Max Scheler(1874 — 1928)
Max Scheler
Allemagne
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German philosopher and a major figure of phenomenology. He founded an ethics of values (material ethics) and contributed to the rise of philosophical anthropology and the sociology of knowledge.
Frequently asked questions
Key Facts
- Born in 1874 in Munich, died in 1928 in Frankfurt am Main
- Published 'Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values' (1913-1916), a critique of Kantian ethics
- Author of 'The Nature of Sympathy' (1913) and of 'Ressentiment'
- In 'The Human Place in the Cosmos' (1928) he laid the foundations of philosophical anthropology
- A central figure of the phenomenological movement alongside Husserl
Works & Achievements
A famous analysis, in the wake of Nietzsche, of how repressed bitterness distorts moral values. A text still widely read in philosophy and sociology.
His major work, which grounds morality in an objective hierarchy of values, in opposition to Kant's formalism. A pillar of phenomenological ethics.
A phenomenological study of shared feelings, love, and empathy. Here Scheler shows how we gain direct access to the emotional life of others.
A collection of patriotic texts written at the start of the conflict, which Scheler later disavowed. A testament to the involvement of intellectuals in the Great War.
A major work of his Catholic period, devoted to religion and the spiritual renewal of the postwar years. A high point of his philosophy of the spirit.
A founding work of the sociology of knowledge, examining how society shapes the forms of knowledge. Here Scheler distinguishes between technical, cultural, and spiritual knowledge.
A short, testamentary text that founds modern philosophical anthropology. Here Scheler defines the human being through the spirit, capable of saying “no” to its drives.
Anecdotes
Max Scheler had a reputation as a seducer and a bohemian that scandalized the German university world. In 1910, a sensational divorce and lawsuits forced him to give up his chair at Munich: for several years, he lived as an independent philosopher, giving lectures to earn a living.
During the First World War, Scheler was at first an enthusiastic patriot and wrote texts exalting the “genius of war.” But he gradually changed his mind and became, in the final years of the conflict, an advocate of reconciliation and peace among peoples.
Raised in a Jewish family by his mother, Scheler converted to Catholicism in his youth, becoming one of the great Catholic thinkers of his time. Then, toward the end of his life, he drifted away from the Church and abandoned theism for a more pantheistic vision of God, which dismayed his Catholic admirers.
Scheler was nicknamed the “Catholic Nietzsche,” so brilliantly did his intelligence shine in conversation. The philosopher José Ortega y Gasset described him after his death as “the first man of the philosophical paradise,” praising his ability to see new ideas wherever he looked.
Scheler died suddenly of a heart attack in 1928, at only 54 years old, shortly after accepting a prestigious post at the University of Frankfurt. He left behind countless unfinished projects, for he thought and spoke faster than he could write.
Primary Sources
All possible moral values are grounded in the self-evidence of the hierarchical order that prevails among the value modalities themselves.
To understand another person's emotional life is not to reason by analogy from oneself: it is to grasp the other's feeling immediately, within its expression.
Ressentiment is a lasting poisoning of the soul, born from the systematic repression of certain affective impulses and emotions.
Man is the being who can say no, the ascetic of life, capable of opposing the most powerful drives through the force of the spirit.
Key Places
Scheler's hometown and the first great center of his teaching, in the heart of Catholic Bavaria. It was there that he joined the phenomenological circle before losing his professorship.
The university where Scheler studied and defended his thesis under the philosopher Rudolf Eucken. There he cut his teeth as a young scholar.
Scheler obtained a professorship here in 1919 at the new university of the Weimar Republic. There he developed philosophical anthropology and the sociology of knowledge.
The Swiss city where Scheler was sent on a diplomatic mission during the First World War. These travels nourished his reflection on peace between peoples.
Scheler had just accepted a prestigious professorship here when he died suddenly in 1928. The city became his final home.
