Existential Choice: Husserl Meets Heller

In this paper, I develop a vindication of Agnes Heller’s conception of existential choice by drawing on Husserl’s manuscripts and lectures on ethics. In the !rst two sections, I reconstruct Heller’s view and the criticism that has been raised against it. In the following sections, I turn to Husserl and argue (1) that existential choice is necessary in order to transition from a naïve to a self-re"ective stage of the good life; (2) that, pace Heller, there is a tight link between existential choice under the category of difference and existential choice under the category of universality, such that the latter is not possible without the former; and (3) that the revocation of existential choices does not annul their impact on life, such that there is a certain irrevocability of existential choices even when life forces us to give up on them.