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Document Details : Title: Discussion with Harry Franfurt Subtitle: The Importance of Being Earnest (about the Right things) Author(s): DE GRAEF, Ortwin Journal: Ethical Perspectives Volume: 5 Issue: 1 Date: April 1998 Pages: 15-21 DOI: 10.2143/EP.5.1.563102 Abstract : There are various ways to come to terms with human matters — as we must still call them, begging the question — among them the issue of what matters to humans. One can adopt a resolutely and perhaps narrowly scientific stance and gather empirical evidence about human preferences and their actual or putative grounding in order to so describe what mattering means to humans. One can choose a genealogical or historical perspective and study the ways in which humans have explicitly and implicitly conceived of themselves as recipients of mattering throughout human history — this typically generates philosophy as commentary. Or one can choose the apparent askesis of armchair-phenomenology — a kind of self-imposed sensory deprivation indulged in by philosophers whose intent it is it to conceptually elucidate the structure of the human condition as, among other things, a site of mattering. |
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