Recent phenomenological ethics in Germany

pp. 533-554

in: John Drummond, Lester Embree, Phenomenological approaches to moral philosophy, Berlin, Springer, 2002

Abstract

German philosophy in the second half of the 20th century has been affected by historical events that are regularly evoked in order to emphasize the necessity for renewed ethical reflection. These events include—no less than the atrocities of the World War II and the Shoah—the development of technology, and above all, nuclear technology. In this light, one must mention, among others, the writings of Martin Heidegger, especially his The Question Concerning Technology,¹ the engagement of Karl Jaspers, and later of Ernst Tugendhat as well as others concerned with the danger of nuclear weapons. The installation in the mid-1980s of Pershing II missiles in West Germany provoked the political engagement of many "professional philosophers." Several phenomenologists, from Antonio Aguirre to Bernhard Waldenfels, clearly and on good grounds protested the installation in the "Declaration of German Philosophers on the Stationing of Missiles."