The Personalistic Attitude: Edmund Husserl, Max Scheler and Edith Stein

Abstract

This paper discusses the close similarities between Husserl’s, Scheler’s and Stein’s concept of the person as an absolute value that exercises itself in position-takings. Ethics, for the classical phenomenologists, Husserl, Scheler, and Stein, concerns the whole person, including the affective and rational dimensions, intellect and the heart, as well as volition. Persons are distinctive for their free agency, capacity to recognize norms, and ability to interact responsibly with other personal agents in the context of the communal and historical life-world.