This book elaborates a moral realism of phenomenological inspiration by introducing the idea that moral experience, primordially, constitutes a perceptual grasp of actions and of their solid traces in the world. The main thesis is that, before any reference to values or to criteria about good and evil—that is, before any reference to specific ethical outlooks—one should explain the very materiality of what necessarily constitutes the ‘moral world’. These claims are substantiated by means of a text- centered interpretation of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics in dialogue with contemporary moral realism. The book concludes with a critique of Heidegger’s, Gadamer’s and Arendt’s approaches to Aristotle’s ethics.

Contents

Introduction 

I: Aristotle and Kant: Actions within the Moral World 

1: Action, πρακτόν and Visibility 

2: Phronetic Perception 

3: Aristotelian Constructivism 

4: Kant: Action, the Good and their Common Categories 

II: Phenomenological Voices and their Dissonances 

5: Towards a Phenomenological Moral Realism 

6: Heidegger on Aristotle’s and Kant’s Ethics 

7: Gadamer and Practical Rationality 

8: Arendt on Action and Performances 

Conclusion: The Many Faces of Moral Realism 

Notes 

Selected Bibliography 

Index of Names 

Index of Subjects 

Index of Passages