France Veber and His Moral Philosophy
Abstract
France Veber (1890-1975) is in many respects the most important Slovene philosopher. He was working within the philosophical tradition of Franz Brentano and Alexius Meinong. (Veber was Meinong’s PhD student and thus part of Graz school of philosophy and experimental psychology.) After situating Veber’s philosophy into this wider context I specifically focus on his moral philosophy. Veber developed a specific type of intuitionism, based upon the philosophical psychology distinguishing between four basic types of psychological acts (representations, thought, emotions, and strivings) and regarded moral judgment as based upon axiological emotions and strivings. A very interesting concept is the concept of correctness of axiological emotions and strivings, which is the basis for his moral realism and objectivism. I will argue that attention to Veber’s moral theory is in many ways instructive for contemporary metaethical debates, especially those related to the dispute between cognitivism and non-cognitivism.
