This book provides a framework for phenomenological axiology. It offers a novel account of the existence and nature of values as they appear in conscious experience.
By building on previous approaches, including those of Edmund Husserl, Max Scheler, and Nicolai Hartmann, the author develops a unique account of what values really are. After explicating and defending this account, he applies it to several of the most difficult questions in axiology: for example, how our experiences of value can differ from those of others without reducing values to subjective judgments or how the values we experience are connected to the volitional acts that they inspire. This provides satisfactory answers to certain fundamental questions concerning the basic structure of value-experiences. Accordingly, this book represents a novel step forward in phenomenological axiology.
Towards a Phenomenology of Values will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in phenomenology and value theory.
Introduction and Historical Background
1. The Necessity of a Phenomenology of Values
2. The Identity of Values
3. Pure Values and Valuable Things
4. Values and Subjectivity
5. Values and Volition
Conclusion
Biography
D.J. Hobbs is a Visiting Assistant Professor at Marquette University. His research focuses primarily on systematic phenomenology in the broadly Husserlian tradition, both theoretically and in its application to various regions of what Husserl called the lifeworld.
"This book is indispensable for anyone interested in the experience of values. Hobbs offers a lucid and rigorous account of the phenomenology of values, ranging from the aesthetic to the moral. While drawing upon a careful study of significant texts on the phenomenology of value, a valuable pursuit in its own right, Hobbs offers in addition his own original and highly compelling account of the experience of value. Thus, this book adeptly exemplifies both excellent scholarship on phenomenology and an outstanding practice of phenomenology." – Michael J. Monahan, University of Memphis, USA
"This book explains the basic principles and theses of a Husserlian phenomenology of value. Yet, it does not only offer a highly welcome defence of a phenomenological brand of value realism. It, moreover, presents a thoughtful and inspiring exercise in doing phenomenology within a life-worldly horizon. In this vein, it also works as a reminder on philosophy’s venerable task to help us understand what we are doing on a daily basis." – Sonja Rinofner-Kreidl, University of Graz, Austria
