Abstract

To develop the axiology of moral (or ethical) values, phenomenological analysis must look at temporality in a way that is unfamiliar to it. This way is through knowledge and experience of the actual historical past, from which it has been separated by the Heideggerian conception of historicity and its classical Husserlian analysis of time consciousness. The development of historical studies helps to make this possible. A simple sample model of the diachronesis of the awareness of ethical significance, value, and obligation is presented. It moves the analysis from a presentist focus to the field of experience in which subjects develop moral agency. Two concepts, historical phenomenology and interpersonal values-making, are advanced as the bases of a research program. It will amplify the potential of phenomenology to understand ethical goods such as empathy and will also encourage interactions of ethics, philosophy of history, and phenomenology