of valuing.

Susi Ferrarello writes that “[for] Husserl, values spring from moral sentiments (Gemüt) that

are not in themselves normative but are instead felt as affections and recognized as

existential values.” 283 So what exactly is felt or apprehended in the act of valuing?

281
Ibid 361
282
Moran and Cohen, 339.
283
Susi Ferrarello, Husserl's Ethics and Practical Intentionality, (New York: Bloomsbury, 2015). 71.

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 A value is the apprehension of an ideal form of being. When the animal activist values

the lives of animals, they do so in terms of a recognition of an ideal - the lives of animals

should be respected. Here it would seem that values on Husserl’s account are organized by

the moral sentiments and the moral consciousness that agents already carry with them.

Thus, values are organized as an axiological system of apprehensive determination for

peering into the spectrum of possibilities available. In the life of the agent, in the living

present, this comes to fruition as a feeling that accompanies and is fulfilled in the

apperception of the world. Husserl’s early work on ethics was concerned with organizing

and making sense of the axiological laws that undergird these intentional acts of valuation.

But in order to fully understand the import of these claims, let us review Husserl’s most

prolonged discussion on ethics, his 1920/24 lecture, “Introduction to Ethics.”

Husserl’s ‘Introduction to Ethics’

Despite its title and apparent audience, Husserl’s lecture on ethics is anything but an

introduction. What we find instead is a systematic analysis and phenomenological rendering

of a selected history of ethics, beginning with Socrates and ending with Kant. Husserl

traces the development of ethics from its birth as a science in Socrates to a discussion of

Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, the classic Utilitarians, and concludes with the moral theory of

Kant. From the outset, we have to immediately recognize the limitation of adopting this

lecture as representing a systematic phenomenological treatise on ethics or a full-throated

application of phenomenology to the field of ethics. Rather, the lecture provides an

example for how phenomenological philosophy can be applied to ethical considerations, but

also stands as a form of hermeneutic analysis. Husserl offers an interpretation of the history

of philosophy while framing the phenomenological evaluation of ethics at the same time. It

is also full of colloquial comments that reveal Husserl as a professor with an ethical relation

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to his own students. When taken as an interpretation, or hermeneutic, Husserl’s lecture both

inspires and reveals. It inspires one to recognize that there are profound phenomenological

insights sourced within the history of moral philosophy, but it also reveals the limits of

Husserl’s own framework. Husserl seems constantly trapped, not by a method of

description, but a picture of the history of philosophy that lends him towards an insistence

to theorize abstractly and to categorize in a manner that is quite static, unlike the genetic

analysis he seeks. But he offers a profoundly nuanced discussion and we should understand

his work as a prototype for the model of moral failure we argue for here.

The existent work of Husserl’s moral theory comes either early or late in his thinking

and is surprisingly scant. The 37th volume of the Husserliana comprises Husserl’s most

sustained discussion on the topic from a lecture he first gave in 1920. During the 1920

lecture, Husserl no longer saw the ego as a “formal center and empty center”, but as

something concretely generative with its own history and habitual characteristics.284 His

thinking on intersubjectivity would continue for the next decade. By the 1924 lecture,

“Fundamental Problems of Ethics,” he had begun to further develop his application of

intersubjectivity to ethics. Husserl immediately notes that the “’Ethical’ is what we call not

volitions and actions with their goals, but also lasting attitudes in personality as habitual

wills.”285 It is clear that Husserl’s initial comments on the subject stress the role of habituality

in character. It is based upon the habitual that the virtue of a person is either established or

judged insufficient. He writes, “We so judge all the habitual mental qualities and summarizes

the whole ‘character’ of a person as ethical or ethically reprehensible…”.286 Habituality is a

284
Edmund Husserl, Einleitung in die Ethik. Vorlesungen Sommersemester 1920 und 1924. [Introduction to
Ethics. Lectures of the Sommersemester 1920 and 1924.] Edited by Henning Peucker. (Dordrecht,
Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2004; my translation.
285 Ibid. 8.9
286
Ibid.

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central feature in his understanding of the subjective individual. So, from the very outset,

the role of habit is a central element in the emergence of ethical life. Unfortunately, this is

one of the themes of his lecture that, while announced, is only sparingly addressed

throughout the lecture proper.

In this dissertation, we argue that bodily habituality is a central ingredient for answering

what Husserl argued was “The Concrete Ethical Question “How should I make my life a

truly good one?”287 Without habit, ethical life itself would be impossible. The concrete can

be taken as the way in which one has a living extension into the world. In his analysis of

Kant, for example, Husserl’s central criticism hinges upon the failure of Kant’s practical

ethics to fully take account of the lived concrete situation. Accordingly, ethics is a practical

science for Husserl, and therefore an an art. Art refers to a “unity of practical interest” or a

“relationship to a practical purpose”.288 As a form of practical reasoning, ethics concerns

itself with the task of substantiating ideal forms of action along the contours of what is

practically possible. So regarded, Husserl considers ethics a type of philosophical

technology.289 But by taking the ethical sphere as something concrete, Husserl was able to

recognize that there are two sides to the equation of moral action. On the one hand, there is

the subjective agent who acts, filled with intentions, values, and reasons; on the other hand,

there is the environment. Kant’s application of the categorical imperative ignores the

second of these considerations. And when we take the individual agent, along with their

intents, values and reasons, we find that they are everywhere situated within a community.

Thus, ethics applies to the community in a collective sense, not merely to the individual

agents, but also to the generative processes by which the consciousness of agents are

287
Ibid. 9.32
288
Ibid. 15.11
289
See HUA 37 [22.5]

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enformed and situated. He writes, “It is also clear that ethical issues are not limited to

Community members, but also to communities themselves, that Communities too can be

ethically evaluated.”290 So it is with these general commitments that Husserl develops his

analysis of the history of ethics.

In his survey, the birth of ethics, as a scientific enterprise, are marked by the overcoming

of the sophists by Socrates.291 For in that moment ethics “acquired a methodical process of

mental effort.”292 But Socrates was not just interested in theorizing about how one ought to

live, his concerns were about living. His philosophical culmination, his death, embodies the

primacy of ethics as a true connection between embodied existence and reflection. “True

happiness does not come from outside, does not fall from the sky as a gift of the gods. The

course of true happiness lies within us, in our reason, in the action of the Self ’s pure insight

and it’s a practical direction towards what is truly good.”293 Husserl’s concern is oriented

towards the insight that the existing concretion of practice is itself morally relevant, without

which practical reason becomes too demanding. Ethics is also concerned with embodied

possibility. Husserl notes that the health of the body is a necessary prerequisite for

happiness.294 He goes on to contrast the ancient approach to the modern in the juxtaposition

between empiricism and rationalism.

An absolutely central figure in Husserl’s account is Thomas Hobbes. For it is with

Hobbes that the ethics of a political system get organized around the centrality of a

psychological principle of self-preservation for a material world.295 Husserl’s own advanced

290
Ibid. 12.35-13.1
291
Ibid. 36.25
292
Ibid.
293
Ibid. 38.9
294
Ibid.
295
Ibid. 48

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analyses in phenomenology and his researches on subjectivity point him in the way of seeing

Hobbes as recognizing the importance of the individual’s experience in ethics and political

science. Hobbes identified this as selfishness motivated by an instinct of self-preservation.296

The principle of self-preservation extends to the ethic of the community writ large. Because

we know from the time period of the lectures that he was concurrently developing his

conception of intersubjectivity (his writings on the phenomenology of intersubjectivity

correspond between the two ethics lectures), it seems appropriate for Husserl to have been

interested in Hobbes and contractarianism.297 Intersubjectivity is something ultimately

predicated by the subjectivity of consciousness itself (a la genetic phenomenology), and it

gets constituted in the harmonic interchange between agents. In their passivity, these

interchanges are constituted as our habits. It is therefore reasonable to suppose that there is

a principle for the self-preservation of the community, in terms of its harmonic

continuation. Hobbes’ ethics can be summarized as a social ethics equally based upon self-

preservation. In Hobbes the moral concepts of good and evil are identified as a privation of

the social agreement we have with others in law. Husserl remarks, “moral good and moral

evil is only the match or conflict of our acts of free-consent with a certain law”.298 So in

Husser’ls reading, good and evil appear to be forms of disharmony and discontinuity we can

have between ourselves and the community around me. In Hobbes, these disharmonies

concern a disagreement in law because of the primacy of the social compact. Law becomes

296
It is worth making a remark about Husserl’s overall methodology here. Throughout the lectures, he
takes his series of philosophers in turn, first identifying the relevant key principles and then applying a
phenomenological reading, he extracts whatever insights can be gained. Next, he will move on to show
that the given theoretical system inevitably collapses into skepticism. Husserl applies this reduction ad
absurdum technique repetitively throughout the lecture. It is also clear that Husserl’s is organizing the sets
of problems in his lecture as a divide between rationalism and empiricism, that culminates in the moral
philosophy of Kant. It is unclear whether his overall method is hermeneutic or phenomenological.
297 See Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität (HUA 14)

298
HUA 37 50

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a mechanism for the objectivity of what can be good and evil. But these edicts of good and

evil are neither arbitrary nor irrational.

The selfish person requires the use of practical reasoning.299 If all human beings are

motivated by their own psychological egoism, then they are also capable of employing

practical reasoning to achieve their selfish intents. But the individual, motivated by their fear,

acting for their own self-interest, uses practical reasoning to determine how they can achieve

those ends. The philosophical system of the Leviathan expands this reasoning to a science.

Husserl writes, “So Hobbes designs in empirical garb so to speak, a mathematics of sociality

namely a sociality pure egoist.”300 Self-preservation is the primary motivation for egoistic

moral life, and its forms of practical reasoning.301 In this manner, the social contract of

Hobbes is something of an ethical technology for linking the subjectivity of the individual to

the community in a rational way. The subject is motivated by a principle of self-

preservation, but, as Husserl suggests, there could be other a priori motives.302

The diversity and multiplicity of ethical theories can be understood as forms of

technology in practical reasoning. Ethics is not simply about what is good, but about

becoming good in a practical way – it is a form of reasoning with a practice towards specific

concrete ends. The diversity of moral philosophies is indicative of the possibility that there

may be, and likely are, more types of motivation of action than merely self-preservation.

Given specific conditions of motivation, and accepted ends, the moral systems of the West

might indicate a history of practical technologies. Husserl’s distinction between a priori and a

posteriori motivations of action is an instructive move in the analysis. Ultimately, Hobbes, as

299
Ibid. 56
300
Ibid. 59
301
Ibid.
302
Ibid.

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well as the hedonistic Utilitarianism of Bentham and Mill, find their subjective motivations

of action as empirical. All of these philosophies, according to Husserl, end in skepticism.

David Hume is the historical figure who situates the limit of the empirical assumptions these

philosophies can take; and this reveals a (moral) technological contingency. If one were able

to articulate a priori motivations of action, then those motivations would exist universally in

the concrete forms of practical reasoning as well. A pure ethics concerns itself both with

the meta-ethical issues and concrete conditions; it is an “a priori science of practical reason

and [its] correlates, but that, and according to our introduction, as well as a technological-

empirical logic”.303 Given this general picture, what are moral values? In his discussion of

hedonism, Husserl develops an answer.

First, we must distinguish a value-feeling from a thing valued. Thus, there is a difference

between values and value, perhaps better put as a difference between valuing and value. The

problem with hedonism is that it ultimately blends the two together.304 The experience of the

good gets conflated as being the good. Empirically, there is a “a kind of evidence belonging to it”,

but when the distinction between valuing and value is made, its clear that pleasure is evidence of the

value-feeling.305 But the evidence of a value consists in whether or not it belongs, not to my feeling

such and so, but to “the logical-ideal objects [taken] in their ideality.”306 Husserl is insistent that we

“sharply separate” the values (that belong to subjects) from value (ideal objects).307 When we

consider the phenomenological scene in which a person holds a value, there is a difference in the

intentional act between holding a value and experiencing the satisfaction of a value. In other words,

a value in the strong sense is something ideal given in consciousness and reasoning. We can situate

concrete values by their difference from the ideal. He writes:

303
Ibid. 63.30
304
Ibid. 70.60
305
Ibid. 72
306
Ibid. 73.5
307
Ibid. 73.18

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 Take as an intentional act on what is perceived in the pursuit and [the] aspiring view, as it
were, of the ego is not directed to a hoped-for future act, but to the value, or rather on the
subject in its value and [in] virtue of his value, say on the ‘concrete value’.308

The ideal value is that ideal object towards which intents and actions are directed, while concrete

values are taken to be the ‘subjects’ of these ideal instantiations. This insight will prove fruitful later

in this chapter in our argument that values are the pricniples upon which passive habitual activities

get organized. Concrete values are motivational in the concrete affairs of activity, but they are

organized by a final value.309 The slippage of the hedonist is to reduce the motivational characteristics

of pleasure to being the one good, thereby conflating the subjects of our values with value itself.

But Husserl does not minimize the difficulties here, he argues that the key problem of modern

morality concerns “the problem of reason in the medium of feeling”.310 Husserl’s attention in his

ethics is not merely theoretical, as he employs the failure of this distinction in his critique of theories

of hedonism.311 Importantly, the distinction of values provides an apparatus for distinguishing

between subjective and objective moral motivations. To overcome this reduction is to move from a

subjective and self-interested morality to an objective and community moral system.312 Between the

two, the priority falls on the side of the community first. Individual existence is impossible without

the community and one cannot derive social values from mere self-love alone.313 To understand why

Husserl argues this, we must first see that the real ego of an agent is something that is developing.

The Development of the Ego, for Husserl, indicates the “emergence of morality” and the

transcendental conditions of intersubjectivity ground and organize this development in its concrete

generation.314 In other words, the ego is a subject living in an environment which catalyzes its moral

affections. He writes:

308
Ibid. 75.10
309
Husserl writes that “By a final value the mean values are motivated by the final value…” (HUA 37
83.27)
310
HUA XXXVII 92.32
311
Ibid. 93.8
312
Ibid. 96.15
313
Ibid.
314
Ibid. 103.17

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 To live in the consciousness to be aware of anything, of that something to be afflicted
sooner and passively into the affections, but soon behave actively, to do so in intentional
acts, taken practically or theoretically. In this intentional life, the ego is not an empty scene
of its consciousness experience, not an empty broadcasting point in its nudity. The ego-
being is constant I-becoming. Subjects are… always developing. But they develop in
consistent correlation with the development of their ‘environment’, which is nothing more
than the world conscious in the consciousness-life of the ego…315

The individual has a situated condition within an environment. The development of the ego,

therefore, “correlates” to the consciousness of the ego’s being in this or that world. So, if the

awareness of the ego and consciousness of the moral agent depend upon the environment, then the

environment of the agent is more than just background information for moral activity, but functions

as a contributing principle for the organization of moral cognition. Additionally, subjectivity is built

along active and passive lines, and these conditions can blind the individual ego into a singular

perspective.316 For instance, even in “the natural attitude we have in a way, [blinders] that [blind] us to

everything spiritual”.317 Husserl’s language of ‘spiritual’ needs to understood in terms of his overall

thinking of empathy and culture.

Motivation is the general term of the spiritual for Husserl. While physical laws are properties

“expressed in the laws of mechanical causality, which we call the laws of nature, motivational laws

are laws that govern the mental causality of inferences in an a priori fashion.”318 The way in which a

person answers the question “Can I”? employs a set(s) of motivational structures. In his typical

fashion Husserl distinguishes between two levels of motivational structure: the lower (the mere

spiritual) and higher levels (excellence of spirit, or virtue). These stages of the spiritual are important

for the analysis of collective moral failure for the reason that we can situate the moral failure of the

collective as a failure of the lower order, in its habitual passivity outside of view of the intentional

life of agents.319 One problem in our own analysis will be that for Husserl, these lower levels of

315
Ibid. 104.18-105.1
316
Ibid. 105.14
317
Ibid. 106.3
318
Ibid. 106.8
319
For a discussion of Husserl’s stages of the spiritual, see HUA XXXVII 110.18-35

202
passivity, the mere spiritual, do “not appear to be a question of reason, of action and

wrongness, truth or falsity, good or badness”.320 There are two ways of interpreting this

statement. Either the passive motivational structures for the development of the ego are not

moral concepts at all, or they merely appear to be non-moral. The higher forms of

motivation concern excellence of intentional action. Along with Aristotle, Husserl

understands these forms of excellence to be synonymous with virtue. He writes that when

we look to the Aktimotivationen of the subject, and say charity, for examples, we will see that

it “proceeds not in passivity”.321 But in this genetic analysis of the motivational structures

relating to our moral predispositions and their excellency as virtue, it becomes definitely clear

that habit is a precondition for virtue. Habit is not only central, but it is an antecedent

condition in the passive structures that enable and contextualize the motivational structures

of the ego. In other words, before charity comes the habit of charity.322

If the environment of the subject is central to the development of the moral ego,

and if there are these passive structures of the intersubjective community, grounded in the

individual’s habit-structure, then the mere-spiritual can be identified with the intersubjective

community that informs these processes, and that if there is a moral dimension to these

passive structures they are moral concepts with reference to the community. The mere-

spiritual does not appear to be morally determinative because of the focus on the individual.

Intersubjectivity provides the grounding conditions to make sense of the problem. In fact,

intersubjectivity and its role in the passivity of the subject’s development and moral

cognition is a central ingredient for the moral imperative of the golden rule. “Everyone

should treat his fellow man as he wants to be treated by them” is rational according to the

320
Ibid. 111.25
321
Ibid. 116.15
322
Ibid. 123.30

203
individual’s practical reasoning, but the congruence among men and their action motivational

structures is an obvious ethical truth. One that is as “evident as any mathematical

evidence.”323 This “congruence” is ultimately what makes a community, as a community

requires is a standardized “mutual congruence” in which individual match each other in

terms of attitudes and behaviors.324 That congruence is further dependent upon the

environmental conditions for action. And so in this way Husserl pulls together the practical

and meta-ethical. When we have the proper understanding of nature and when we have right

practical reason, then the ethical truths for how we ought to live can converge on the world

as factual. The ethical always finds its culmination in the concrete material world of our

living and habitual interactions with each other. Importantly, the distinction between the

practical behavior of people and the feeling of being moral is critical for recognizing that

there is a difference between our making moral judgements about things, and our own

motivational structures for acting ‘morally’. In recognizing this distinction, we can

understand that the coal miner can work with one set of motivations, but that the substance

of their activity may be ethically distinct.

The moral field is clearly organized, for Husserl, by the conditions of intersubjective

community, and culture harmony. He writes that it is not selfishness that motivates us, but

that “a certain harmony of selfish and social emotions” and that moral sentiment concerns

the “harmony or disharmony of emotions to consciousness” developed in the form of

moral judgements.325 It is precisely the social harmony of intersubjectivity that organizes our

moral field.326 Husserl writes:

323
Ibid. 137.27
324
Ibid.
325
Ibid. 156.30
326
Ibid. 157.6-10

204
 The egoistical instinct is self-preservation, the social is directed to the system, and
that respective community, supremely earthly humanity. The harmony of the world
belongs [more] to the harmonious perfection than in their decision…gradually
incorporated into their partial systems down to single individuals… every person is
endowed with a certain harmony.327

Husserl sketches a picture of moral consciousness that is deeply rooted in the intersubjective

communities that people find themselves concretely living in. But the social here is not a

mere additive of individual intents, but a constitutive element for the moral consciousness

that individuals themselves feel. The values of aesthetic beauty are analogously given as one

of these community harmonic objectivities. It is worth remarking that it is in the context of

these remarks that Husserl indicated that the moral renewal of the other is a key thesis for

his ethics.328 We shall discuss this element of Husserl’s project in our next chapter.

To draw our review of Husserl’s mature discussion on ethics to its final phase, we

must now turn our attention to his remarks on Kant. Husserl’s own phenomenological

philosophy, although distinct from the project of transcendental metaphysics in Kant, bares

a striking resemblance to Kant’s own project. It is not a surprise then to learn that Husserl’s

own moral dictums resemble closely Kantian approach to the moral law. First, the Moral law

must be rational for its objective validity.329 This is an essential element. Throughout his

lecture, Husserl criticizes all previous moral theories as leading to, or culminating in

skepticism. If Husserl, or Kant, are to avoid that same difficulty, then an objective ground

must be given for the prescriptions of moral duty. But how can the objective grounds be

given when we recognize that the motivational forces for action are subjective, and for

whom the evidence of a subjective moral judgement is evidenced as a feeling of some sort?

327
Ibid. 158.15-20
328
Ibid. 160
329
Ibid. 202.12

205
How can a moral phenomenology yield objective knowledge? Husserl asks us to imagine a

though experiment in which the subject is hypothetically restricted:

[Imagine] a rational being that has no pure willing will, but rather a pathologically
affected will. In other words, let us imagine a being in which reason and sensory
impulses work together, then cases can occur in those whose spring from his reason
practical laws and those derived from sensual instincts.330

The agent is restricted to just its pathological motivations. In this model, we can imagine an

agent that “expresses the imperative form”.331 Kant’s categorical imperative expresses an a

priori condition for how any agent should act, regardless of their particular history, for all

time, and always in terms of a practical generality. It is when we strip the concrete specificity

of an actual lived situations out of the equations, and imagine a subject not filled-in, as it

were, that we can begin to imagine the normative objectivity of the categorical imperative.

Under this model, reason can become legislative and the moral rules deduced can have an

objective validity. But so conceived, the generality of the Kantian subject is too abstract and

too obtuse to help us make sense of the practical role of ethics. Towards this end, Husserl

introduces what he calls the material practical principle: namely that “All material practical

principles are altogether of the same kind and belong to the general principle of Self-

love”.332 The principle of self-love for Husserl, is a principle about the motivations of living

beings, it is not an objective law, at best it is a “subjectively necessary law.333 Husserl wants to

recognize the validity of the categorical imperative but keep his feet plainly on the ground of

practical decision making. Kant saw the will of the subject as something where the edicts of

practical rules and reasoning could enable the subject to overcome the material practical

principle and respond to a higher moral calling than mere self-love. “Kant concludes: There

330
Ibid.
331
Ibid. 202.25
332
Ibid. 204.8
333
Ibid. 205.24

206
is either no upper desire, or pure reason [that] has to be practical on its own, i.e. everyone

without a condition of feeling, without any idea of the pleasant or unpleasant without any

regard to a matter of the desire, by the mere form of the practical rule the will can be

bested.”334 Despite Husserl’s clear sympathy with this argument, he reminds his students that

we are finite beings and that as finite beings, we are always in need. Everyone must eat, must

breathe, flee the cold, search for love, and more – and all of these needs are encountered in

the local world. The needs of people are concrete and situated within a living environment.

This means that the Kantian portrait of the moral agent, despite being an accurate model for

moral objectivity, is precisely not the type of being that we actually are. The Kantian moral

subject is something stripped down, a caricature of a world-less agent. The universalism of

the categorical imperative dismisses the situatedness and local nature of individual moral

practical reasoning. So, the categorical imperative demonstrates the “Will as pure will” and

“expresses the autonomy of will” for a moral subject in its ideal form, a freely willed

existence where no decision is arbitrary or unfree. 335 To act against one’s motivation of self-

love and in accordance with practical reasoning is synonymous with freedom. But what

exactly makes the willing will morally valid? Does the concept of validity for judgements

apply here as well? If the will is valid in the ways that judgements are, then the validity of the

will means that the will is in conformity with itself. This is either a tautology or there can be

differences of will. Husserl argues for the second of these by making a distinction between

two modes of judgement that apply a priori: (1) judgmental opinion vs. (2) judgement

insight.336

334
Ibid. 205.27
335
Ibid. 209.25
336
Ibid. 213

207
 Judgmental opinion concerns the validity of the practical extension of a moral

principle, where judgmental insight concerns the validity of the principle itself. Husserl

criticizes Kant’s conception of the will as failing to recognize the distinction; Kant’s

organization of the will as a response to the categorical imperative is too simple a model for

the phenomena of actual life. In other words, an accurate model of moral phenomenology

has to allow for an actual accounting of the local conditions, rather than just level them out

of the equation. Instead, Husserl notes that consciousness in a real practical example comes

fully “loaded”.337 Kant’s modeling of the will on the a priori conditions of practical reasoning

renders an agent as something abstract, unformed, and moot. An account of the general

disposition of ideal character is no substitute for the influence of culture on the motivational

structures the organize the objects of practical reasoning. The language of culture quickly

becomes the language of the spiritual for Husserl. And it is the spiritual content of life that

is fully dropped out of Kant’s account. What Husserl takes notice of is that we, as living

agents, are not motivated by the abstract conditions of universally rational action, but by

conditions indicative to us as living moral agents. A conflict of duty is not something

abstract for another to resolve, it can be my problem. Husserl offers a fuller explanation:

The formative principle of morality, applicable to real people, is the categorical

imperative as a synthetic judgement a priori. The new categories are good and evil,
the categorical imperative not generated, as if a higher Nature, a pure moral world,
but it creates the idea of man and the human world, which despite all sensibility, is
directed in freedom by the categorical imperative. Here is the synthetic principle of
‘standard’ morality’.338

In this passage we see Husserl extending his analysis of good and evil in a very different way

than the Hobbesian view of the disparity of law. Good and evil indicate a spectrum of

possibilities that organize the moral field, and they come into play only when practical reason

337
Ibid. 216.34
338
Ibid. 222.5

208
becomes concrete. In other words, the distinction between good and evil is tied to the fact

that living agents are practically constituted into particular concrete conditions. The

suggestion of this dissertation is that we should recognize therefore that the realm of good

and evil, insofar as it is concretely based, concerns the intersubjective harmony of the

community. Consider that Husserl extends his analysis of empathy to the discussion of the

concrete activities of practical reasoning. For it is only in the concrete that “anyone separates

clearly enough between vague feelings of opinion”, unproven claims, and those which have

“objective reliability and validity”.339 Husserl describes the concrete inner workings of an

active agent along the lines of empathy and harmony, but it is clear that the real connection

is to intersubjectivity. Along these lines, Husserl differentiates moral feelings from objective

moral acts, but in a way that does not trade away the concrete in favor of pure abstraction.

This criticism is implicated by Husserl’s generally favorable treatment of Kant’s moral

philosophy, but his simultaneous chastisement of Kant’s picture as biased. Because Kant’s

treatment of the subject begins with an already hollowed-out subject, when Kant is forced to

imagine the morally dutiful person, and without a model for understanding the local moral

phenomenology of the individual, Kant appears to imagine an unimaginably existent person.

I think a second contributing reason, not mentioned by Kant, might be seen in Kant’s denial

of conflicts in moral duty. While Kant denies that conflicts of moral duty can occur, it is

equally clear by a countless set of examples, that there is a disparity of fit in Kant’s picture

because we do experience conflicts of duty. Husserl claims that when we look further at the

ways in which Kant’s ethics were directed towards practical concerns, particularly in his

account of war, the categorical imperative becomes “unscientific”, constructivist, and full of

339
Ibid. 228.1

209
deductions missed.340 Kant applies an aesthetics to the practical ethics which ultimately skews

the concrete moral universe into something twisted and un-liveable.

In its truth, the categorical imperative is fundamentally about the harmony we have

in our actions and feelings with others in our community. One must recognize that real and

true persons, live under concrete conditions and are accordingly members of a community.341

Communities require the interdependence “of all people to individually associated

individualistic ideas and individual self-determination of all these people [insofar] as the

community relationship [is to] last.”342 The concrete interdependence of the community

both grounds and is a necessary scene for the continuance of actual lived moral activity.

Husserl further contrasts the difference between the axiololgy of contrasting of values (as

seen earlier in his lecture discussion of hedonism) and what he calls ‘ethical seeing’. I think

that Husserl is trying to draw us away from making the mistake that just because values can

be compared and weighed axiologically, and because life is concretely situated, that there is

no duty, or calling, beyond particular values. It is value, taken in its ideal objectivity, that

seems to motivate Husserl. In the final sections of the lecture, Husserl advocates what most

scholars have situated as his primary moral insight - the ethics of the best possible life.343 In

other words, just because there are values to be weighed does not point us in the direction of

knowing what we ought to value. Kant sees in the categorical imperative a matrix for

helping us determine the values that we ought to hold in their practical context, and with

this, the primary question of what should I do? gets inaugurated into the concrete with a new

question: what is the best possible life I can live? It is for this reason that a primary focus of

340
Ibid. 237.12
341
Ibid. 240.30
342
Ibid.
343
It should be noted however, that Husserl adopts this view from Franz Brentano.

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Husserl’s ethical discussion concerns vocation. Husserl notes that his analysis “requires

more accurate models” in which the “not quite unique and unexplained difference of Kant’s

categorical and hypothetical imperative” can to be taken into consideration with more

detail.344 For the clean division between the categorical and hypothetical imperatives seems to

blur under the auspices of the question of how should I act?

Vocation can be understood as a title for the collection of habits we decide to

organize our lives toward. Habitual life can enable one to live morally, but in a naïve sense.

When the person who tells the truth does so, not out of a practical ethics, or moral duty, but

out of habit, the result is moral, but unintentionally so. Although Husserl’s own example

applies to the normative procedures necessary for knowledge under the auspices of the

scientific enterprise, the broader point applies equally well to the practices of a coal miner,

the climate scientist, or a religious believer.345 The habits that people take on will have an

over-riding effect in the types of moral life that get constituted in the course of daily

concrete life. Both the context for these practical decisions, and the primary cause for many

of these habits, culminate in the type of vocation one chooses. Each of us has only one life.

None of us can live as universal agents. So if the primary ethical question is how ought I to

live? then a primary ethical concern for each person, in their concrete practical life, is what

vocation they should take. What life should I live? Vocation is the means by which one takes

their place individually within a framework of possibilities that reach every forward towards

the concretion of a categorical ideal. But for the particular agent, merely being apart of a

moral enterprise, of the community, is not sufficient. A person must also have the intention

of doing and being good. A vocation allows for a spectrum of possibilities to emerge that

344
Ibid. 247.12
345
Ibid. 249

211
would otherwise be unavailable. Kant’s moral system failed to fully recognize the

importance of possibility in the course of reasoning, but a moral philosophy of vocation

implicitly incorporates that dimension. In other words, through our chosen vocation, the

actions we take can fall into harmony with a spectrum of intentions that direct out towards

the fulfillment of a universal character. Husserl renders this as the imperative that “one

should pursue the idea of the richest and best in all that they do.”346 The goal of choosing a

vocation serves us in the task of trying to live not just a good life, but the best possible life

available to us. The contours of our best possible are framed not only by our “current

environment,” but also by our “entire future horizon of the future”.347 It is our vocation that

organize the possibilities of our future. The importance of vocation to moral

phenomenology concerns the temporality of the consciousness we have of ourselves as

doing the best in a concrete life. Husserl writes,

My best is more precisely determined through my past and present, and my future
not entirely without a sketch…My whole life is laid out in front of me and the
spread of my environment oriented around me as environment. What I can obtain,
that which is subject of my consideration, and the best of what I do for now and for
my whole future… 348

That which is morally right is that which is synonymous and conducive for use to be the best

that we can. But there is a problem here worth considering. If the best is the standard, then

how can we distinguish between what is morally obligatory and morally praiseworthy?

Surely, doing your best is morally praiseworthy. But if concrete moral life enables a gradation

of activity from good to evil, then one’s obligation to do one’s best appears to conflate the

moral floor of obligation with the ceiling of praiseworthiness. The argument we need to

come to see is that the difference between the praiseworthy and obligatory centers around

346
Ibid. 251.26
347
Ibid. 252.25
348
Ibid. 252.31

212
the bonds of the intersubjective community. What is consistent with the intersubjective

harmony is obligatory, and what goes beyond in the subjective sense, by the individual, can

perhaps be called praiseworthy from the vantage of the community.

The latter work on ethics that Husserl articulates is predominantly concerned with

the personal rather than the logical structure of ethical life. A number of concepts come

into the fore, most predominately a discussion of vocation. We can see from the very start

why this would be the case. In order to fulfill my personal categorical imperative, the most

extensive ethical decision a person can make regarding how they can do their best, concerns

their vocation because if doing one’s best depends upon the possibilities available, then one’s

vocation organizes most all other forms of life. Vocation is not to be understood

economically however, but rather in an existential register. A primary example of vocation

that Husserl gives is motherhood. What a vocations does is provide a forcing mechanism for

primary organization of one’s life activities under a common principle. The highest vocation

for Husserl is that of philosophy, which is not the same thing as being a professor, teacher,

or writer. To what does the philosophical vocation consist? The answer consists in the

activity of critique and renewal.

“‘Renewal’ is the expression Edmund Husserl used for the social, political, and

ethical transformation of human culture (1922-1924).”349 The renewal of human culture, of

the spiritual, is always aimed towards renewing our activities towards the best that is

possible. In this sense, we can understand renewal as the functional modality for responding

to the categorical imperative in new conditions, or under new possibilities over time. But

before one can renew their activities todard the higher duty to do one’s best, one must first

349
Anthony J. Steinbock, "The Project of Ethical Renewal and Critique: Edmund Husserl's Early
Phenomenology of Culture," The Southern Journal of Philosophy XXXII (1994): 449.

213
engage in the ethical critique. Prior to renewal is critique. We can think of critique as simply

the methodical clarification of things. There are many forms of critique, but all forms have

clarification in common as the over-riding concern. To speak of critique as an ethical task is

to speak of the way in which one must question and clarify the meaning of the things that

have become hidden through sedimentations of meaning.

The philosophical vocation is of the highest order for Husserl because philosophy

enables a destabilization of that which has become ever familiar (even invisible) through

sedimentations of meaning, perception, and activity. Philosophy is the pre-eminent vehicle

of critique. A demonstration of the renewal and critique of the philosophical vocation can be

seen in Husserl’s own Crisis of the European Sciences. In the introduction to that text Husserl

writes, quite passionately that “[the] personal responsibility of our own true being as

philosophers, our inner personal vocation, bears within itself at the same time the

responsibility for the true being of mankind..” 350 The vocation of the philosopher is

oriented towards truth on the one hand, and the ethical renewal of humankind. The vocation

and formation of critical philosophy is an essential task for fulfilling the imperative to do our

best according to the ideal values and axiological determinations available. The task of

bettering ourselves is ultimately a responsibility each individual has and not something

worthy of being taken lightly. But the responsibility of doing one’s best always concerns the

other, the intersubjective. Husserl describes this as a call to the higher-order ‘we’. In Ideas

II, Husserl describes the higher order intersubjective world:

This surrounding world is comprised not of mere things but of use-Objects (clothes,
utensils, guns, tools), works of art, literary products, instruments for religious and
judicial activities (seals, official ornaments, coronation insignia, ecclesiastical symbols,
etc.). And it is comprised not only of individual persons, but the persons are instead
members of communities, members of personal unities of a higher order, which, as

350
Edmund Husserl, The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology; an Introduction
to Phenomenological Philosophy, (Evanston,: Northwestern University Press, 1970), 17.

214
 totalities, have their own lives, preserve themselves by lasting through time despite
the joining or leaving of individuals, have their qualities as communities, their moral
and juridical regulations, their modes of functioning in collaboration with other
communities and with individual persons, their dependencies on circumstances, their
regulated changes and their own way of developing or maintaining themselves
invariant over time, according to the determining circumstances. The members of
the community, of marriage and of the family, of the social class, of the union, of
the borough, of the state, of the church, etc., "know" themselves as their members,
consciously realize that they are dependent on them, and perhaps consciously react
back on them.351

Husserl's sense of this higher order is not an invocation to merely a local culture or situation

but refers to the teleological responsibility we have towards both future generations and

other communities, or cultures. The higher order ‘we’ towards which our ethical activity, the

critique and renewal we embark upon, includes a duty to the intersubjective community,

which is trans-generational. This provides an important clue for our thinking about moral

failure and its possible solution.

3. Moral Evil and Moral Wrongdoing as Intersubjective Privation

Individual moral life begins with the recognition that things can, and do, go wrong.

Every question about how one ought to act presupposes that some actions are worse than

others. There are numerous potentials reasons why, and moral theory offers a variety of

reasons to explain some of them. Wrong-doing is first and foremost a negative concept

such that its negation amounts to a denial about the why things are supposed to be. If one

were to take a purely egoist or subjectivist point of view, they might likely conclude that

wrong-doing is merely a relative affirmation according to the desires of an individual. On

this view, wrongness gets treated as a mental property of sorts whose validity depends upon

351
Husserl, Ideas II, 191 [82].

215
the subject making the judgement. But since environmental failure is principally the

consequence of collective activity spanning generations and for unintentional reasons, our

analysis precludes us from using a model of the first-personal or the individual. Our

meditation here operates on a higher level of generality. Instead, we need an account of

what moral life hinges on at the general social level for any community whatsoever. Wrong-

doing at this level cannot be accounted for by reference to the desires of the individual

agents. Every intersubjective community is organized by a principle of embodied harmonic

relations and out of this concrete existentiality a moral dimension opens up at the threshold

where the embodied activities of the community either negate that harmony, either actually

or potentially. In other words, our meta-moral realism begins with a consideration of evil

and wrongdoing. 352

The problem of evil and its many splintering variations have been of interest to

philosophers for a very long time, and has been a particularly cantankerous problem for

theologians. Let us begin our discussion by taking a cue for our discussion from the first

and most noteworthy thinker on the issue, St. Augustine. The problem of evil is a

particularly important concern for Augustine because of his theological commitments

regarding the nature of God's providence. If God is all powerful, benevolent, and

responsible for the world's creation then how and why is there evil in the world? As David

Hume would note much later, if there is evil is in the world, then either God is not all

powerful or malign. 353 Augustine discusses the problem in the Confessions and The City of

God, but his more succinct treatment can be found in his Enchiridion. He writes (quoting at

length) in §12 of that work:

352
Although we will come to discuss this later, it should be noted that evil and wrongdoing are treated here
as synonymous terms. The problem of radical evil is addressed at the close of this chapter.
353
See Hume’s Dialogue Concerning Natural Religion

216
 All of nature, therefore, is good, since the Creator of all nature is supremely good.
But nature is not supremely and immutably good as is the Creator of it. Thus the
good in created things can be diminished and augmented. For good to be diminished
is evil; still, however much it is diminished, something must remain of its original
nature as long as it exists at all. For no matter what kind or however insignificant a
thing may be, the good which is its "nature" cannot be destroyed without the thing
itself being destroyed. There is good reason, therefore, to praise an uncorrupted
thing, and if it were indeed an incorruptible thing which could not be destroyed, it
would doubtless be all the more worthy of praise. When, however, a thing is
corrupted, its corruption is an evil because it is, by just so much, a privation of the
good. Where there is no privation of the good, there is no evil. Where there is evil,
there is a corresponding diminution of the good. As long, then, as a thing is being
corrupted, there is good in it of which it is being deprived; and in this process, if
something of its being remains that cannot be further corrupted, this will then be an
incorruptible entity [natura incorruptibilis], and to this great good it will have come
through the process of corruption. But even if the corruption is not arrested, it still
does not cease having some good of which it cannot be further deprived. If,
however, the corruption comes to be total and entire, there is no good left either,
because it is no longer an entity at all. Wherefore corruption cannot consume the
good without also consuming the thing itself. Every actual entity [natura] is therefore
good; a greater good if it cannot be corrupted, a lesser good if it can be. Yet only the
foolish and unknowing can deny that it is still good even when corrupted. Whenever
a thing is consumed by corruption, not even the corruption remains, for it is nothing
in itself, having no subsistent being in which to exist.354

Augustine’s solution to the problem of the apparent contradiction between benevolent

divine providence and the existence of evil is to deny the second premise and argue that evil

is not substantially real, but rather the privation of being.

For Augustine, evil is not a something at all, but rather a nothingness or diminution

of that which is already good; it is a form of ontological negation. Let us use this as a clue

for establishing our own thesis regarding what moral evil is at the ontological plane. Our

task here is thoroughly secular and we are not interested in the theological underpinnings of

Augustine's argument, but we can use it as a first clue for thinking our problem of the

intersubjective moral dimension. In our review of Husserl’s moral philosophy, evil appears

354
St. Augustine of Hippo, Enchirdion: On Faith, Hope, and Love, ed. Albert Outler, trans. Albert Outler,
(New York: Biblioteke/Doubleday Religion, 2009). §12.

217
to be characterized as a diminishment in practical and material possibilities of doing our

best, but these practical possibilities depend upon an intersubjective ontology for their

comprehensibility. For Augustine the problem of evil explicitly depends upon an ontology

of creation. At the heart of the difficulty is that (for Augustine) we can make true

propositions about evil and wrong-doing (that these propositions are true in reference to the

natural constitution of the world), but that there is no true object for evil as such. Although

Augustine’s motivations are theological, his solution to the problem presents us with the

form of a solution for a conception of evil that can makes sense of Husserl’s theoretical

gradations given in the context of a concrete world with localized practical reason. Evil is

not a real property in the world, but rather the nominal name we give in describing an

ontological privation. Augustine insists that evil is a corruption insofar as it represents the

negation of being. This analysis serves as a pattern for the intersubjective constitution of a

community and suggests that communal moral wrongdoing can be described as the privation

of the harmonic principle(s) that bind together the concrete intersubjective relations of a

community. But let us put a bit more meat on the bones of this argument and contextualize

it by considering a number of elements of moral philosophy so as to construct a more

thorough explanation of what this thesis means.

To begin, right and wrong, good and bad, are not bivalent properties. Despite their

contrarity, these determinations are not on the same level as the bivalent properties of truth

and falsity. Given the law of excluded middle, a proposition is considered either true of

false such that the determinations are thoroughly exclusive in their disjunction. Given the

diminution of being hypothesis, right and wrong (good and bad) are not exclusive disjuncts

because any being that is privated (bad) is still a being (good) insofar as it still exists. The full

extension of privation corresponds to the ontological negation of being, extending out

218
towards nothingness. Since nothingness is nothing, evil in its full concretion is nothing at all.

Augustine’s philosophical innovation was to articulate an ontological schema in which moral

valuations are arranged on an ontological spectrum by degree, thereby rending evil as a

nominal declaration. For Augustine, the explanation of privation almost certainly demands a

teleological ontology because without some standard of how things should be, there would

be no way to determine the extent of a privation, or corruption. For our purposes, this

means that the privation of an intersubjective community is not a zero sum game. We argue

that a moral determination depends upon the privation of the embodied harmonic principle

which might take a variety of concrete forms and contexts. This also means that the moral

determinations of good and evil are not representational of objects (or even characteristics

of objects) but rather represent the extent to which the intersubjective harmony has been

privated, negated, or destabilized.

Over time every community develops its own passive structures for the harmonic

interactivity between the bodies of the members of a community. Governed by a principle

of harmonization, these concrete forms of life form the objective and materialist basis for

the moral activities of that community. These embodied movements are always localized

and contingent to a specific time and place, despite the degree of their habituation into the

life of a community. In other words, the embodied habits of a community are themselves

dynamic and changing; so a mere change of embodied activity does not in itself signify the

privation of the community (since the community itself is always changing, as it were).

Accordingly, we must situate a theory of intersubjective privation as squarely related to the

principle of harmony. Such that whatever promotes the harmony between a community can

be counted as good while whatever disrupts it, is wrong. The degree of disruption

corresponds to the degree of harmful severity. This analysis is consistent with the often-

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held view of justice as corresponding to a balance between competing interests in terms of

fairness. The scales of justice illustrate the harmonic tension between the actions that

populate a community’s form of life and its moral determination. The idea here is that the

ontological stability of the community in terms of the potential of its principle forms the

basis upon which the moral scales rest, as it were. When a child lies to her parents, the

balance between a form of family life is diminished, when a theft occurs the balance

between property rights and responsibilities falters, or when a murder occurs the existential

potential of the community is diminished. Moral evil and wrongdoing depend upon the

degree to which a dynamic intersubjective process between the members of a community

are qualitatively diminished in some fashion. In terms of environmental catastrophe, if the

result of industrialization is the disruption of the community in the form of environmental

destabilization, the result is equally bad. The privation of a community can be intentional or

unintentional, the result of agency or nature; it is the diminished status of the intersubjective

harmonization that counts in the moral determination of a situation. In this regard, we can

resurrect such concepts as natural evil as a fitting description for the types of harms

indicative of climate change. When a flood caused by rising tides or a hurricane storm surge

disrupts and destroys the harmonic possibilities of a community, that too should be counted

as a natural evil. On this account, unintentional evil, whether natural or by agency, is still evil

to the community who endures it.

There is a secondary resource in Augustine that is also worth considering – and that

is whether or not the intersubjective is to be conceived as intrinsically good. Augustine’s

solution to the problem of evil hinges upon the idea that the world, insofar as it is the

product of a good God, is intrinsically good itself and therefore inherently valuable. In other

words, the moral value of a thing is derived from the transcendental cause of a thing. Since

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God is inherently good, the being(s) created by God must also be good insofar as they are

products of the good. But given the atheistic and secular approach we are taking here, can

we hold that a community is inherently good? Etymologically, the concept of ‘inherence’

comes from the Latin in-haerere which literally means ‘sticking to’. The concept of ‘intrinsic’

comes from the intrinsecus and means ‘inward’ or ‘inwardly’. So at an etymological level, the

question can be rephrased by asking, does the intersubjective community contain inwardly

within it the quality of the good, in a way that sticks to it wherever it exists? Is the

ontological constitution of the intersubjective, insofar as it is born out in the

phenomenology of subjects, something to be conceived as good? Husserl’s own thoughts

on ethics provides some evidence in support of the answer yes.

In his “Lecture on Ethics”, Husserl begins by first clarifying the domain of the ethics

as being a “theory of right action or, as proper action is one, that goes to the right purposes,

the doctrine of purposes” and that the “Good of the wider and widest community, the

nation, [and] Humanity, in which we do not count ourselves should be included.”355. But to

say that there is a good of the community does not amount to saying that the community

itself is good, as Husserl also insists that “communities can be ethically evaluated.”356 In

order to provisionally understand the dilemma we need to situate what the good of a thing

is. In Husserl’s early thinking on ethics, the good was conceived as being analogous to the

function of truth for logic. In the way that the order of truth was conceived as being

independent of things, by analogy, the order of the good is independent of the goods

themselves.357 In the way in which logic is meant to derive the laws inherent to truth, one

355
HUA 37. 9-10
356
Ibid. 11-12
357
See Louis Dupre’s “The Concept of Truth in Husserl’s Logical Investigations”, Philosophy and
Phenomenological Research, Vol. 24. No. 3 (March 1964) 345-354

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can say that ethics is the science meant to derive the laws inherent to the good. Husserl did

not hold that truth was independent in itself, nor does he seem to hold that the good is

independent of the concrete affairs that make up life. For a science of right action, and

right purposes, can only be envisaged where there is a concrete field of possibilities at play.

Husserl’s own work on ethics was primarily focused at the level of the individual deciding

their own courses of action in terms of their vocation, but if we were to extend the analysis

to the community writ large, as he himself envisages that we do from the outset, then we can

take note of the importance of the habitual for the ethical. For the individual, the goal of

ethics is to achieve the highest possible good available in the circumstances within one’s own

life. The perfect ethical life is one in which the contents of ethical purposes are infused into

the habitually and practical reasoning of the individual. The good must be something that

when habitualized is justifiable for the individual.358 It seems clear that by extension, the

good of the community is also the habituated concretization of the intersubjective across

multiple paths of interwoven activity. The intersubjective harmony principle therefore

stands as the grounding for the possibilities of the good within the community under all

conditions. Accordingly, we can conceive of the baseline conditions for a community as an a

priori good. This suggests, I contend, that at the most basic level, every community is good

insofar as it is a realized community within the concrete manifold of the environment.

Along these lines, we can look to Husserl who states that “any deliberate injury to the

community” is immoral.359 If the injury to the community is wrong, then the community

must itself be something of value, it must be a good, as it were. There is therefore, a radical

insight worth appropriating from Augustine’s conceptual treatment of evil – namely that in

358
Ibid. xv my translation
359
Ibid. 9

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existence we find something good. The degree to which a community is subjected to

diminishment, in terms of its ontological horizon of possibilities, is an evil insofar as the

community itself loses its existence. But one may well ask here, if the source of moral value

is the community, then what argument is there for the preservation of the community

overall. If both good and bad are organized by an intersubjective framework, does the loss

of an intersubjective amount to a “moral disaster” or loss of value?360

St. Augustine’s theological framework provides us with a possible analogy for solving

this problem. The privation argument for the good of existence depends upon their being a

good God who created it, remains external to it, and can therefore stand as the arbiter of

value. But what makes God good? If the argument in Augustine is that an external

transcendental criterion is required for the justification of what counts as being morally

wrong, then what is the transcendental criterion for God’s goodness? Augustine has no real

answer and takes it on faith (with consistent reasoning) that God is good. At bottom some

premises have no antecedent justification. If a community is wiped out of existence, along

with all of its values, what then makes the new state of affairs morally bad? Well, if morality

is ultimately a construct of human existence, then the loss of that community would

certainly appear evil to the members of that community. But there is something important

in the fact that the members of a community have no other option but to recognize their

impending demise as a great evil. To ask if the community’s absence would be evil always

assumes that there is a perspective after the community. God functions as an observer from

nowhere, independent from circumstance, but this vantage is not possible for a community

that gets wiped out. But there lies the error. The question itself assumes that such a vantage

is possible. I argue that it is not and the question itself assumes an absurdity. The loss of a

360
This phrase was suggested to me by James Dodd.

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community extinguishes moral goods in the world, and the total extermination of a

community would be the greatest evil. But it is also clear that a paradox lurks here. Doesn’t

this position mean that the greatest evil would also mean the privation of evil itself, and that

we should count the loss of evil as something evil when it is in fact good? At bottom we

find a presupposition in our analysis – we are treating existence as intrinsically better than

nonexistence. I think we should accept this as something self-evident. The denial of this

presupposition begs the question because if non-existence were better than existence, then

being better would be nothing, and that is incomprehensible at every level of analysis.

Consequently, I think we should admit that the existential grounds of the good is something

to be taken as good itself for existing beings such as ourselves. As such the negation of a

community is a negation of the good.

From the outset we need to say something about what a value is and in what sense

we are provisionally using the term here. Phenomenologically, a valuation is an intentional

comportment and experiential affectivity and so a value is a given determination of that

intentional comportment. In moral philosophy we can distinguish three view on values: (1)

the Objectivist view, (2) the Quasi-Objectivist View, and (3) the Dispositionalist view. The

first view treats values as objects and this view commits the naturalistic fallacy, so we shall

dispense with it immediately. The second view treats values not at objects in the world, but

rather as quasi-objects, that depend upon both subjective disposition and an object. The

final view, takes it that values are ultimately mere dispositions towards objects or states of

affairs. The central problem we need to take as our cue is the idea that values are

circumstantial in their concrete formations; meaning that an action from one perspective

may be valued differently from another perspective with a different correlated context.

Consequently, we must reject not only the objectivist account but also the dispositionalist

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account. Clearly if a value correlated with an object, then context would be irrelevant. But

on the other hand, since context is relevant for valuation, this means that a value cannot

correspond to a mere disposition and must be object dependent in some thin way.

Dispositionalism fails to explain why context seems to matter in principle for making moral

valuations. My argument here is that what contextualism shows us about moral valuations is

that the concrete arrangement of things matters for making moral valuations. For Husserl,

ethics is the primary science of practical activity and, as such, it is always instituted within

concrete actualities. The values themselves are not just perspectives, nor are they mere

objects, but rather some mixture between the two. Our principle of embodied

harmonization allows us to say that what the context shows is not a corresponding object-

value nexus but rather the degree to which the harmonization principle is upheld in this or

that instance. The environmental activist and coal miner do not have a moral disagreement

about objects and facts in principle, but rather the application and concretization of the

embodied harmonic principle from their view. By seeing the situation from differing

perspectives, each recognizes different disharmonic effects. In Husserl’s view, the problem

amounts to a conflict between vocations. The coal miner and the environmentalist have a

conflicting vocation and thereby hold contradictory values and apply them squarely in

conflict with each other. But the good of the community itself is not embodied by either

perspective vocations; rather, the vocations of all should harmonize toward a single goal –

that a community should become the best possible community it can. Insofar as any

community has existence it has value, and ethics should be coneived as the science which

maximized the actualizations that can flow out of that good through the harmony of its

members. The question of the environment and its significance to moral philosophy

signifies a special problem for consideration, especially regarding the debate over

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anthropocentrism, but this is a problem for us to look at in the next chapter. What we can

say here is that given this description, the climate crisis suggests at minimum a disharmony

between the way a society exists within its natural limits from one perspective and as a threat

to the harmony of economic existence on the other.

We should also note here the distinction between the predicate and attributive uses

of moral language. When we say that something is morally wrong it can either be taken as a

predicate of its subject or as an attribute of the subject. The difference is rather critical for

clarifying the conceptual register of what moral statements amount to. From the Latin

tribuere, to 'attribute' is to assign or bestow a quality to an object; whereas to 'predicate',

coming from the Latin praedicare and meaning to proclaim, is a more general operation of

relating ideas. There are a whole range of predicative operations possible, one of which is

that attribution. The distinction has been used as a rebuttal to the sweeping consequences of

the naturalistic fallacy.361 It could be the case that when one says that 'pleasure is good' or

'polluting the atmosphere is wrong' they are attributing a quality to their object (an activity in

this case) rather than tautologically synchronizing them as identical. To say that something is

good or bad is not to say that one or the other is a natural object itself; it is the subject which

is object. Or in other words, moral claims denote qualitative characteristics of natural

objects and activities. But the question does not end there, because it still remains to be seen

what the eidetic form and specific characteristic of moral attribution actually concern.

There are different categories of attributive qualities possible and without knowing the

designation for what a moral attribution is about, then we risk the possibility that moral

statements actually just amount to nonsense362. Given the embodied harmonic principle, we

361
See Strawson
362
This was recognized by Bertrand Russel such that his approach was to say that these statements
ultimately concerned psychological and emotive content.

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can wager a provisional answer - namely that moral statements concern the degree to which

harmony is recognized along a continuum of negation and affirmation in the concrete affairs

of the intersubjective field. This means that while wrong actions appear to be predicatively

natural (think of the mother who having lost her child to flooding says that evil exists in the

world), they are instead perspectival dispositions that attribute a qualitative privation. Moral

dispositions are generated from their home communities and they are organized according to

the broad outlines of the embodied harmony as it is concretely practiced. The dispositions

of individual moral agents depend upon the perspective (and background) taken individually

but always with reference to the formal whole. It is important to note that the embodied

nature of the intersubjective field is such that moral concepts ultimately correlate to the

formal bodily and material inter-relations among agents. Given the concrete intersubjective

frame we each inhabit, we develop a whole range of diverse views about moral life that

frequently contradict the views of communities foreign from my own, and these views are

substantiated in the formal movements of my community. Always, the notion of wrong-

doing and its apparent application is bound to the degree to which I can recognize some

instance or other of privation. Harms are determined by their concrete manifestation in the

course of lived activity; but harm is structurally always a comparative relation in which a

privation is either felt or anticipated. The threshold distinction for us is the embodiment of

activity. This means that something can be registered on the spectrum of wrong-doing in a

minimally objective way insofar as the diminishment (or privation) is embodied (keeping in

mind the idea that speaking a language is also an embodied activity). So the idea here is that

the real ontological basis for the moral concepts we use to organize the field of our actions

and corresponding interests, is the intersubjective community. In an effort to better

understand collectivities of action, we disregarded theories of first-personal moral

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deliberation and experience and focused on articulating the central principles of

communities as such. This led us to the material ontological principle of embodied harmony

that persists in any existing community. Using Augustine’s argument regarding the privation

of being as a clue, we have argued for a model that treats moral wrong-doing as the privation

of the intersubjective community in varying degrees.

To be clear here, ontology is distinct from the moral philosophy. Strictly speaking

the ontology of communities are morally neutral. The ontological principle of embodied

harmony is not itself a moral concept and stands a priori to moral life as a constituting

principle. But in the region of moral philosophy, the privation of being here corresponds to

a privation of the concretized harmony between agents.363 Even our moral concepts

themselves, insofar as they are fixtures of language correspond to this ultimate basis. Local

practices which are good and bad, right and wrong, evil and the like can always be described

in terms of this intersubjective diminution given our ontological description. Two potential

consequences follow. First, this means that in principle the localized moral concepts,

activities, categories, etc. – ie. the moral language – of a community can be understood along

these lines. This does not entail us to take a moral stance with, or endorse, those specific

localized concepts, but it does mean that we can ascertain their intersubjective genesis.

Secondly, the hypothesis of intersubjective privation offers a genuine objective field for

moral assessment and the application of moral communal practices. At a minimum, the

diminution of the community is something that will always be recognized as morally

negative. This negativity founds the basis for the spectrum of our normative customs.

363
Ontologically we can refer to individuals, monads, or subjects but in moral discourse we speak of agents
sons to retain the conception of dynamic activity implicit for each subject.

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 4. The Intersubjective Diminution Principle

Let us begin with the hypothesis that the privation of the community is always

understood, using the framework of intersubjectivity, as something wrong. We can refer to

this as the intersubjective diminution principle. This principle holds that wherever a

community is privated, that community has experienced a moral harm, or evil, in some way.

This principle can account for the internal logic and relativity of local moral customs.

Wherever we see the community in diminishment, we can always infer the moral judgement

that something is wrong. The real diminishment of the community is an objective wrong

because objectivity is an epistemological function of the community. This moral principle is

unaffected by arguments of cultural relativism, plurality, or divergent forms of life because

the principle applies to the concrete practical conditions, which themselves are always

localized to specific agents acting in local conditions. The problem of cultural relativism is

that it assumes the objective view from nowhere, it assumes grounds that treat the

multiplicity of moral life as something that can be given all at once for comparison. Even if

there are no transcendental moral principles, no true objectivity to justice, and all the

arguments proceed, it will still always be true that there is still a culture that has specific

concrete moral values. When those values, or the conditions for those values, get negated,

then the community suffers as a community. In other words, the diminution principle is a

concrete principle and does not depend, for its comprehensibility, on the moral feelings of

agents. Consider how Herodotus describes the wonderful paradox of moral life when he

compares the practices of burial between cultures in ancient Egypt. 364 How can a single, so-

called 'objective', moral principle be the basis for such a diverse set of moral possibilities,

many of which are inconsistent with each other? If the ontology of the intersubjective, so

364
See Book II of Herodotus’ Histories.

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far as we have described it, represents the real basis for any community as such, then this

principle is applicable to all such communities.

The intersubjective diminution principle is not itself a principle for the deliberation of

practical action, although it clearly would have relevant implications for moral deliberation.

Rather, the principle can be articulated in the descriptions of wrong-doing that people make.

Nearly, without exception, all examples of evil, or moral wrong-doing, can be consistently

described in terms of their having an effect of diminishment on the community, and the

harmony of embodied interactions that community maintains. This does not entail some

sort of consequentialism, but rather that every diminishment of the community has the

consequence of allowing us to postulate a negative moral judgement. Privation appears to be

at the essence of harm and wrong-doing in all cases. Secondly, the diminution principle is

consistent with nearly all other moral principles imaginable. The Greatest Happiness

Principle, for instance, is predicated at the start on the idea that communities exist. In like

manner, the categorical imperative is also consistent with this principle because every injury

of the community is a diminishment of moral agency and autonomy. We should adopt

Husserl’s picture of good and evil as being tied to the concrete realm of possibilities, but

understand that the mode of this link is intersubjectivity. Under the Husserl-ian framework

we can recognize levels and gradations of competing harms.

Let us further distinguish two levels of the moral principle. At the higher level, the

intersubjective diminution principle describes the structure and spectrum of moral life

insofar as it correlates to the ontology of the community, at the lower tier we see a plethora

of competing forms of moral life and their reasons for action whose object constraint is not

a general ontology, but rather the concrete action itself. In other words, moral principles for

deliberation depend upon some version of the higher principle because their practicality

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depends upon an existing ontology. We should therefore distinguish this difference by

separating moral theoretic principles treated very broadly (the kinds of principles we see

posited for moral deliberation and practical action) from meta-moral ontological principles

upon which they concretely depend. To be clear, the intersubjective diminution principle is a

meta-principle. It provides us the capacity to unfurl a number moral puzzles., but it is not a

formula of practical reasoning.

Moral philosopher Bernard Williams has distinguished between thick and thin moral

concepts. First, moral concepts have degrees of specificity and that ‘thicker’ moral concepts

have a union between “fact and value” in that they have a specificity to the cultural world in

which they occur.365 Williams gives examples of brutality, courage, promise, and treachery –

each of which depend upon a specific activity in relation to a specific context, or a

descriptive local scene. He explains, “It is essential to this account that the specific or

“thick” character of these terms is given in the descriptive element.”366 Thick moral

concepts have a specificity that correlates to a local concrete performance. Since moral

performances occur within the intersubjective field and are both (a) dynamic and (b)

materially localized, the thick concepts are heavily organized by the intersubjective context in

which they occur. By contrast, Williams’ “thin” concepts have less specificity and greater

generality. The fact-value correlate to a local performance is replaced with a value generality

that correlates to a larger potential horizon of activities. Williams notes that the thinner

moral concepts are cross cultural and not relativistically. Consequently, moral disagreements

do not easily come between the thinner concepts, but in terms of the thicker performative

concepts associated. Every community agrees that unjustified killing, murder, is wrong; but

365
Bernard Williams and A. W. Moore, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (London ; New York:
Routledge, 2006), 129.
366
Ibid. 130

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communities can, and do, disagree about what counts as justified killing in their local

histories. The language of moral conflict reveals that thicker moral concepts and their fact-

correlating practices is a conceptual source for moral relativism itself. Since the

intersubjective habituality of a community is organized by concrete conditions that change, a

community unfolds through time by adjusting its habitual strutcure along the contours of its

thin moral concepts. We can think of Williams’ thinner moral concepts as originating

principles for the localized thicker ones.

We can further divide the concourse of moral life along an additional axis. First of

all, using the phenomenological method we can set our domain of analysis to the concrete

intersubjective field we have been describing such that the ontological field references the

eidetic plurality of possibilities, not actual existence. The intersubjective field gets filled with

concrete embodied activities according to the harmonic principle. Next, we restrict our

analysis to ‘moral life’ and consider the relation of the diminution principle as a functional

correlate to the engaged harmony between the community. The concretization of the

community is materially embodied. A community’s harmony exists through an interaction

with the entire concrete field of natural objects. The daily intercourse of activity is situated

as such with a habitual regularity. The variety of intersubjective situations depend upon the

body and the matrices of relations it has with alterior objects. The field of concrete forms

and substances that communities encounter are diverse and multiple while being situated

within a natural environment. Every community is therefore particularly placed. Each has

some real situation that demands modifications of concrete habitually over time. As

conditions change and dissonance is introduced, a community would recognize a privation

(or harm) and modify itself accordingly. This means that what is ‘wrong’ or ‘right’ are

variable to the principle along an spectrum of possibilities.

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 Secondly, the moral life of a community is chronologically structured such that the

reasons for morally thick concepts and expectations get hidden from view.367 Over time,

embodied intersubjective formations get reified through habituation, even to the point of

institutionalization, and the original reasons behind our moral expectations get lost. At a

trans-generational level it is likely that a community would develop entire sets of moral

activities, expectations, and judgements – a moral paradigm – that could be concretely

maintained without recourse to the original. In other words, the very reasons for action to

which such habits of action are no longer known, or intelligible to a community. The

etymology of human language - the very fact that there are etymologies - documents a

mammoth history of intersubjective experience, most of which become sedimented into the

moral tapestry of a culture, but whose reasons are no longer decipherable despite being

manifestly concrete. Both think and thin moral concepts are bound by the harmonic

principle. The difference is that thick moral concepts are more closely tied to their

chorological situation. But there should, in effect, be no real difference between the two.

The thin moral concepts appear differently because of their generality. Both conform to a

particularized concrete intersubjective genealogy.368

There is a second puzzle that bares our attention as well - namely, the difference

between natural and moral evil. The distinction between the two has long been a fixture of

philosophers or religion and theologians who work on the problem of evil. Ultimately the

distinction has its own genealogy in the problem of evil. A natural evil is any privation that

367
For an excellent discussion on the Metaphysics of Chronology in Plato see John Sallis’ excellent, though
lateral, discussion on the topic of chronology see John Sallis’ Chronologyy: On Beginning in Plato’s
Timaeus.
368
One concern here is whether this amounts to the moral cliché that one ought to always do in Rome as the
Romans do? A number of absurdities regarding the possibility of objective moral judgments may result if
this were the case.

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lacks an agent for its antecedent cause. Typically, natural evil results from the remorseless

effects and conditions of nature such that a ‘evil’ or harm in some way gets generatively

applied to the community, thereby disrupting the materially embodied harmony between

agents. By contrast, a moral evil is an evil or harm that comes about as a result of agency in

some way. Given our purely secular and atheistic position, the distinction may seem

irrelevant to our problem, but this is incorrect. The distinction is helpful for our project of

environmental failure. A natural evil is a diminution of the intersubjective community that

gets caused by natural events or circumstances in some way (e.g. an arid drought causes a

famine, for instance). The event is an ‘evil’ insofar as it privates the embodied harmony, and

hitherto existence, of that community. A moral evil is one that comes about only because of

the activities of moral agents themselves. Murder, theft, and a whole host of others crimes

are all forms of moral evil because they involved the actions of an agent. The diminution

principle allow us to understand why communities react to moral and natural evil in similar

ways. Both types of evil, regardless of their causal histories, have the effect of diminishing

the concrete community in some way. But more than that, we can use the distinction to get

a better grip on the problem of collective environmental moral failure. The environmental

crisis is both a moral and natural evil. But the natural evil of the crisis does not simply

concern the fact that it is a problem concerning nature, but also that the type of

intersubjective activities which fuel the crisis are both (a) collective and (b) not intended to

create harm. The intersubjective interworking of a community can through their natural

ontological form, give rise to effects which cause self-diminishment. The evil caused by the

intersubjective community as a whole is a type of natural evil, or at least quasi-natural. All of

this remains too unclear. We need to have a more precise understanding of the way moral

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communities unfold in their particularity with regard to our postulated moral principle of

intersubjective diminution.

The privation of that embodied harmony in its concrete reality functions as the real basis of

our conception of wrong and correlatively, right. Critical to the success of the argument is the

notion that evil is a privation or a dimunition of the harmonic embodiment that takes place in a

community. A murder injures the community both in its concrete annihilation of an other, but also

in that the values exhibited by activities of murder are asymmetrically opposed to the continuation

of the community itself. We can take Husserl’s discussion of Hobbes and his own remarks on the

notion of self-preservation as informative here. We argued that under the concept of dimunition,

the evil that a community might undergo need not be the result of agency and could be entirely

natural as it were. With that, this distinction between moral and natural evil is understood yet

overcome. Because the embodied habitus of the community is the primary site for moral life, we can

say that intersubjective moral dimunition refers to those cases in which member agents of the

community act towards the dis-harmonization of the community. In the following section, we need

to take pause and consider the counter-argument that our thesis has effectively reduced all forms of

evil and wrongdoing to a single ontological plane (that of privation) and that such a reduction does

an injustice to a phenomenology of evil. In such a manner, the notion of radical evil presents us

with an important challenge. Let us first begin by looking at the problem of radical evil, situating

and juxtaposing the problem to our current study, and then look to how the phenomenology of

violence might enable us a way forward.

The notion of radical evil was first introduced by Kant in his Religion Within the Boundary of

Mere Reason in which Kant says the following:

In view of what has been said above the statement, “The human being is evil,” cannot mean
anything else than that he is conscious of the moral law and yet has incorporated into his
maxim the (occasional) deviation from it. “He is evil by nature” simply means that being
evil applies to him considered in his species; not that this quality can be inferred from the

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 concept of his species ([i.e.] from the concept of a human being in general, for then the
quality would be necessary), but rather that, according to the cognition we have of the
human being through experience, he cannot be judged otherwise, in other words we my
presuppose evil as subjectively necessary in every human being, even the best. Now, since
this propensity must itself be considered morally evil, hence not a natural predisposition but
something that a human being can be held accountable for, consequently must consist of
maxims of the power of choice contrary for the law, yet because of freedom, such maxims
must be viewed as accidental, a circumstance that would not square with the universality of
evil at issue unless their supreme subjective ground were not in all cases somehow entwined
with humanity itself and, as it were, rooted in it: so we can call this ground a natural
propensity to evil, and, since it must nevertheless always come about through one’s own
fault, we can further even call it a radical innate evil in human nature (not any the less brought
upon us by ourselves).369

Let's unpack this a bit. First, evil is itself non-universalizable and stands in opposition to the

categorical imperative and the universal moral law. Kant’s analysis of evil, ultimately related to the

theological question of sin, comes under a series of theoretical constraints and commitments

regarding both pure reason and practical reason. Evil is ultimately incomprehensible in itself, but

intelligible via its contrast to that which is comprehensible, the universal moral law. We can note

right from the 'get go' both a similarity and distance from our own view of evil. Like us, Kant

regards evil as a form of privation; but unlike us, his perspective of evil accords with subjective

processes regarding the will. Richard J Bernstein notes that "[Kant] is frequently, but rather

mistakenly, criticized for allegedly claiming that it is our natural inclinations that are the source of

human evil."370 What the passage above makes clear is that for Kant, evil somehow regards both the

natural freedom of human beings, and so it has some relation with the natural capacities (and

indeed, propensities) of the human animal, but it is not something essential in the human being

either. Kant says that the quality of evil cannot be inferred from the species. The ability to commit

evil is therefore an activity of freedom in juxtaposition to the maxims of the universal law. Freedom

369 Immanuel Kant et al., Religion and Rational Theology, The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant
(Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 6:32.
370 Richard J. Bernstein, Radical Evil : A Philosophical Interrogation (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press,

2002), 15.

236
plays an important role for Kant such that its undetermined nature neuters the rational maxims of

the universal law into options, potential choices - accidents. The ground for this is what he calls our

natural propensity to evil is itself a radical evil. This means that the radicality of evil corresponds to an

ungrounded grounding in human freedom and reason. Bernstein adds, "what is fundamental for his

understanding of freedom and morality [is] that human beings, by virtue of their faculty of volition,

are completely accountable and responsible for the good and evil maxims they adopt."371 In his

book Fallen Freedom: Kant on radical evil and moral regeneration, Cordon Michelson adds that

Kant puts both reason and freedom into question: reason, because of the seemingly
irrational character of the act of will that throws us into racial evil; and freedom, because of
the apparent impossibility that we can through our own autonomous powers, save ourselves
once we have fallen. Radical evil implies that reason is capable of turning against its own
best interests…372

We might say that the 'radical' nature of evil, at least for Kant, consists in a the paradoxical

contradiction in which the rational will undermines itself in choosing evil maxims of practical action.

How is this a challenge to our view?

The radical nature of evil that Kant introduces ultimately corresponds to a contradiction in

human volitional activity. Our analysis, by contrast, began by bracketing out of consideration two

important elements that radically alter our own understanding of evil. First, we suspended

discussion regarding first personal volitional activity as a means of delimiting the investigatory field

to the intersubjective. Because of this suspension, the problem of moral evil is not for us a

volitional problem. There are, of course, interesting questions that pertain, but they fall outside the

scope of this analysis. Second, we have also suspended our consideration regarding local forms of

moral activity. Our view is that the intersubjective community is something fixed to a changing

locale, within its own stream of historical recursions that unfold and generate the space and

371
Ibid.
Gordon E. Michalson, Fallen Freedom : Kant on Radical Evil and Moral Regeneration (New York:
372

Cambridge University Press, 1990), 17.

237
cognition for moral activity, in a dialectical organization. Because of this, specific (local) maxims

and maxim considerations fall outside the scope of our analysis of evil. In other words, the radical

evil of which Kant speaks has an entirely different theoretic matrix. Evil for us is a dimunition of a

concrete intersubjective community; moral evil refers to a dimunition with a causal antecedent of

agency, and natural evil has a natural antecedent.

We previously defined moral failure as its own form of contradiction. We said in chapter 1

that moral failure refers to any case in which a reason for acting, that once instituted and according

to an internal principle over time, and through iterations of activity leads to reasons for action that

contradict the original moral principle for acting itself. Thus, moral failure represents a

contradiction in practice whereby moral activities legitimated by a community and embedded into a

concrete moral habitus, result in the overcoming of the reason for which they were created. The coal

miner works everyday to better their life and the lives of the their family. They have their own

history as a community and have habituated their values accordingly. The coal mining community is

just one cultural world, but its values concretely consist in the consumption of the natural landscape

with the dire consequence of hastening an end to their world over the long run. Environmental

moral failure, at a highly generalized level, describes the paradox of radical evil. One acts to create a

better world by practically employing means which constitute a natural evil to the community writ

large over time along timescales too large for the practical intuition of local agents. Perhaps

environmental moral failure could be said to represent a radical problem on those grounds. But the

ontological features of our argument do not represent a transcendental contradiction rooted in

freedom the way they do for Kant. One important feature that Kant employs in his discussion of

natural evil concerns his description of its grades.

Kant argues that there are three primary grades of our propensity to commit moral

evil. They are (1) frailty, (2) immunity, and (3) depravity. There seems to be a strong

238
analogy between the first two and our own analysis. Frailty describes “the general weakness

of the human heart in complying with the adopted maxims.”373 In contrast, there is also the

impurity of adopting various maxims, some good and other bad; Kant defines impurity as

“the propensity to adulterate moral incentives with immoral incentives.”374 Finally, there is

depravity which concerns the propensity to adopt evil maxims. Since we have bracketed out

of consideration first personal moral agency, depravity is not something immediately relevant

to our analysis. We can imagine versions of the first two as being relevant to a social

ontology, or social axiology. Kant’s organization of the grades of evil concern the general

propensity of human beings to do such and so with their freedom. Our investigation of

moral habitus is rooted ultimately in a description of the intersubjective field, excluding the

problem of intention; but even if we disregard the intentionality of evil, there will remain the

concrete activities that come about as a result of intentionality. By way of extension, we can

also recognize similar propensities intersubjectively. The concrete values that get set into

motion within a cultural world are also frail, and potentially impure. Analogously, the moral

habitus of a community can also be described as frail under specific concrete conditions.

Marxism, for instance, is a demonstrative study in the way in which human forms of life are

frail to the economic material conditions which make them possible. How many

communities, villages, moral custom, ways of being have vanished under the weight of

material reorganizations fueled by economic globalization? The moral habitus of a

community can also become impure. Impurity would refer to concrete habits of activity that

upon sedimentation and over time become conjunctively inconsistent. How many rarified

373 Immanuel Kant, Allen W. Wood, and George Di Giovanni, Religion within the Boundaries of Mere
Reason and Other Writings, Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy (Cambridge ; New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1998), 53 [6:29].
374
Ibid.

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moral traditions have over time begun o negate their own reason for being? In fact, the

problem of sedimentation is precisely related to this problem of impurity. As customs

become sedimented, expected, and eventually invisible in the life of a community, they may

also become impure in terms of their moral terminus. All evil (moral and natural) has a

radicality in terms of its character as a modality of privation. Evil is a privation of the

worldliness in which each of us live, constituted through our communities and concrete

intersubjective activities. Every evil has a degree of radically.

5. Habits

The moral life of a community concretely occurs in a fabric of networked practices.

The reasons for these practices are varied, almost as varied as the agents themselves. Some

of the actions taken functionally contradict and initiate natural intersubjective ruptures,

harms, or privations against the embodied harmony of the community's material existence.

Our thesis here is that moral concepts, both localized and general, have their basis in this

intersubjective reality. Moral harms, however articulated, run along an axis of intersubjective

diminution. The concretization of the community allows us, through an inspection of

moral harm, to sketch the manifestation of the harmonic principle (identifying the limit and

field of the intersubjective). Every community exists both in time and space. We are not

referring to the sense of localization that agents of a community have about their space, but

rather the general necessity of an embodied spatiality of/for the emergent community. In

summary, the embodied harmony of a community is effectively chorological in its

concretization. The members of the community, its agents, are only moments in the

composition of the whole; although necessary moments in terms of their compositional

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totality and manifest existence. As a dynamic form of being in time, intersubjective life is

governed by a harmonic principle that extends beyond the individual. Having previously

bracketed out of consideration the first-personal forms of deliberation by the agents and

only taking the material inter-relations into account, we can ask by what means does the

intersubjective harmony take hold? The most apparent answer is habit.

If we look at the intersubjective field in its concrete unfolding, we find that that the

embodied movements of the individuals who make up the poles of that field, in terms of

their harmonization, are repetitiously organized. Over and over again, the majority of the

actions that agents take, in their embodied form, have patterns of activity that agents repeat

conjunctively. It does not take one long to realize that our own actions are repetitious in

nature. Each day we move our bodies as we have before: our bodily comportment is highly

attuned to the language of embodied movement. Everyone recognizes that every

community holds certain norms and expectations with regard to their use of the body. They

are patterned and repetitious in nature. We see the same repetition in the concrete use of

language. (We must keep in mind that language is also a material interconnection between

agents) Not only is there meaning in what agents say, but also in how they say it. There are

accordingly verbal customs. Instead of asking why these repetitions occur, we note that they

conform to a general symmetry of harmonic proportions. It may be the case that the social

conformity experiments performed by psychologists have their basis in the tendency of

individuals to act in repetitious concert.375 Effectively, these repetitious forms of embodied

activity fall under the general name as habits. Our thesis in this section is that the

intersubjective harmony of a community is given over time in terms of habitual patterns of

activity. Habituality plays an important role in the concrete life of a community.

375
The work of Solomon Asche is quite noteworthy here. See his work Social Psychology (1952)

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Habituation concretely enables certain norms of activity for agents within a community

which ground the moral dimension of the community. Given the chorological and localizing

dimension of the moral life of a community, habituation plays both a (i) normalizing and (ii)

generative role for the community. Children are habituated and those forms of habituation

concretely organize the development of each individual agent. Habitual embodied activity is

the glue that binds a community together and it is also apart of the intersubjective generative

and grounding function.

Habits have been paid significant attention by a range of philosophers.376 In

Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics, we see an important discussion regarding the way habits play a

critical role in the cultivation of moral virtue. He writes, “moral excellence comes about as a

result of habit”377. Aristotle even notes that the Greek term for ethics (εθος) is a variant of

the word for habit (ηθιKη).378 There is a close affinity to our discussion of intersubjectivity

and a parallel discussion of ethical life in Aristotle that (a) is methodologically descriptive, (b)

emphasizes the necessary conditions of habit, and (c) the functional principle of harmony

and balance in determining right courses of action. Aristotle notes that there are different

forms of habit possible. Not only are there habits of thought and habits of activity, but

there are layers and levels of intersubjective habituation. The role of habits and habituation

has been a significant topic in the phenomenological philosophies of Husserl, Merleau-

Ponty, Alfred Schutz, Edith Stein, as well as the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. If the

intersubjective community has its harmonic existence in the embodied habituation of its

376
Even as far back as the Pre-socratics, we see philosophers discussing the role of habits and their
relationship to reflective consciousness. Parmenides is credited with having written that habit compel us in
our failure to think, writing - “Never I ween shalt thou learn that Being can be of what is not; Wherefore do
thou withdraw thy mind from this path of inquiry, Neither let habit compel thee, while reading this pathway
of knowledge…”
377
Aristotle, The Complete Works of Aristotle, ed. Jonathan Barnes, trans. W.D. Ross and J.O.Urmson, 2
vols., vol. 2 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), 1103a16.
378
Ibid.

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collective members and agents then we will need to distinguish a number of key elements,

including the relations between habits of thought, embodied habituation, to what extent

habit takes hold, and the difference between individual and collective habituation. To begin,

our analysis, let us begin by reviewing habits in the work of Husserl and then turning to the

concretion of habitus as presented by Pierre Bourdieu. Using these philosophers to pin our

language down, we shall offer the thesis that habits play a functional role in the material

dialectic of an intersubjective community. Institutions normalize those habitual structures

into codified systems of expectation over the course of generations. The moral

embodiment and language of a community is primarily instituted through passive and active

structures of habituation.

Let us begin with Husserl’s discussion of habit, having evolved over the course of

his career and especially with the development of genetic phenomenology. Dermot Moran

has noted that although many of the writings published in Husserl’s lifetime do not touch

upon habit explicitly, the role of habituation was an important element in his mature writings

and one can find references to habitually in nearly all of his writings.379 In other words, the

concept of a habit is an ‘operative concept’ for Husserl, used to analyze the thematic topics

of his phenomenology rather than being a theme in their own right.380 This means that

‘habit’ is one of the key concepts Husserl employs in his descriptive phenomenology. There

are accordingly different types of habits and different roles for habituation. For instance, we

can discern habituation in a number of our experiences. First among them are our habits in

thought (Denkegewohnheiten381), there are also habits of disposition (Habitualitäten),382 and

379
See Moran, Demort. "Edmund Husserl's Phenomenology of Habituality and Habitus." Journal of the
British Society for Phenomenology 42, no. 1 (January 2011): 53-77.
380
Ibid. Moran notes that the term ‘operative concept’ is borrowed from Eugene Fink.
381
See Husserl, Ideas I. xix
382
See Husserl, Phenomenological Psychology (1977)

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habits of personal style,383 and many more. Although, our primary concern is that of

collective habituation, we need to begin by saying something about individual habits.

Husserl uses both habit (Gewohnheit) and the Latin habitus (and Habitualität). In discussing

the constitution of the ego and the reification of perceptual experience, habit is understood

to demarcate a “relation to the manner in which certain beliefs and ways of behaving settle

down to become part of the ego’s character and contribute to its personal style384.” In Ideas

II, Husserl emphasizes the fundamental role that habit plays in the constitution of the ego

and the sedimentation of our experiences. Even after an experience has ended, our

experiences have an afterlife and continue to modify future experiences. He writes:

The earlier lived experiences did not vanish without a trace; each one has its after-effect.
To the essence of the soul pertains a continuous new formation or re-formation of
disposnvictions, of orientatiar titles: association, habit, memory…385

This means that habits play an operative role that bares similarity to memory, association,

and other motivational capacities which play a complex role in the manner and ordering of

lived experiential activity. Husserl even discusses the phenomenological importance of habit

in terms of the constitution of the natural attitude and that phenomenology itself, as a

methodology, sets forth its own habitual parameters. There are certain habits of thought

which enable and contextualize the understandings of our experiences, giving them their

apperceptive quality. The phenomenologist does not rid themselves of the habits in the

natural attitude, but rather replaces them, or augments them. This is a second important

consideration. Habits are not negated or changed, but rather replaced, modified, and

augmented over time. Moran comments that “[developing] or changing a habit, moreover,

383
See ‘Phenomenology’ Encyclopedia of Britannica (1927)
384
Moran and Cohen, 141.
385
Husserl, Idead Pertaining to a Pure Phenomnology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy. Second
Book: General Introduction to a Pure Phenomenology, 2, 136.

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may require deliberation and scrutiny. Giving up or resisting a habit, e.g. Smoking, requires

the development of new habits, overriding and deflective routines.”386 Husserl’s use of the

term habitus emphasizes the stability and permanence that goes along with habituation387.

For the individual, we can differentiate habits of physical condition from habits of

thought and habits of disposition. A physical habit is one which is one which clearly

concerns the body and Husserl mentions that some of these habits are the result of

instinctual drives. But physical, embodied habits, are primarily set according to specific

natural conditions, such that the negation of the bodily negates the habit’s concretization,

and the habit ceases to be. Many habits are rational and clearly purposive in nature, having

been set presumably by an agent at some point prior. The physical habits we have are also

operations of the mind’s capacity to recognize and complete the activity, but the primary

feature of our physical habits is that for the most part we do not notice them, for they

constitute the primary limiting threshold for our very experience of being in the world. This

leads back to the question of habits of thought.

The other habits such as those of thought and disposition play a very important role

in how we come to experience and live in the world. A habit of thought (Gewohnheit)

refers to a habitual way of thinking that can be influenced, informed by, or given in

association with a theoretical domain (science, psychology, political ideology, etc.). In Ideas

II, Husserl warns that we can fall prey to the “blinders of habit.” 388 A habit of disposition is

a habit concerned with the repetitions we have regarding our abilities and dispositions389.

386
Dermot Moran, "Edmund Husserl's Phneomenology of Habituality and Habitus," Journal of the British
Society for Phenomenology 42, no. 1 (2011): 57.
387
See HUA XIV 195
388
Husserl, Idead Pertaining to a Pure Phenomnology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy. Second
Book: General Introduction to a Pure Phenomenology, 2, 183.
389
See Husserl’s Phenomenological Psychology lectures from 1925

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Collectively the various forms of habituation that individuals have play an integral and

founding role for the constitution of the ego itself. In the Cartesian Meditations Husserl refers

to the ego as a substrate of habitualities. Quoting at length, he writes:

But it is to be noted that this centering Ego is not an empty pole of identity, any more than
any object is such. Rather, according to a low of ‘transcendental generation’, with
every act emanating from him and having a new objective sense, he acquires a new
abiding property. For example: If, in an act of judgment, I decide for the first time in
favor of a being and a being-thy, the fleeting act passes; but from now on I am
abidingly the Ego who is thus and so decided, ‘I am on this conviction.’ That, however,
does not signify merely that I remember the act or can remember it later. This I can
do, even if meanwhile I have ‘give up’ my conviction. After cancellation it is no
longer my conviction; but it has remained abidingly my conviction up to then. As
long as it is accepted by me, I can ‘return’ to it repeatedly, and repeatedly find it as
mind, habitually my own opinion or, correlatively, find myself as the Ego who is
convinced, who, as the persisting Ego, is determined by this abiding habits or state…
I decide; the act-process vanishes but the decision persists; whether I become passive
and sink into heavy sleep or live in other acts, the decision continues to be accepted
and, correlatively, I am so decided from then on, as long as I do not give the decision
up.390

Despite the fact that certain volitional and other experiences pass, it is through our

habitualities that our decisive activity persists beyond the conscious state. An individual

identity is organized around a concrete habitus structure. This means that habits are an

enduring state for our decisions and this is how the singularity of identity gets structured

through life. Intersubjectively, habits are interwoven into a complex network, or networks,

of activity and coordination that we have with other. The moral conceptual landscape of a

given community must fit the its material ontological constraints, and this would entail a

concrete moral habitus. A fully descriptive understanding of moral life necessarily includes

moral habituation. By altering this habituation, the harmonization of the community

changes. Thus, moral habits have certain tension between their embodied repetition towards

social harmony and the disruption of their replacement.

390
Husserl and Cairns, 66.

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 Habits operate on differing levels. At the lowest level, habitually enables the passive

pre-conscious constitution of the individual. At higher levels, habits are the result of

intentional activity by an individual. For instance, consider the role that habituation plays in

the development and maturation of children. In Ideas II, Husserl argues that association and

habituation play a fundament role in the passive origination of apperceptive activity in

consciousness, writing:

These are, specifically, either "sediments” of earlier acts and accomplishments of

reason, or ones which emerge, in "analogy" with the former, as apperceptive unities
without actually being formed out of acts of reason, or else they are completely a-
rational: sensibility, what imposes itself, the pre-given, the driven in the sphere of
passivity…391

So, we must bare in mind that not all habitualities are the result of reasoning in an active

sense. This means that habits can be understood as ‘passive motivations’392. Husserl even

refers to habit as the ‘first law’393. “Obviously belief, and any position-taking, is an event in

the stream of consciousness and therefore is subject to the first law, that of ‘habit’.”394 This

means that the passive motivational character of habit is an essential element in

understanding the dynamic unfolding of the ego over time. Furthermore, this means that

certain activities in consciousness and lived activity conform to habitual passive structures

unbeknownst to us, but they continue to leave their trace (Spur) and this trace remains

available to judgment. Even though the source of the habit “may become ‘forgotten’; but

for all this, it in no way disappears without a trace; it has merely become latent. With regard

to what has been constituted in it, it is a possession in the form of a habitus ready at any time to

be awakened anew by an active association.”395

391
Ibid. 222
392
Ibid.
393
Ibid. 223
394
Ibid.
395
Husserl, Experience and Judgment; Investigations in a Genealogy of Logic, 122.

247
 For the purposes of our investigation on environmental moral failure, the

implications are clear. We have habitualities that are both the results of active reasoning and

the habitualities that are passively sedimented into our bodily activity, that are also the result

of rational activity. Although the latter of these may be unknown, they are not in principle

and they can be identified through active forms of association. We have emphasized the

importance of recognizing that the environmental crisis is not the result of an intentional

purpose to destroy the environment, but it is a form of collective activity nonetheless.

Accordingly, habituality provides us the first element of our explanatory model. But we

need to say more about the difference between individual habitualities (the primary focus on

Husserl’s phenomenology) and uncover further details regarding collective habituation.

Although Husserl does distinguish between the habitualities of the individual from those of

the collective in terms of the concretization of tradition, we will make further inroads by

adopting an explanatory model proposed by Pierre Bourdieu.

In his book The Logic of Practice Bourdieu sets out to offer an explanatory model for

what practices are and how they dialectically intertwine in a society, especially in terms of its

relevance for Marxism and the sociology of capital. Taking Husserl as a departure point,

Bourdieu offers further insights into collective habitualities. There are a number of points

worthy of our attention. First, we must understand that habitus is produced by and out of

the concrete conditions for existence itself.396 Habits are fundamentally concrete in their

fulfillment, and the concretion is organized by the conditions needed to exist. This means

that the collective habits that unfold in the intersubjective field are conditioned by localized

factors related to the existence of the community. Given our earlier thesis on moral

valuation, we can see that this means collective habituation will naturally take on the

396
Pierre Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1990), 53.

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character of being morally positive (insofar as its position grounds the condition of moral

existence itself). From this stance, we can see why forms of habituation get inculcated into

the field of normativity for a given community. Second, Bourdieu argues that the

dispositions that individuals can have within a community get organized by the habitus of the

community. This means that some dispositions, namely those which represent the negation

of the habitus, are unthinkable, as it were. He writes, “[the] most improbably practices are

therefore excluded, as unthinkable, by a kind of immediate submission to order that inclines

the agents to make a virtue of necessity, that is, to refuse what is anyway denied and to will

the inevitable.”397 It is because of our habits, then, that moral norms get sedimented into

certain moral truths we take for granted; not the other way round. The habitus of a

community is thus the result of the history of that community, but also that the future

history of that community is produced in part by the habitus.398 Tradition and moral

traditions refer to certain concrete moral habits of the body and the language habituated by

the body. In other words, habitus produces and is produced by an embodied history. The

habits of the collective enable the conditions of free thought for the individuals who make

up that collectivity. Previously we made the distinction between the individuals of a

community and the institutional pieces that make up the community. Bourdieu adds that it is

the habitus that enables institutions to fulfill their function. He writes:

Produced by the work of inculcation and appropriation that is needed in order for
objective structures, the products of collective history, to be reproduced in the form
of the durable, adjusted dispositions that are the condition of their functioning, the
habitus, which is constituted in the course of an individual history, imposing its
particular logic on incorporation, and through which agents partake of the history
objectified in institutions, is what makes it possible to inhabit institutions, to
appropriate them practically, and so to keep them in activity, continuously pulling
them from the state of dead letters, reviving the sense deposited in them, but at the

397
Ibid. 54
398
Ibid. 57

249
 same time imposing the revisions and transformations that reactivation entails. Or
rather, the habitus is what enables the institution to attain full Realization…399

When we bracket out the individual’s intentional activity and focus upon the concrete

intersubjective, we find that it is the habitus of the community which acts as the concrete

bond between the members of that community and that that bonding plays a passive role in

conditioning the intentional activities. The moral norms of a community, aligned with the

intersubjective diminution principle, provide us with a concrete model of understanding.

Every community has norms of action and these are expressed in a collective habitus. This is

an important potential answer to the question of what distinguishes one community from

the next, especially when we consider the problem of cosmopolitanism. Clearly a

community must require more than its mere habitus, but the discussion of intersubjective

ontology requires that we recognize the collective habitus as an essential feature for any

community. Without a harmony between the embodied interests of the individuals over

time, a community would dissipate. The habitus is in a state of dynamic development

because it is tied to local conditions for its existence. This would account for at least one of

the reasons communities not only change their habitus over time, but also why we see various

demarcations for communities. Because of differences in the conditions of existence,

different communities will develop and adhere to differing theoretical norms - what we have

previously called local moral concepts. When we consider the problems of cosmopolitanism

and the conflicts between communities, we can say that (in effect) the merging of distinct

communities takes place and gets organized by the harmonic principle. A cosmopolitan

community is the formation of a new community accordingly. The problems of

globalization, its moral and sociological developments, are foreseeable because the

399
Ibid. my italics

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conditions of intersubjective existence dynamically change. Over time and in the long run,

communities will either naturally coalesce and harmonize (thereby rendering new local moral

concepts and norms), remain the same, or they will cease to exist.

A second problem concerns the incompatibility of a habitus to new environmental

conditions. Bourdieu calls this a hysteresis effect, he writes:

The presence of the past in this kind of false anticipation of the future performed
by the habitus is, paradoxically, most clearly seen when the sense of the probable
future is belied and when dispositions ill-adjusted to the objective chances because
of a hysteresis effect (Marx's favorite example of this was Don Quixote) are
negatively sanctioned because the environment they actually encounter is too
different from the one to which they are objectively adjusted. In fact the persistence
of the effects of primary conditioning, in the form of the habitus, accounts equally
well for cases in which dispositions function out of phase and practices are
objectively ill-adapted to the present conditions because they are objectively adjusted
to conditions that no longer obtain.400

Over time, communities (and individuals) encounter new conditions in which an operative

habitus becomes ill-equipped to function, either in part or as a whole. Some communities

encounter new environmental conditions completely outside of an existing habitus. These

are usually thought of as moments of existential crisis for a community, for the total collapse

of a habitus would likely require a completely new set of environmental conditions. The

problem of environmental moral represents an existential crisis on the order of the

collective industrial habitus. Dale Jamieson refers to the climate crisis as the pre-eminent

moral challenge, not because of its overwhelming effect on the whole of humanity, but

because it threatens the very possibility of a world in the first place.401 From our perspective,

the environmental crisis today may be challenging the collective habitus of the modern

industrial economy to such an extent that the crisis itself becomes unthinkable, unforeseen,

400
Ibid. 62
401
Jameiseon made this remark at the 2012 American Philosophical Association Meeting held in Seattle.

251
and easily forgotten. Our own discourse is sedimentation depends upon our intersubjective

surroundings.

Moral concepts are conditioned by the intersubjective material dialectic. As a

dynamic entity, a community changes over time and adjusts its habitus according to a matrix

of conditions that get collectively infused and sedimented into the normal and activities of

the community. The range of the collective habitus and its dynamic movement, according to

the existing conditions, establishes what can only be understood as a dialectical process in

the embodied lives of the community. Since the structures of habituation are both passive

and active, we cannot refrain from also recognizing that the habitus of a community also

gets organized and adjusted by the active process of instituting new habits. But new habits

can only be replaced, and so the Spur of the former remains like a fading stamp in our

morally embodied activity. 402 Intersubjectively, the active formations of rational deliberation

primarily get instituted through institutions (such as legislatures, courts, universities,

churches, journalistic institutions, and so forth) which have the power to enforce new

habitual patterns. Moral customs abound within the intersubjective field, and our traditions

of moral custom habituate our bodies repetitiously, habitually. Every culture has its customs,

holidays, and religions each of which enforce a specific concrete material reality, along the

contours of which our intentional activity takes place. Other customs, indeed the ancient

customs, still have traces in our habitual activity embedded in the languages of our bodies.

Cultural norms reflect the passive habitus of an intersubjective collective at a higher level. We

402
An important question here, indeed the central question of the problem of moral failure is related to the
answer of why we cannot stop habits once they are set. In many ways, it is easy to see the tragic nature of
our moral habituations. Consider the problem Shakespeare presents us with in Hamlet. The moral tragedy
consist in an inability to remain anything but faithful to moral habituation. To be locked into the tragic is a
manifestation of an inability to sufficiently alter or stop the patterns of moral life that set our embodied
parameters.

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can even think of these habits as a recipe for the concrete fulfillment of cultural harmony.

Through the embodied tension between agents, and their synthetic dynamism, we can begin

to understand in a much more nuanced way that the moral life of a community is a dynamic

process dialectically moving through and organizing history. The anthropogenic

environmental crisis is an outgrowth of the intersubjective embodied dialectic insofar as it is

on the order of anthro.

6. Values

Having articulated the basic principle of intersubjective diminution as our

criterion for setting the values of things which are considered morally right and

morally wrong, we now must investigate its concrete manifestation. This principle is

a descriptive principle so that with it we can describe and recognize moral harms and

their patterns. The keen reader will have already surmised that the sense of ‘moral’

conduct has been stripped of its dependence on intentional action. Our view here is

that intersubjective harm, in forms both natural and human, may be interpreted

along a moral axis. When a community undergoes a diminution of some sort, that

event may be categorically regarded as something axiologically negative, no matter

the antecedent cause or motivation. We are thus transitioning from an ontological

discourse to an axiological discourse. Categorically, the ontological comes before

value, because things cannot be valued if they do not exist, and so being itself is

logically value neutral. Where then do values arise?

Values begin first with what is valued. Or in other words, the experience of

valuation has a structural dependence on its object. It cannot be otherwise for the

reason that values always occur with an intentional object. Clearly, people value

many different and conflicting things. The baker values bread, the scientist

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knowledge, the soldier war, and the like - such that it may be said prima facie that there

are a plurality of values. If we inspect the concrete intersubjective inter-activities

and ignore the intentional reasons for action, we shall find a mixture of material

activities that both harmonize in their coordination and dis-harmonize accordingly.

The whole process is materially dynamic and dialectal. Valuations, however

organized, depend first of all on there being things to value. What those values are

in their concrete cases depends upon the forms of material harmony over time that

can take place in a concrete location. The privation of the intersubjective, in terms

of a concrete disharmony is the schema by which we can articulate and evaluate

forms of collective moral harm. Due to the generality by which we have extended

the sense of the term ‘moral,’ our discourse will preclude us from making localized

moral evaluations, but we can articulate certain general principles that are applicable

across all localities. As a meta-moral discourse, we effectively remain silent at this

point on issues of concrete moral conflict. This means that our discourse on value

is not made with the aim of articulating and defending some specific value over

others. In many ways, this has been one of the major drawbacks in the progress of

environmental ethics. There seem to be as many ethical theories as there are ethicist

in the promotion of certain values over others. There are ecofeminists, deep

ecologists, green Utilitarians, environmental pragmatists, green deontologists,

monists, pluralists, and the list goes on. Every conceivable ethical system can have

its own environmentalism that situates certain values as more less central to the

practical problem. This means that environmental ethics today is less of a science

for understanding our environmental existence, and takes on the character of an

ideological art. Alain Badiou has argued that ecology has become an opium to the

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masses and that environmentalism has become a form of religious ideology. 403 But

moral value matches the concrete intersubjective conditions for moral life in the first

place. Real progress on the environmental crises of our day depends upon an

understanding of the real values of our society and not simply promoting certain

values as preeminent over others. Our insistence that local moral values are - well,

local - indicates that ordering of values depends upon specific concrete conditions.

The diversity of local values itself and the avocation of certain local values

has led many thinkers to conclude that moral discourse is always relative to the

subject. At the core of the position is the central notion that there is no real

purchase on our moral values and that they are ultimately in our heads, as it were,

and nothing more. This leads to the further consequence that arbitrating competing

moral values (form the subjectivist perspective) requires first reason, and then when

that fails, force. This point has been understood since Nietzsche, who articulated a

psychological motivation (the will-to-power) as the ground for moral values.404 This

leads to a serious problem for a philosophy of moral environmental failure. If

values are subjectively determined and have no real weight in the world apart form

their deliberative and psychological force, then the environmental crisis may

represent a moral failure for some and not others, depending on the subjective

perspectives taken. A loss of moral objectivity leads to a loss of a moral discourse

with external persuasive force. It would mean that values are apart of the

architecture of individual deliberation, cultural artifacts, but nothing else. Our

position of the concrete intersubjective moral framework is one which is entirely

403
Alain Badiou, Alain Badiou Live Theory (INew York: Continuum, 2008), 139.
404
See the Will to Power and the Genealogy of Morality

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different in that we have bracketed the subjectivism of the subjects out of

consideration. This means that whatever our analysis of values might be, it will be

free of the problem of subjectivism. The sorts of values we will describe are those

which align with the intersubjectively objective. This does not entirely mean we are

out of the ‘weeds’ though. We shall try to address some of the subjectivist problems

regarding moral judgments in a subsequent section. In what is to follow, let us begin

by (1) reviewing Husserl’s general discussion of values and valuation and then (2)

articulating the thesis that values can be descriptively given as practical principles in

the concrete habitus of the community.

Husserl distinguishes, among other things, between values, value

apprehension, and valuation - but his analysis is always from the vantage of

understanding the multiplicity of things that go into our experience of holding

certain values, recognizing things as valuable, and having certain value-motivations in

consciousness. A value can either be objective or ideal and his view is that we attach

values to things in the world, not that values are in the world in a literal sense. From

this vantage, values are conceptual products or eidetic forms that get fused into our

apperception of objects/activities in the world.405 Values are one among many layers

of apperceptive motivation that superimpose themselves onto our experience.

Apprehending a value is akin to perceiving an object. Susi Ferrarello comments that

“[for] Husserl, values spring from moral sentiments (Gemüt) that are not in

themselves normative but are instead felt as affections and recognized as existential

405
See Edmund Husserl, Vorlesungen Über Ethik Und Wetlehre 1908-1914, ed. Ullrich Melle, Husserliana:
Edmund Husserl Gesammelte Werke (Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1973), 70-101.

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values”.406 It is not surprising that the language of the felt recognition would come

up in a phenomenology of value. From the first personal experience, values are

laden throughout our entire experience of the world, from our day to day routine to

moments of moral crisis. We actually need norms and values in order to distinguish

facts themselves.407 Valuation plays a role in the general positing of the natural

attitude itself.

Consider our experience of something factual in the natural attitude. When

we experience something as being a fact in the world, attached to the fact are sets of

unspoken assumed standards regarding what counts as real (and whose objectivity is

intersubjectively given), indicating a form of valuation in the factuality of the fact.

Accordingly, there is a tight and complex relationship between the facts of our

experience, our norms, and the values we hold in our general experience of the

world. All of these correspond to intentional operations in consciousness. These

standards and values are rolled into the embodied habitus of the community.

Additionally, there is a distinction between value and act of valuing.408 Acts of

valuing are, by extension, related to possible objects of habituation. In Ideas II, he

writes that “[to] yield to a drive establishes the drive to yield: habitually. Likewise, to

let oneself be determined by a value-motive and to resist a drive establishes a

tendency… to let oneself be determined once again by such a value-motive… and to

resist these drives. Here habit and free motivation intertwine.” 409 Values are not only

laden in our experience of objects in the world, they are also directionally instituted

406
Susi Ferrarello, Husserl's Ethics and Practical Intentionality (New York: Bloomsbury, 2016), 71. my
italics
407
Ibid.
408
Husserl, Ideas II, 230-32.
409
Ibid., [255].

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in the habits of our activities. We not only see values, but we value things in how we

live in the world. There is an existential dimension of valuation; namely, that values

exist in our acts, as it were.

When looking at the concrete moral intersubjective field, we employ a

descriptive form of method. The thesis of our present discussion is that values can

be descriptively given in these concrete practices. So, instead of looking at the first-

personal experience of values and valuations, we must treat intersubjective values as

something given, or attached to, the concrete practices themselves. Given the scope

of our investigation, we can dispense with a more thorough discussion of how

values are given in consciousness, at least for the time being. Instead, we ask this: in

what sense are values attached to or given in the concrete intersubjective practice(s)?

We have already noted how the forms of a community habitus intertwine in a

harmonic dialectic and how the morality of a community is given as a function of

the moral harmonic against the backdrop of intersubjective diminution. Given this,

we can say that the moral habitus of a community is descriptively teleological410. This

simply means that the activities that fill out the moral habitus are directional towards

specific and/or ideal aims. Even when conflated and altered, the passive habitus

maintains teleological traces (Spurs) that can be articulated by associational

investigation. If we take seriously the idea of materiality for the intersubjective, then

we must recognize that values have a material trace. In effect, an intersubjective

value corresponds to a structural element of a practice. Consider the daily routines

of activity that fill out the lived experience of someone who participates in the

410
In evoking ‘teleology’ here, we merely mean to describe the fact that a given habitus has a given end or
purpose which directs its unfolding and deployment.

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emission of CO2 into the atmosphere, think of the environmental ethicists who

traverses the world on airplanes emitting pollutants to give talks on the dangers of

CO2 pollutants. Despite the tragic irony, we would note that the living life of the

ethicist unfolds along the parameters of the collective habitus in which she finds

herself living. Within this milieu of activities, multiple teleological traces are

decipherable to varying degrees. These teleological traces have varying degrees of

organization in the concrete practices. Our hypothesis is that the organization of the

habitus indicates a concrete structural principle, and that this concrete structural

principle should be understood as an embodied value. We recognize that there is a

difference between the valuations, along with the various motivational features that

pertain, of an agent and the existent values actually in operation and inferred from

the agent’s own activities. It is not that the habit itself is a principle or value, but that

the organization of the habit points in the direction of there being a principle of

action; and given that principle of action a value becomes articulable. In other words,

a genetic descriptive phenomenology will see concrete intersubjective values as

structural elements which organizes the practice(s). This means that despite the

ethicist’s claim (and likely true claim) that they value a pollutant-free atmosphere,

they also descriptively value the consumption of pollutant causing chemicals because

their embodied practices require them.

Given the harmonic principle and our claim that a moral habitus is structured

along the contours of the material diminution of the community, we can say that

specific moral values can be articulated within given practices, not in terms of what

the individual’s intent, but rather in what they do. We need therefore, to distinguish

these concrete values from the values that a community declares. We therefore will

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conclude our discussion on values by noting an important terminological distinction.

On the one hand we have real values and on the other hand, nominal values. Simply

put, a real value is one that has existential significance as something given in the

concrete intersubjective field (aka the habitus). In contrast, a nominal value is a value

that a community, or the members of a community, are said to hold or declare

themselves to hold. The former is objective whereas the latter is rooted in the

experiences, affinities, and traditions of the community. It is therefore possible to

articulate disparities between the real and nominal moral values of a community.

This difference will prove fruitful in the question of how we can make moral

judgments about a community’s form of existence and their moral form of life.

This is particularly apropos for a discussion of environmental moral failure and

collective moral failings. To this topic we now turn.

7. Collective Sedimentation

We have argued that when we inspect the concrete intersubjective field, the habitus of

a community (the embodied movements of the community) play a central role in the

harmony of the community over time. The moral valuation of a community's practices

depends upon the degree to which those practices evoke a diminution in that community's

being. Since every community is localized, its concrete deployment forms the basis for the

local moral concepts, values, and norms that get instituted (or sedimented) into the

embodied moral habitus. We have also noted that since habits replace other habits, leaving

traces, the moral habitus of a community can bring together and amalgamate a multiplicity of

values. One of the central elements for our discussion of moral failure in the next chapter

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will concern the way in which these practices and values compile on top of each other over

time. In order to better understand this, we need to take pause and say something about the

logic of sedimentation.

Maurice Merleau-Ponty is perhaps a philosopher about whom we have said too little.

His phenomenology of the body has strong relevance to our own analysis regarding the role

of intersubjective habituation. For example, in the Phenomenology of Perception, Merleau-Ponty

argues for the centrality that the motor habits of the body play in the act of perception. He

writes that "every perceptual habit is still a motor habit, and here again the grasping of a

signification is accomplished by the body."411 The language of sedimentation conjures an

image of compounding soils over time, that despite being covered over, remain as apart of

the constitution of that which appears. In Experience and Judgment Husserl refers to

sedimentation as “the continuous transformation of what has been originally acquired and

has become a habitual possession and thus something non-original.”412 In the Origin of

Geometry he comments that traditions are forms of the sedimentation of truth.413 As time

proceeds and the habitualities build, they are repeated, altered and repeated again, but the

genesis of an activity leaves its sedimented trace. The concept of 'sedimentation' is an

operative concept for Merleau-Ponty and it describes the means by which passive embodied

habituations play a functional role in our apperception of the world. Merleau-Ponty

describes beautifully the process of the embodied sedimentation upon the body and how the

traces of motor habituality reorganize our experiences:

411
Merleau-Ponty and Landes, 154.
412
Edmund Husserl and Ludwig Landgrebe, Experience and Judgment; Investigations in a Genealogy of
Logic, Northwestern University Studies in Phenomenology & Existential Philosophy (Evanston,:
Northwestern University Press, 1973), 275.
413
Jacques Derrida and Edmund Husserl, Edmund Husserl's Origin of Geometry, an Introduction (Stony
Brook, N.Y. Boulder, Colo.: N. Hays ; distributed by Great Eastern Book Co., 1978), 367.

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 As a system of motor powers or perceptual powers, our body is not an object of an
‘I think”: it is a totality of lived significations that moves toward its equilibrium.
Occasionally a new knot of significations is formed: our previous movements are
integrated into a new motor entity, the first visual givens are integrated into a new
sensorial entity, and our natural powers suddenly merge with a richer signification
that was, up until that point, merely implied in our perceptual or practical field or
that was merely anticipated in our experience through a certain lack, and whose
advent suddenly reorganizes our equilibrium, and fulfills our blind expectations414

What we see Merleau-Ponty describing is the way in which the motor habituality of lived

experience has an accumulative effect. It is necessary to also note that every habit has both a

motor and perceptual dimension. Merleau-Ponty’s emphasis on the role of the body still

falls in line with a general consideration regarding the way in which the motor habitus of the

body have a generative and constitutional effect on individual experience. Sedimentation

ultimately refers to this process. It has other consequences as well - especially for the

analysis of collective moral failure. If we want to better understand what the logic of

sedimentation might mean for our analysis, we need to understand better how habits integrate.

Merleau-Ponty’s analysis is not so far from our own here. We hold an emphasis on the role

of the body rather than the problem of determining the complexes of intentional

constitution that go into the perceptual elements of habituality. The general structure and

organization of integration is set by a conception of ‘equilibrium’. The equilibrium of

motor habituality will also conform to the intersubjective harmonic principle in terms of the

passive features of collective habituality.

When we consider the intersubjective field as a moral habitus field, and we consider

the problem of collective action, it is clear that a community will integrate previous forms of

habitus into the lifeworld of that community and as things get sedimented they can only be

integrated to the extant that they do not perversely alter the intersubjective harmonic

414
Merleau-Ponty and Landes, 155.

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dialectic. The process of sedimentation is therefore a recursive function. A recursive

function “consists in defining the value of a function by using other values of the same

function.”415 For example, we could consider the following equation form :

X=1 + 1/x416

Here the value of x is defined as a function of x. When looking at a community habitus we

will frequently find a similar description regarding our moral habits. When most children ask

why they must observe traditions, the general response that is given is because it is

traditional to do so. The point here is that the habitus of the community will maintain

harmonized iterations of the habitus as a recursive operation over time but thereby leaving

the habitus altered and the same. In fact, Heidegger describes the very operation of

philosophy in terms of recursion. He writes, “… all philosophical discussion, even the most

radical attempts to begin all over again is pervaded by traditional concepts and thus by

traditional horizons… Construction in philosophy is… a de-constructing of traditional

concepts carried out in a historical recursion to the tradition.” 417 But a community’s moral

habitus is not organized like a philosophical de-construction. There is good reason to

suppose, however, that the embodied recursion of intersubjective sedimentation maintains

has a similar inherent tension. In the embodied sense, recursion takes its collective hold by

reinforcing repetitious movements of the body, the moral habitus, in congruence with the

harmonic principle. So, on one end of the pole is a logic of continuation (not for its own

sake, but out of the fact that a moral dialectic harmony persists as the organizing principle)

and at the other end is alteration. Because communities are embodied into a material and

415
Piergiorgio Odifreddi, and Cooper, S. Barry, "Recursive Functions", The Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy (Fall 2012 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL =
<http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2012/entries/recursive-functions/>.
416
Ibid.
417
See Heidegger’s The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, 22

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substantial existence, they must respond to diminution by altering the moral habitus of the

community given new conditions. As new evils and potential evils show themselves, the

embodied motor habits of a community, will adjust in proportion to the social ills

encountered. The sedimentation of a habitus will take the general form of a tension between

continuation and alteration accordingly. Some conditions might greatly skew the moral

habitus of a community over time while others might enable a fairly stable habitus dialectic.

Sedimentation is recursive because habituality requires a re-instantiation of activity over time.

This means that the moral sedimentation of a collective habitus will tend to, because of the

recursive function of habituality, maintain itself. Perhaps this is where the internal force of

moral intuition is rooted? If our moral life has a recursive logic to it (rooted in the motor

intentionality of our moral habits), then moral life will not only seek a general

harmonization, but it will also tend to sedimentary reify itself over time. We can imagine a

number of moral catastrophes that might befall a community. But when, after having risen

themselves out of the ashes, as it were, a community will tend to re-inscribe itself according

it is moral habitus, its traditions, even when completely new and novel forms of habituation

are required. The fact that habits are not repealed but revised fits the argument here.

Perhaps collective forms of habit are so difficult to change because recursion requires that

alteration correspond to varying degrees of continuation. In terms of the environmental

moral crisis, we can say that sedimentation forms the collective bond that enables a global

environmental crisis on the order of anthropogenic climate change in part because the

reversal of the moral habitus that is fueling the problem is quite literally unimaginable. We

seek technological solutions to the environmental crisis because an approach via

technological determinations maintains a moral habitus of environmental instrumentality.

The problem of collective sedimentation, of collective habituation, indicates the basis for a

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problem of moral responsibility and blame. We said earlier that where everyone has equal

responsibility, the very category of blame begins to break down and recede into an invisible

ubiquitous background, in which no one bares responsibility or blame. This is a

consequence of the recursive function of collective sedimentation because the very moral

fabric of a community subsists in its recursion, its repetition. When the very framework of a

moral world depends upon a specific set of habitual recursions, then the framework is one in

which responsibility will be can only be organized as subordinate to the recursive procedure.

To say that no one bares responsibility because all do, is a way of demarcating the

subordination of responsibility to the ontological conditions for moral life in the first place.

Our theory here suggests that climate change is in part such a difficult moral problem

operatively because it is the result of a moral habitus, which in virtue of its essence is

fundamentally allergic to reversal or repeal.

8. Making Moral Judgments

With an eye towards the concrete intersubjective frame, we argue that it is possible to

make specific descriptive moral judgments regarding the spectrum of negative and positive

moral possibilities given in a concrete situation. In this section, we will take a few moments

to consider the range, scope, and structure of what sorts of judgments are possible from

this vantage. There are a number of key problems we can take stalk of. First, there is the

general problem of moral relativism and the epistemological problem of ascertaining the

conditions under which a judgment can be counted as true or false. A purely subjective basis

for determining the truth condition of a judgment leads inevitably to a plethora of problems

associated with cultural and moral relativism. A purely subjectivist basis for moral

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judgments ultimately leads to either emotivism or nihilism, both of which alter the quality of

a judgment’s being a judgment. Let me explain.

To make a judgment is to make a claim regarding the truth of some object, or set of

objectivities. If judgments are in principle subjectively grounded, (and to be clear here, we

are not denying that there is a role for subjectivity in moral judgments) then they loose their

grip and purchase on their object. A second noteworthy problem concerns our particular

thesis of a localized concrete moral life. Given that our argument includes a distinction

between (1) the general moral principle of diminution and (2) that local moral life is relative

to its history, we are led into a further problem that local moral judgments ultimately look

hopelessly relativistic in nature. How can the objectivity of the higher level shed light on the

social relativism of the concrete local community?

One way to begin to broach the problem is to first remember that the intersubjective

field is a dynamic and dialectal thing. We can say that analogically, the intersubjective

community in which moral activities take form is fluid. Like a river, it maintains a relative

unity over time in a series of fluctuating, differing, and entangled moments. When we

ordinarily think of making moral judgments, we typically do so from a universalist or static

perspective. For only individuals make moral judgments. And given the time dimensions of

individuality - the fact that we have classed them as mere moments - means individual moral

judgments tend to make the dynamic stand still, as it were. But every individual is but a

moment in the life of the community as a concrete totality, and this means that individual

moral judgments operate in an asymmetry from the sorts of moral descriptions we can give

of the community as a whole. We can say that the material diminution of a community

represents a moral evil for that community, but this is only generally outlined as objective.

Concrete cases are actually what litter the landscape of a community’s moral life and habitus.

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This simply means that moral life as it is lived in the concrete has a structural limitation. We

can think of this as the problem of scope. When determining the moral worth of a

concrete intersubjective practice, we do so by relations. The harmonic principle is already

situated as a structural relation of tension between multiple poles. This means that a moral

judgment is given only after the poles for relational comparison (tension) are set. Namely,

the idea here is that in order to evaluate a concrete practice, we have to first recognize that

we will always be forced to compare relations. Individuals set those relations according to

their perspective and then make moral judgments accordingly. In other words, individuals

make judgment n differing degrees of scope. The problem though is that other individuals

compare different relations, and so forth. This is the problem of relativism. Whose relative

relation should count most?

In many ways the problem we are discussing here is not unlike the Aristotelian

problem of happiness and death.418 Aristotle writes that if someone is to be said to live a

happy life, we must look at their entire life. This is obviously not possible for ourselves since

we are in the midst of living life and so Aristotle contends that we can never know if we live

good lives ourselves, but we can know if others do (after they die). For only when we have a

view of the whole, does it seem possible to make judgments about the whole. It may be that

we must take a similar position here. The person who looks from on high can see how the

river winds and unfurls, but the from the vantage of the boatman, the whole of the river can

only be known in time, piece by piece. Perhaps we can say that the intersubjective moral

principles we are discussing lead us to two asymmetric positions regarding moral judgments.

Although there is a general schema for making moral judgments about the practices and

habits of a community given the moral principles previously articulated, the evaluation of

418
See Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, Book I

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concrete cases, local cases, can only be given in degrees. In addition, we can also say that the

concrete local history of a habitus is essential for judging the moral value (whether positive or

negative) of that practice. The sorts of moral judgments we can make in any given situation

will correspond to the concrete fixtures of the intentional harmony within the purview of

the perspective. History widens our perspectives accordingly, but only imperfectly. Let’s give

a concrete case here.

Consider the practice of burning wood (biomass) in sub-Saharan Africa. The

burning of biomass for fuel is the traditional means of heating and cooking used by the

indigenous communities that live in these southern regions. But the burning of biomass is

also a significant contributor to global climate change. We can imagine potential differences

in the moral judgment of this activity. If the activity has a local history that is ingrained in

the habitus of the community, then the activity will not be viewed as negative, and may even

be viewed as morally good (given the tradition of the practice) especially when we consider

its material impact on maintaining the existence of the community. The burning of biomass

(wood and other plant fuels) will be seen as a morally positive thing insofar as it prevents the

community from specific forms of diminution along a localized timespan. But from a

different perspective, if and when we set a different relational comparison, we might come

to recognize more disharmony than harmony, especially when we consider the implications

on the health along with climate. Concrete practices are morally judged by concrete

relations. There is also a second important consideration.

In the previous section we argued for the thesis that values are concretely given in

the practical habitus of a community. This led us to differentiate real values (values as they

are concretely practiced) from nominal values (values as they are disclosed or named in a

community). When we compare the two in a concrete case, we can objectively determine a

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concrete moral failing. In Chapter 1 we argued for a difference between moral failings and

moral failure, as we defined them for our investigation. A moral failing is simply the failure

to fulfill a practical moral principle. For instance, the animal rights ethicist who lectures on

the respect towards animals, but who after a long day at work, kicks her dog, exemplifies a

moral failing. A moral failure, by contrast, is the paradoxical condition of failing a moral

principle in the pursuit of fulfilling the moral principle. The climate crisis was our premiere

example in that in the very act of trying to make a better standard of living for all (with the

concrete conditions of modern industrialism) we may be inadvertently diminishing the lives

of all. This is the special sense we have allotted to our conception of moral failure. It is only

by comparing real and nominal values that we can articulate objective cases of concrete

moral failings. This is a very important step in that it means we can retain the capacity to

structurally identify our description for moral failings, which will matter greatly in our next

chapter on moral failure proper.

Finally, we need to emphasize the degree to which real moral values are given as a

product of the communities existentially. There are also an enormous range of potential

moral values that occur, inter-mix, and compete. In a given habitus we will find a multiplicity

of co-existing values that over time alter each other and effect each other. This is an

important consideration for making moral judgments because it means that our moral

judgments of the concrete practices need to be pluralized to match the plurality of the

values. It can be very tempting to spot a community practice that prima facie appears

negative, but when it is removed, it wreaks even greater moral havoc. This means that when

we make moral judgments about concrete intersubjective practices, we should attempt to

harmonize our judgments with other judgments. Instead of treating moral judgments

hierarchically, we should organize and relate them horizontally. This is the major difference

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between a moral philosophy that attempts to articulate the moral and normative dimension

of individual actions (i.e. Kant) from those moral or ethical philosophies which seek

harmonization of contextual information as a rule (i.e. Aristotle).

In concluding our section on moral judgment, we can see that our thesis has led us

into the position of being able to articulate general moral principles as objectively valid, but

that the work of practical (concrete) moral philosophy is much more difficult. Concrete

practices require moral judgments that are pluralized in nature and take into account the

historical teleology of a community practice. The habitus of a community inculcates all of

this into the living concrete present, leaving only traces. By distinguishing between the real

and nominal values of a community we can make objective moral judgments regarding

moral failings. The intersubjective moral habitus that all communities embody has a

teleological organization that is not bound to the perceptive limitations of individual agents.

In this regard, a phenomenology of intersubjective moral life provides us the way forward in

determining a comprehensive model for making sense of the greatest moral problems of our

own day - namely, that in creating the best world we can, we have simultaneously privated

that possibility by degrading the environmental pre-conditions of the intersubjective

community itself. And now, to the problem of moral failure itself, we must now turn.

Chapter V. A Model of Moral Failure

1. A Model of Moral Failure

Today we live in a world, and on a planet, that is being wreaked with environmental

havoc. The goal of our present study has been to provide some form of explanation that

might help us understand the problem more thoroughly. In many ways, our work here is

conducted in parallel with others in other fields who also recognize that things are going

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wrong. The climatologist seeks to understand the mechanisms of the climate so as to help

us get a better grip on the mechanics of how climate change is occurring. The

conservationist studies the methods and tools of how we might better conserve the natural

manifold in its natural state and avoid the anthropogenic extinction of other species. The

environmental activist works to raise awareness and effect practical and political change at a

social level. But as a philosophical study, our goal is to offer a critique of the principles and

concepts that come a priori to our very understanding of the problem itself. Every science

has a domain and the premiere domain of philosophical consideration concerns the being

of things, the first principles of principles. From this perspective, we have sought a series of

reflections on the nature of our moral ontology as human persons living in a shared world

that might account for how it is the case that our being as beings has led to disastrous

environmental effects. The specificity of our investigation has centered around a concept of

environmental moral failure. The goal of this chapter is to finally articulate a model of

environmental moral failure and offer our final thoughts on how the intersubjective ontology

available via phenomenological insight might help us attain a clarified conception regarding

the problem of environmental moral failure in its various iterations.

We shall begin by articulating in detail a model of moral failure given our previous

reflections on intersubjective ontology, harmony, moral evil, habit, sedimentation, and value.

In the second section, our aim will be to document how the forms of global environmental

crisis are species of moral failure and thus articulate a conception of concrete environmental

moral failure. Focusing on the environmental problems of climate change and widespread

species extinction it is argued that these environmental crises conform to our general model

of moral failure. Keen to our analysis will be the recognition that these problems are the

consequence of collective trans-generational activity that confounds the ordinary model of

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moral activity. Central to our analysis will be the application of the principle of charity. We

take it that these problems are not intentional despite being the result of intentional moral

activity. From here, we shall turn our attention to the inadequacy of moral theory to

properly avoid moral failure. In fact, every moral theory in virtue of its intersubjective

groundings is a priori primed for the possibility of moral failure. This section will also

address the inadequacy of conventional environmental ethics. As a species of moral

philosophy, environmental ethics too is primed for moral failure and this leads us to the

conclusion that the crisis cannot sufficiently be addressed sheerly through more theoretical

research. But this does not mean that moral philosophy has no role to play. In the

subsequent section we address the role that critique and renewal can play in helping confront

moral failure. While we cannot fully avoid moral failure, for it is a product of our moral

ontology itself, we can confront it through a form of philosophical vigilance. Although our

study is primarily descriptive in its orientation, we hope in this chapter to address an

alternative conception of moral thought by arguing that the first and most prior moral

responsibility is existentially oriented towards future generations. By having reorganized the

lines of our investigation along the intersubjective, we can articulate a moral philosophy that

situates the collective moral dimension as prior to individual agency. Every action taken by

every individual in every community has its effect on future generations and intersubjectively

this orientation can help alleviate the overly individualistic moral philosophies of our time.

Dale Jameson has written that the problem of climate change has confounded our

‘commonsense morality’ and we argue that this need not be the case if we realign our moral

theoretic insights away from the atomic ego and towards the concrete formations within the

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intersubjective field. Finally, we conclude with a brief summation of the overall argument.419

In many ways our study here is not itself a discussion of environmental ethics in the

practical sense, but rather a preliminary study for the possibility of any environmental ethic

whatsoever.

A model of moral failure. Let us begin by first delineating our understanding of

each term, starting with some notes about what we consider a ‘model’ to be in the first place

and what sorts of efficacies a ‘model’ brings to the table of moral considerations. First, the

term model itself has a variety of denotations and possible applications. We can begin by

briefly summarizing the etymology of the term. The English term itself is derived from

sixteenth century French term modelle, used to describe a structural likenesses in architecture.

Additionally, the term is related to both the Italian modello with a diminutive heritage from

the Latin modus. The Italian term describes a mold, into which the artisan would fashion a

likeness into concrete material while the Latin refers to a manner or measure, a mode. So we

can say that from a very general level, a model refers to a created structural likeness that

itself acts as a modality for representing something. Etymology itself is nothing other than a

record of linguistic sedimentation. By uncovering these layers of sedimentation we are able

to effect a breakdown of the familiarity of the term’s colloquial invisibility. To model

something philosophically is to articulate a structural likeness to being in some fashion that

allows us to mold our intentional organization of phenomena data into a structure that fits

an uncovered eidetic essence. It also means that a model is effectively on the order of and in

accordance with the logic of the mimetic. A model represents. And it does so by organizing

419
Jamieson derives the term from Sidekick (1907: xix) and defines it as “a dynamic system of interrelated
beliefs, ideals, attitudes, emotions, dispositions, and more more besides.” Jamieson, Reason in a Dark
Time, Loc. 3066

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the unfamiliar into the familiar but, and this is very important, it does not instantiate the

concrete itself. So a model of moral failure is therefore a shorthand for making sense of

that which might previously have remained hidden. The model is not the essence of the

moral failure itself, but rather its representational correlate. This is helpful for us

conceptually because it allows us to maintain a divide between our theoretical extrapolation

of moral failure and the failure itself. The essence of moral failure has its correlation in the

concrete doings of things. A model provides a prism for our understanding, but the moral

failure itself unfolds in the arena of the actual. This also means that there is no hard and

fast, no absolute, essence to which every instance of concrete moral failure must accord

with. The spectrum of moral failures are large and diverse. The fact that we offer here only

a model means that we recognize that task is fundamental explanatory in its character.

The determination of what we mean by ‘moral’ should be thoroughly clear by this

point. Let us summarize those results now. Morality for us refers to the concrete unfoldings

of activity that have as their correlates certain value principles. Given the concrete

intersubjective specificity of our investigation, values do not refer to the concepts of

experience available to an Ego in the manner that they did for Husserl, but values refer to

the structural principles that seemingly organize our concrete habitual and embodied activity.

Values can be derived from the description of habitual activities in their concrete formation.

They lie at the heart of the sedimentations of activity that can both be available to

consciousness and hidden from view. The ontology of the intersubjective is organized

according to a principle of harmonization against the backdrop of the community’s

potential privation. A community’s concrete embodied harmonization is fundamental to the

ontology of what it means to be a community as such, but this is not the point of departure

of the moral. Morality begins analytically with the idea that the community harmonic can

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itself be negated. The potential privation of the embodied intersubjective harmony provides

us with the schema or spectrum for making objective value judgments. This means that for

us, morality is subsidiary upon the intersubjective ontological foundation of harmonization

and that to speak of the ‘moral’ is to talk at a different level. Moral values exist along a

schema which takes the possibility of ‘evil’ or privation as a structural possibility. Given our

commitments to the intersubjective, and our denial (or suspension) of the first personal Ego,

and its deliberational aspects, we understand the ‘moral’ therefore to refer to a certain

coloring or dimension of the intersubjective field that takes its essence as a form of

collectivity, habit formation, and the potential privation thereof; the individual is merely a

moment within the wider unfolding. This means that the subjective characterization of

morality we are so accustomed to thinking of in ordinary moral philosophical discourse is

completely rendered moot. In this sense, the moral has an objective determination as such.

We have articulated a minimal moral realism. The problem is ultimately convoluted in terms

of the local sedimentations rampant in our own understandings and moral vocabulary; so

for us, the objectivity of moral collective considerations must furthermore be divided into a

variety of local forms. This means that in its concrete iterations, we end up with a plurality

of moralities, but that each conforms to the same objective grounding. So, when we put this

together with the notion of a model, we can say that a model of the moral, or a moral

model, is a modality of mimetic explanation for capturing, as it were, the iterations of

privation possible for a given community that is concerned principally with value structures

in the concrete moral habitus of that community. Now then, what about ‘failure’?

From the very outset and in the first chapter, we argued for a differentiation between

failure (in our investigatory sense) and failing. A failing for us can be understood in a rather

straightforward manner. A failing is simply the inability to achieve a desired end. Given that

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our investigatory field corresponds to the intersubjective, we can say that a moral failing

corresponds to the inability to fulfill a the structural value of a moral habitus. For instance,

consider the intersubjective concrete habit of how persons treat each other in a public

setting, think of people walking on the street. People avoid walking into each other, they

avoid taking each other’s property, and so on. There are specific concrete forms of

‘acceptable’ relations between agents. Because intersubjectivity has a formal reality rather

than a substantial one, a failing corresponds to any breach of this formal structure. For

instance, when we see a person shoving another person out of the way to get onto a train,

we recognize a moral failing because the principle of embodied harmony has been breached.

In terms of our judgments, we recognize these types of relations between persons as

‘wrong’ precisely because the moral value, the principle at work, has been concretely privated

even if only momentarily. Individuals voice their recognition of a moral failing, for instance,

by saying “I am sorry”. Within a society the most central of these moral customs get

institutionalized in the forms of laws such that breaches constitute crimes, and the

subsequent forfeiture of the free use of the body by individuals. Moral failings therefore

correspond to an inability to concretely constitute activities in conformity with set values.

But we have something different in mind when we speak of a moral failure.

Whereas a moral failing describes an inability to achieve a moral standard, as it were,

moral failure refers to the inability of the moral value to fulfill itself. What does this mean? I

have something in mind akin to self-contradiction. A moral failure refers to any case in

which the implementation of a moral habitus (which out of necessity is directed towards and

organized by a moral value) results in the denial of the value itself over time and after

iterations of activity. Let’s break this down. Within the intersubjective field, morals get

constituted as habitual structures that sediment over time in a recursive manner. A social

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habit can only be a habit if it occurs over time and if it builds recursively through multiple

iterations. The value is fixed as the structural principle which organizes this multiplicity of

activity. Unlike a failing, a moral failure occurs when the value gets privated despite the

‘successful’ implementation of these iterations of activity. In other words, we have a sort of

paradox at hand. An example of a moral failure can be seen in the reification of political

ideology, for example. A political ideology operates by recursively habituating a certain

language and conceptual understanding of things over time to such an extent, that the logic

of the idea metastasizes into its own principle.420 The language of a political discourse can

take on such a life of its own that it no longer allows for the discourse of its own language.

Political ideology functions for discursive reasons but it does so in such a way that discourse

itself gets precluded as an authentic possibility. Think of the way in which terms like

‘socialism’ or ‘capitalism’ are no longer authentic topics of American political discourse but

rather operate as discursive parameters. Another well-known example concerns the racial

profiling of persons. In order to protect all citizens equally, a police department might take

the objective fact that more crimes are committed by a certain demographic group. Quite

logically, the enforcement agency will then use that demographic information as a clue for

law enforcement. But what seems to happen over time, again and again, is that the through

the iterations of profiles that get created, a skewed model develops such that the equality of

enforcement is disproportionally directed against the demographic group. This too is a form

of moral failure where the very performance of the moral habitus negates the value principle

over time. The critical piece in understanding the iterations of activity that funnel into the

failure is the fact of sedimentation. As the habitus sediments within new circumstances and

420
See Hannah Arendt’s discussion of political ideology in the final chapter of The Origins of
Totalitarianism.

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in differing moments (or individuals), the structure sediments into invisibility. For local

concrete reasons, these reifications seem to develop inconsistently with other habitual

structures and a perversion of the value principle seems to result. Now, why this occurs in a

concrete case is not the purview of our study at this time. The answer to that question, or

that problem, is the subject of practical ethics. We should make clear though that strictly

speaking, moral failure is not a species of contradiction, but rather inconsistency. If the

habitus were to become contradictory it would be a failing. So moral failure is not tantamount

to a logical paradox, but I think it does result in a felt paradox, as it were. In other words, if a

person were to experience a moral failure they would on the one hand recognize that their

moral habitus stands in conformity to a given principle, yet they would also recognize the

unavailability of the value as a result of the moral performance. One would feel that they

have acted correctly and yet their action would be somehow incorrect. Moral failure is likely

to lead to the cynicism of value. Its quite understandable how moral failure is likely to beget

moral nihilism along these lines. For if one acts as they should and yet their values feel as if

they continually recede beyond their grasp, they are likely to give up on the value in the first

place. But this is ultimately a matter for the moral psychology and extends beyond our own

stated investigatory parameters. Let’s tie this all together now.

A model of moral failure is therefore a descriptive structure that can allow

investigation into those cases of moral activity that seemingly lock us into tragedy in which

the very performance of moral life leads toward the negation of the moral values our lives

concretely embody. All of this occurs in terms of the collectivity of actions between the

agents of a community irrespective of the individual. We can also see that moral failure is

likely to exacerbate itself over time. As a habitual structure, intersubjective moral failure is

teleological organized by its own repetition and sedimentation. The recursive nature of

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moral failure therefore represents a very interesting feature of moral life and wrongdoing,

for it embodies the tragedy of a certain inability to do otherwise. This model can help us

better diagnose a whole litany of moral problems that, given the conventional ego centric

moral theorizing, have previously eluded our attention. Chief among these problems include

the environmental crises we see occurring all around us. On the one hand, these

environmental crises are painfully obvious effects of our collective activity; yet despite this,

and on the other hand, we seem to lack an ability to do otherwise. Moral failure is, in a

certain sense, a general failure to see and do things otherwise despite the painfully obvious

nature of things. It is certainly a form of moral tragedy. Environmental moral failure is but

one species of the general poverty that lies at the heart of what make moral life possible.

2. Environmental Moral Failure

Moral failure fundamentally consists in those instances in which our moral activity

itself negates its own originating principle over time. This description of an acute moral

situation, instantiated as a community dynamic rather than being a product of the individual,

allows us to potentially diagnose some of the most difficult environmental problems facing

us over the next century and beyond. Environmental moral failure refers to those instances

in which our moral activity leads to a deteriorated environment which, in turn, jeopardize the

values that lie at the heart of our moral activity. Central to a consideration of environmental

moral failure is the reasons for action that can either be inferred from or are directly stated

for the injurious activities themselves. The goal of this section is to document how specific

environmental crises are a demonstration of moral failure. In what is to follow we will begin

by first making a few remarks about what constitutes an environmental moral failure versus

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other types of moral failure. Then, as an example we will turn our attention to two acute

environmental problems that fit our model. Part of the impetus for these reflections

consists in the fact that each of these problems are the consequence of collectivities of

action, primarily uncoordinated in terms of the intentional deployment. There are many

types of problems that concern the environment that are not, properly speaking, instances

of environmental moral failure. For instance, the concern over animal rights, environmental

justice, conservation, enforcement, and law are not directly related to our discussion. The

task here is to show how we can indeed make moral sense of the confounding moral

problems central to the contemporary need for environmental ethics.

First, the environment - what is it exactly? Why should we demarcate the

environment as a special concern for moral philosophy worthy of its own discursive

investigation? We should begin by differentiating a phenomenological conception of the

environment from an ecological one. Although he certainly did not have the domain of

practical ethics in mind when he defined his notion of the environment, Heidegger’s

understanding of the environment in Sein und Zeit provides a first place to begin.

Methodologically, Heidegger’s phenomenological method not only provides a way forward

consistent with our own, but it also provides an ontological grounding. Heidegger’s word

for the environment is Umwelt.421 It literally can be rendered as the 'around-world'. This

concept plays a central role in his exposition of Dasein’s ‘being-in-the-world’. For

Heidegger, the notion of the environment is fundamental to an understanding of our

situatedness in the world which is existentially prior to and foundational for a

phenomenological evaluation of Dasein. Accordingly, his conception of the Uwelt is

421
Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Ribinson (Blackwell, 1962),
84[57].

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foundational to an ecological conception of the environment. He writes “[for] the

environment is a structure which even biology as a positive science can never find and can

never define, but must presuppose and constantly employ.”422 For Heidegger, the fact of the

environment is derivative of the existential manner in which we are beings in the world. He

goes on to argue that “[the] world of the everyday Dasein which is closest to it, is the

environment.”423 Our own reduction to intersubjectivity as the framework for analysis

precludes us from importing the analysis of Dasein’s enviornmentality directly into our own

investigation (although an evaluation is certainly possible), but we can begin with this

conception by saying that the environment is something absolutely fundamental for every

intersubjective community. Every community exists - and this is an existential point - as

situated within an environment. This is not just a description about the factual nature of a

community, but of the ontological constitution of a community. A community exists as a

form of collective inter-relations that have a material embodiment, but that embodiment is a

logical correlate of the surrounding world in which the community unfolds and persists

through in time. This means that a community is itself fundamentally environmental. This

conception of enviornmentality is not a specifically natural conception though. The grand

vistas of the Yosemite Valley are equally environmental as are the urban landscapes of the

cities in which the majority of people live. In fact, from a phenomenological level even the

remote virtual worlds more and more persons find themselves immersed in constitute forms

of enviornmentality. All communities are environmental in this way because ‘man’ is an

environmental being.

422
ibid.
423
ibid. 94 [66]

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 At this very fundamental level, all ethical concerns are environmentally situated

because the constitution of the community, and fortuitously the individual, are always

environmental. If ethics concerns the task of how one should act and morality the

spectrum of how we do act, and action can only and necessarily occur within and in tension

to an environment, then it is clear by necessity that the moral field of relations must always

be situated within, according to, and even in tension with an environment. It is along the

contours of this situatedness in our environment that forms the background horizon of

privation. We cannot disregard this central ontological insight. Any moral philosophy that

reduces all its terms of analysis to the atomistic individual (or Ego) risks loosing sight of the

central role of enviornmentality. Although not stated in these terms, the situatedness of

Aristotle’s virtue theory incorporates, albeit indirectly, this very insight. Aristotle cannot give

precise moral determinations of how agents ought to act in the form that Kant’s formal

moral system does because of the enviornmentality and situatedness of moral life.

Eudaimonia depends upon a shared horizon of possible conditions. Indeed, the formalism

of Kant’s moral imperative seems to lose sight of this central existential insight. Husserl’s

emphasis on the possible as a feature of the categorical imperative is an indirect recognition

of our enviornmentality.

The conception of the environment we are most accustom to thinking about,

especially in the circles of ‘environmental ethics’ is a starkly different conception based upon

a recognition of our natural ecology and the biological sciences. As a practical philosophy,

environmental ethics takes its conception of the 'natural' environment as its starting point

and conceptual domain. We need to clarify the relation between these two conceptions of

enviornmentality - the ontological and natural scientific - in order to fully and properly

articulate how the environment crises of our time are phenomenological correlates of the

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intersubjective moral field. At the root of the matter is our conception of ‘nature’. In the

opening of Husserl’s critique of naturalism in Ideas I, we find a distinction between a

conception of the world and the natural sciences. He writes

The world is the sum-total of objects of possible experience an experiential cognition, of objects that,
on the basis of actual experiences, are cognizable in correct theoretical thinking… Sciences of the
world, thus sciences in the natural attitude, the sciences of material nature, but also those of animate
beings with their psychophysical nature, consequently also physiology, psychology, and so forth, as all
so-called natural sciences in the narrower and broader sense.424

Although his distinction between the world and the natural sciences does not discuss the

problem of enviornmentality, we see that the natural sciences only treat one aspect of

phenomenological experience. Nature along these lines is (i) intersubjectively constituted, (ii)

fundamentally material and therefore ‘objective’, and (iii) exists according to mechanical laws

which, although accessible only under the auspices of phenomenological laws of cognition,

remain independent of human cognition in terms of their manifestation, ordering, and

demonstration. The primary material science which treats the problem of the ‘environment’

in this sense, and to which we shall use as our eidetic parameter for defining an

environmental moral failure is ecology.

Ecology is a rather new science, although its beginnings are difficult to define. In his

history of ecology, Donald Worster states that the “age of ecology is a still unfolding

phenomena”.425 This is not surprising because ecology studies the interrelations between

organisms and their environment in terms of their systemic deployment. Ecology is a

combination of physics, biology, botany, zoology, ethology, geology, and so forth; it

continually develops as a combinational study as new insights emerge. In effect, the natural

424
Edmund Husserl. Ideas I.
425
Donald Worster, Nature's Economy a History of Ecological Ideas, (Cambridge ; New York, NY, USA:
Cambridge University Press, 1994), http://search.ebscohost.com/
login.aspx?direct=true&scope=site&db=nlebk,e000xna&db=nlabk&AN=589164. 333.

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scientific domain of ecology is formally concerned with systems and system theory. In

many ways, ecology as a discipline, or domain, is about the systemic interrelations of natural

laws and intriguingly bares a similarity to our own analysis of intersubjectivity. Emergent

effects are possible within complex systems which requires the ecologist to methodically link

their analyses to observable data. The word itself was coined by nineteenth century

zoologist Ernst Haeckel who defined ecology as “the entire science of the relations of the

organism to its surrounding environment, comprising in a broader sense all conditions of

existence.”426 Of course, those ‘conditions’ are implements of the material sciences alone.

Notably, the problem of global climate change is an ecological problem because of the vast

varieties of interrelated systems involved. So, the ‘environment’ of ‘environmental ethics’

refers to the inter-related material ecological systems that are in relation to human existence

and the general axiological problems related to values and norms.

An environmental moral problem can therefore be said to be any problem in which

the community has a systematic and collective relational role within an environmental

system, or systems, that create felt effects within the moral dimension of the intersubjective

field. So for us, environmental ethics is essentially an overlapping of moral considerations

with material scientific considerations. The ‘around world’ of the community forms the

basis for the activities and relations that manifest and cause real material effects in the

natural environment (ecologically). When these relations are understood along the

dimension of the community’s potential privation (or harmonic reinforcement), we can

situate the proper sense of a phenomenological environmental ethic(s). In this way, we can

426
“… die gesamte Wissenschaft von den Beziehungen des Organismus zur umgebenden Außenwelt,
wohin wir im weiteren Sinne alle Existenzbedingungen rechnen können.” Translation by Ulrich Lüttge in
Physiological Ecology of Tropical Plants.

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analytically articulate the sense in which an environmental moral problem should be

understood.

Returning to environmental moral failure, we can now determine the sense in which

ecology and ecological scientific findings can allow us to formally identify examples of moral

failure. Before turning to these problems though we need to say something briefly about the

problem of anthropocentrism. It may have occurred to the reader that our analysis has

fundamentally aligned the moral to a fundamentally human dimension because of our

insistence that moral life is ontologically grounded in the intersubjective. The literature on

environmental ethics is replete with discussions and objections to anthropocentric systems

of environmental moral considerations. It is often argued that moral and ethical

philosophies that ground the ethical in the human (the athro) miss the point because from

that vantage the environment becomes a mere instrument for the human; and by so doing,

the value of the environment takes on a merely instrumental role and that this is what

ultimately fuels our environmental ethical problems in the first place. For instance, classic

environmental ethicist Lynn White has argued that ontological anthropocentrism is the root

cause of the environmental crisis,427 or Richard Routley’s argument that “[human] interests

and preferences are far too parochial to provide a satisfactory basis for deciding on what is

environmentally desirable”.428

The objection of anthropocentrism, however, should not deter our analysis here for

a number of reasons. First, every ethic is fundamentally grounded in the enviornmentality of

the human being because moral considerations concern the overlap between possible action

427
Lynn White, Jr., “The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis. Science, 155, no.3767. March 10,
1967.
428
Richard Routley, "Is There a Need for a New, an Enviornmental Ethic?" (paper presented at the
Proceedings of the XVth World Congress of Philosophy, Varna, Bulgaria, 17th to 22nd September 1973).

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and normative standards. The possibility of action can only be understood according to the

situatedness of the scenario. The ontological foundations for ethics is anthropogenic, not

anthropocentric. The distinction is important. Something is ontologically anthropogenic if

it’s being is a consequent effect of human being. Ontological anthropocentrism, by contrast,

refers to the priority of human being against the background of other non-human beings.

Just because ethics requires the antecedent of the human being (and community), this does

not necessitate the absolute centralization of human beings in terms of their relations to the

environment, or our evaluation of them. In other words, we should avoid the production of

moral judgments with the judgments themselves. The ontological necessity of human beings

should not be conflated with the centralization of the human being. Secondly, our method

as a form of phenomenological investigation begins (and necessarily so) with human

experience. We have formed a groundwork for understanding moral problems on the basis

of the human community but that is not tantamount to reducing all considerations to the

cognitive instrumentality of the community. We might say that our study is

methodologically anthropocentric in terms of its correlate as an investigations of the

conditions of experience, but that method does not necessitate or even bring us to a

prescription of anthropocentric instrumental interests. Finally, the objection of

anthropocentrism to our discussion of environmental moral failure does not succeed

because our moral study of value does not consist in determining some ideal prescriptive

value that gets attached to nature, whether anthropocentric or nature-centric, but consists in

purely identifying values in a descriptive operation as they are given in concrete affairs. We

do not hold that things have values but that values appear as organizing principles in the

concretion of embodied activities. Valuation, by contrast, is an aspect of human

apperceptive experience and its grounding is intersubjectively inscribed into our experience

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as a concrete manifestation of the body along the contours of a moral habitus. Thus, the

worry of anthropocentrism to our investigatory study of moral failure is moot and of no

worry whatsoever. We might even say further, that the task of trying to assign values

prescriptively, human or otherwise, simply confounds the problem(s) before we have even

understood it (or them).

Let’s now take a look at how three different environmental problems exemplify and

demonstrate our model of environmental moral failure. Centrally, we need to identify the

general contours of the essence of moral failure and these include (1) the articulation of a

value principle, (2) the documentation of the iterations of a moral habitus along with its

sedimentation character, and (3) the manner in which the environmental activity results in

the privation of the value principle(s).

A. Climate Change

The first example of environmental moral failure we shall discuss is the problem of

anthropogenic climate change. We need to first denote that our analysis only refers to

anthropogenic change and not climate change writ large. There is some difficulty here in

terms of the scientific data available to us. Because there is only one global atmosphere, and

many local climates, the complexity involved in differentiating natural climate patterns and

changes from anthropogenic ones, in terms of the causal chains of effect, and at a global

level, is a very difficult task. Indeed, even defining what exactly a climate is presents

difficulties from a thoroughly natural scientific perspective. The climate models used present

enormous difficulties in terms of their mathematical construction. Although, our study is

certainly not a scientific analysis on the topic, we need to begin by delineating the natural

scientific description of the problem so that we can isolate the moral activities relevant for

our discussion.

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 To begin, the climate is not any one thing as it were, but rather a series of inter-

related things that are mathematically measured. The climate is a dynamic system with

specific configurations at specific times rather than any single entity, event, or occurrence.

The 2013 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report distinguishes weather from

two differing senses of climate:

Weather describes the conditions of the atmosphere at a certain place and time with reference to
temperature, pressure, humidity, wind, and other key parameters (meteorological elements); the
presence of clouds, precipitation; and the occurrence of special phenomena, such as thunderstorms,
dust storms, tornados and others. Climate in a narrow sense is usually defined as the average weather,
or more rigorously, as the statistical description in terms of the mean and variability of relevant quantities over a
period of time ranging from months to thousands or millions of years. The relevant quantities are most often
surface variables such as temperature, precipitation and wind. Classically the period for averaging
these variables is 30 years, as defined by the World Meteorological Organization. Climate in a wider
sense also includes not just the mean conditions, but also the associated statistics (frequency,
magnitude, persistence, trends, etc.), often combining parameters to describe phenomena such as
droughts.429

Frigg, Thompson, and Werndl argue that a more thorough definition of climate is “the

distribution of certain variables arising for a certain configuration of the climate system.”430

In our vernacular, we can say that the climate has a formal rather than a substantial reality.

The climate system is generally measured according to thirty year averages and changes in

those averages. Climate variables are measured in terms of their average per decade.431 The

climate, as a system of the Earth’s atmosphere, is driven by the input of solar radiation.

This energetic input is known as an external condition. Other conditions, including those of

anthropogenic origin are also considered external to the climate system itself while the

oceanic systems and atmospheric compositions are considered internal mechanistic forces.

As a dynamic system, the climate is in fact always changing, ever moving and unfolding in

429
Cubasch, U., D. Wuebbles, D. Chen, M.C. Facchini, D. Frame, N. Mahowald, and J.-G. Winther, 2013:
Introduction. In: Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I tothe
Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Stocker, T.F., D. Qin, G.-K.
Plattner, M. Tignor, S.K. Allen, J. Boschung, A. Nauels, Y. Xia, V. Bex and P.M. Midgley (eds.)].
(Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA.: Cambridge University Press). 126 my itallics
430
Erica Thompson Roman Frigg, and Charlotte Werndl, "Philosophy of Climate Science Part I:
Observing Climate Change," Philosophy Compass 10, no. 12 (2015): 953.
431
See the IPCC report on a summation of climate change measurement and methodology.

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weaves of causal patterns. This means that ‘climate change’ refers only to fluctuations in the

average variability of the system over time given specific configurations. Anthropogenic

‘climate change’ therefore refers to those fluctuations generated by human activity. For

instance, depending up the Earth’s cycle of rotation and relation to the sun, the

configuration of the overall climate changes. We know this colloquially by our experience of

the seasons. In winter the climate is configured differently than in the summer. Key

elements internal to the climate system’s composition include clouds, aerosols, ozone, and

greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane. 432 As solar radiation hits the Earth,

roughly 30% is refracted back into space, 20% gets absorbed by the atmosphere’s chemical

composition, and the rest is absorbed by the Earth’s land masses, oceans, ice/snow cover,

and vegetation.433 At each stage a multiplicity of causal events take place and ‘chains’ of

causal events unfurl consequentially. Climatologists and chemists are actively working in

piecemeal fashion to understand this enormously complex system. This complexity presents

its own challenges in terms of modeling the climate.

Scientists have been able to measure a significant change (and increase) in the climate

systems since the late nineteenth century for which we have fairly detailed records. By

analyzing ice core samples, tree rings, the atmospheric composition, global temperatures,

historical weather patterns, and other data either observed or inferred, they have been able to

show that the normal cyclical variability of the system does not account for the tremendous

increase in the warmth of the system over the past 150 years.434 At the same time, we have

432
Ibid IPCC 126
433
Ibid.
434
See G. Myhre, D. Shindell, F.-M. Br.on, W. Collins, J. Fuglestvedt, J. Huang, D. Koch, J.-F. Lamarque,
D. Lee, B. Mendoza, T. Nakajima, A. Robock, G. Stephens, T. Takemura and H. Zhang, 2013:
Anthropogenic and Natural Radiative Forcing. In: Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis.
Contribution of Working Group I to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change [Stocker, T.F., D. Qin, G.-K. Plattner, M. Tignor, S.K. Allen, J. Boschung, A. Nauels, Y.

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been able to measure changes within the atmospheric composition in terms of increased

aerosols and greenhouse gases. The change in composition effects changes in the

observable chemical reactions and this is creating a situation in which less long wave

radiation is able to exit the climate system as a whole. Over time the Earth retains and

absorbs more radiation in the form of heat. The excess heat and CO2 gets primarily

absorbed into the oceans. As a consequence, the Earth’s average global temperature has

increased with each decade since modeling began. The rate of increase appears to be an

exponential rate that is mirrored by a matching increase in the concentration of global

greenhouse gases that are emitted by industrial activity. The chemical compounds building

up in the Earth’s atmosphere are primarily a bi-product of industrial production. While it is

true that other compounds from natural sources (such as volcanic ash) are also contributing

to the concentration of heat trapping gases into the atmosphere, those natural sources are

not sufficient to account for the statistical increase. There is, accordingly, massive and

mounting evidence that the primary cause of global temperature change is a result of human

anthropogenic activity.

The change in the climate was first observed and theorized in the 19th century, but by

the 1980s the measurements had become so consistent in terms of the increase that it was

clear that a natural environmental crisis was at hand given the relative sensitivity of most

organic vegetation, animal, and oceanic life to temperature change on the Earth’s surface.

Temperature change in an ecological system can result in more stress on the system in a

whole variety of ways, including the alteration of basic ecological processes like soil

absorption or climate variability. As temperatures increase ecosystems become ever more

Xia, V. Bex and P.M. Midgley (eds.)]., (Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA Cambridge
University Press, 2013).

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fragile, while others risk potentially collapsing. It is critical to note that not only do animal

ecological systems collapse, but history is complete with many examples of whole

civilizations that ceased to exist because of ecological malfeasance. Observable effects (in

which climate change was a contributing factor) include habitat destruction, species

extinction, coral reef bleaching, sea level rise, and forest migration and many others beside.

By the late nineteen eighties the alarm bells began ringing and the Intergovernmental Panel

on Climate Change was commissioned by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO)

and the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) to study the problem, provide

regular assessments, and recommendations to world policy leaders. The IPCC’s Fifth

Assessment report states that “[the] atmospheric concentrations of the greenhouse gases

carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), and nitrous oxide (N2O) have all increased since 1750

due to human activity. In 2011 the concentrations of these greenhouse gases were 391 ppm,

1803 ppb, and 324 ppb, and exceeded the pre-industrial levels by about 40%, 150%, and

20%, respectively.”435

The climate temperature increase appears unabated and is only headed upwards.

Forecasts for the future of the climate estimate that the global mean temperature is likely to

increase 1.5º-2º centigrade above the 1850-1900 average global mean by the end of the

century.436 In the worst-case scenario, climate models indicate that if global industrial output

of greenhouses continued and even accelerates, there may be an average global increase of

up to 4ºc, although such a scenario is considered unlikely.437 But the severity of the

temperature increase will not be uniform and certain regions will undergo extreme

temperature change and be unable adapt. The potential changes reported by the IPCC are

435
Ibid. IPCC 11
436
Ibid. IPCC 1031
437
Ibid.

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truly devastating in terms of their scope and degree. Other authors predict a 2ºc increase in

global mean temperature by 2036 in which the climate system might cross into a runaway

threshold effect whose trajectory could jeopardize the environmental conditions for the

human species itself. 438 The effects of anthropogenic climate change constitute a

potentially existential threat to the existence of humanity itself. Climate change represents

an extraordinary problem of enormous consequence and it confronts us with something

invisible, a problem for another day, a ‘crisis’ that gets absorbed and lost behind the

background of our everyday intentional comportment.

Let’s take a moment and think through some of the philosophical considerations in

our description and describe the nature of anthropogenic climate change as a moral

problem. The first thing I think we need to recognize is that there is an asymmetry between

the antecedent cause and the consequent effect. The threat to humanity comes in the form

of a natural evil but the antecedent condition is ‘spiritual’, to use Husserl’s special sense of

the term. Human activity, as intersubjective, constitutes the grounds for the moral

dimension as such. So, we have a ‘moral’ input of collective activity on the one hand and the

output of natural effect on the other hand. We can represent it as a conditional statement, p

> q. The antecedent is the consequence of collective activity, and the consequent is a

natural function which has a negative moral coloring. We are faced with a problem that has a

cumulatively deleterious effect on the very constitution of the moral dimension itself insofar

as it threatens the potential for all communities - a truly universal practical moral problem.

All intersubjective activity has a moral dimension, primarily based in a moral habitus, such

that the ethos of a community is bound for its reality to the convening values of that

438
See “Earth Will Cross the Climate Threshold by 2036” by Michael E. Mann (Scientific America, April
2014).

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habitual structure. For they are the structures necessary for the harmonic constitution of

the community. Not only are the ‘effects’ of climate change phenomenologically invisible in

our daily experience, they are also invisible in terms of their moral asymmetry to our

ordinary activities. Just by driving an automobile, even the environmental ethicist or activist

contributes in some small measure to a rising sea that will quite literally drown Pacific

islander communities. Each action is insufficient to cause the seas to rise, but their collective

accumulation over generations threatens the privation and diminution of the intersubjective

field.

There is an interesting asymmetry concerning the debate over who bares

responsibility. Imagine if we were to atomize our conception of responsibility and allow for

us to talk about responsibility in terms of degrees and not merely kind. Because the primary

cause of anthropogenic climate change is the concentration of particulate gases within the

atmosphere, the degree of responsibility for the change of effect grows with time because

the contributing effect of our activity does not go away over time, but rather accumulates as

an effect with time. One simple act of driving a car by a person unfurls for all time. The

emissions caused by a woman in the 1920s have an effect on global climate change longer

than the woman on the 1970s because the increased density of the particulate matter

requires the continual co-presence of a previous effect. But it is also the case that the

human activity initiates only chains reactions of effects. Consequentially, it also appears that

the input of activity diminishes with time as each new causal chain reaction occurs. It

simultaneously seems absurd to say that a woman in the 1920s is somehow responsible, or

more responsible for the coming threshold effect, than we are. There is a confused sense of

responsibility here. When we set our concept of responsibility as a measurement of

individual output, we end up effectively obliterating all of the traditional framework and

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categorical parameters typically necessary to make sense of a moral problem and make a

judgment of responsibility. This is why an account of moral collective action from the

perspective of the individual is an insufficient means for understanding the moral

problematic that is represented by anthropogenic climate change - a problem of moral

collectivity. Responsibility is a concept that is always conceptually directed towards an object

which attaches to that which ‘bares’ responsibility. In the case of climate change, there is no

one object for responsibility to take hold of but rather a collective accumulation of inter-

related activities. We are forced into designating the object of responsibility into something

dependent upon a certain domain, or configuration, of the individuals (the typical object of

responsibility) that does not make much sense. By rendering the individuals into moments

of an intersubjective ontology, we no longer have the same problem. Who, or what, then

does bare responsibility? Well the object of responsibility for collectivities of action does

not attach to a single thing and therefore does not attach to a substantial entity. The

intersubjective materially concrete frame is organized as a series of dynamic relations and

habitual structures. The responsibility of a collective formation of action attaches to this

formal structure, or the antecedent cause of that structure being between agents, and not the

agents themselves. Morally, we can designate responsibility to ‘that community which acts in

x manner at y time’ in such a way that the community itself undergoes an effect of privation.

Responsibility here does not concern a what or a who, but the how of things. So perhaps

instead of assigning blame to agents, and pursuing a retributional approach in the domain of

environmental ethics, one should seek an understanding of the inter-relations that contribute

to them and advocate new practices using a logic of habit replacement.

But how is anthropogenic climate change an example of moral failure? We need to

understand what the causes of climate change are in a way that is more precise. Since the

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climate is itself a system of inter-relations between substances and anthropogenic climate

change is an effect caused by still more inter-relations of activity by inter-relational agents,

then the complexity of climate causation is clearly relevant morally, especially if the effects

are emergent properties of inter-relation rather than singular intentional activity. Both

simple and complex models for understanding the causes of climate change have been

developed. Of the more complex models, the landscape of the entire Earth is divided into a

three-dimensional x,y,z grid in which a super-computer, using fluid dynamic equations,

evaluates the causal relations between its surrounding grid, and so forth. The models have

been developed over the span of decades, on a whole spectrum of complex simulations and

assumption, and the code is now so large that legitimate questions have been raised

regarding the efficacy and representative nature of the models themselves. Simon Shockley

et al conclude in their study on climate models that

Even the conscious deliberation of all scientific social and policy judgments and choices by the
present community of modelers, other research scientists, research managers and policy-makers, could
not possibly illuminate adequately the validity and wisdom of many of the assumptions and judgments
involved in the construction and scientific policy use of GCMs. 439

Despite the uncertainty, climate models have proved to be fairly reliable when we compare

their predictions to the global mean temperatures that have actually occurred.

Epistemologically, there is some room for concern however. Because of the complexity of

the models, when a model proves wrong, designers will alter the model using a process

known as ‘hind casting’ to track closer to the real data within the observable years, rather

than radically rethink or re-design the core logic of the system. In other words, climate

model designers rarely revise their operating principles but ad hoc retroactively realign them

439
Simon Shackley, Peter Young, Stuart Parkinson, and Brian Wynne, "Uncertainty, Complexity and
Concepts of Good Science in Climate Change Modelling: Are GCMs the Best Tools?", Climatic Change
38, no. 2 (02, 1998): 159-205. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1023/A:1005310109968.
http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.lib.uh.edu/docview/198498131?accountid=7107. 196

295
without accounting for the reason of their divergence, or error. The models depend on

users setting the initial conditions and the boundary conditions. The models then compute in

segments of 30 minutes, what the dynamic effect of each grid to each other would be under

a global climate model. 440 Then the next sequence is calculated, as so on. These models are

themselves extraordinary examples of engineering but they are prone to their own emergent

effects. An emergent effect is an unforeseen principle of interactivity that exists among

multiple layers of causal relations, but cannot be predicted in any other way than through

observance of the inter-relation. For the model, at least the causes of activity are traceable

to whatever sets the initial conditions and the boundary conditions to what they are. The

principle cause of anthropogenic climate change are effects of industrialization, including

the modern techniques of commodity production, transportation, and agricultural

industrialization. The effects are principally the result of accelerating the transformation of

nature into material commodities by newer and newer technical methods. E.O. Wilson has

concluded that the environmental crisis is not a result of human beings suddenly doing

something wrong (earlier Native peoples had in some cases a more destructive effect on

their natural environments) but that the problem concerns the quantity and speed of our

natural consumption.441 Industrial technology for those who live in the developed world

forms the material basis upon which the habitual structures of daily life are situated. But a

modern industrial economy also depends upon an equally pervasive form of habitual

consumption for its continued deployment. The environment (a linear system) gets

absorbed by an economic logic (with an exponential logic) so that more worlds are needed.442

440
Erica Thompson Roman Frigg, and Charlotte Werndl, "Philosophy of Climate Sceince Part Ii: Modeling
Climate Change," Philosophy Compass 10, no. 12 (2015): 965.
441
Edward O. Wilson, The Future of Life, 1st ed. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002).
442
See E.O. Wilson’s noteworthy book on the subject, The Future of Life (New York: Random House,
2002).

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The moral habitus of the modern industrial community persists and harmonized against the

backdrop in its dynamic concrete embodiment. There has to be a general rule of threshold

for any moral habitus such that the habit can only pertain so long as the conditions for

repetition persist. If the conditions that allow for a habit to persist are denied, then the

habit cannot remain a habit. When differing conditions arise, habits get replaced and this

will pertain to both the moral and economic spheres. So, the modern industrial moral habitus

is one which concretely treats the consumption of the environment and its transformation

as the material basis and situating condition for its repeatability. There is a tension between

the moral perception of the agents and this trans-agent effect. The moral activity of the

agent as conceived in intention does not question the grounds upon which the moral activity

is itself situated so that the moral recognition of the problem by the agent is virtually

impossible. From the agent level, activities are chosen, habits formed, and all of it in terms

of atomistic developments. One habit gets set, and then later another for a different reason,

and then still others follow and the habits intermingle, replacing one another and in some

cases co-existing, and so forth. The intentional reasons for action are not purely economic

and in many cases they are ’spiritual’. Parents work to make a better life for their children.

People make computers, travel for pleasure, and buy music for reasons aimed at happiness

and enjoyment, and these acts in themselves may even be admirable, but their activities

persist in a manner which conserves, for the sake of communal harmony, the material

conditions that continue to effect the climate.443 What is more, if the agents were to do

otherwise, they might well be accused of a moral failing in terms of denying a certain

function or moral principle. For instance, it would be morally problematic if a parent were

to refuse to transport their child to school for fear of contributing to climate change. There

443
See Totality and Infinity by E. Levinas.

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is something to the idea that the cause of anthropogenic climate change includes also the

successful performance of some moral activities. The coal miner works to create a better

community and provide a more flourishing life to their children. Given their situational

environment, it is easily conceivable how a coal miner might recognize and organize their

activities in a way that sees coal mining itself as instrumental towards the moral activity of

raising a standard of living for their immediate dependents in this or that local community.

Given that standards of living have been increasing in the material world for nearly the past

century, all of which is fueled by processes that emit green house causing agents, we begin to

see the radical nature of the problem. The moral perception that we have of an activity can

come in terms of degree. Can we really ask the communities of the world to forgo a high

standard of living precisely because it will jeopardize a future standard of living for others

and expect different results than what we now see? It seems that climate change is the

exemplar case for environmental moral failure.

We previously said that the example of moral failure in terms of climate suggests a

three-step movement in the analysis. First, (1) we need to diagnose the value principle at

work in the activity, then (2) describe the moral habitus structure and its itterational

development related to its teleological ‘success’, and finally (3) determine if any privation of

the value principle in (1) occurs through the successful performance in step (2). Any case

which can fit this structure is an arguable case for environmental moral failure. The massive

increase in average global temperature is a historical result of the development of

industrialization. The crisis is primarily fueled by technology developed for economic means

and for 'moral' reasons. The material dynamic that is embodied by a flourishing community

has a set economic modality. The value principle at work in the economic industrialized

community is rooted in a material principle that guards the well-being of that community.

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Industrial processes today are used to maintain current levels of consumption and their

negation would result in the direct and immediate harm of the community. For example, if

industrial agricultural practices were reduced substantially, then the global price of food

stuffs would rise and somewhere down the line a community would suffer and a child might

starve. There are actually strong moral reasons to maintain an industrial economy. Our

hypothesis with intersubjectivity is that these reasons are so strong that they can actually

make sense of our seeming inability to act. For in acting to solve the climate crisis, we would

inadvertently fail other moral responsibilities. The climate problem is so paradoxically

difficult to get a handle on because it is precisely our successful moral performance (in a given

situatedness) that is fueling the crisis. This is, without doubt, not true under every condition

of activity, but we wager that most activity conforms to this schema because the

intersubjective harmony requires, for its continued constitution, a moral habitus that tends

towards the production of the community and not its reduction. The habits repeat, they

sediment, for reasons that are morally praiseworthy, but the collective aggregate of all these

performances forces a privation of the general system in the form of a natural evil. But at

the heart of all these differing moral habits is a general principle of communal well-being.

The specifics of these moral habits and correlating nominal values depend upon the

localized conditions and its corresponding environment. So we can say that the industrial

moral habitus develops towards increasing urbanization, with an apparent techno-centric

ethos, and as a consumptive economy it gives rise to a moral language and local axiology

that, by the law of absorption, gets organized accordingly. When the average everyday

person complains that all of these environmental problems related to climate change

constitute too strong of a moral demand, they are in effect right because the very grounds

for moral activity in the local setting are already structured by the pre-conditions of

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industrial development. So we see people throwing up their hands in resignation. Over

time, the effects of climate change constitute a threat to the well-being of the communities

responsible (but the effect is morally imperceptible, but perceptible in terms of a negative

change in the community’s environmental situatedness) and this effect is the paradoxical

result of raising the community’s standard of living. The concrete value principle results in

its own overturning. The temptation for the industrial economic community is to seek a

technological intervention to augment the final result rather than replace any fundamental

value habitual systems. Designers try to create artificial leafs to accelerate the natural

purification systems of the Earth’s vegetation instead of reducing the antecedent

consumption itself. Anthropogenic climate change is the paradoxical result of activity

organized for moral purposes that self negate over time.

B. Species Extinction

There is a second environmental moral problem that I argue fits our model for moral

failure and that is the problem of massive species extinction. The problem of extinction has

many parallels to the case of anthropogenic climate change, except that in the case of

species extinction we have an additional moral obligation not in the view of an internal

communal privation, but in terms of an externally directed form of privation towards other

conscious animals and communities. In other words, the problem of climate change

represents a moral wrong-doing in terms of the privation of the originating community.

When the moral habitus of the community, and its convening value systems, converge in

such a manner that their successful deployment tends over time to negate itself, then we

have a case in which our ‘morality’ itself fails. In the case of species extinction, we do not

only have a case in which the loss of other species harm the human community in the form

of a natural evil, but we also have a situation in which the species on the verge of extinction

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represents a moral problem in terms of their intrinsic loss. There is something important

about the idea that this moral problem is externally directed. In what way do we mean

external? The moral habitus of a community has its ultimate telos in the preservation of the

community’s existence over time within the field of embodied space. Because moral failure

is temporally given in terms of the juxtaposition of the value systems inherent in the

embodied habitus and the effects of that activity, the externalization of an effect’s action

represents a qualitatively different moral problem. An effect here is not necessarily a causal

concept, but rather a phenomenological one bound by the law of association. A moral

habitus that fails will have both an internal and negative effect. When a community

establishes a habitus of recursive embodied motion that constitutes an intersubjective event.

Each event has both an internal and external effect on the recursive stability of the habitual

structure. The internal effect is either positive or negative. Either the habit will reinforce

itself over time, or it will deplete itself with time. The second effect gets perceived as a

moral problem. People who exercise often complain about the difficulty of kicking old

habits and of starting new ones. Some habits fail as time passes and conditions change,

while others flourish and build. The external effect of the habitus structure, by contrast,

concerns its relation to other foreign habitual structures that are encountered. When

intersubjective communities come into contact with other intersubjective communities of

the same species they will naturally seek to harmonize with each other. This is a

consequence of phenomenological pairing and ontological harmonization. Here the history

of language itself stands as a testament to the way cultures and communities merge in a

dynamic dialectic of embodied activity that spans the entire breadth of the written record.

External effects therefore refer to the effect a habitus has on externally related communities.

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A moral habitus therefore effects both itself and others within its range. Now, why is this

morally significant for a discussion on species extinction?

In the case of human conflict between communities, we always have a natural

harmonization over time in the linguistic and moral practices which tend towards absorption

and harmonization. But in the case of animals, we have the example of a truly alien

intersubjective encounter. When two different species meet, if they are not both human,

then we have a diminished capacity for empathy. In Husserl’s Cartesian Meditations, the

empathic structure is based upon (first) the recognition of the other’s body as like one’s

own,444 and this allows for (secondly) a ‘pairing’ of the other’s consciousness in one’s own

consciousness445. Husserl calls the unity of this pairing in the apperception of the other a

“remarkable kind of primal instituting of an analogizing apprehension446.” Importantly, this

pairing comes in degrees, such that based upon the pairing of the other’s body - its

similarities and dissimilarities - the analogizing apprehension that forms the basis of

phenomenological intersubjectivity need not be complete, where completeness is understood

as a totality of degrees constitutive of the apprehensive paring. This means that it is

possible to have some limited form of empathy for non-human animals. When we

experience the living organism of an animal, we can see through the movements and

reaction of the animal body, through the flick of a tail, the movements of the eyes, or ears,

that the organism inhabits the same bodily space. We recognize analogizing clues from the

animal body that enable us to situate them, however alien, as apart of some world. Of

course, the degree of pairing is consistent with the degree of habituated anticipation we

expect in terms of how animals act to like phenomena. Both the wild bear and the tamed

444
Husserl and Cairns, 110 [40].
445
Ibid. 112 [142]
446
Husserl and Cairns, 112 <42>.

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dog can inhabit a space, but the degree of empathy possible is directly connected to the

degree of fulfilled anticipation possible in their bodily movements.447 Dogs, for instance,

have been members of the human community for thousands of years while bears have, for

the most part, always remained outside. The further the degree of difference, the more alien

a species encountered will be in apperception because the analogizing apprehension can only

be fulfilled in a lesser way. There are accordingly various levels of apprehension and

empathic recognition possible and these degrees differentiate all the way upward into the

multiplicities of human communities such that even a human can appear ‘alien’. From the

perspective of the natural attitude, we can differentiate three realms of possibilities regarding

the relation between humans and animals. There are (1) wild animals, (2) tamed animals, and

(3) pets.448 Animals can play a generative role in the production of the home world as

“home companions” that co-exist with the human community. Anthony Steinboch writes in

his discussion on Husserl and animality that “[an] animal becomes a home companion when

it contributes along with human home companions to the co-generation of a sense of home

world…

For instance, in expanding concordantly and optimally (hence ‘normally’) our world.
An eagle, through its extraordinary sight, a dog through its ability to smell, or again,
black bears that eat certain foods and not others, etc., can teach us something of
‘our’ world that we never knew before, and even in a narrower epistemological
regards can expand our world-horizons, contributing to the generation of meaning
in the homeward. This takes place without the animals being tamed, domesticated,
or being merely of use value. They become co-constitutors of our ‘same’ home
world in and through their unique optimality.449

447
Cf. Peter Singer offers an interesting discussion on the perception of animals in his Practical Ethics.
448
Anthony Steinbock, "Gernativity and the Scope of Generative Phenomenology," in The New Husserl: A
Critical Reader, ed. Don Welton (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003), 311.
449
Donn Welton and ebrary Inc., The New Husserl a Critical Reader, (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 2003), http://site.ebrary.com/lib/ascc/Doc?id=10087035. 312.

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This means that our interactions with other species in the ‘same’ world as ‘ours’ requires us

to do away with the clean hermetic distinction between the human and animals worlds; they

overlap in terms of a concrete material relation. This too constitutes an intersubjective field.

In view of the genetic constitution of the Ego and our experience of the world, animals play

a co-constituting role. We also recognize that animals have their own communities of

interaction, and that their communities contribute constitutionally to the signification of our

own. We should at least state that for Husserl, and with him we agree, the critical element

that differentiates our world is that animals lack our ability to critique and renew their world

because they act primarily in terms of the repetition of their world. So there is a difference

between the animal and the human, but the difference could never be reduced to a simple

difference of instrumental use. Not only would the absence of animals (as a consequence

of extinction) reduce the world’s ontological features, as it were, but such an absence would

reduce all the other connected worlds as well. The principle of intersubjective harmony

ultimately extends across all the intervening communities that are materially interconnected

in the concrete.

There is a fundamental principle that we need to defend - namely that not only is it

wrong to destroy one’s own community, it is also wrong to destroy the communities of

others. We can think of the moral field as one of the many layers that constitute our

experience of the world. Fundamental to that layer is the system that allows the

apperception of activities as values concretely open to all. Beneath this moral layer rests

laws that undergird the ontological existence of moral communities; without these laws, the

community, would not be the thing it is for us. This ontology applies to all species and inter-

relations of possible experience. The moral layer on the order of our experience in daily life

insofar as it is perceived along moral lines does not end where the animal kingdom begins.

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Just because animals do not proceed according to a moral cognition does not negate their

moral worth. Indeed, the moral sphere extends a priori to all forms of organism and life.

Having need of reflection, we are able to recognize activities along rational lines of

intentional comportment and understanding. Animals appear to, by order of gradation, have

lesser consciousness; but all animalis activities aim toward their continued inter-relational

existence in the world. Extinction is proof of the fact that not all species are able to achieve

their continued generational existence. But when humankind collectively acts in such a way

that habitats disappear at a rate that exceeds the normal background rate of extinction by

orders of magnitude, then it is clear that our activities (primarily an output of economic and

industrial growth) collectively constitute a privation of the concretely intersubjective.

Because harmonization remains the fundamental principle for the production of any world,

an external negation of animality signifies a privation, and therefore a moral wrong. The

question of whether animals themselves experience the moral layer of valuation probably

depends upon the species and the degree of similarity; but it is ultimately irrelevant whether

or not an animal experiences moral life or not. For I am the one who experiences the world

in a way that is layered with moral experience, habituation and reflection. The moral sphere

extends to all reaches of the perceptive universe in which I inhabit, regardless of the species

which populate that experience. In fact, one is able to even extend their moral comportment

to non-living entities. Moral consideration extends to all life, and even the systems of life,

regardless of what the ‘other’ entity can comprehend or be conscious of. Species extinction

today reveals a profound moral failure in terms of the moral status of intersubjective

communal life and a massive degradation of the world.

The primary cause of species extinction is habitat destruction. Habitat destruction is

primarily a consequence of continued and accelerating industrial economic activity in terms

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of the consumption of natural resources (including primarily the development of civilization

and its concentration in urban centers). One of the necessary reasons for this rapid

development consists in the successful operation of everyday individuals to collectively act

towards communal interests in making a better world for all. The language of a ‘standard of

living’ speaks to the desire for all individuals who make up communities to flourish over

time. The capitalistic consumption of the world is a historical fact precisely because it does

deliver a higher standard of material existence. The problem is that the formula for its

continued growth would currently result in the degradation and rapid reorganization of the

very life support systems upon which we all depend. Because we only recognize the world

according to an intersubjectively given historically informed value structure (that plays a

passive role in the very constitution of our consciousness and natural attitude), the species

extinction that results from industrial development remains invisible and outside the purview

of our moral recognition. Habitat destruction today is a silent moral tragedy insofar as we

allow ourselves specific reasons for action that justify our consumption and homogenization

of the natural world for good reasons, but the world is a little less day by day.

3. The Problem of Divergence

The forms of environmental moral failure in which we are describing are still

incomplete. For up until this point we have emphasized that moral failure occurs as an

outgrowth of a habitus that ‘over iterations of activity’ eventually culminate into an antithesis

of the values to which they are supposedly directed. What process is taking place over these

‘iterations’? There are two key concepts that we have discussed that provide the

groundwork for a specificity of these iterations. First, we have discussed sedimentation.

The moral habitus of a community sediments out of intentional view but as a passive

background for intentional activity. All of this is based on the intersubjective ontological

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necessity for harmonization. Second, we have argued for a basic principle of replacement.

Habits are recursive patterns of embodied activity such that every new iteration of activity

becomes a moment in the overall habitus structure. The actions of our habits are always new,

but recursively organized. So, when we ask the question how new habits are formed we must

recognize that new habits replace old habitual frameworks within the sphere of potential

iteration. Replacement depends upon the reason for action and whether an act can achieve

either a complete (teleological) or incomplete (sublimated) end. If one wishes to get rid of a

‘bad’ habit, it can only be replaced by a substantial change in one’s overall habitus. We are all

aware, in an average everyday sense, that our lives are mostly habitual in a Sisyphean sense.

But when we have chance to take pause and travel or vacation, we disrupt the entire habitual

structure of the everyday and only then are we able to take rest. We replace our habitual

structures with new ones, even if only temporarily. Using replacement and sedimentation,

we can begin to describe how a moral habitus can become corrupted. But instead of the

morally charged language of ‘corruption’ (which is an evaluative term), I prefer ‘divergence’

(which is a descriptive term). Divergence describes the movement of a thing as it alters

path, a dynamic motion over time, that results in something going away from a previous

state.

The thesis I wish to argue for in this section of the chapter is that environmental

moral failure results from a divergence of the moral habitus over time from its value principle

(its telos). The idea is simple enough. As time progresses conditions change. Communities

come into existence always in relation to an environment, their around-world, as it were.

The conditions of the environment change for every community over time both for internal

and external reasons. Internally, the relation of the community to the environment is in a

state of dynamic reciprocity. Communities that are ‘unsustainable’ have a negative

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reciprocity, for instance. Because a community’s material embodiment depends upon the

consumption of nature, the relation of the environment and community is always in a state

of change because of the internal mechanics of the system. Externally, by contrast, the

environmental conditions are also in a state of change for reasons that are entirely

independent of the intersubjective relation to the environment. Part of the difficulty of

perceiving the climate crisis as a moral crisis lies with the fact that we see a blurring of

internal and external conditions. The fact that conditions change is not only empirically true,

but a logical necessity for any sets of relation that exist over time. Time itself is perceived in

consciousness as a series of differences. Given that an intersubjective community

ontologically expresses a form of harmonization, which is also a temporal term that only

makes sense in a ‘dynamic’ register, then the community is by necessity a conglomeration of

differences in relation. The dynamics of the community run in parallel to the dynamics of a

changing environmental horizon in which that community exists and persists over time.

Changing conditions necessitate new embodied habitual forms. The logic of the

habitual is recursive and formal. The essence of a habit is to repeat passively an already set

activity (or action). In new conditions, the recursive activity must be repeated in a new way

that somehow models the former activity. This means that a given activity can only be

habitual in a formal sense. The habits of human beings are not like the repeating algorithms

of a calculator, but they take on new forms and modes of expression that bare a recursive

resemblance to the original. Here again we see the logic of phenomenological association.

Habituality over time does not reference some original activity, but rather the field of

recursive patterns formerly enacted. Over time we no longer even remember the original

activities that initiated our habits. The recursive form is itself dynamically organized in

relation to the entire set of habitual activities that come prior. All of this is to say that the

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‘original’ is a reference to the dynamic structure, not a particular moment, or iteration, of the

habit.

Now, we have also said that the moral habitus of a community reveals descriptive

value structures such that a value can be said to be the principle which organizes the

embodiment of a locally enacted intersubjective field. We have distinguished between real

and nominal values accordingly. A real value is a value that is actually concretized into the

practices of a community whereas a nominal value is one that is merely spoken of by the

community. Every action that is taken as a result of intentional activity can be said to have a

reason for action. These reasons for action reveal that the actions of individuals are taken in

view of some purpose. Actions can be like instruments that help us achieve some end.

Once an action is taken, the reasons that gave rise to them fall away and can, if continually

re-enacted, contribute to an overall habitual structure. Intersubjectively, the reasons for a

person’s individual action have been bracketed out of consideration and this means that the

‘reasons’ for a collective moral habitus reside in the real value structures present in the local

community. Divergence occurs when the recursive habits of the community drift away from

their originating real values.

At the core of the argument here is the notion of habitual replacement. As new

conditions emerge, new forms of habit are introduced that mediate the originating value

structure with new relational conditions. A habitus can replace structures of activity with a

sufficiently co-teleogical activity which in effect harmonizes the new conditions which the

old value demands. There are some changes in condition so radical that old value systems

are no longer operable. If we look historically, and even just at the history of communal

philology, we see that the habits will persist even when the values are no longer real. In

these cases we can, using the language of psychoanalysis, describe these habitual structures

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as sublimated. They do not fulfill the concrete value structure, but in some sense achieve

their end, albeit incompletely. For instance, even under the most dire conditions, literature

gives us plenty of examples of peoples and heroes who ‘carry on’ despite the obvious

impossibility to do so. The history of the Holocaust exemplifies the impossible need to

maintain ‘humanity’ and ‘dignity’ when its concrete fulfillment was tragically out of reach.

Depending on the local conditions, those activities can diverge even further to the point of

invisibility. The collective habitual structures of values long since forgot can remain as

elements in the concrete practices of a community. The etymologies of human language

enable us to inspect parts of these traces of formal value systems. Nietzsche’s method as a

philological genealogist of morality is a premiere example of the insight that language leaves

its traces. These traces, to us, are but only moments in an overall habitus. All of this process

occurs in what Husserl called, the passive generation of the Ego and her community. This

means that as habits get replaced, they can diverge, but that they also can diverge in terms of

their sedimentation.

A moral sedimentation occurs when older values get buried over time by new values in

the concrete frame. As sedimentation occurs, the habits of a community are comprehended

partially in terms of tradition and the values of tradition. A moral tradition is one which

exists principally as a passive norm. There are degrees of moral sedimentation possible. We

can even note what might be stages in moral sedimentation. These include the action as (1)

actively constituted by intention, (2) habitually constituted and understood by intentional

consciousness, (3) collectively traditional (comprehended but not understood), (4) potentially

even institutionalized, eventually fading into mere (5) conditions for the background horizon

of new embodied activities and values. With each of these differing degrees of

sedimentation, differing degrees of divergence become possible. Just because a habitual

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practice can become sedimented does not necessary indicate divergence from the value. But

with each new stage of sedimentation a divergence becomes increasingly difficult to

comprehend.

The primary catalyst of the moral divergence we see in the problems of

anthropogenic climate change and widespread extinction is technological. Modern

industrialism has culminated in a growth of efficient technologies. An ‘efficient’ technology

is one which can achieve an instrumental end in a manner that improves either qualitatively

or quantitatively, often both, as compared to a previous technique. In a capitalist industrial

system, efficiency is primarily modeled economically where if it is possible to achieve some

end for less expense, then it is considered efficient. With the industrial revolution, coupled

to a now global industrial capitalistic economic system, the technologies available to us far

exceed previous industrial methods in terms of efficiency. An increase of efficiency

translates into industrial acceleration, even beyond our ability to perceive the effects of our

actions. The acceleration of technological capacity is morally organized in part by the

sedimentation of a moral habitus that grounds the community. These newer efficient

technological implements constitute new conditions, new habitual formations, that seek to

harmonize the old with the new in the form of a recursive divergence. Our thesis here is

that as the moral habits change, they can diverge over time, thereby leading to the potential

for moral failure. In other words, because a habitus diverges with its real value over time as it

meets new conditions, and because of the acceleration of industrial technological efficiency,

environmental moral failure results. We end up living in a world that is concretely habituated

by an ethos that enables a total consumption of the natural environment, and the

consumption of the very foundation for the community’s value systems themselves. The

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snake eats its own tail. From this perspective, I think that moral divergence is a sufficient

explanation for describing the process of iteration that leas to environmental moral failure.

4. The Inadequacy of Moral Theory

Moral theory is the systematic reflection of action, primarily divided as being either

descriptive or prescriptive. The ultimate orientation for every moral theory is prescription

because all people must act and they seek moral guidance. Moral theory deals in the

articulation, coordination, and preservation of specific values and value fields. These values

are and can only be nominal in the midst of theorizing. Real values inform the materially

embodied practice. This means that moral theorizing can be used to produce rational

actions in accordance with other reasons and the operative moral field at the time of

reflection. When actions are then instituted as a consequence of reflection, the activity

becomes concrete. In being made concrete, moral reasoning can be said to accord with a

teleological reason for action, whether known or forgotten. As the activity is habituated and

eventually contributes to the collective habitus, a plurality of habits converge and costively

replace each other in a dynamic process of everyday passivity. The embodied habitus will

diverge from its ‘telos’ under an operation of replacement as new conditions arise. The

element of divergence means that a moral activity will diverge away from its teleological

reason for acting through sedimentation. This means that moral theory, as prescriptively

oriented, is prone, even upon its successful implementation, to some degree of potential

failure, given the changing nature of the concurrent intersubjective conditions combined

with the forgetfulness that accompanies the everyday. Environmental moral failure is the

consequence of diverging practices multiplied almost without end. The material

infrastructure of industrialization has engendered a moral habitus that passively renders the

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way in which individuals perceive their world. A phenomenology of trash provides an

interesting example.

Consider the mode of material engagement that surrounds the production of

environmental trash in an average everyday context. When a person walks into a grocery

store they are surrounded by products, all wrapped in disposable packaging. The best

grocery stores project a sense of cleanliness so that customers tend to perceive the

packaging of products as something clean and secure. The irony comes in the almost

immediate reversal of value. Almost immediately upon purchase what was seen as clean

becomes 'unclean' and in need of disposal. Here we are only describing the concrete value

practice of disposal. The effect in individual apperception and consciousness is a derivative

effect of the entire intersubjective field with its own recursive moral habitus. If people were

to perceive, in terms of their material engagement, the packaging of the grocery store

product as trash in the store they would act in a measure of repulsion. So what can account

for the changing nature of our experience of trash? Part of the answer lies in the passively

constituting habitus of the community. Husserl demonstrated that the transcendental ego has

a genetic development in the intersubjective. The moral habitus is one constitutive part of

that development. We have focused on it precisely because of our interest in collective

action. As these passive structures evolve over time (collectively), they functionally get

replaced with new material activities, diverging to and fro, according to new environmental

conditions. Environmental moral failure on the scale of the crisis we have described

represents an existential threat to all communities and a threat of great evil but its

development is a consequence of a moral habitus we are concretely manifesting regardless

of any individual intent. Its collective scale is a functional derivative of an entrenched

communal moral habitus that has, in its accelerated technological form, signaled an end to the

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current value system. The industrial moral habitus has a passively constituting effect on the

cognition of individual perception and communal activity that reinforces a nominal set of

values while concretely embodying another. This means that the very language of moral

theory is bound, in terms of its concrete meaningfulness, to the concrete moral embodiment

of the Ego.

Moral theory, as an act of reflection, seeks to isolate the characteristics of moral

action through rational argumentation. In this sense, the act of moral theorizing mirrors

methodically the distinction between static and genetic phenomenology. That is, if a moral

theory treats its subject matter as a something static, as a mere intellectual object with an

isolated essence, then the moral theory operates on a different theoretical plane than the real

activity of action itself which occurs in the dynamic interactivity and habitualities of

everyday life. By modeling moral failure, we have come to the realization that the moral

dimension has natural existential parameters, and that moral life is dynamic in its situatedness

and enviornmentality. The process of dynamic harmonic interactivity between concrete

subjects requires a process of passive sedimentation. That which is concretely sedimented

into the language and instantiated into daily life is not theoretical at all. The experiences of

(a) doing moral philosophy and (b) living through a moral problem could not be more

different in terms of their texture and modality. Phenomenological analysis can provide us

with the tools for describing these differences. This means that the goal of moral theory

culminates in its structural suspension because the end of moral thinking is acting. In other

words, moral theory aims at its theoretical suspension in practical action. At the point of

acting, when reflection is suspended and a natural attitude for living in the world takes over,

a ‘moral action’ undergoes its passive habituation, sedimentation and harmonization. Ideally,

an action can maintain its coordination with the real and nominal values structures it is

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associated with. But over time and with sedimentation, old values become the materials for

the new. Divergence can lead to moral failure for the very good reason that not only do we

treat the industrialization of the world as a concrete good, but its overturning opposes the

very moral habitus that grounds our everyday communal norms. The recursive structure of

the moral habitus and its itterational replacement can contribute to an explanation of the

mechanics of the intersubjective moral dynamism.

What all of this means is that all moral activity is susceptible to moral failure regardless

of the principles, values, or moral theory used to justify it. There are probably better and

worse moral theories, but in view of their prescriptive orientation, their completion requires

a concrete deployment in action. The thrust of the intersubjective ontological framework

suggests that even if a moral theory were to be instituted successfully in terms of passively

forming the value structure of the community in conformity with a said theoretical principle,

that over time the activities of the habitus would diverge and sediment into new value

formations. The model of a intersubjective moral habitus provides a structural description

for understanding portions of Nietzsche’s analysis of morality as herd instinct. He writes:

Wherever we meet with a morality we find a valuation and order of rank of the
human impulses and activities. These valuation and orders of rank are always
expression of the needs of a community or herd: that which is in the first place its
advantage - and in the second place and third place - is also the authoritative
standard for the worth of every individual. By morality the individual is taught to
become a function of the herd, and to ascribe to himself value only as a function.
As the conditions for the maintenance of one community have been very different
from those of another community, there have been very different moralities; and in
respect to the future essential transformations of herds and communities, states and
societies, one can prophesy that there will still be very divergent moralities.450

450
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Joyful Wishom ("La Gaya Scienza"), trans. Thomas Common, vol. 10, The
Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche: The First Complete and Authorized Translation (New York:
Macmillan Company, 1924), 161.

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Our characterization of the community’s moral fabric differs from Nietzsche in one

important respect. Nietzsche treats morality as an instinct of conformity, whereas our own

analysis suggests that morality has a dynamic and changing logic bound to an ontological

principle of harmony. The individual is not simply ruled by an instinct, but is rather

cooperatively contributing to the constitutional existence of the community through a

pattern of habitualities. One of the reasons moral reflection is essential is precisely because

it can intervene into the habitual structure. The reasons we have used in the past to establish

a moral habitual behavior frequently get de-coupled over time from their antecedent

originating conditions. New moral reflections can allow for a re-positioning of the moral

habitus. Practical moral reflection always tends towards a concrete deployment of action, in

conformity with the conclusions of reflection, thereby entailing an inevitable suspension of

reflection itself when thought terminates and actions commence. Where Nietzsche sees

communal interest as the primary aim of morality, we have substituted a principle of

intersubjective harmony. The language of interest confuses the categories of subjective and

intersubjective. Subjects have interests, but a community is the harmonization of those

subjects, and their ensuing interests.

The natural success of a moral theory is given by the capacity to implement a reason for

action, and then once having been decided, for it to produce a just and harmonious state of

affairs in its concrete embodiment. When a reason becomes an action, it is no longer a

reason, and its material concretization is no longer an object of theoretical deliberation.

Also, you can say that a moral theory is only worth having if it can allow us lasting moral

judgments and principles for acting. Ethical theories attempt to systematize which reasons

and actions one should hold regarding how one is to live. But when ethical theories are

implemented, they can only succeed if they are adapted to their environmental conditions.

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This is why moral theory in Kant is perfectly reasonable but impossible to live consistently,

and the moral naturalism of Aristotle's virtue theory is both flexible but rationally obscure.

For instance, Aristotle's argues that “we become just by doing just actions”451 which of

course, seems to beg the question. In other words, the just must inhabit a concrete just life

to be just. The end of reflection is action.

We must recognize that since all moral theories have moral failure as their possibility,

a set moral theoretical framework will not sufficiently guard against problems like

environmental disaster. There is no philosophical silver bullet here. Even if we were able to

articulate the perfect moral theoretical framework for thinking through problems in

environmental ethics, the ontology is such that, the possibility of paradoxical failure is always

on the horizon (even with the perfect implementation) precisely because the success of a

moral theory depends upon its being habitually instituted. We can conclude then that moral

theory has a fundamental limitation because of the ontological structure upon which it

depends. I think that this point lies in congruence to Husserl's own moral emphasis that the

categorical imperative must be understood from the angle of possibility. Husserl writes,

“Tue das Beste unter dem Erreichbaren!”452 (Do the best among the attainable!). His

emphasis on the ethical importance of vocation is further illuminated by this point. When a

person chooses their vocation, the effect of their decision is the reorganization of a concrete

moral habitus given the fact that a vocation represents a specific intersubjective stance,

relation, and choice of community.

This means that environmental ethics as a branch of moral research that is exclusively

concerned with the moral theorization of ecological duty/responsibility is also subject to the

451
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1103b.
452
Husserl, Grenzprobleme Der Phänomenologie: Analysen Des Unbewusstseins Und Der Instinkte.
Metaphysik. Späte Ethik, 390.

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same limitation as theory in the general sense. The degree to which environmental ethics

takes the ecological as its point of departure, does not diminish the possibility of its own

moral failure. To some degree the Deep Ecology movement recognizes this in terms of its

theoretical pluralism. But if we were to think of environmental ethics as the science which

determines right action regarding our ecological relation to other species and the world

around us, then we should have to admit that a theory itself is not enough for the successful

implementation of right action. The habitus structure, as recursive, is one which will always

go beyond the static structure of moral theoretical judgments. But this does not mean that

environmental moral failure is tragically unavoidable. Something else is required.

5. The Vigilance of Reflection: Moral Renewal & Critique

In the last section we argued that there is a clear limitation on the efficacy of moral

theory. Namely, because of the passivity and recursive habituality of moral life, the theoretical

judgments we make from the vantage point of moral theories and systems are fundamentally

prone to be integrated with other moral habits through a process of sedimentation. As this

occurs, the action advocated by a moral theory may diverge from its reason from action (and

coordinated value function) over time throughout its various instantiation points.

Consequently, the efficacy of moral theory depends upon the ontological function of

passive habituality - which we have argued is intersubjective in its orientation - and the

ontological conditions that go into that habituality. But one must be careful to guard against

the temptation of tragic determinism here. Just because the passive habituality of our moral

activities can diverge over time from their teleological reason for acting, does not mean that

we are forever trapped by our histories. Environmental moral failure as a phenomenon is

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not unavoidable. In this section I argue that environmental moral failure and its possibility

can only be mitigated by a vigilance of reflection. Only when we are pliable to reconsider

our context and the moral situation, only through a vigilance of active reflection unbounded

from static theorizing, can we hope to counter the problem of moral failure. Drawing from

Edmund Husserl’s conception of critique and renewal, I offer the argument that moral

failure requires a continual vigilance and renewal of reflection.

Husserl’s concerns and investigation into ethical critique and renewal plays an important

part of his account of culture. Between the years of 1923 and 1924, in a series of articles

now known as the Kaizo articles, named after the Japanese journal in which they appeared,

Husserl developed a series of reflections on the ethical task of cultural critique and renewal.

Indeed, Husserl saw that the Western world was in deep need of a cultural and spiritual

renewal. Translator Jeffner Allen comments, “As Husserl shows in his ‘Renewal’ article, what

is most essential for cultural renewal is the development of an a priori science of the

individual person and his community, a science having its own peculiar nature.”453 The

necessary science for understanding renewal is ontologically intersubjective in its nature

because it must on the one hand structural . In “Renewal: Its Problem and Method” Husserl

writes that

…the separate, individual realities, or rather, their ego-subjects, approach one

another through relations of mutual understanding (“empathy”); through “social”
acts of consciousness, they establish (immediately or mediately) an entirely new for
of unification of these realties the form of the community which is spiritually united
through internal moments, through intersubjective acts and motivations. 454

453
Jenner Allen, "Introduction to Husserl's "Renewal: Its Problem and Method", in Husserl: Shorter
Works, ed. Peter McCormick and Fredericj A. Elliston (Notre Dame, Indiana: Notre Dame Press, 1981),
325.
454
Edmund Husserl, ""Renewal: Its Problem and Method"," in Husserl: Shorter Works, ed. Peter
McCormicj & Fredick A. Elliston (Notre Dame: Notre Dame Press, 1924), 329.

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Husserl’s summarization of his intersubjective ontology is a required pre-requisite for

situating critique and renewal because without first understanding the structural mechanics

of empathy and, ultimately, collective intersubjective action, then the possibility of critique

gets marginalized to purely natural theoretical judgments. He writes in the same article, just

a little bit later, that “in the realm of the human spirit, unlike in the case of the nature, we do

not have solely the formation of so-called ‘theoretical judgments’ which are directed to

‘mere facts of existence’.”455 Instead, in the realm of the human spirit, we must first

understand the essentials of what it means to be a conscious living moral agent in a

community in the first place. Husserl goes on to argue that ethical renewal first begins with

an ethical reflection about fundamental considerations that seek a clarification of the essence

of things.456 In other words, ethical renewal requires an “essential reflection, for only it can

open up the way to a rational science that not only treats man as such, but also his

‘renewal.’”457 But can we be more precise regarding the so-called method of ethical critique?

There are many types and forms of reflection. If the ethical reflection indicative of renewal

differs from the way in which one makes natural theoretical judgments, then what method

specifically differentiates ethical critique? Zackary Davis, in his commentary, has argued that

for Husserl the form of critique discussed in the Kaizo articles is similar to the method of

phenomenological reduction, except with a different emphasis on the bracketing procedure

in which one suspends their communally operative norms and values. He writes:

This ‘new’ critique, however, could not be a total suspension of the world. The
critique is made from within the communal world as a member of the community.
If the critique meant leaving the communal world, it would mean that the person
who is critically reflecting would no longer be implicated in the ethical crisis. But a
renewal is only possible for a member of the crisis, only possible in the
transformation of the social acts themselves. A total absolution from the crisis

455
Ibid.
456
Ibid. 330
457
Ibid. 331

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 would also imply an absolution from the solution, from the active participation in the
regeneration of a new community. Hence, Husserl’s sense of a new critique requires
the rather paradoxical condition of normative suspension by an active participant of
the community… For Husserl, the same type of free fantasizing can take place in
the science of ethics. As there is an ideal peace, so can there be an ideal or best
humanity. It is this notion of an ideal humanity that then guides the critique of
cultural norms… ‘pure ethics is the science of essences and the possible form of
such a like in pure (priori) universality’.458

He adds later…

The suspension of ethical norms is in the conscious decision no longer to participate

in the norms. But one does this not by non-action, but by re-orienting the current
norms. It is, properly speaking, a normalization of communal life in accordance
with the ethical ideal (H 27,49).459

In effect here, we can say that the form of ethical critique that Husserl suggests in one in

which the individual of a community reflects by, first, suspending the operative sense of the

norms and values they are akin to using in their living condition; then, secondly, reflectively

juxtaposing the idea essence of human activity to those norms. Donn Welton offers a

systematic and historical account of Husserl’s conception of ethical critique in The Other

Husserl: The Horizons of Transcendental Phenomenology (pgs. 306-327).

The form of ethical critique that Husserl advocates is specifically not an application

of a previously decided upon moral theoretical system. Ethical critique in this sense does

not begin with a pre-established theoretical principle (such as the principle of Utility) at all,

but is rather a more radical from of critique that begins with the suspension of the very

norms and values that are already operative in one’s living life and in the life of the

community. This does not mean that a science of ethics cannot decipher central ideal

principles, but that the act of reflection is essentially open. In other words, the type of

458
Zachary Davis, "Husserl on the Ethical Renewal of Sympathy and the One World of Solidarity," The
Southern Journal of Philosophy XLIII (2005): 564.
459
Ibid. 565

321
ethical reflection he has in mind is one that remains essentially open to an immediate re-

working. From our perspective, this model of critique (which is but one species of

reflection) is central for overcoming the problem of moral failure because this form of

critique allows the individual to counter the process of habitual sedimentation by

systematically re-considering the types of values and norms that one should adhere to in an

ethical life.

It seems that we can differentiate two forms of moral reasoning then. The first

form of moral reasoning we associate with moral theory is a form of reasoning that takes

previously ascertained moral principles that then seeks to apply them to the concrete

situation. Essentially, we are talking about practical ethics here. This form of moral

reasoning is not authentic because it relies in the very beginning upon a recursive habituation

of the moral theory, even if only cognitively constructed, to evaluate the living situation.

Authentic moral reasoning is a radical operation of beginning with a critique of one’s moral

situatedness and from there isolating the relevant norms and values. The history of

environmental ethics as a branch of practical ethics is, from this perspective, largely

inauthentic. The problem of environmental moral failure cannot be countered by a

‘greening’ of Kant or Mill, but requires a radical critique that seeks to rethink the very

situation of the environment itself. An authentic ethical critique makes it possible to re-

organize the moral habitus and replace its structures with new forms of activity that approach

the ideal possible.

As we said previously, every moral activity has failure as one of the possible outcomes.

The habits of moral theory themselves are open and prone to the invisibility of new

conditions. For our study, the environmental moral failure indicative of species extinction

and global anthropogenic climate change is a result of a moral performance. While moral

322
theories cannot internally remove the possibility of moral failure, we can see that a vigilance

of reflection and critique is a central ingredient to avoiding, or at least, recognizing moral

failure when it occurs. Here a further investigation of study emerges - the problem of moral

phenomenological recognition. This dissertation has been an attempt to describe the

problem of environmental moral failure along the lines of an intersubjective ontology. Our

task has not been to offer an ethical ‘solution’ to the problem, but merely to make sense of

it. The closest thing we have to a solution for the ethical conundrum of environmental

moral failure is the insistence that we remain vigilant in our ethical reflections, until we have

a fuller view of the mechanics regarding moral phenomenological recognition. The form of

critique offered by Husserl, provides us a model that avoids the systematic pitfalls of mere

theoretical application in favor of a method of reflection that more radical and authentic.

6. The Future Generations Argument

Thus far in this chapter, we have sought to demonstrate how a model of moral

failure, from an ontologically intersubjective basis, can provide us with an understanding of

how a culture can structurally come to destroy its own ecological grounding for moral

reasons. The environmental crisis of this century is not simply a matter of individual moral

failings, but of the paradoxical tragedy that the problem results from the community

fulfilling its normative obligations. As such, the best approach for the problem appears to

require a radical form of reflection that can disentangle the sedimented norms through

active critique and eventual renewal. But I would like to offer another argument for

consideration - namely, that we should also recognize the intersubjective underpinnings of

323
our actions such that every action is, through its habitual implementation, something to be

taken as collectively grounded towards the future.

Every action contributes to the passive sedimentation (both in terms of its privation

and generation) to the moral habitus of a community. The contribution is collectively

organized by a harmonic principle of embodiment. The privation of the overall

intersubjective harmony is a harm that has a transgenerational effect. In terms of the

intersubjective field, individuals are moments within and that make up the larger harmony.

This means that every individual action generates collectively a passive habituality and

apperceptive consciousness towards the future.

The ontology of the dynamic community is such that every action constitutes the

grounds for future actions. At the base of all actions (regardless of the constituting moral

reason) is an implicit obligation to future generations regardless of moral theory. It is as if

we could say to ourselves that “every action I take, I take for all time. Every decision I make,

I make for all time, and I must therefore act, first of all, in all of my dealings with the

understanding that my actions are world constituting.” In a certain sense, because of

recursive habituation what I decide now, I decide for all time. In terms of environmental

moral failure, this means that we must also say that “every action I take must preserve as far

as is possible the communities which exist in the horizon of my world. I have an implicit

obligation not only to the future generations of my own community but to the future

generations of animals, species, and ecosystems not yet born as well. No immediate purpose

of mine can justify the permanent privation of the future environment.” In terms of

environmental ethics, this would mean that the consumption of the Earth beyond

sustainable levels constitutes a moral evil that should be opposed. When asked how this can

be possible when we consider that a reduction in consumption collides with the concrete

324
values that are currently be adopted the world over, our only reply can be that an authentic

critique and renewal of understanding can perhaps provide new paths towards new values.

A good life, and a flourishing community, need not be organized around relativized

materialism. The formal values of commercialism and economic consumption can and will

be replaced with alternative conceptions of economic value over time. We are facing a world

without species, a world diminished of environmental diversity, and one with an increasing

trend towards harsh environmental conditions for all communities. All of these

characteristics constitute forms of natural evil. The process of sedimentation and

habituation is such that the collective values will undoubtedly change, the question is how

and in what direction? Today we must seize upon our capacity to authentically engage the

problem of species extinction and the threats of global anthropogenic climate change and

allow ourselves the freedom to recognize the conditions of our situation anew.

In effect, I want to argue for the primacy of a future generations argument for

ethical life. When we bracket the individual out of consideration, and merely focus upon the

collective embodiment of the community, we come to recognize that all of individual

actions are collectively harmonized and have their value in the manner and mode of that

harmonization. This means that the first and most primary argument for an environmental

ethics that seeks to clarify the problem of collective action must be some form of this future

generations argument. Because every action has a contributing future in the collective moral

habitus, then every action should be regarded as something sacred and pivotal for all future

communities and activities. Perhaps individuals can resist the sedimentation of norms and

the yawning naiveté we have towards the concrete values already operative in our

communities, by remaining cognizant of the lasting impact of action. Again, this is not a

325
solution to the environmental crisis of our times, but it can stand as a way of reminding

oneself to be vigilant in the reflection that comes before action.

7. Conclusion

Over the course of our study we have sought to bring some clarity to the great

environmental challenges facing us today in terms of anthropogenic climate change and

widespread species extinction. Central to our considerations has been the fact that these

particular environmental challenges are so difficult because of their collective nature. Most

systems of moral theory designate the moral dimension as primarily concerned with the

individual’s activity. But using Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology as a starting point, we

have articulated a descriptive model for understanding the moral problem based upon an

analysis of intersubjective ontology. While Husserl and the majority of phenomenologists

have approached the problem of intersubjective ontology through the primary prism of

empathy, our approach has been to elucidate the moral dimension through a consideration

of the concrete. We have argued that by situating the moral field as a direct correlate of the

concrete intersubjective field, then a form of moral naturalism, or realism, opens up. More

precisely, a descriptive model becomes available that allows us to describe the problem as a

paradox of moral life itself. From this angle, it is no wonder that the problem of climate

change is so intractable. Every community is intersubjectively organized in a way that

requires the ontological harmonization of the individuals of the community. The

diminishment or promotion of that harmony becomes the ontological scaffolding upon

which our moral perceptions ultimately rest. When the community is diminished, either as a

result of human agency or natural disaster, we perceive moral and natural evils respectively.

326
But when the diminishment of the community is the result of the very norms operative in

that community, a paradox of perception arises. On the one hand, our development of the

world is an outgrowth of the community’s success and flourishment; on the other hand, the

very same development can be seen as absolutely inconsistent with the community’s success

and flourishment. Moral considerations are activated by the potentiality of privation in the

embodied and harmonic spheres of intersubjective life. When the privation of our

community arises from the supposed fulfillment of our communal moral obligations (as a

function of the intersubjective concrete harmony), then we have an acute and unique moral

problem.

Central to our considerations of intersubjective moral ontology is the feature of the

moral habitus of the community. Every community has a descriptive moral habitus that gets

sedimented into the recursive habitualities of that community’s embodiment. A value is not

an idea or concept that we cognitively adhere to (nor is it a mere object of ‘valuation’), but it

is a structural component in the concrete habitus itself. A real value is the structural principle

that organizes the habitus of our activities. Over time, the intersubjective habitualities

diverge, get replaced, and rarify. This process provides a structural description for how it is

possible that the activities of collective moral activity can result in environmental privation

over time. Our view is that the moral problem(s) represented by climate change are

distinctive of a paradoxical failure. When actions get intersubjectively habituated, they

sediment with time in the concrete life of the community and without an intervention of

critique and renewal, they can culminate in a situation where it appears that the very

fulfillment of communal values is precisely what is fueling the environmental disaster. Our

concrete moral actions become forms of failure in themselves. This is what environmental

moral failure is. The intersubjective account also provides us with the reasons for making

327
sense of why the problem is so intractable. For on the one hand, the individuals of the

community have a consciousness which is a passive product of these intersubjective value

formations. We see the world with inherited eyes. This means that the consciousness which

sees the environmental crisis as a moral problem is one which must first suspend the moral

attitudes (and the corresponding values and norms) we are akin to living out in the natural

attitude. Environmental ethics today has largely been shaped by a tendency to refashion

previously articulated moral theories to the problems of natural value. While much of this

work is important for philosophical and scholastic reasons, we should recognize that the

environmental moral failures of climate change and species extinction will not be solved by

merely refashioning theory. For the moral failure lies in the embodiment, habituality, and

sedimentation of moral value, not in its theoretical characterization. Environmental moral

failure forces us to reckon with the implicit fact that moral life occurs in the living out of our

morals.

The problem of moral failure, as we have attempted to decipher it here, applies to a

much wider field of phenomena than just problems associated with the environment or

ecology. The problem of moral failure is applicable to all forms of moral life and can be

seen, for instance, in political ideology. Although we have focused our considerations on the

environment, it is hoped that the conclusions of this study will be of applicable use in other

areas of moral philosophy. In many ways, the very hope and topic of this dissertation is to

provide a structural way for our understanding and describing moral life prior to advocating

the application of any specific moral theory of principle. The admirable work of Edmund

Husserl has proved extremely fruitful in that his work provides the groundwork for new

ways of understanding the problems of our average everyday living existence. Perhaps by

recognizing that all of our actions as individuals play a much wider role in the tapestry of the

328
intersubjective monadology of our communities, we can come to recognize that we too have

the capacity for enacting environmental and ethical renewal.

329
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