Tomasello, Husserl, and the Cognitive Foundations of Morality

One of the strongest theses in Michael Tomasello’s A Natural History of Human Morality (2016) is that morality presupposes the constitution of a “we” (i.e., a plural agent). Yet, the precise nature of this plural subject, what exactly the we is, is something that Tomasello wisely leaves open for further philosophical debate. The goal of this chapter is to elucidate Edmund Husserl’s contribution to this debate and clarify, from the Husserlian perspective, in what way the plural subject can constitute the basis for morality. A thoroughgoing comparison with Tomasello helps evaluate what can still be considered to be valid in Husserl’s view. Accordingly, the present chapter has both an exegetical and a systematic component. For both Husserl and Tomasello, although morality is based on shared intentionality, shared intentionality is founded on affective empathy in its turn. Broadly consistent with Tomasello, Husserl suggests that, in some fundamental cases, the we is the carrier of a communal intention or other kinds of communal mental states. The plural subject coincides with the individuals insofar as they communicate with each other and form a phenomenological unity. The specificity of Husserl’s contribution lies in the clarification of how a communal mental state is individuated. This clarification relies on Husserl’s own theory of how experiences in general are individuated through a synthesis of distinct components. Husserl’s position is thus radically anti-Cartesian because it challenges the assumption that a mental state can have only one individual subject. The chapter also points out that this anti-Cartesian position was common to other early phenomenologists such as Max Scheler and Edith Stein.