Le devoir m'appelle ? Reinach et Williams sur les limites (éthiques) de l'obligation

In this paper, Adolf Reinach's account of social acts is examined with respect to conflicts of obligation. The aim is to look at whether Reinach’s phenomenological realism holds its own against positions developed by Bernard Williams concerning the nature and import of obligations, and their capacity or incapacity to impinge upon each other and other moral and non-moral concerns. We shall see that even if Reinach turns out to succumb to pitfalls Williams identifies, he nonetheless verges upon agreement with Williams in more ways than one might expect. This result is significant because it shows that Reinach’s phenomenological realism, in contrast to certain forms of moral realism, lays the foundations for what can be considered a heterontology of obligation and ethical concerns, which is presupposed by the experience of (moral) conflict in the first place

Humanities · Health, Medicine and Society · Philosophy · Philosophy, Sociology, Political Theory · Social Sciences and Governance