Phänomenologischer Personalismus und Charakter

This article examines Husserl’s personalistic conception of character and contrasts it with dominant approaches in contemporary moral psychology. The first section reconstructs the debate between dispositionalism and situationism, arguing that both positions share a naturalistic assumption: they treat character primarily as a latent explanatory factor inferred from behavior. Against this model, the article proposes a phenomenological alternative grounded in Husserl’s distinction between the naturalistic and personalistic attitudes. Drawing especially on Ideas II and related manuscripts from the early 1920s, it argues that persons and their characters are not merely hypothetical constructs behind observable conduct, but are directly experienced in expressive behavior. Character is disclosed through the unity of expression and what is expressed, rather than inferred as a hidden cause. The article further explores Husserl’s analyses of empathy, comprehension, and imaginative self-variation, showing how they illuminate both self-knowledge and the experience of other persons. It concludes that phenomenology offers a promising non-naturalistic framework for understanding character as an aspect of our direct experience of persons.