Grundlinien der Ethik von Maximilian Beck

Abstract

Beck, a member of the Göttingen-Munich phenomenological circle and direct disciple of Alexander Pfänder, defends an acute realism with respect to both physical things and human psychism. The first section analyses consciousness and freedom as features of moral personality. Consciousness is not merely intentional direction to objects but also immediate apprehension of them, whereas the I means the individual enclosed in itself. Analogously, the will can open itself to reality in its concretion through love or it can engage solely in the search for selfish ends. All moral fulfilment reaches this crossroad proper to a realist anthropology. The second section presents an analogous disjunctive in the political sphere: either the democratic will which is guided by the common good or the isolation fostered in the XX century by nationalisms and by the colectiviste State. Choosing the former entails discarding all psychologist (like in Nietzsche) and socioeconomic (proper to Marxism) reductionism and respecting the intrinsic dignity of the person.