Love and morality in Husserl's late ethics

Abstract

The aim of the article is to analyze Husserl´s concept of love and its relationship with morality. Our presentation is based on the lecture courses that belong to the later period of his ethics and especially on research manu­scripts published in the volume XLII of Husser­liana, Grenzprobleme der Phänomenologie. Love is a many-sided phenomenon that, according to Husserl, determines personal life from its deep­est center. As far as it a reveals the individuality of the person, love proves the insufficiency of a merely formal approach of practical reason to account for subjective duties and individual imperatives. Besides, by virtue of its inherent tendency to extend its scope, love exhibits the unsurpassable telos of intersubjectivity, the highest form of monadic life. In this context, the main core of our inquiry into love as a moral mo­tive will be the relationship between love and in­dividuality and the analysis of some of the prob­lems that Husserl´s re-interpretation of practical reason in terms of the affective moment of the ethical experience might give place to.