Brentano and Husserl on Hume’s Moral Philosophy

Abstract

ABSTRACT The article analyses the reception of Hume’s moral philosophy in the lectures and manuscripts of Edmund Husserl and in the published lectures of Franz Brentano, on which Husserl originally based his views. I first present the reasons that led Brentano to appreciate Hume’s sentimentalist background in moral philosophy and to criticize Hume’s relativism. I then show how Husserl, following the critique of psychologism in his Logical Investigations, builds on this starting point and attempts to show a possible contradictory nature of Hume’s moral relativism. Finally, I consider whether Hume’s doctrine contains phenomenological insights that Husserl overlooks.