Abstract

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.