I dispute Scheler’s view that good and evil cannot be willed as such; that moral value is always an inevitable and indirect by-product of willing other ends; that every act of willing yields a moral value; and that moral value attaches only to persons. I argue that moral value attaches to a variety of objects of willing (including one’s own moral worth), and that, although all acts have moral implications, not all acts are typologically moral. Those that are, I suggest, (...) typically involve a transactional categoriality where we take another’s good or bad as our own. Those that are not may yield various values of personal willing whose positive or negative value is typologically non-moral. I also deny that obligation is diminished by value-insight or that all norms are categorially moral. (shrink)

THE IDEA OF PHILOSOPHY The duality of human life and consciousness is the actual ground* of all reflection and philosophy. Man finds in himself the feeling ...

In his criticisms of the German youth movement and the emergence of fascism across Europe during the early 1920s, Max Scheler draws a distinction between the different senses of political apathy that give rise to mass political movements. Recent studies of mass apathy have tended to treat all forms of apathy as the same and as a consequence reduced the diverse expressions of mass violence to the same, stripping mass movements of any critical function. I show in this paper that (...) Scheler’s distinction provides the means by which to locate the various origins of mass violence and the practical means by which to address this violence that preserves the liberating potential of collective political movements. (shrink)

The central theme is a hitherto unknown explanation of the “temporality” of the person as proposed by the late Max Scheler. The first part deals with the meaning of “absolute time” in general. The second part shows how the temporality of the person is to be seen as “absolute” time on the basis of two opposing principles in man: the “life-center” or impulsion, and “mind” which, without the former, remains powerless, but conjoined with it “become” personal in absolute time.

Heidegger's central question, "What is the meaning of Being?", is intertwined with the concept of nothingness, as it has been since Pre-Socratic thought. I wish to articulate "nothingness" by restricting myself to three aspects of this concept given by Scheler: 1.) the meanings with which the word "nothing" is used, 2.) the moral implication belonging to the question of "nothing," and 3.) the concept of reality. It is the purpose of this selection of Schelerian thought to furnish some distinctions to (...) be made in Heidegger's central position. (shrink)

The central theme is a hitherto unknown explanation of the “temporality” of the person as proposed by the late Max Scheler. The first part deals with the meaning of “absolute time” in general. The second part shows how the temporality of the person is to be seen as “absolute” time on the basis of two opposing principles in man: the “life-center” or impulsion, and “mind” which, without the former, remains powerless, but conjoined with it “become” personal in absolute time.

The central theme is a hitherto unknown explanation of the “temporality” of the person as proposed by the late Max Scheler. The first part deals with the meaning of “absolute time” in general. The second part shows how the temporality of the person is to be seen as “absolute” time on the basis of two opposing principles in man: the “life-center” or impulsion, and “mind” which, without the former, remains powerless, but conjoined with it “become” personal in absolute time.

This volume demonstrates that their contributions to a material ethics of value are complementary: by supplementing the work of one with that of the other, we obtain a comprehensive and defensible axiological and moral theory.

The translator of Scheler’s essay, “On the Rehabilitation of Virtue,” presents an account of the context of this essay in Scheler’s work and of its relevance to his concept of the ordo amoris and to his critique of Kant. The translator discusses the intended audience of the essay, its moral purpose, and the method of its procedure. The postscript further reflects on the essay’s central themes of humility and reverence, suggesting avenues for a critical assessment of Scheler’s conclusions. It ends (...) with some reflections on the contemporary value of Scheler’s contributions in this essay to a historical and philosophical understanding of the conflict between science and religion. (shrink)

I defend the view that the experience of resistance gives us a direct phenomenal access to the mind-independence of perceptual objects. In the first part, I address a humean objection against the very possibility of experiencing existential mind-independence. The possibility of an experience of mind-independence being secured, I argue in the second part that the experience of resistance is the only kind of experience by which we directly access existential mind-independence.

There is a latent distinction in Scheler’s middle-period philosophical anthropology between personal uniqueness as divinely determined and as self-determined. The first dimension is more explicit; the second, a logical conclusion from Scheler’s notion of person as pure spirit. In the following study I will first thematize these two aspects of personal uniqueness. Then, I will explore Scheler’sidea that one gains knowledge of these aspects of a person through love. Here Scheler’s differentiation between love as intuitive and love as participative serves (...) to justify and further explain the above distinction in personal uniqueness. Through intuitive love one is especially able to grasp the divinely determined dimension of another, her ideal and individual value essence. Through participative love one is especially able to grasp that dimension of another’s uniqueness which she herself forms through her own freedom. (shrink)

The German philosopher Max Scheler defines the human person as a value-oriented act structure. Since a person is ideally a free being with open possibilities, the aim of education is to help human beings develop their potential in various directions. At the centre of Scheler's educational philosophy is the idea of all-round education, which aims towards a developed capacity for assessment, an ability to make choices and an ability to focus on the objective nature of things.

Scheler’s theory of the person is at the center of his philosophy and one of the most celebrated of his achievements. It is somewhat surprising, then, that a straightforward and sufficient account of the person is missing from his works, an omission felt most keenly in that work which is in large measure dedicated to forging a new personalism: The Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values. In his explicit accounts of what a person is, Scheler stresses its spirituality (...) and claims that it lives and has its being wholly in the execution of its acts. But in forging his personalism, Scheler makes a number of claims which require an account of the person that reaches deeper than its executed acts. In this essay, I focus on the accounts of the person given in the Formalism and use Scheler toimprove Scheler’s theory of the person. (shrink)

Max Scheler’s essay on virtue, first published under a pseudonym in 1913, begins with some reflection upon the decline in his era of a concern for virtue. Its central theme is a phenomenological exhibition of the Christian experience of humility, reverence, and related concepts, together with an exploration of their historical and social embodiments in Western culture. The core of humility is a spiritual readiness to serve, related to love, that produces in its possessor a liberation from the ego. The (...) core of reverence is its sense of what surpasses our vision. It has the power to reveal to us the deeper value and being in all things. The paper contains elements of a polemic directed against scientific naturalism. (shrink)

One of the pioneers of modern sociology, Max Scheler (1874- 1928) ranks with Max Weber, Edmund Husserl, and Ernst Troeltsch as being among the most brilliant minds of his generation. Yet Scheler is now known chiefly for his philosophy of religion, despite his groundbreaking work in the sociology of knowledge, the sociology of emotions, and phenomenological sociology. This volume comprises some of Scheler's most interesting work--including an analysis of the role of sentiments in social interaction, a sociology of knowledge rooted (...) in global social and cultural comparisons, and a cross-cultural theory of values--and identifies some of his important contributions to the discussion of issues at the forefront of the social sciences today. Editor Harold J. Bershady provides a richly detailed biographical portrait of Scheler, as well as an incisive analysis of how his work extends and integrates problems of theory and method addressed by Durkheim, Weber, and Parsons, among others. Harold J. Bershady, professor of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, is the author of Ideology and Social Knowledge and the editor of Social Class and Democratic Leadership . Heritage of Sociology series. (shrink)

THE "LOCATION" OF THE FEELING OF SHAME AND MAN'S WAY OF EXISTING The curious difficulties a phenomenology of shame, and of the feeling of shame, ...

Produced in 1961 using film shot by official war photographers provided by the Australian War Memorial in Canberra, this 26 part series covers every major ...

Introductory Remarks IN A MAJOR WORK planned for the near future I will attempt to develop a non-formal ethics of Values on the broadest possible basis of ...

The idols of self-knowledge.--Ordo Amoris.--Phenomenology and the theory of cognition.--The theory of the three facts.--Idealism and realism.

The subject of "On the Eternal in Man" is the divine and its reality, the originality and non-derivation of religious experience.

Luther, A. R. The articulated unity of being in Scheler's phenomenology : basic drive and spirit.--Funk, R. L. Thought, values, and action.--Emad, P. Person, death, and world.--Smith, F. J. Peace and pacifism.--Scheler, M. Metaphysics and art.--Scheler, M. The meaning of suffering.

The author studies Scheler’s essay, “Repentance and Rebirth,” gathering together and interpreting all the insights of Scheler on repentance, and often reading them in the light of Dietrich von Hildebrand’s work in the philosophy of religion. The author examines Scheler’s critique of the reductionist accounts of repentance as well as Scheler’s own account. He gives particular attention to one basic problem in Scheler’s account of repentance, namely, a tendency to let forgiveness arise in the repentant person simply by the force (...) of the act of repenting and not to give due weight to the divine initiative without which there is no forgiveness. (shrink)

Peter Spader has written a magisterial study on Max Scheler, one of phenomenology’s earliest and greatest figures, whose theory of ethical personalism has become a major voice in the formulation of phenomenological ethics today. Spader follows Scheler’s use of the classic phenomenological approach, by means of which he presented a fresh view of values, feelings, and the person, and thereby staked out a new approach in ethics. Spader recreates the logic of Scheler’s quest, revealing the basis of his thought and (...) the reasons for his dramatic changes of direction. This remarkable study provides a framework that allows us to understand Scheler’s insights in the context of their dynamic evolution of his thought. It corrects imbalances in the presentation of his ideas and defends Scheler against key misunderstandings and criticisms. In short, Spader’s work continues the process of developing Scheler’s pioneering theory of ethical personalism. (shrink)

Dietrich von Hildebrand, a close friend of Max Scheler since 1907, wrote this assessment of Scheler’s personality and philosophical style in 1928, just months after Scheler’s death. (Dietrich von Hildebrand, “Max Scheler als Persönlichkeit,” Hochland 26, no. 1 [1928/29]: 70–80.) He explores the extraordinarily rich lived contact with being out of which Scheler philosophized. At the same time he acknowledges the lack of philosophical rigor in many of Scheler’s analyses. He brings out the restlessness of Scheler’s mind and person that (...) resulted from a one-sided passion for coming to know things; Scheler was not able to dwell with things or persons once he had come to know them. Von Hildebrand also explores the relation of Scheler’s thought to Catholicism and offers an interpretation of Scheler’s abandonment of Catholicism in his last years. (shrink)

This article makes use of the thinking of both Max Scheler and Dietrich von Hildebrand in attempting properly to understand the nature of humility. The article examines how gratitude and truthfulness are both present, in an essentially integrated fashion, when a person exists in a humble state. Also addressed is the converse proposition, namely, that gratitude and truthfulness are absent in theperson who exists in a proud state and are replaced in that person by their respective opposites, ingratitude and mendacity. (...) The article begins with a discussion of Scheler’s view of humility as gratitude, then investigates von Hildebrand’s notion that humility is truth. In presenting their ideas, the article identifies three distinct ways in which von Hildebrand’s analysis of humility in terms of truthfulnesscomplements and expands upon Scheler’s analysis of humility in terms of gratitude. These three distinct yet complementary ways are, respectively, ontological, psychological, and ethical in nature. (shrink)

Max <span class='Hi'>Ferdinand</span> Scheler was born in Munich on August 22, 1874 and brought up in an orthodox Jewish household.1 Aft er completing high school in 1894, he started to study medicine, philosophy, and psychology. He studied with Th eodor Lipps in Munich, with Georg Simmel and Wilhelm Dilthey in Berlin, and with Rudolf Eucken in Jena,2 where he received his doctorate in 1897 with a thesis entitled Beiträge zur Feststellung der Beziehungen zwischen den logischen und ethischen Prinzipien (Contributions to (...) an appraisal of the relations between the logical and ethical principles). Two years later this was followed by his habilitation thesis on Die transzendentale und die psychologische Methode. In 1902, Scheler met Edmund Husserl for the fi rst time at a reception in Halle given by Hans Vaihinger (1852–1933), the editor of Kant-Studien. Th.. (shrink)