 Mandelbaum considered his phenomenological approach to moral theorizing crucial for uncovering universally correct moral norms without begging questions for or against competing views about such norms. His phenomenological description as of direct moral obligations coming from one’s external circumstances as opposed to being experienced as grounded in one’s desires and aversions, favored some form of moral  realism.[17]  Mandelbaum also took his phenomenological inquiry to favor a deontological normative ethical theory, about which we say more below in  section 3.