An Ethics of the Second Person: Love, Goodness, and Relationality

This book reimagines the foundations of moral philosophy by centering on the ethical significance of second-personal experience--our direct, lived responsiveness to others. Philip Strammer challenges the dominance of both naturalist and transcendental traditions, arguing that neither adequately accounts for the moral depth of the I-You relation.

Drawing on Martin Buber’s dialogical philosophy and enriched by post-Wittgensteinian moral thought, the book explores conscience, remorse, and saintliness as second-personal phenomena. At its heart is the concept of lovingness--a wholehearted, unmediated openness to otherness--as the key to understanding moral meaning and the manifestation of goodness.

Through rigorous philosophical analysis and vivid phenomenological examples, Strammer offers a compelling alternative to moral theories moving within the subject-object dichotomy. This work will appeal to scholars and advanced students in ethics, phenomenology, moral psychology, and religious thought, offering a fresh and challenging perspective on what it means to live a morally responsive life with and among others.

Philip Strammer teaches at at the University of Pardubice, Czech Republic.