The articles in this volume discuss the relation between values and ontology, focusing on the significance of ontology for ethics and aesthetics, i.e., themes which due to the raising interest in ontology come to play a central role in contemporary philosophical debate. The contributors address the questions of whether and in which sense values can be considered to be real, whether it is possible to experience them, and in which sense we can speak about their objective validity. These topics - which were also discussed by early phenomenologists like Brentano, Meinong, Ehrenfels, proponents of Gestalt psychology like Köhler, by Husserl, and by French phenomenologists like Merleau-Ponty - are approached by both historical and systematic analysis.
Wolfgang Huemer has studied Philosophy and German Literature at the universities of Salzburg, Fribourg, Berne, and Toronto. He was wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter at the University of Erfurt and is, since 2006, ricercatore at the Department of Philosophy of the University of Parma. He is the author of The Constitution of Consciousness. A Study in analytic phenomenology (Routledge, 2005), various articles on philosophy of mind and philosophy of literature, as well as co-editor of Phenomenology and Analysis. Essays on Central European Philosophy_ (with Arkadiusz Chrudzimski, ontos 2004), The Literary Wittgenstein (with John Gibson, Routledge 2006), and A Sense of the World. Essays on Fiction, Narrative, and Knowledge (Routledge, 2007). Beatrice Centi, formerly a researcher at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, is currently Professor of the History of Philosophy at Parma University. Her main areas of research are the philosophy of Kant, philosophy and psychology and the theory of values in German thought in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Among her publications: L'armonia impossibile. Alle origini del concetto di valore in R. H. Lotze (Milan 1993), Coscienza, etica e architettonica in Kant. Uno studio attraverso le Critiche (Pisa-Rome 2002), Fenomenologia della ragion pratica. L etica di Husserl (with Gianna Gigliotti, Naples 2004) and articles on history and issues of phenomenology.
