Between Nature and Ethics

Genealogy and Limits of Husserl’s Notion of Vocation

Abstract

This paper aims at providing with a discriminating discussion of Husserl’s account of vocation from the perspective of his phenomenological axiology. In particular, I will deal with the relation between vocation and natural life. My core thesis is that the transcendental structure of vocation tends to “flow into” natural life, namely into the empirical world. Consistently with a number of claims in the Crisis of the European Sciences, I will argue that the phenomenon of “flowing” (Einströmen) of transcendental subjectivity in natural life is particularly observable in the domain of ethics. After a reconstruction of Husserl’s lectures on ethics (1914 and 1920–’24), I will emphasize how the concept of absolute ought develops into the notion of vocation throughout the 20s, together with Husserl’s interests in genetic phenomenology. In the final section I focus on the relation between vocation and the individual’s empirical life with its temporal and intersubjective structures.