Reflection on Morality in Contemporary Philosophy

In this book, the study focuses on that ethical thinking that reconciles two elements of human action: on the one hand, rational and free reflection, and on the other hand, the assumption of a natural element that is - in a broader sense - given and serves as a basis for this reflection. Therefore, philosophers of the phenomenological tradition have been chosen, or kindred spirits of phenomenology, who recognise that ethics begins on a real, objective basis. The majority of the philosophers discussed here do not deal with ethical action in a direct way, and some do not even work on ethics as a discipline in its own right. But in all of these authors one can find an intense reflection that leads to ethics and to the consideration of human action in different ways. Thus, many contributions to this collection offer a detailed description of the ways in which the philosophers covered engage with ethical issues without delving into ethics itself. This is known to be a very common feature of 20th century philosophy.