In a crisp, original style the author approaches the crucial question of moral theory, the is--ought' problem via communicative argumentation. Moving to the end of Habermas's conception of the communicative action, he introduces the concept of radical choice' as the key to the transition from the descriptive to the normative. Phenomenological subjectivity of the intersubjective life-world is being vindicated as the `arch-value' of all derivative values, or the first principle for all normative precepts.
With exceptional acumen and mastery of the philosophical argument, the author -- a young native Chinese lately trained in a Western university -- delineates a fascinating route along which the philosophical question of justification raised in the analytic tradition can be answered on the basis of phenomenology.
A noteworthy contribution to the interplay between the Anglo--American and Continental schools of philosophy.

Inhalt

1. Introduction: The Issue and the Background.- § 1. The Is-Ought Controversy.- § 2. The Continental Tradition.- § 3. Communicative Rationality and My Aim in this Program.- 2. Communicative Rationality and the Justification of Normative Validity Claims.- § 1. Communicative Rationality: the Counter-Factual.- § 2. Communicative vs. Cognitive Rationality.- § 3. Initial Principles.- § 4. Human Reason as the Only Justificatory Power of Values.- § 5. Normative Validity Claims and Cultural Relativism.- 3. The Necessity of Radical Choice.- § 1. Habermas' Communicative Ethics.- § 2. Alan Gewirth's Attempt.- § 3. The Question of Death.- § 4. Good life No More And No Less Than the Life of Humans.- § 5. The Rationality of Radical Choice.- § 6. Humanitude vs. Human Nature.- 4. Meaning, Ideality and Subjectivity.- § 1. Recapitulation and Strategy 91 § 2. The Naturalistic Notion of Subjectivity and Reason vs. Cause.- § 3. The Thesis of Subjectivity.- § 4. Ideality and Validity Claims.- § 5. Subjectivity and the Lifeworld Experience.- § 6. The Transcendence of Subjectivity.- § 7. Constitutive as Opposed to Conative Subjectivity.- 5. Radical Choice Fulfilled and the First Ought.- § 1. Subjectivity and Humanitude.- § 2. Radical Choice fulfilled and the Normative Redeemed.- § 3. Freedom and the Normative.- § 4. Ought and Responsibility.- § 5. ?Value), ?Disvalue? and ?Non-Value?.- § 6. Pre-Moralic and Moralic; ?Moral?, ?Immoral? and ?Amoral?.- § 7. Semi-Final Remarks and Anticipations.