Max Scheler

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Known for his work in phenomenology and philosophical anthropology, famous for his phenomenological insights, Scheler developed further the philosophical method of the founder of phenomenology, Edmund Husserl, and was called by Ortega-y-Gasset "the first man of the philosophical paradise." 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 (or Wesensschau), 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. the Buddhist concept of tathata, and the Christian theological quidditas). In 1953 Karol Wojtyla, later Pope John Paul II, defended a thesis on "evaluation of the possibility of founding a Catholic ethic on the ethical system of Max Scheler".

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Biographical Data

Max Scheler was born in Munich, Germany, August 22, 1874. His father was Lutheran, his mother orthodox Jewish. As an adolescent, he turned to Catholicism, likely because of its conception of love. Around 1921 he became increasingly non-committal.

Scheler studied medicine in Munich and Berlin, philosophy and sociology under W. Dilthey and G. Simmel in 1895. He received his doctorate in 1897, and his associate professorship (habilitation-thesis) in 1899 at the University of Jena. His advisor was Rudolf Eucken, a 1908 Nobel Prize winner for Literature and a correspondent of William James. Throughout his life, Scheler entertained strong interest in the philosophy of American Pragmatism.

He taught at Jena University from 1900 to 1906. In 1902 he met the then renowned phenomenologist E. Husserl for the first time in Halle. Scheler was never a student of Husserl's. Overall, their relationship remained strained. 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. He joined the Phenomenological Circle in Munich around M. Beck, Th. Conrad, J. Daubert, M. Geiger, D. v. Hildebrand, Th. Lipps, and A. Pfaender. Due to personal matters he was unfairly caught between the predominantly Catholic University and the local socialist media, leading to the loss of his Munich teaching position in 1910.

From 1910 to 1911 Scheler lectured at the Philosophical Society of Goettingen. He made other and renewed acquaintances here with Th. Conrad, H. Conrad-Martius, M. Geiger, J. Hering, R. Ingarden, D. von Hildebrand, E. Husserl, A. Koyre, and H. Reinach. Edith Stein was one of his students. She was impressed by him "way beyond philosophy." 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. He stayed there until 1928. Early that year, he accepted a new position at the University of Frankfurt, a.M. He looked forward to meeting here E. Cassirer, K. Mannheim, R. Otto and R. Wilhelm, sometimes referred to in his writings. 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"]. His well known oratory style and delivery had captivated his audience -- for about four hours!

Toward the end of his life, many invitations were extended to him, among them those from China, India, Japan, Russia, and the United States. However, on advice of his physician, he had to cancel reservations already made with Star Line.

At the time Scheler increasingly focused on political development. He met the Russian emigrant-philosopher N. Berdyaev in Berlin in 1923. 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. "Politics and Morals," "The Idea of Eternal Peace and Pacifism" were subjects of talks he delivered in Berlin 1927. His analyses on Capitalism revealed it to be a calculating, globally growing "mind-set," rather than an economic system. While economic capitalism may have had some roots in ascetic Calvinism (M. Weber), its very mind-set, however, is shown to have its origin in modern, sub-conscious angst expressed in increasing needs for financial and other securities, for protection and personal safeguards as well as for rational manageability of all entities. 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. Already at that time he was supportive of programs such as "continuing education," and of what he seems to have first called a "United States of Europe." He deplored the gap existing in Germany between power and mind, which gap he regarded to be the very source of an impending dictatorship and the greatest obstacle toward establishing a German democracy. Five years after his demise, the Nazi dictatorship (1933-1945) suppressed Scheler's work.

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