Knowing good and evil ... (genesis 3.5b)
pp. 243-254
in: Kostas Gavroglu, John Stachel, Mark W. Wartofsky (eds), Science, mind and art, Berlin, Springer, 1995Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to undertake a Husserlian inquiry into the experiential foundations of good and evil. Specifically, we shall seek to address the question whether the distinction of good and evil—which we shall understand as a distinction between what is to be sought and cherished and what is to be shunned and avoided—is an arbitrary one or whether it reflects some more basic experiential distinction. We shall claim that Husserl's basic insight that reality is primordially a Lebenswelt, a Welt des Lebens, enables us to claim that the distinction of good and evil does indeed have an ontological justification: some things sustain life, others destroy it.
