Online research in philosophy

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.

Hartmann's axiology is intuitionist like that of Max Scheler and acknowledges ,like Scheler's a hierarchy of ideal values. The two also agree that the primary intuitive consciousness of axiotic traits is emotional. Values themselves are ideal entities entailing laws regarding what ought to be and what ought to be done. The requirements about what ought to be are more likely to come into prominence or exigence for the emotional sense of what is of value when real, temporal things are not as they ought to be or when the way they ought to be is under threat. The human consciousness of time is able to enlarge the sense of what might be of positive value or of negative value, making possible that human beings function as agents, for it also gives rise to awareness of reliably repeatable sequences and of potential means for affecting the chances for such goods and evils. Agents have very limited but nevertheless creative and spontaneous ability to affect, to predetermine the course of events for better or for worse. With no such ability, with no power to predestine no temporal entity however automotive can be other than inert. Inertia, not immobility is spontaneity's opposite. It cannot be clearly conceived that a spontaneous and omnipotent entity, however sublime that may otherwise be thought, might co-exist with another spontaneous entity however severely limited. A moral agent whether a morally good or a morally evil one cannot be such a creature.Ni.

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.

Before the Darwinian revolution species were thought to be universals. Since then, numerous attempts have been made to propose new definitions. The twentieth-century German philosopher Nicolai Hartmann defined 'species' as an individual system of processes and a process of life of a higher-order. To provide a clear understanding of Hartmann's conception of species, I first present his method of definition. Then I look at Hartmann's Philosophie der Natur (1950) to present his concepts of "organism" and "species." And I end the paper by pointing out two possible systematic inconsistencies.