Philosopher and social theorist, born in Munich, SE Germany. He taught at the universities of Jena (19006), Munich (190710), Cologne (191927), and Frankfurt (1928). Influenced by Husserl, he developed a distinctive version of phenomenology which he set out in his major work, Der Formalismus in der Ethik und die materiale Wertethik (1921, Formalism in Ethics and the Material Value Ethics). He also did influential work in the sociology of knowledge. Other works include Die Sinngesetze des emotionalen Lebens (1923, trans The Nature of Sympathy) and Die Stellung des Menschen im Kosmos (1928, trans Man's Place in Nature), a work of philosophical anthropology, with a pantheistic view of how God is realized in history and in the world.
Max Scheler (August 22, 1874, Munich - May 19, 1928, Frankfurt am Main) was a German philosopher known for his work in phenomenology, ethics, and philosophical anthropology. Scheler developed further the philosophical method of the founder of phenomenology, Edmund Husserl, and was called by Jose Ortega y Gasset "the first man of the philosophical paradise." In 1954 Karol Wojtyla, later Pope John Paul II, defended his doctoral thesis on "An Evaluation of the Possibility of Constructing a Christian Ethics on the Basis of the System of Max Scheler."
Philosophical contributions
The heart of Scheler's thought was his theory of value. According to Scheler, the value-being of an object preceded perception. Values and their corresponding disvalues exist in an objective ordering of ranks:
Values of the holy vs. disvalues of the unholy Values of the mind (truth, beauty, justice vs. disvalues of their opposites) Values of vitality and of the noble vs. disvalues of the ignoble Values of pleasure vs. disvalues of displeasure Values of utility vs. disvalues of the uselessA disorder "of the heart" occurs whenever a person prefers a value of a lower rank to a higher rank, or a disvalue to a value.
As Scheler explained in Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values, there are also moral values that relate directly to the person, and never to objects: values of good and evil.
The term Wertsein or value-being is used by Scheler in many contexts, but his untimely death prevented him from working out an axiological ontology. Another unique and controversial element of Scheler's axiology is the notion of the emotional a priori: values can only be felt, just as color can only be seen. the mind can only order categories of value after lived experience has happened. For Scheler, the person is the locus of value-experience, a timeless act-being that acts into time. Scheler's appropriation of a value-based metaphysics renders his phenomenology quite different from the phenomenology of consciousness (Husserl, Sartre) or the existential analysis of the being-in-the-world of Dasein (Heidegger). Scheler's concept of the "lived body" was appropriated in the early work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty.
Max Scheler extended the phenomenological method to include a reduction of the scientific method too, thus questioning the idea of Husserl that phenomenological philosophy should be pursued as a rigorous science. Natural and scientific attitudes (Einstellung) are both phenomenologically counterpositive and hence must be sublated in the advancement of the real phenomenological reduction which, in the eyes of Scheler, has more the shapes of an allround ascesis (Askese) rather than a mere logical procedure of suspending the existential judgments. The Wesenschau, according to Scheler, is an act of blowing up the Sosein limits of Sein A into the essential-ontological domain of Sein B, in short, an ontological participation of Sosenheiten, seeing the things as such (cf.
Biographical Data
Max Scheler was born in Munich, Germany, August 22, 1874.
Scheler studied medicine in Munich and Berlin, philosophy and sociology under W. Throughout his life, Scheler entertained strong interest in the philosophy of American Pragmatism.
He taught at Jena University from 1900 to 1906. Scheler was never a student of Husserl's. Scheler was rather critical of the "master's" Logical Investigations (1900/01) and Ideas I (1913), and he also harbored reservations of Heidegger's Being and Time whom he also met various times. Nevertheless, after Scheler's demise in 1928, Heidegger noted, as Ortega y Gasset did, that all philosophers of the century were indebted to Scheler. Many others considered Scheler's sudden death to be an irreplaceable loss of European thought.
From 1907-1910 he taught at the University of Munich.
From 1910 to 1911 Scheler lectured at the Philosophical Society of Goettingen. Scheler unwittingly influenced Catholic circles to this day, including his student Edith Stein and Pope John Paul II who wrote his Habilitation and many articles on Scheler's philosophy.
While his first marriage had ended in divorce, Scheler married Märit Furtwaengler in 1912, who was the sister of the noted conductor. During WW I (1914-1918) Scheler was drafted, but discharged because of astigmia of the eyes.
In 1919 he became professor of philosophy and sociology at the University of Cologne. In 1927 at a Conference in Darmstadt, near Frankfurt, arranged by Graf Keyserling, Scheler delivered a lengthy lecture, entitled "Man's Particular Place" (Die Sonderstellung des Menschen), published later in much abbreviated form as Die Stellung des Menschen im Kosmos [literally: "Man's Situation in the Cosmos"].
At the time Scheler increasingly focused on political development. Scheler was the only scholar of rank of the then German intelligentsia who warned as early as 1927 in public speeches of the dangers of the growing Nazi-movement and Marxism. However, the subordination of the value of the indiviual person to this mind-set was reason enough for Max Scheler to denounce it and to outline and predict a whole new era of culture and values, which he called "The World-Era of Adjustment."
Scheler also advocated an international university to be set up in Switzerland. Five years after his demise, the Nazi dictatorship (1933-1945) suppressed Scheler's work.
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