Max Scheler: Manfred S. Frings

Max Scheler
A Concise Introduction
into the World
of a Great Thinker
Manfred S. Frings
First Edition published by
DUQUESNE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Pittsburgh, Pa.
Editions E. Nauwelaerts, Louvain
1965
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Frings, Manfred S.
Max Scheler : a concise introduction into the world of a great
thinker / by Manfred S. Frings. — 2nd ed.
p. cm. — (Marquette studies in philosophy ; #13)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-87462-605-6 (pbk.)
1. Scheler, Max, 1874-1928. I. Title. II. Series.
B3329.S48F7 1996
193—dc20 95-50160
Second Edition 1996
Cover photo taken by Max Scheler’s son of a 1926 painting by

Otto Dix. The original is at the University of Cologne.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be

reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission of
the publisher.
Printed in the United States of America

IN MEMORY OF MY PARENTS
DR. GOTTFRIED AND MARIA FRINGS
Acknowledgments
I should like to express profound gratitude to Martin

Heidegger for his personal co-operation in determining Max
Scheler’s position on Sein und Zeit as well as for disclosing valu-
able facts of both their relationship before Scheler’s sudden death.
Acknowledgment is made to the libraries of the Univer-

sity of Cologne, Germany, and Duquesne University, Pennsyl-
vania, as well as to Mr. John R. Biros for having typed the origi-
nal manuscript.
Table of Contents
Dedication ................................................................................... iii
Acknowledgments ........................................................................ iv
Preface to the First Edition .......................................................... vii
Preface to the Second Edition ...................................................... xi
The Collected Works (Gesammelte Werke) of Max Scheler .......... xiv
Current English Translations ....................................................... xv
1. Introduction ............................................................................. 1
2. On the Bio-Psychic World ...................................................... 11

The Stratification of Psycho-Physical Being and the Being of
the Spirit, p. 11
The A Priori or Phenomenological Experience, p. 18
Inadequate Definitions of Man and Their Origin, p. 22
3. Emotive Spheres...................................................................... 27
Feelings and Feeling-States, p. 27
Reality and the Types of Inter Emotional Experience, p. 33
4. Ordo Amoris........................................................................... 41
The Priority of Love, p. 41
The Microcosm of Values, p. 43
False Love, Kinds of Love, and Erotic Fate, p. 46
5. Ressentiment .......................................................................... 53
Initial Forms of Ressentiment, p. 53
Weakness as Source of Ressentiment, p. 56
Ressentiment as Source of Value Deception and Moralities, and
the A Priori of Values, p. 60
6. Non-Formal Ethics of Values .................................................. 71

The Historical Place of Ethics of Values, p. 71
Phenomenological Givenness in Intentional Feeling, p. 77
vi Manfred S. Frings Max Scheler
Emotive Axiology: The Graded Realm of Values, p. 80

Relative, Absolute, and Moral Values. The Ought and the Ideal
Models of the Person, p. 85
7. Man as Person ......................................................................... 95

Phenomenology of “Person” p. 95
The Sphere of the Person and the Types of Communal
Experience, p. 102
8. Man and God ....................................................................... 109

Phenomenological Exhibition of God and the So-Called Proofs
for the Existence of God, p. 109
Phenomenology of Religious Acts, p. 115
Person and World, p. 120
“Christian Philosophy”—A Fabricated Illusion, p. 123
9. Knowledge and Reality ......................................................... 131

The Measures of Cognition, Phenomenology and Science, p. 131
Reality is Vital Resistance, p. 137
The Ontological Meaning of Knowledge and the Three Types of
Knowledge, p. 140
10. The Age of Adjustment ....................................................... 145

The All-Humanity, p. 145
East and West and the Revolt of Human Drives Versus Intellect,
p. 147
Cosmopolitan Philosophy, Urge and Spirit, and Philosophical
Anthropology, p. 149
Person and Dasein, p. 152
Selected Literature (1955 to Present) ......................................... 157
Index of Names ......................................................................... 165
Index of Subject Matter ............................................................ 167

vii
Preface to the First Edition
T here can be no doubt that presentations of contemporary Euro-

pean philosophy in the English language, at once scholarly and
philosophical, are few in number. This pertains both to the history of
contemporary thought in Europe as well as to presentations of the
philosophy of individual thinkers. However many reasons for this
situation there may be, there are two which appear to be foremost.
Firstly, there is the well-known language problem. It is true that
contemporary European philosophy is not easy to read. This holds
true especially with respect to German philosophy. It has often been
said that the complexity of both sentence structure and word forma-
tion is more a burden than it is a necessity as to the understanding of
certain contemporary thinkers, and that indeed many a thought could
have been more easily formulated than in fact had been done. How-
ever true this may be in individual cases it is certainly not true as a
general statement. For both existentialist and phenomenological ter-
minologies, which mark the better part of European philosophy to-
day, are neither one of choice nor one of willful construction. Rather,
this terminology is determined by the respective subject matter itself.
Since essential states of affairs, immediate envisagement, as well as an
exhibition thereof, cannot be subject to definition in the strict scien-
tific sense of the term, language expressions are by necessity compli-
cated and often alogical.
In addition to this it is especially the German language which lends
itself to always new word-formations and creations, by virtue of the
nature of this language. Hence, an approach to comprehend certain
German thinkers in another language than theirs always implies ex-
tremely difficult problems of translation. It is these which seem to
have been often too much neglected in the past. A brief look at the
history of translations of many of the works of Nietzsche, for ex-
ample, will quickly verify that the understanding of his thinking in
the English speaking world is still far from being rounded due to the
fact that there exist translations of many important passages that ei-
ther put the original text in a false light or do not even make sense. It
is necessary for the understanding of contemporary European phi-
losophy to read the original texts, and to use translations only sec-
ondarily.
viii Manfred S. Frings Max Scheler
A second reason for the relative absence of works on contemporary

European philosophy as a whole is a historical one. Both pure and
applied Phenomenology have been intensely investigated in Europe
for half a century. The same holds true, mutatis mutandis, for the
philosophy of Dasein. In comparison to this, both aspects of contem-
porary European thought have only recently become of a general and
growing interest in the United States. This is due to the fact that
scientific philosophy has played a major role here in a great number
of institutions of higher learning during the past four decades or so.
Whatever the merits and constructive results of scientific philosophy
may be, they have been accomplished, to a large degree, at the ex-
pense of Phenomenological analyses and existential thinking. How-
ever, this is only one side of the situation in contemporary thought.
Europe’s phenomenological and existential philosophy has been on
its part at the expense of continuous investigations in the philosophy
of science. It is, therefore, no less a philosophical task than it is a
mission of the second part of this century to close either gap, and
reach out for more constructive mutual philosophical discourse, from
which both American and European philosophy, i.e., western phi-
losophy as a whole, can only gain. If this book will contribute in any
form to this end, it will fulfill its purpose.
Both the historical and linguistic reason for the scarcity of works
on contemporary European philosophy apply, among other reasons,
to the philosophy of Max Scheler. It seems, indeed, that he belongs to
such European thinkers whose message has remained almost unheard
of in the United States, comparing the situation to the number of
translations and works on Heidegger, Husserl, or Nicolai Hartmann.
There do exist English translations of some of Scheler’s works but
they do not encompass Scheler’s philosophy as a whole, since it is just
the greater part of the major works that has remained untranslated to
this day. Only one volume of the Collected Edition, it may be added,
is available in English. There exists, then, a concrete need for further
translations as well as analyses of his philosophy in the English lan-
guage. Since there do not exist presently any books of a philosophical
investigation in Scheler’s thinking as a whole in English, the author
has chosen to first submit a presentation of some of the major thoughts
of our thinker, and this in a concise and a condensed form. He in-
tends, however, to submit in the future a critical analysis and investi-
gation in Scheler’s fundamental philosophical position. This presen-
Preface to the First Edition ix
tation is solely based on the original German texts, and is not based
on any translation. Whenever we thought it necessary to render En-
glish translations of certain significant passages, it was carefully borne
in mind to stick to literal translations as closely as possible.
Throughout the text there are English renditions of some of Scheler’s
terms which have his own specific connotations. The German word
“Geist” has always been translated by spirit, and not by “mind,” be-
cause Scheler’s usage of “Geist” implies not only rational and volun-
tary but also and especially the emotional sphere of man. The word
spirit lends itself better to such an implication of significance than
the word mind. The word essence has been used for German “Wesen,”
and essential for German “wesentlich,” and this always with reference
to Phenomenological immediate envisagement (Wesenserfassung). The
word essence is never used with Thomistic implications. The Ger-
man word “Drang” has been translated by urge or urge-forward. Some
authors have translated this word by “drive,” which, however, misrep-
resents the original meaning of German “Drang,” for “drive” pos-
sesses in English certainly psychological connotations, which are not
basic to Scheler’s conception of “Drang.”
Since the author intended to give a presentation of essential aspects
of Scheler’s philosophical message, he did not include in this presen-
tation Scheler’s views on the Phenomenological method and
envisagement of essences in detail as they appear throughout Scheler’s
thinking. To include Scheler’s phenomenology would have been equal
to more complicating an already very complex and difficult subject
matter. For Scheler’s phenomenology deviates in many points from
Husserl, and it can only be explained on the presupposition that the
reader is versed in Husserl’s Phenomenology and by all too numerous
references to it.
Since only six volumes of the German Collected Edition, which
will consist of thirteen volumes, have thus far been published by the
Francke Verlag, Bern, Switzerland, and Munich, Germany, the ques-
tion will be asked if a presentation of Scheler’s philosophy, based on
these volumes and other works of Scheler thus far published, can at
all be justified. To this we may answer that these six volumes contain
the basic writings of Scheler, with the exception of the not yet pub-
lished volume nine. The author was, however, able to gain access to
writings of Scheler, which have been out of print for a long time
during his years of study in Germany. He was also able to consult
x Manfred S. Frings Max Scheler
numerous references of German periodicals and journals with refer-

ence to unpublished writings or those out of print.
In the immense variety of subjects contained throughout Scheler’s
writings strict attention was given to connect the complexity of poles
within Scheler’s wide ranging scope so that they constitute a whole,
in which metaphysics, history, sociology, anthropology, ethics, reli-
gion, and knowledge combine in ordered interrelations. For if there
is any philosopher’s work marked by disorder and disorganization on
its surface it is Scheler’s. Throughout this presentation, which I hope
will contribute to more understanding and recognition of Scheler’s
distinguished place in contemporary European philosophy in Ameri-
can philosophical circles, the author was always guided by Scheler’s
own statement that the variety of subjects, methods of procedure as
well as the range of thoughts constitute one whole springing forth
from within each subject treated, and which is not imposed on them.
A concise synthesis of Scheler’s thoughts and the tying together of
numerous essays, passages, and references, scattered throughout
Scheler’s works, was by no means an easy undertaking. May its criti-
cism not be so hard as the effort which stands behind it.
Manfred S. Frings
Duquesne University
September, 1965
xi
Preface to the Second Edition
O ver the past decades I had on several occasions been asked by

students of philosophy and colleagues alike whether a new edi-
tion of this book could be arranged for future studies. A number of
international commitments caused me to again and again postpone
the pleas. For this I apologize to all who continued to be appreciative
of Max Scheler’s thoughts as they were presented in the first printing
of the book in 1965.
Among said international commitments was the editorship I held
of the German Collected Edition (Gesammelte Werke) of Max Scheler’s
works since 1970. There were six volumes available at that time (vol-
umes 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 10) edited by my most distinguished predecessor
and wife of the philosopher, Maria Scheler (1892-1969). Thence-
forth, more volumes appeared, and the German edition will be com-
pleted with volume XV in 1996. Volumes XI to XV contain posthu-
mous manuscripts edited with annotations, critical and editorial ap-
paratuses that felicitously characterize the Gesammelte Werke since its
inception in 1954.
The reader might ask why the second printing of the present book
was not enlarged with materials published in the German Collected
edition after 1970. There are two reasons for this:
1. The book does already contain a number of essential aspects of
Scheler’s later manuscripts. They could be gleaned from the six Ger-
man volumes mentioned above, because in various places of them
Max Scheler had supplied valuable guidelines to his future projects
but over which he died. Because of their significance, they had been
incorporated in the 1965 printing.
This printing was the first book written and printed in the English
language on the philosophy of Max Scheler. Shortly thereafter, other
introductions were presented by A. Deeken, J. Kelly, A. Luther, and
E. Ranly. An up-to-date list of complementary texts consisting of
English translations and a new selection of secondary literature has
been added at the end of the present book for the reader’s conve-
nience.
The project of a second edition had also been delayed by Martin
Heidegger’s invitation made to the author shortly before his death in
1976 to edit for his Collected Edition (Gesamtausgabe) the Freiburg
xii Manfred S. Frings Max Scheler
Lectures on Heraclitus he delivered in 1943 and 1944; a subsequent

invitation by his wife lead me to edit Heidegger’s 1942/43 Lecture on
Parmenides. This work was followed by my detailed exegesis in En-
glish of the contents of these German lectures in Wolfe Mays’s Jour-
nal of the British Society for Phenomenology (1988, 1990, 1991).
2. A detailed analysis of Scheler’s later manuscripts comprising his
unfinished Philosophische Anthropologie and Metaphysik would have
gone far beyond the introductory character of this book. The author
will, however, submit in the near future a comprehensive account of
Scheler’s philosophy based exclusively on Scheler’s manuscripts. A
proper coverage of Scheler’s original phenomenology, too, would have
gone far beyond the introductory character of the book. During my
editorial work of the Gesammelte Werke, Scheler’s phenomenology
revealed itself to be even more different from that of Edmund Husserl
than could have been expected from the texts published before 1970.
It is especially volumes IX, X, and XIV of the Gesammelte Werke that
contain such material.
It does not appear that a comprehensive study on Max Scheler’s
very own phenomenology — especially in comparing it to Husserl’s
— has ever been undertaken. Therefore, I wish to list for the reader
what appear to me seven distinct cornerstones of Scheler’s phenom-
enological bases along with a few source-references taken from the
Gesammelte Werke. It is already these, I believe, that reveal Scheler’s
independent phenomenological thought, whose beginnings can safely
be traced back to the time shortly after he had read Husserl’s 1900/01
Logische Untersuchungen:
1. Phenomenology is not to be based on a method. Any method

presupposes the very meaning or phenomena any method is employed
to (X, 379-395). This does not mean, however, that methods ought
not to be applied at all.
2. Phenomenology, instead, is to be based on pure intuition. It is

instituted by an intuitional technique that temporarily eliminates both
sense data and sensible intuition (X, 448/9. See also Max Scheler’s
marginals in Husserl’s Ideas I [1913] in XIV, 324-432).
3. Time-consciousness presupposes the self-activity functioning at

the bottom of all life and living beings (“urge”). So does the self-
Preface to the Second Edition xiii
spatialization of life and living beings with regard to the occurrence

of spatial perceptions, etc. (IX, 228).
4. No consciousness — be it Divine, human, or imagined as in

drama, etc. — exists unless it is consciousness in-person, i.e., depen-
dent on the being of the person. All consciousness, therefore, is “in
person” (IX, 188), or “person” is the “form” in which consciousness
always occurs.
5. The ego is an object of inner perception and of the latter’s non-

objectifiable acts (II, 386). It has no constitutional function of its
own.
6. The experience of the value of any individual entity is the foun-

dation of what is thought, willed, and perceived (X, 345-76).
7. Reality of the world is constituted in the capacity of life and

mind to resist (VIII, 363; IX, 43; 183-340. X, 188. II, 135).
The first printing of the present text captured also interest in Max
Scheler in Asia, resulting in a Japanese translation of it in 1988, and a
Chinese translation is on its way.
Where necessary, references made in the first printing of the book
have been converted to the paginations of the present state of the
German Collected Edition. As above, Roman numbers refer to vol-
ume numbers, followed by Arabic numbers for the pagination.
In a number of places, changes were made with regard to diction,
updating, and vocabulary. But major concepts like “urge” for Ger-
man Drang have been retained in the present printing. The word
“man” refers to “human being” in the sense of German “der Mensch.”
It has no gender connotation in the text.
Manfred S. Frings
Albuquerque, New Mexico
October, 1995
xiv Manfred S. Frings Max Scheler
The Collected Works (Gesammelte Werke) of Max Scheler
The Collected Works were published in Bern: Francke Verlag, 1954-

1986. From 1985 on to the present, it is appearing in Bonn: Bouvier
Verlag.
Vol. I. Frühe Schriften. Maria Scheler and Manfred S. Frings, eds.,

Bern, 1971.
Vol. II. Der Formalismus in der Ethik und die matierale Wertethik.
Neuer Versuch der Grundlegung eines ethischen Personalismus. Maria
Scheler, ed. Bern, 1954 (6th ed., Bern, 1980).
Vol. III. Vom Umsturz der Werte. Maria Scheler, ed. Bern, 1955 (5th
ed., Bern, 1972).
Vol. IV. Politisch Pädagogische Schriften. Manfred S. Frings, ed. Bern,
1982.
Vol. V. Vom Ewigen im Menschen. Maria Scheler, ed. Bern, 1954 (5th
ed., 1972).
Vol. VI. Schriften zur Soziologie und Weltanschauungslehre. Maria
Scheler, ed. Bern, 1963.
Vol. VII. Wesen und Formen der Sympathie. Manfred S. Frings, ed.
Bern, 1973.
Vol. VIII. Die Wissensformen und die Gesellschaft. Maria Scheler, ed.
(3rd ed., 1980).
Vol. IX. Späte Schriften. Manfred S. Frings, ed. Bern, 1976. (2nd ed.,
1995).
Vol. X. Schriften aus dem Nachlass, I. Zur Ethik und Erkenntnislehre.
Maria Scheler, ed. Bern, 1957.
Vol. XI. Schriften aus dem Nachlass, II. Erkenntnislehre und Metaphysik.
Manfred S. Frings, ed. Bern, 1979.
Vol. XII. Schriften aus dem Nachlass, III. Philosophische Anthropologie,
Manfred S. Frings, ed. Bonn, 1987 (2nd ed., 1996).
Vol. XIII. Schriften aus dem Nachlass, IV. Philosophie und Geschichte.
Manfred S. Frings, ed. Bonn, 1990.
Vol. XIV. Schriften aus dem Nachlass, V. Varia I, Manfred S. Frings,
ed. Bonn, 1993.
Vol. XV. Schriften aus dem Nachlass, VI. Varia II, Manfred S. Frings,
ed. Bonn, 1997.
Preface to the Second Edition xv
Current English Translations
1. Books and Collections of Essays
On the Eternal in Man. Tr. Bernard Noble. London: SCM Press, 1960.
Reprinted: Hamden: Archon Books, 1972.
Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values. Tr. Manfred S.
Frings and Roger L. Funk. Evanston, IL: Northwestern Univer-
sity Press, 1973.
Man’s Place in Nature. Tr. and Introduction by Hans Meyerhoff. New
York: Noonday, 1961.
The Nature of Sympathy. Tr. Peter Heath; Introduction by Werner
Stark. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1954. Reprinted,
Hamden, CT.: Archon Books, 1970.
Philosophical Perspectives. Tr. Oscar Haac. Boston: Beacon Press, 1958.
Selected Philosophical Essays. Tr. and Introduction by David
Lachterman. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1973.
[Containing: “The Idols of Self-Knowledge.” “Ordo Amoris.” “Phe-
nomenology and Theory of Knowledge.” “The Theory of the Three
Facts.” “Idealism and Realism.”]
Problems of a Sociology of Knowledge. Tr. Manfred S. Frings; ed. and
Introduction by Kenneth W. Stikkers. London: Routledge & Kegan
Paul, 1980.
Person and Self-Value. Three Essays. Ed., partially tr., and Introduc-
tion by Manfred S. Frings. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Martinus
Nijhoff, 1987. [Containing: “Shame and Feelings of Modesty.”
“Repentance and Re-Birth.” “Exemplars of Person and Leaders.”]
Ressentiment. Tr. William W. Holdheim. First edition edited with an In-
troduction by Lewis A. Coser. New York: Free Press of Glencoe, 1961;
reprint: New York: Schocken Books, 1972. Second edition: Intro-
duction by Manfred S. Frings, Marquette University Press, 1994.
2. Separate Essays
“An a priori Hierarchy of Value-Modalities.” Tr. Daniel O’Connor.

In Readings in Existential Phenomenology. Ed. Nathaniel Lawrence
and Daniel O’Connor. Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1967.
“Concerning the Meaning of the Feminist Movement.” Tr. Manfred
S. Frings. Philosophical Forum, Fall 1978.
xvi Manfred S. Frings Max Scheler
“Future of Man.” Tr. Howard Becker. Monthly Criterion 7 (Feb. 1928).

“Humility.” Tr. Barbara Fiand. Aletheia II, 1981.
“The Idea of Peace and Pacifism.” Translated by Manfred S. Frings.
Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology 8, October 1976,
continued January 1977.
“The Idea of Man.” Tr. Clyde Nabe. Journal of the British Society for
Phenomenology 9, October 1978.
“Love and Knowledge.” Tr. Harold J.Bershady with assistance of Pe-
ter Haley. In Max Scheler. On Feeling, Knowing, and Valuing. Se-
lected Writings. Ed. with an Introduction by Harold J. Bershady.
The University of Chicago Press, 1992.
“Metaphysics and Art.” Tr. Manfred S. Frings. In Max Scheler (1874-
1928) Centennial Essays. Ed. Manfred S. Frings. The Hague, 1974.
“The Meaning of Suffering.” Tr. Harold J. Bershady. In Max Scheler. On
Feeling, Knowing, and Valuing. Selected Writings. Ed. with an Intro-
duction by Harold J. Bershady. The University of Chicago Press, 1992.
“The Psychology of So-Called Compensation Hysteria and the Real
Battle against Illness.” Tr. Edward Vacek, S.J. Journal of Phenom-
enological Psychology, 15, 2, Fall 1984.
“On the Positivistic Philosophy of the History of Knowledge and Its
Laws of Three Stages.” Tr. Rainer Koehne. In The Sociology of
Knowledge: A Reader. Ed. James E. Curtis and John W. Petras.
New York, 1970.
“Reality and Resistance: On Being and Time, Section 43.” Tr. Tho-
mas Sheehan. Listening 12, 3, Fall 1977.
“The Thomist Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.” [Misleading title
of a partial translation of “Der Bourgeois und die Religiösen
Mächte.”] Tr. Gertrude Neuwith. Sociological Analysis, 25 1964.
“Toward a Stratification of the Emotional Life.” Tr. Daniel O’Connor.
In Readings in Existential Phenomenology. Ed. Nathaniel Lawrence
and Daniel O’Connor. Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1967.
“Sociology and the Study and Formulation of Weltanschauung.” Tr.
R.C. Speirs. in Max Weber’s “Science as a Vocation.” Ed. Peter
Lassman and Irving Velody with Herminio Martins. London, 1989.
“On the Tragic.” Tr. Bernard Stambler. Cross Currents 4 (1954). Reprinted
in: Tragedy: Vision and Form. Ed. R.W. Corrigan. San Francisco, n.d.
“Max Weber’s Exclusion of Philosophy (on the Psychology and So-
ciology of Nominalist Thought. Tr. R.C. Speirs. in Max Weber’s
“Science as a Vocation.” Ed. Peter Lassman and Irving Velody with
Herminio Martins. London, 1989.
Chapter One
Introduction
A ttempts to introduce philosophical readers into contemporary

European thinking are still few in number. This is primarily due
to the absence of translations of the works as well as competent and
detailed presentations on the thoughts of Europe’s outstanding phi-
losophers. The reader studying this presentation of the main ideas of
Max Scheler will soon find out how far removed contemporary Eu-
ropean and American philosophy are, and that a greater exchange of
philosophical ideas on both sides of the Atlantic is, indeed, urgent.
The influence of Husserl’s phenomenology has for some time now
revolutionized European philosophy in that practically no thinker of
rank can be understood without it, while on the other hand phe-
nomenological investigations in the United States have only some
decades ago become a subject of recognition and earnest concern.
Roughly speaking, it was during the first three decades of this cen-
tury that the foundation of contemporary European philosophy were
laid by three German thinkers: Husserl (phenomenology), Scheler
(Philosophy of Man), and Heidegger (Ontology of Dasein). Their
influence is substantial in all later philosophic development. There
can be no doubt that Max Scheler is the most versatile and compre-
hensive thinker of contemporary philosophy. The wide scope of sub-
jects he treated encompasses ethics, philosophy of religion, the foun-
dation of biology, psychology, metaphysics, theory of cognition and
perception, Buddhism, education, culture, philosophy of history, the
sociology of metaphysics, religion, and science, pragmatism, capital-
ism, the sense of suffering, to mention only a few. Besides, Scheler
was always interested in the treatment of specific subjects such as
love, death, awe, shame, the emancipation of women, national ideas
of great nations, western and eastern Christianity, the cultural re-
edification of Europe, the psychology of nations, repentance, humil-
ity, and many others. But throughout all these studies his philosophy
is directed towards two major objectives: the determination of man’s
place in nature and the determination of the ens a se (as primordial
source of being) in both philosophy and religion.
Scheler’s extreme versatility and multi-dimensional thoughts raise
at once the question of whether one can trace a golden thread of
2 Manfred S. Frings Max Scheler
continuity throughout this immense plenitude of subjects and fields

he covered, or if his thinking presents itself as a unity at all. As to the
first part of the question, there is one subject in which ultimately all
of Scheler’s thoughts focus: Man. He writes in April, 1928, a few
weeks before his sudden death: “The question: What is the human
being, what is its position in being? have occupied me much more
than any other philosophical question since I had become aware of
my philosophical consciousness.” As to the second part of the ques-
tion, we are confronted with two facts. Scheler died unexpectedly in
1928 of a heart attack, only 54 years of age. He had taught at Jena,
Munich, and from 1919 on at the University of Cologne. Many
manuscripts of his Cologne period have been published, and are con-
tained in the “Nachlass” volumes of the Gesammelte Werke, which
consist of 15 volumes, published by Bouvier Verlag, Bonn, Germany.
Second, Scheler repeatedly referred to three major comprehensive
works on which he was working: 1. Philosophical Anthropology, 2.
Metaphysics, and 3. Theory of Cognition (Erkenntnistheorie). It is safe
to assume that these three volumes, together with his Formalismus in
der Ethik und die Materiale Wertethik, would have constituted the
pillars of Max Scheler’s philosophy, if he had not been prevented
from finishing these by his all too early death.
But we do have many links to his dimensions of thought by care-
fully reading all that has been thus far published. The contexts of
many respective footnotes give us clues of the depth and nature of his
thoughts and the wide scope of his interests, ranging from biology to
atomic physics, from sociology, animal psychology, and theories of
drives, to theology, medical science and history. All this almost unbe-
lievably wide and profound knowledge would have been the basis of
his Philosophical Anthropology. We are fortunate, however, that Scheler
published Man’s Place in Nature as a brief summary of what he was
planning to cover in this work.
Connected with his early death is the fact that, if one looks over
the entirety of contemporary European philosophy, one cannot help
having the impression that Scheler stands somewhat in the back-
ground of a Heidegger, Jaspers, or Marcel. Phenomenology, Existen-
tialism (in France), and Ontology of Dasein (in Germany), are pres-
ently the foremost fields of philosophic discussion. Scheler’s reputa-
tion and fame, especially in America, is not less known because of
the quality of his work, but because of two technical reasons: first,
Chapter 1 Introduction 3
his unfinished work, and second, the suppression of his work by the
Nazi-Labor Party during 1933–1945 (Scheler’s mother was Jewish,
his father Protestant, he himself an independent Catholic convert).
Only after 1945 was there started a genuine rediscovery of Scheler in
Germany and elsewhere. Max Scheler, as a person, is the sworn advo-
cate of man’s individual freedom, the absoluteness of certain values,
and the eternal in man. This raises at once the question of Scheler’s
place within contemporary philosophy as a whole, to which we can
refer here only in brief. In most of the outlines of the history of con-
temporary thought he is regarded as a follower of Husserl (since he
was the first to apply phenomenology in practice) and as a forerun-
ner of ontology of Dasein. There can be no doubt that Scheler does
have this intermediary place between Husserl and Heidegger from a
historical viewpoint of contemporary philosophy, although Husserl,
Scheler, and Heidegger knew each other personally and produced
many of their influential works roughly in the same period of time
(1900–1927). Anyone familiar with Husserl’s phenomenology will
easily see Scheler’s few attachments to Husserl as well as Scheler’s
many deviations from him as to phenomenological procedures. How-
ever, it requires an intense study as a special subject, of Scheler’s own
works to establish him as a forerunner of the Philosophy of Dasein.
There exist beyond any question passages in Scheler’s writings that,
although the term Existenz (Da-sein) is not used, remind one of the
existential atmosphere that started to arise in Germany during the
twenties. Also Scheler envisages mankind in its ontic loneliness and
existential uniqueness (V, 103-04), and it is mostly the notion of the
person, underlying the greater part of his thinking as we shall see, that
reminds us of Da-sein in its unobjectifiability and ontic significance,
and moreover it is his notion of Schicksal (cum grano salis: destiny)
as Spielraum (i.e., ontological scope), within whose structure man’s moral
environment constitutes itself continuously, and into which man acts
out his factual life as a historical being, which has its relevance to Dasein.
As soon as Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit was published in the spring of
1927, Heidegger sent a copy of this fundamental work of contempo-
rary thought to Max Scheler in Cologne, who immediately set out to
study its problematic. Scheler was one of the very few, if not the only
philosopher at that time, Heidegger told me, who recognized the
importance of Sein and Zeit. He was especially interested in the prob-
lematic of Da-sein, Temporality, and Death, and Scheler continued
to be occupied with Heidegger’s philosophical breakthrough until

his sudden death. He invited Heidegger to give a speech to the Kant-
Gesellschaft at the University of Cologne in the fall semester of 1927–
1928, where Heidegger lectured on Kant’s Schematism of the Cri-
tique of Pure Reason. It was on this occasion that the two philoso-
phers met for the last time. During three days of discussions at Scheler’s
home, they exchanged their ideas in detail on Sein und Zeit as well as
Scheler’s views on phenomenology. Scheler conceived Sein und Zeit
as the highest platform and the endpoint of metaphysical questions
in contrast to Heidegger, who conceived Sein und Zeit as a starting
point for a new way of thinking. According to Scheler’s wife’s state-
ment, made to Heidegger in later years, the copy of Sein und Zeit,
which Scheler used during his studies on it, is full of remarks and
notes. Scheler had the intention of dealing with Sein und Zeit in
detail in part 5 of his treatise entitled: Idealismus—Realismus. His
unexpected death prevented him from so doing. But the manuscripts
were posthumously published in vol. IX of the German Collected
edition. Conversely, Heidegger maintained a great interest in Scheler’s
Philosophical Anthropology and intended to participate in the editions
of posthumous works. Political differences between Scheler’s widow
and Heidegger had made this impossible by 1933.
There can be no question that Scheler’s philosophy would have
evidenced new impetus through Sein und Zeit in his planned works,
and perhaps his ideas as a whole cannot be adequately evaluated with-
out a detailed investigation into the relation he had to the problem-
atic of Sein und Zeit. I have contributed to this effect in Person und
Dasein (1969). It is of extreme importance that in future research
Scheler’s ideas in this respect will be more exhibited. However, it is
beyond the scope of our presentation of his main ideas to do so. That
which distinguishes Scheler fundamentally from Husserl and
Heidegger are his multilateral interests and thoughts, the stress on
the phenomenological exhibition of the alogical (emotional) spheres
of man and, especially, his continuous occupation with the ultimate
source of all intellectual and voluntary powers of man: love. The ques-
tion of the ontic determination of the dark urge of life, understood
as an “X” getting beyond itself up to its manifestations of spiritual
and divine love — all closely connected with his Non-Formal Ethics
of Values — gives Scheler a unique place in contemporary thinking.
Naturally, he dealt with a great number of notions of man: man as a
historical being, as a dead end of evolution (no further development

of the cortex), as “homo faber,” as a being with God, just to mention
a few. But ultimately he conceived man as ens amans, who, by way of
love, breaks through the biological limits of his being to reach out for
that which is in its whatness. Thus, he rejected all previous defini-
tions of man on the grounds that they failed to conceive man in this
his ultimate alogical power. There appears no doubt that Scheler’s
notion of “Dasein” would have contained the phenomenon of love in
man. For Heidegger’s notions of on-the-way-to, or as being-unto-death,
or as being-in-the-world are compatible with Scheler’s notion of love.
It is love, for Scheler, which is the foundation of all being-in-the-
world and the relation to death: “Suffering and death have their
origin…in love. They would not exist without love” (VI, 45).
The versatility of Scheler makes it rather difficult to relate him
historically to definite sources. He argues with and sharply against
Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibnitz, Kant, and Nietzsche.
His work is, in the true sense, genuinely autonomous, and consciously
without much concern for the philosophy of the past. This is partly
because he applied (and extended) phenomenology first in his ethics
and in a number of essays. His only direct relation to any one thinker
is, therefore, Husserl. But the immediate Schau des Wesenhaften, the
prelogical envisagement of whatness, is for Scheler the a priori of all
philosophical investigation, which brings out pure facts before the
possibility of applications of observation and procedures. The
asymbolic intuition (Schau) of the phenomenological fact is distin-
guished from natural facts (based on sense knowledge) and scientific
facts (expressed in symbols) by the very absence of elements of sensa-
tion and symbols.
Reading Scheler’s works, one has the impression that he often could
not master the avalanches of thought that came over him. Scheler
was a restless person and an intense thinker. His style is not infre-
quently unpolished, his German sentence structure often confusing
and complicated. He says of himself “that he has never managed to
form a whole sentence, but only words or pictures.” (Lützeler, Zu
Max Scheler’s Persönlichkeit 414; Hessen, Max Scheler, 81). He was
abundant in ideas and the world of his thoughts was “the testimony
of a great spirit, lavishly given to him by God” (von Hildebrand).
Ortega y Gasset refers to Scheler’s spirit most adequately in his eu-
logy: “Characteristic of his work is the most curious team of quali-
ties: clarity and disorder.” It is not surprising, therefore, that some

inaccuracies, unclear formulations, and false references have slipped
from Scheler’s pen as the result of an abounding vitality and sensi-
tiveness even for the most hidden vibrations of human emotions and
feelings.
Despite the aphoristic versatility which mark Scheler’s work from a
methodological viewpoint, it is a commonly agreed upon practice to
distinguish in his productivity three periods, which follow from the
writings themselves. The first period ends about 1910, in which he
was primarily occupied with Kant and Rudolf Eucken, who was his
teacher at Jena. He is also increasingly interested during this first
period in Nietzsche, Dilthey, and Bergson. Besides his Dissertation
and Habilitation (the latter is something like a second doctoral dis-
sertation required in German universities to receive the rank of
“Dozent,” corresponding to something like associate professor in
America), the following are the main works of this period: Das
Ressentiment und Moralisches Werturteil, Versuche einer Philosophie des
Lebens, Zur Rehabilitierung der Tugend, and some treatises in vol. X
(Nachlass), as well as other works published in vol. I. In his second
period of productivity, 1910–1921, Scheler wrote the following ma-
jor works: Zur Phänomenologie und Theorie der Sympathiegefühle und
Von Liebe und Hass (2nd ed. as “Wesen und Formen der Sympathie”),
Der Formalismus in der Ethik und die Materiale Wertethik, Vom Ewigen
im Menschen, and some treatises of vol. X. This period is character-
ized by applied phenomenology. Scheler’s last period shows an in-
creased tendency to emphasize the notion of “Drang” and “Trieb”
(urge and drive). In many respects, Scheler breaks with previous opin-
ions, especially with respect to religion. In the preface of Die
Wissensformen und die Gesellschaft, 1925, he speaks of deep perturba-
tions (Erschütterungen) in his religious ideas, which have developed
during the past 5 years, and in the preface to the third edition of the
Formalismus, 1926, he speaks of fundamental changes of opinion in
the question of absolute being, emphasizing that one could no longer
call him a theist in the traditional sense of that term. Many other
valuable signs and hints to his change of thought during this period
are contained in Scheler’s speech: Die Formen des Wissens und die
Bildung (IX, 73-182, esp. footnotes), and Die Stellung des Menschen
im Kosmos. In Philosophische Weltanschauung he has reached a point
of almost daring formulations of a dynamic panentheism, in which
the spirit, by itself impotent (ohnmächtiger Geist), and the strong urge
(i.e., Drang, a word for which there is no adequate English term) are
the two constituting factors in man and God, man becoming the
place of deification.
At the end of his life, Scheler gave us advice on how to proceed in
studying the different stages of the development of his theories on
man (IX, 9) and lists the following treatises and works, to which we
have given special attention in integrating them into our presenta-
tion of his philosophy: 1. Zur Idee des Menschen, Das Ressentiment im
Aufbau der Moralen (III, 33-147); 2. Respective chapters in: Der
Formalismus in der Ethik und die Materiale Wertethik (II); Wesen und
Formen der Sympathie (VII); 3. Mensch und Geschichte (IX, 120-44);
Die Wissensformen and die Gesellschaft (VIII); 4. Die Formen des Wissens
and die Bildung (IX, 85-119); Der Mensch im Zeitalter des Ausgleichs
(IX, 145-70).
Philosophical Anthropology, Scheler’s primary concern, deals with
the analysis of the question: What is man? It is for Scheler the philo-
sophical discipline which is the foundation for all sciences having
man as their object (e.g., biology, medicine, characterology, psychol-
ogy, ethnology, sociology, history, etc.) and which deals with the meta-
physical, psychic, physical, and spiritual origin of man, the funda-
mental directions and laws of his biological, psychic, social, and his-
torical development, as well as with the determination of man’s vital,
physical, psychic, and spiritual spheres (individual spirit, group-spirit,
community–spirit, culture-spirit, i.e., Kulturgeist). Kant already held
(Logic) that all philosophical problems ultimately meet in this ques-
tion: “What is man?” Roughly speaking, for some 150 years Euro-
pean philosophy has progressively concentrated more and more upon
this question. The anthropologistic tendency of European philoso-
phy becomes increasingly obvious in the first part of this century.
The approach different authors take naturally depends largely on their
fundamental metaphysical positions, e.g., Heidegger, Scheler, or in
the 19th century, Nietzsche, Schelling and Hegel. Man is not any-
more understood (i.e., he does not anymore understand himself ) as
a being above reality, or as a being, who, because of his reason, has
the possibility to explain and master reality as an object, but he con-
ceives himself — first outspokenly in Nietzsche — as a part of and in
nature in the entirety of his intellectual, psychic, and especially emo-
tional being. European metaphysics has turned out to be meta-
anthropologistic. The question: what is man? has for this reason a

different sense than that of traditional philosophy of pre-Kantian
times, where man is conceived as a being above, or opposite nature,
viz. as soul, substance, res cogitans, ego, rational animal, or conscious-
ness-soul. The determination of the unity of body and soul, not their
heterogeneous difference, is the goal: Nietzsche’s profound word that
man does not have a body but that he is body became understood in
its original sense. European philosophy has made a turn away from
pre-Kantian notions of man, which had stressed, one-sidedly, man’s
intellect. A genuine evaluation of man’s vital spheres has become pos-
sible and a wide range of philosophical research as well as that of
respective sciences has opened itself up. The being of man in its whole-
ness, his ontic place within the structure of reality, and his personal,
social, and historical way of “to exist” are questions of primary inter-
est. The starting point of this anthropologistic philosophy is the con-
crete experience-of-self in finite man, and the question of the im-
mortality of a soul-substance has been more or less abandoned.
It is of importance to note that the notion of “experience”
(Erfahrung) implies a wider range of meaning than that of the natu-
ral sciences. Psychological, emotional, social, historical experience,
awareness-of-self, or “thou-I,” and “I-thou” experience as “with-world’
(Mitwelt), and the different kinds of environment of man and ani-
mals are some manifestations of experience that are far beyond scien-
tific measurable “reality.” But, however close the contacts are with
respective natural sciences, such as biology, physiology, medical sci-
ence, etc., contemporary European philosophy, as a whole, does not
take scientific results and facts as an unconditional basis for the de-
termination of a “true” or “false.” Rather, philosophy is in conjunc-
tion with science, and not under its autonomy. Hence, contempo-
rary European philosophy is not overly preoccupied with logic,
methodology, and scientific analyses of physical reality. Since their
object is not measurable reality, philosophical methods cannot be
derived from the sciences. As Scheler puts it: a scientific philosophy
is ein Umding (V, 77). Metaphysical reasoning is of a different nature
than scientific reasoning. In short, European philosophy has turned
from Aristotle’s animal rationale, from Descartes’ cogito, and Kant’s
transcendental apperception to the vivo of man. It is this philosophical
atmosphere within which we have to come to an understanding of
Scheler’s thinking. The scope of his philosophy allows many ap-
proaches to our goal. We choose to set out with a presentation of his

main ideas on the structure of the bio-psychic world and the prob-
lem of the ontological place of life. Scheler touched on these subjects
only peripherally in not many passages scattered throughout his work.
But we will, nevertheless, gain a platform for the further analyses of
the “X” called man, existing within this structure.
Chapter Two
On the Bio-Psychic World
The Stratification of Psycho-physical Being and the Being of the Spirit
T hat which we call alive is characterized by self-motion, self-

differentiation and self-limitation. Living beings not only pos-
sess connections with objects outside themselves but they have al-
ways what Scheler calls inwardness, Innesein, a state of having them-
selves, a state of being to themselves. The phenomenon of life is a
psychic way of being-self, in contrast to inanimate nature. This in-
wardness manifests itself, however, in different strata of life in differ-
ent ways. The lowest strata of psychic being is the presence of an
unspecified, undifferentiated, blind “urge-forward ” (Drang). It is com-
pletely consciousless and, therefore, without inner or outer sensa-
tion. This urge reveals itself as a slow “towards” and “away-from”
(e.g., towards light) and it must first be attributed to plant-life. It is
at the same time the “vapor” (Dampf) which is at the bottom of all
life, driving forward all life up to its highest manifestations. The only
motion to be met here is the motion of growth (which characterizes
all life), connected with expression, such as “weak,” “luxuriant,”
“strong,” “poor.” The physiognomy and pathognomy of inner states
(Innesein) is of essential significance in the phenomenon of life. Ex-
pression becomes more complex with the increase of the complexity
of inner states in the higher forms of life, for instance, the sorrow-
expression already to be found in higher animals, or the extremely
enigmatic, spontaneous and meta-conscious “laughter” or “smile” of
human beings. A reason for the absence of sensations is the lack of a
(nerve) center, to which instant states of organs can be reported back
so that a modification of motion or states in subsequent moments
can take place due to such a report (Rückmeldung). As a consequence
of the absence of sensation and a center in living beings of this type,
there is no ability to “learn,” which must be attributed already to the
lowest animal-forms. In this urge, the drives of nutrition, growth,
and propagation are not yet differentiated, but are welded together
as a blind forward. We call this urge blind because it is not directed to
any specific components of environment, but only to an unspecified
whole in the form of upward-to (light) or downward-to (earth). Plants
show only a reactive self-motion with regard to the intensity of light,

but not yet to specific colors. Nor does a plant choose its nourish-
ment, for which there is no reason because it nourishes chiefly from
inorganic matter which is everywhere present in its direct environ-
ment. Also, choice for the mate is excluded in this undifferentiated
life-urge. The absence of spontaneous locomotion, sensation, speci-
fied drives (as disintegrated urge), and of a nerve center, then, are as
a whole deficiencies within the ontic presence of urge. But what is
the ontological place of urge in nature? We are here confined to only
a small number of references in Scheler’s work, for he intended to
treat this question in detail only in his Metaphysics. The ultimate
elements of the inorganic world can only be understood and explained
in terms of the dynamic theory of matter, as it is presented by mod-
ern physics. Scheler says: “Mass, electron, (positive and negative) is
and remains a function of motion” (Bewegungs-funktion, VIII, 313).
The dynamic theory of matter, already anticipated by Leibnitz, Kant,
and E. von Hartmann, does away with any kind of assumption of an
extended substance-matter (VIII, 147). Extended matter is only a
manifestation of forces. It is interesting to note that Scheler believes
that the dynamic theory of matter is very much in agreement with
the philosophical theory according to which being (Realsein) is noth-
ing else but resistance-being (Widerständigsein) against vital acts and,
at the same time, something given which antecedes everything else
given in a body, as are duration, structure, color, etc. The forces that
underlie physical appearance are not linked to space and time coor-
dinates. Their starting point (Ausgangspunkt) is trans-spacious and
trans-temporal, because they explain the how of appearances in space
and time. Along with Scheler’s considerations of the dynamic theory
of matter, in which he very much follows Hermann Weyl (Was ist
Materie? Naturwissenschaften, 12. Jahrg.), he stresses the impossibil-
ity of Aristotle’s prote hyle, because Aristotle understood matter as
independent from force. Matter had, therefore, an absolute exist-
ence, both as secondary matter and as principle of extension and
individuation (VIII, 149). Scheler’s metaphysical considerations on
life’s place in nature rest on the notion of Drang or Alleben (All-Life),
which is the fundamentally “real.” It is a life-agent determining “vital
centers” and positing “force-centers.” All-life differentiates itself in
bundles, bringing about transcendent objective appearances, i.e.,
phantasmic images of both organisms and inorganic bodies. Hence
Chapter 2 On the Bio-Psychic World 13
there is, strictly speaking, for Scheler no dualism between organic

life and inorganic nature, because both are permeated, as it were, by
this “Drang.” We may graph this in the following way:
Drang
force-centers vital centers
inorganic nature organic nature
In contrast to the centers of force in inanimate nature, vital centers

are those of spontaneous motion. They have rhythm in growth within
their respective environmental world. The low strata of the urge-
forward does not have a border against matter. Rather, it follows that
force centers and vital centers are different exhibitions of the “Drang,”
as that which posits all reality.
On the levels of life, higher in the order of plant life, the vapor of
the urge-forward — as undifferentiated energy of growth reaching
out ecstatically into a neutral, unspecified environment — is modi-
fied by sensation, spontaneous locomotion, distinct drives, and in-
stincts, which begin to untie the living being from its vegetative level.
Sensation, as a report of an organ to a nerve center, modifies subse-
quent motion in the living being. This is a first primitive experience
of resistance against an “outside,” which is continuously reported
back to the nerve-center of the organism, and this resistance-experi-
ence awakens first forms of awareness. Sense experience, for Scheler,
always corresponds to the multitude of different spontaneous mo-
tions a living being can perform. Whereas in plant life the energy of
growth (Drang) exists in terms of a neutral and blind inwardness
(Innesein), it now enters into a stage of a re-flexio, in which states of
the organs become present to the living being. This entails, within
this higher level of life, a communal-togetherness-experience with
other living beings. The plant is, in contrast to this, totally numb, as
are all animals in their state of sleep, the closest state to the blind
urge animals can have. That which mostly characterizes the second
form of life are the instincts as abilities (to be sharply distinguished
from intellect) to emotively pre-feel (vorfühlen) values of life con-
cerning something forthcoming (X, 147). Scheler avoids definitions
of instinct and restricts himself only to descriptive analysis (IX, 17).

The instinct, as a specified urge, is directed to specific parts of the
environment (Umwelt), and takes a rhythmic course, e.g., the sex
instinct in animals. The instinct is still something like half-blind,
because it breaks through even if we know that the animal cannot
have met with a respective situation before. The animal is pushed by
it and cannot act against it. The instinctive disposition and organiza-
tion is, therefore, fixed and static, and it can remain latent without
coming forth for quite some time after birth. Its preserving character
pertains to the animal itself, to the whole species, and to other living
beings, with which an animal shares a life community (e.g., insects
and birds fertilizing plants). As an inborn hereditary disposition, it
still excludes the necessity of “learning.” Instinct does not originate
in sense-experience for Scheler, but is only stimulated (ausgelöst) by it
(IX, 19). The instinctive disposition determines all that of which an
animal may have a sensation, and the animal is governed, so to speak,
by the relation instincts have to the respective structure of environ-
ment. Therefore, the animal is enclosed in a specific environment. In
summary, then, Scheler gives the following characteristics of instinct:
1. Instinct takes a rhythmic, fixated, and unchangeable course.
2. Instinct serves the species, and is both inborn and hereditary.
3. It does not originate in sense-experience, but is only released by
sense-experience.
The two low forms of manifestation of life (urge and instinct) are
followed by “associative memory” and “practical intelligence.” The
former shows evidence of experiencing (learning), practicing, and
formation of habits. On this level, higher animals begin to free them-
selves from the bonds of the rigid structure of an instinctively deter-
mined environment. The instinct begins here to “disintegrate” and
gives a primitive possibility for more dimensions of life. With the
elementary beginnings of overcoming a fixed environment by primi-
tive adjusting to new situations nature has supplied correctives for
inevitable dangers, stemming from this very low kind of disconnec-
tion from instinct-guided life, namely, practical intelligence, towards
which Scheler has devoted many pages throughout his work. Practi-
cal intelligence is met in higher animals as a low form of insight and
of senseful mastering environment-alien situations, without any pre-
vious practicing or attempts. Scheler is, in this regard, in complete
agreement with Wolfgang Köhler’s animal tests made on Teneriffa
(IX, 28-29). We find on this level of life cunning, appearance of choice

(between mates) as the beginning of eros, a kind of prudence
(Klugheit), and a sense for advantage.
The question arises as to where the difference between man and
the higher animal is to be seen. Scheler rejects two positions in this
respect, namely, the one according to which animals do not have
practical intelligence at all, and the position which holds that man is
only an evolutionary prolongation of animality (Darwin) or a tool-
animal (Bergson’s “homo faber”) having the same powers as animals,
but only of higher complexity, and in which spiritual (geistige) and
psychic spheres are ultimately rooted in sense-experience and drives.
For Scheler, the essential difference between animal and man is the
presence of spirit (Geist), which makes human life highly indepen-
dent of drives, and independent of attachment to environment (in
strict contrast to the basically environment-stricken animal). This is
what Scheler calls “weltoffen,” world-open. The world of man is a
world of objects (Gegen-stände) in their thisness, So-sein. This means
to say that things of the animal environment are neutral because they
are not conceived as this or that specific thing (absence of words) but
they are only perceived as the different senses allow them to be expe-
rienced (high, low, or smooth, as sensed by the sense of touch). But
things of man’s world are objectified as this or that different thing,
and not by way of sense experience. Spirit has the pure So-sein of the
object, transcending it from drive and instinct. Scheler applies the
following graphs for this essential difference between animal and man
(IX, 33):
A E
The animal (A) lives within its environment, having only such
environment as is relative to the organization, constitution, and
natural disposition of its organism. For example, a cat has to catch a
mouse no matter if the cat is hungry or not, because the mouse plays
always a fixated role in the cat-world which the cat cannot transcend.
Man’s spirit, however, transcends any environment to an “open” world,
and is aware of having world, independently of the subjection to
drives and their impulses. Thus, man’s ( M ) world (W ) is unlimit-
edly “open”:
M W
The world of spirit is an objectified world as So-sein, i.e., the cor-

relates of spirit are these specific things, whereas the correlates of
animal drives and instincts form a neutral “X” of a fixed environ-
ment (Umwelt). The capacity of spirit implies also objectivation of
the self, and it follows from the foregoing that plant-life possesses
only a neutral inwardness of urge, animal life possesses awareness in
terms of sense-reports to a nerve center, i.e., the animal is given to
itself “a second time,” and man possesses consciousness of world and
of self, being given “a third time.” Thus, we can extend Scheler’s
graphs by the following symbols: (in which “S” is spirit, and “W” is
world):
S W
All activities of animals start from the physiological and psychologi-

cal organization and disposition of their nerve center. Instincts and
drives determine that which is given to animals: a specific environment
in which they remain. The environment of different species can be
very different (e.g., fish and birds), but they can also have many
overlappings. However, everything within the environment of a spe-
cies has its specific (arttypische) function. For instance, a tree has a
constant function in the life of a deer (rut) and in the life of a cat
(means of escape). The role of the tree is here fixed and static through-
out the evolutionary development of a species. This fixated environ-
ment (Umwelt) implies that the animal cannot reach outside its envi-
ronmental structure, and, consequently, anything outside it is not
given to the animal. The essential difference between man and ani-
mal is, then, ontological: spirit is opposite to life (entgegengesetztes
Prinzip, IX, 31), because spirit is not environment-stricken. This is
not only clear when we consider that man forms his own environ-
ment in social life and history as well as in using artificial means to
change it for better adjustment and comfort, but also that he can
know one object in different fashions. For example, a rock is com-
prehended by an artist from an aesthetic aspect, whereas it may have
very different meanings for a hunter or a geologist. This dynamic
thisness of objects within mankind is of extreme ontological signifi-
cance in the determination of specific differences between man and
animal. The thing is known to man without the interference of drives
as well as sense functions. Spirit is the elevation to world-openness
and the world’s presence. It is objectivation. Spirit elevates man above

world and above himself (as an organic being). From this follows one
of Scheler’s tenets which we encounter throughout his works: Since
all things, including man himself, are raised to objectivation, spirit
itself cannot be part of this objectified world, nor can it be an object
itself (in the sense of thing-object), because spiritual being is the act
of making a thing into an object, an act of raising world (in space and
time) to objectivation. Spirit, then, cannot have its foundation or
source in this objective world, but only in the primordial principle of
the cosmos (Urgrund) itself. As we shall see later, the center of the
spirit is that which Scheler calls person, an ontic sphere, which in
terms of individualizing acts constitutes each individual spirit (as a
person), and which in terms of social acts, constitutes the ontic rela-
tion to the “other” in different strata and forms of sociation, as mass,
communities of life, society, etc., that all have their foundation in an
absolute spiritual center as an absolute person.
Scheler attributes to spirit as Sachlichkeit, i.e., determinability by
the thisness or thatness of things, three determinations (IX, 100):
1. Spirit is determinability by the content (Gehalt) of a thing, in
contrast to any form of determination by instincts, drives or organic
states.
2. Spirit is directed towards world in form of love (without desire
— begierdefrei).
3. Its fundamental determination is the capacity to differentiate
essence (Was-sein) from existence (Dasein).
In the latter function of spirit the environmental drive relations are
cut, making insight possible. The absence of organically caused im-
pressions of extant things reveals the pure essence of things (Was-sein).
Such insights remain valid throughout all fortuitous objects and ex-
emplifications (V, 97; IX, 100). Knowledge of essence (Was-sein) is,
therefore, a priori and Scheler states emphatically: “He who denies a
priori knowledge in man makes him, without knowing it, an animal”
(IX, 100).
Human spirit exists in the specific act of revealing essence (Was-
sein), which Scheler calls ideation (Ideierung). He furnishes an ex-
ample for that which he means by this act (IX, 40). He says that
having pains in one’s arm can be an object for a question regarding
the cause and removal of the pain (Physiology, Psychology, Medical
Science). But this specific pain can also be an example of the fact that
this world reveals ontic manifestations of the phenomenon “pain,”

and the question of how it is at all possible that this world has this
phenomenon arises. Pain, under this aspect, is a correlate of an ideat-
ing act, which reaches out into the ontic structure of the world, i.e.,
beyond the limits of sensory perception and sensation and beyond
scientific observable and measurable reality. Possible knowledge of
structures of essence and essential properties of world is, in this case,
gained from one example of one world-region (organisms). Simi-
larly, the number three in mathematics is an independent object (as
threeness), disconnected from possible objects and practical applica-
tion. This disconnection is symbolized by “x,” ”y,” or “z,” etc. in
non-contradictory relations of non-sensory manifolds. Relational
insights that are valid for all possible worlds are a priori insights,
which in science are axioms, in philosophy, whose object is possible
cognition of absolute being, windows leading out to the absolute
(Fenster ins Absolute, Hegel).
The A Priori or Phenomenological Experience
Scheler’s concept of the a priori, which he explains in detail

in Der Formalismus in der Ethik und die Materiale Wertethik, II, A, B,
pp. 65-126, is in many respects a strong criticism against Kant, who
connected a priori knowledge with the formal, the spontaneity of
reason, universality, and necessity. The fundamental difference be-
tween Kant and Scheler is here that Kant identifies a priori knowl-
edge with a constant organization of reason, whereas Scheler holds
that reason is subject to historical change, and that only its ability to
have forms of thinking, intuition (Anschauung), and valuation, is con-
stant. In this, he is in agreement with Spengler: “Kant’s table of cat-
egories is only the table of categories of European thinking” (VIII,
62).
Ideation, as a specific act of spirit, is a cancellation of the reality of
objects, resulting in the comprehension of essence (Wesenserfassung).
Spirit is, then, a novum opposite drives, instincts and practical intel-
ligence. Spirit negates the real, and in so doing, reaches a priori es-
sence.
But what is a priori knowledge? “A priori we designate those
ideal units of meaning (Bedeutungseinheiten) and propositions which
become self-evident (zur Selbstgegebenheit kommen) by the content

(Gehalt) of an immediate intuition (Anschauung) in the absence of
any kind of positing (Setzung) of their thinking subjects and their
natural constitution, and in the absence of any kind of positing an
object to which they would be applicable” (II, 67). Since Scheler
explicitly states (IX, 67) that the difference between animal and man
is not that man has knowledge, but that he has a priori knowledge,
we have to explain the a priori in Scheler’s sense of the term.
Whatness (Was-sein, essence) is, in contrast to Kant, neither some-
thing individual nor universal (X, 396). The essence (Wesen) of red,
for example, is contained in the universal concept of red as well as in
every perceivable shade of this color. Universality and individuality
of red comes about only in the relation which “red” enters in the
objects in which its essence then appears. Essence is only universal if
it is identically found in different objects, and it is individual if it is
found in only one thing. Cognition of essences is gained in the ab-
sence of drive impulses or impressions based upon them. We must
point in this context to Scheler’s fundamental position that reality is
experienced as resistance within the vital sphere of man, to which we
will refer later in detail in our discussion of knowledge. But the “real”
of things, their existence, their being this or that now and here (Jetzt-
Hier-Sosein) given in sense knowledge, is pushed aside in cognition
of essence (Wesen): This is why cognition of essence can also be per-
formed in objects of phantasy. For instance, a painted animal renders
the essence-cognition of living being. But all this does not mean that
cognition of essence is independent of experience, although it is in-
dependent of induction and the quantity of experience made. Es-
sence precedes induction, observation, and measurement. It can be
obtained in one example, but once an essential cognition is gained,
e.g., the essence of life, such a cognition is valid for all fortuitous and
observable facts that fall under this essence, analogous to propositions
of mathematics giving necessary, ideal relations before nature is in-
vestigated in terms of observation and measurement. Scheler makes,
therefore, a strict distinction between the two German words Verstand
and Vernunft, i.e., understanding and reason. Understanding is the
capacity of an organism to adjust to new situations beyond innate
instincts and also associative memory, which to lesser degrees must
be attributed already to higher animals. A monkey, which uses a stick
as a prolongation of his arm to reach a fruit shows such a kind of
primitive intelligence. Thus as long as the instinct serves drives of life

(e.g., nourishment, and as long as intelligence is based on them as a
loose extension and able to meet unfamiliar situations successfully,
this display of intelligence is not specifically human, because man
possesses this low form of intelligence as do higher animals. In con-
trast to practical intelligence, reacting to stimulations of environ-
ment, reason performs a priori cognition of essence before applica-
tion to fortuitous facts and experience. Nevertheless, the a priori does
belong to that which is given, viz., to the sphere of facts (II, 71). A
proposition is only true if it finds its fulfillment within the cognition
of essence. For Scheler, as for Husserl, phenomenological experience
is, therefore, different from all other experience. Phenomenological
experience gives facts as they are, immediately, and not by means of
symbols. “Red” can be determined in many ways (II, 70): as the color
of this thing, as a wavelength or as the color that I see. In such cases
it remains an “X” of an equation, or an “X” of a context of condi-
tions. In phenomenological experience the totality of such symbols
finds its “fulfillment” as the red as such, as a fact of intuition
(Anschauung). Therefore, non-phenomenological experience is me-
diate, not telling us anything about the phenomenon as such, whereas
phenomenological experience is asymbolic and immanent experience,
i.e., intuitive in the respective act of experiencing (des Erfahrens);
non-phenomenological experience, then, only proceeds from such
pure facts of intuition. “A priori is everything in the given of intu-
ition which belongs to the pure what- and essence-sphere, i.e., the pri-
mordial notion (Inbegriff) of such essence-determinations
(Soseinsbestimmtheiten) of objects (in absence of modi of existence)
which as Sosein (thisness) are indefinable and which, for this reason,
are presupposed in every attempt to define them. Such essences are,
therefore, only ‘intuitive’” (erschaubar) (V, 196-97). All attempts to
define a priori essences result, therefore, in a circulus in definiendo (II,
69).
The ontic difference between man, as a spiritual being, and the
strata of animality is to be seen, then, in the detachment from envi-
ronment, which brings about open cognition of pure essence, whereas
the environment of animals is only relative to the natural disposition
of their organism. Spirit is a fundamental ontic novum. Scheler’s phi-
losophy is characterized by the tendency to stress the purification of
spirit, i.e., to cancel all factors which might disturb clear insight so
that genuine devotion to the world becomes possible. Husserl’s phe-

nomenology lacks this aspect of devotion to the world because, with
him, consciousness withdraws into its own spheres, in which Scheler
saw a remnant of the loveless, and almost inimical attitude towards
world, characteristic of Descartes and Kant. The preceding outline
of the cognition of essence, which necessarily lead us to some ab-
stract formulations, casts a first light on Scheler’s understanding of
Philosophy (V, 98): “Philosophy, in its nature, is strictly evident and
for all fortuitous being a priori valid insight, neither increasable nor
destructible by induction, into all essences and essential intercon-
nections (Wesenszusammenhänge) available to us in examples, that is,
in both the order and realm of levels in which they are in their rela-
tion to absolute being and its essence.”
Scheler’s unfinished theory of spirit, which states that spirit is self-
performance, being beyond the confines of nature, i.e., the capacity
to suspend the vital urge of life and the “X” which can cast an em-
phatic “no” to life so that man raises above life has, however, an al-
most incomprehensible inconsistency, when we realize, that Scheler
maintained at the end of his life that spirit, strictly speaking, is no
reality, that it is utterly without power, and that its effectiveness con-
sists only in the borrowing of energy from the urge of life, directing
it, as it were, to its own purposes. This is what Scheler called with
Freud sublimation, a guidance and direction of the stream of power,
furnished by organic impulse. Spirit, then, cannot act directly against
the low streams of vitality, but can only lure them into certain direc-
tions. However incompatible these last ideas of Scheler may be with
the former, any criticism against such inconsistency seems to be pres-
ently premature, because Scheler could not complete his Philosophische
Anthropologie in which he possibly would have furnished detailed
explanations. One has to await the publication of further manuscripts
in this respect (XII). Looking over Scheler’s works we find that the
number of inconsistencies increases after 1922, when he underwent
fundamental changes of his opinions relating to religion and meta-
physics. If he had been able to complete his planned comprehensive
works to which he made so many references, many of the inconsis-
tencies with which we are faced today undoubtedly would have been
clarified. Scheler died at a time when his restlessness and vitality had
reached a climax, caused, last but not least, by personal unfortunate
experiences. It is all too natural that religiously orientated writers like
Dietrich von Hildebrand and John M. Oesterreicher stress the

inconsistencies of Scheler’s later years, when he was in practical and
philosophical respects not in accord with the Catholic Church. But
the fact remains that Scheler’s works have come down to us as an
unfinished symphony, whose final movements alone would have con-
stituted the whole of the philosophy of the person Max Scheler. It is,
therefore, not justified to consider the threefold division of Scheler’s
development (-1912; -1922; -1928) to be adequate. Since there can-
not be any doubt that his Philosophische Anthropologie, Metaphysik,
and Erkenstnistheorie would have been milestones in his development,
the time from 1922 to 1928 should be considered only as a period of
transition to a more fixated and fundamental philosophical position.
Inadequate Definitions of Man and Their Origin
The preceding outline of Scheler’s few ideas of man as a spiritual

being, which are scattered throughout his works, will receive more
light from the following chapters, because it is not in Scheler’s sense
at all to conceive man only as a spiritual being, or to reduce essential
characteristics of man to one denominator: spirituality. The ap-
proaches and aspects under which Scheler incessantly tried to grasp
man as man form a totality. They are not only those of straight phi-
losophy, but they also take into consideration modern results of natural
sciences, sociology, history, psychology, and many other sciences. In
his entire development and history, man has proved to be a being of
extreme flexibility (Plastizität) (IX, 151; III, 175). Scheler consid-
ered it a great danger in philosophy to define man in terms of fixated
or narrow notions or to consider him only from one or two aspects.
This is for him an unfortunate fact in the history of philosophy. The
idea of animal rationale is much too narrow for him as to allow suffi-
cient elbow room to encompass man’s whole nature; the same holds
true concerning the homo faber idea (Bergson, Positivism), Nietzsche’s
dionysian man, man as disease of life (Panromanticism ), the Super-
Man, the homo sapiens (Linné), L’Homme Machine (La Mettrie),
the power-man of Machiavelli the libido man (Freud), man as social-
economic being (Marx) the fallen, created man. All these notions des-
ignate only single aspects from which man’s being is understood. None
of them is adequate to man’s extreme flexibility as well as the com-
plexity of the whole of his spiritual, social, voluntary and emotional

being. All these notions are, for Scheler, ideas of things, but man is
not a thing (IX, 151). He emphasizes the necessity of elbow room
(Raum) for the understanding of man as an ontic direction, and re-
jects those ideas of man formed from examples of human manifesta-
tion in world and history. In this regard he quotes L. v. Ranke: “Hu-
manity possesses within itself an infinite number of developments,
more miraculous and superb than one thinks.”
The multiplicity of metaphysical conceptions of man is, however,
not only due to too narrow philosophical approaches, but they also
reflect the social origin of metaphysical ideas in general. On the basis
of natural world-views of man such as that of the paradise, the social
natural state (Rousseau), the “bellum omnium contra omnes”
(Hobbes), etc., there have been built seven different kinds of knowl-
edge (Wissen) of culture, which in their sequence increase in artifici-
ality and degrees of constructiveness: 1) myth and saga, as primitive
forms of religious and metaphysical knowledge; 2) knowledge con-
tained in colloquial language (Volkssprache) investigated by W. v.
Humboldt; 3) religious knowledge in its different states of aggrega-
tion, ranging from piously vague intuition to dogmas of a church; 4)
fundamental forms of mystic knowledge; 5) philosophic-metaphysi-
cal knowledge; 6) positive knowledge of mathematics, natural sci-
ences, and historical sciences (Geisteswissenschaften) and 7) techno-
logical knowledge. Scheler holds that the more artificiality and con-
structiveness in all of these occurs, the faster the movement and
changes in history. For instance, positive religions move forward
(weiterbewegen) much slower than “philosophemes,” which on their
part retain their validity throughout the fast changes of historical
development and the even faster changes of science and technology.
The changes in the ideas of man have taken place on the back, as it
were, of human socio-historical development, a key idea of Scheler’s
sociology of knowledge (VIII, 60-69) and a major problem of his
Philosophical Anthropology.
Concerning Scheler’s demand for elbow room for the determination
of man’s whole being, it is not surprising that he devotes many pages
to scientific investigations pertaining to man, which naturally are far
removed from those of philosophy. Scheler did not seem to have been
concerned about possible contradictions between science and phi-
losophy in the understanding of man, and he was also not too con-
cerned about contradictions in general, as is testified by Dietrich von

Hildebrand (Die Menschheit am Scheidewege; Regensburg, 1955, pp.
622-39) and John M. Oesterreicher (Walls are Crumbling, London,
1952, pp. 232–88). Even Nicolai Hartmann writes that the world is
not without contradiction and that Scheler but mirrored it (Kant-
Studien, XXXIII, 1928). The liberal-mindedness and almost easy-
going attitude with which Scheler tried to incorporate results of dif-
ferent branches of knowledge into his philosophy is certainly an ex-
pression of his vitality. It is not surprising to find in Scheler’s works
the following sentence alongside man’s apriority, which distinguishes
man from the animal, “Man — homo naturalis — is an animal, a
small sidetrack, which life has taken within the class of vertebrates,
and here the primates. He did not develop from animals, but was
animal, is animal, and will perpetually remain an animal” (III, 190-
91).
Nevertheless, Scheler rejected the idea of the “sentimental monkey
romanticists” (III, 190), according to which man has developed from
the animal. For Scheler, man is a degenerated (krankgewordenes) ani-
mal, which is retarded by comparison to most akin fellow-animals
because of his lack of adjustability to nature; this being the reason for
his tendency to make nature adjust to himself (IX, 92). Phylogeneti-
cally, man’s nerve system, especially the cortex, is most striking. The
vital functions connected with this organ have developed within man
in a special manner. There are phylogenetic developments of the parts
of the brain which other animals do not have (e.g., the forehead im-
portant to his erect duct and processes of attention). His brain uses
tremendous amounts of energy from nourishment, heat, etc., and
thereby taking energy away from other organs. The human cortex
has recuperated and developed least by comparison to all other or-
gans. It is an organ in which all life process is, as it were, petrified
(erstarrt): Man is a “slave of the cortex.” In this most cerebral animal,
the relative longest lifetime of the individual is connected with the
shortest life-time of its species. It is the most transient animal, ex-
posed to an early end of its existence. This animal appears like an
episode in the vast history of nature, an episode which took its origin
in relatively recent times, and which will come to an end very soon
(IX, 94). The place of man in nature reminds us of a caterpillar,
hanging helplessly from the edge of a leaf, looking for a power to
help it get out of the mechanism of a terrible world around it (V,
105). But man is not only a blind alley of evolution in whom nature
has lost itself, so to speak. The irrefutable scientific facts of evolution
do not alone determine man’s ontic being. Any positivistic or prag-
matistic speculation holding that man is a special animal, having the
same powers as higher animals, but only in terms of more compli-
cated organization and stratification or which asserts that everything
psychic and spiritual in man is derivable from sense impressions and
animal drives, implying that the presence of culture is only an epi-
phenomenon of basic agents already to be encountered in lower ani-
mality, is an unfounded and one-sided conceptualization of man.
Human concepts and language are not refined tools replacing or-
ganic deficiencies of a homo faber whose mind is supposed to be a
mere by-product of nature substituting for such deficiencies. At the
side of scientific facts (biology) there is the scientifically unprovable
and irreducible fact of the presence of spirit in its autonomous law-
fulness (Gesetzlichkeit) and psychic spheres which all permit the be-
ing of man to be opposed to nature by way of self-awareness (and
reflection on this). It is the manifestation of spirit in human beingness
which makes possible man’s smile at and down upon nature (IX, 38).
Man is a citizen of two worlds, as Kant already saw in this connec-
tion (IX, 95). In human beingness there is the presence of love, val-
ues, and insight, as well as their relations, and these are not deducible
from man’s biological animality.
Chapter Three
Emotive Spheres
Feeling and Feeling-States
I t was pointed out that Scheler criticizes Kant’s a priori because he

connected it with the formal. Also Kant’s connection of the a pri-
ors with the rational is a point of heavy Schelerian criticism against
Kant. Scheler holds that the whole of spiritual life, not only cogni-
tion and thinking, possesses pure acts, independent of the psycho-
physical organization of man (II, 82), i.e., also the whole of the emo-
tional quality of spirit (feeling, preferring, loving, hating, etc.). In
this sphere there is a priori content which is not based on thinking,
and which ethics has to reveal independently from logic. Since an-
cient Greek philosophy, reason has always been referred only to its
logical quality. Kant, for instance, reduced pure will to practical rea-
son, and does not see the autonomy of acts of will in their own inde-
pendent lawfulness. Although it is true that the logical principle of
contradiction applies to this sphere (e.g., it is impossible to will and
not to will the same object) the logical principles as such are not
underlying emotional acts. Axioms of ethics and values are indepen-
dent of logical axioms, and if they happen to coincide it is only be-
cause of their phenomenologically common basis. Pure logic is at the
side of pure values (II, 83). Since Kant was hesitant in accepting an
independent realm of values, and since he failed to attribute the emo-
tional to reason, he conceived the entire world of feelings in terms of
sensibility, and excluded it from ethical investigation.
The traditional division of spirit in reason and sensibility
(Sinnlichkeit), dating from ancient Greek thinking to contemporary
philosophy, is for Scheler thoroughly inadequate, because the whole
of emotional life must on this premise be assigned to sensibility, in-
cluding love and hatred (II, 259). Whenever this had been done the
emotional had been understood either as dependent on the psycho-
physical organization of man or as a function of the psycho-physical
variations through the evolution and history of life. The question
whether there is at the bottom of the alogical emotional qualities of
spirit an original difference of act qualities (Rangverschiedenheiten der
Aktinbegriffe, II, 259) or if there are at the bottom of the alogical
autonomous acts of the kind as we know them in pure logic and

through which we comprehend its objects, has never been raised.
Such pure autonomous acts of the emotional are pure intuition
(Anschauung), feeling, pure loving, hating, pure striving and willing.
They are, as their logical equivalents, independent of man’s bodily
organization. In his demand for the apriority of the emotional Scheler
follows Blaise Pascal (II, 260). Pascal described this autonomous law-
fulness in feeling, loving, hating, etc., which is comparable to that of
formal logic, as “ordre du coeur,” “logique du coeur,” or as “le coeur
a ses raisons.” This “ordre du coeur” is not reducible to rational law-
fulness. Emotional experience, whose foundation is this “ordre du
coeur,” is not intellectually understandable as laws of logic are. The
intellect is as blind to it as is the ear to colors (II, 261). But this mode
of experience makes to us accessible an immutable order of its genu-
ine respective objects: values and their interconnections, and the
apriority of the emotional consists in such intentional objects. Be-
fore we can enter the problematic of values, the core of Scheler’s eth-
ics, we will have to discuss first the spheres of the emotional from
different aspects.
There exists, first of all, a language difficulty between English and
German, which we have to eliminate to avoid misunderstanding. The
word “feeling” is used in English in two different ways for which the
German language has two distinct terms. “Feeling” can refer to a
state of feeling, for instance, that of illness, health, weakness; and it
can refer to the feeling of this state, i.e., to feel a feeling, so that “to
feel” is intentional to such a feeling-state. To illustrate this we take
pain. Pain (as a state of feeling) can be endured, suffered, psychically
suppressed, or even enjoyed (algophilia). Pain, as a state, can be felt,
as these examples show, in different ways. Scheler uses for a state of
feeling the word Gefühl, and we shall refer to it in the following as
“feeling-state.” He uses for the modes of feeling-states the word “das
Fühlen,” which would be literally in English: “the feeling” (as a ger-
und). In German you can say therefore “Das Fühlen eines Gefühls,”
which is “to feel a feeling” in free translation, in literal translation:
“the feeling (gerund) of a feeling (noun).” To avoid misunderstand-
ing we use “feeling-state” and “feeling” in the above sense.
Already from this distinction of terms follows that feeling-states
refer to a content, and feelings to the function of the reception of this
content (II, 262). Feeling can be understood, but feeling-states can
Chapter 3 Emotive Spheres 29
only be stated (konstatierbar) (II, 263). The emotional world as a

whole reveals itself in Scheler’s phenomenological analysis in differ-
ent strata of depths. There exists a number of feeling-states which are
all individually different, and they are not only different intensities
of one or another feeling-state, as it might look upon first sight. Hap-
piness, blissfulness, cheerfulness, comfort or pleasure and their op-
posites (misery, despair, sadness, pain) are clearly different individual
states, for a human being can still be happy in the process of suffer-
ing pain, as in joyful (seliges) suffering. Feeling-states and feelings
participate in a fundamental stratification of emotional depths. A
grief-stricken face retains grief even in a smile. Feeling-states are con-
nected with lower strata of the ego, and they spread, as it were,
throughout the ego, thereby permeating and coloring smaller or larger
parts of contents of consciousness. Feelings break out from a lower
source of the ego, and the fulfillment of their intentional direction
renders satisfaction. The intentional direction can be specifically in-
dividual, it can be a family characteristic, it can be specifically racial,
and it even shows in certain types of feelings characteristics of an
historical epoch, culture, or religion. Scheler mentions in this regard
types of techniques, interpretation, and ethics which humanity has
developed with respect to ways of suffering (VI, 53-54). There are
many ways to meet suffering (Leid), e.g., by way of resignation, dis-
solution of self (Buddha), of heroic resistance (Antisthines), of denial
in form of metaphysical justification of evil (Leibnitz, Spinoza), in
form of auto-suggestion (Christian Science), of apathy (Stoa), of at-
araxia (Epicureans), of justification of suffering as punishment (Old
Testament), or in terms of blissful (seliges) suffering in martyrdom.
All such techniques to suffer may be classified in two groups: to feel
suffering so that it decreases or that it is annihilated. The first tech-
nique appears as an exterior fight against suffering. It is a planned
attempt to eliminate the source of suffering by resisting against evil
in the world. This approach is typical of all western civilization. The
second technique is that of suspending suffering from within in terms
of non-resistance and complete patience. This technique is typical of
eastern cultures, especially the Indian, and in less developed form,
also in the Stoa and in Christianity, in which it appears to higher
degrees in the orthodox church. It is also quite common in Russian
literature, especially in Dostoevski and Tolstoy. In other words, Scheler
understands the western type of suffering as an external heroic activ-
ity to diminish suffering, whereas in eastern culture (India) as an

inner-psychic dissolution. In the former there is active resistance
against suffering to master it, in the latter non-resistance and passive
heroism. He believes that Indian culture never had the specific Greek-
western category of “spirit” and that all Indian systems are forms of
biologism (IX, 48). The external (rational) attitude and the internal
(passive) one in West and East are two fundamental traits in both
cultures. This shows, for instance, in the two kinds of medical treat-
ment of the body. The organism is open to both outer influences
(physical, chemical) and inner influences (suggestion, hypnosis, psy-
chotherapy, psychic effects of changed social environment, etc.). Dis-
eases and ailments can have both organic and psychic causes and
their mixtures. Whereas Western science and medicine is occupied
primarily only with external means to diminish suffering in the ob-
ject-body itself, Indian medicine shows the opposite, also one-sidedly,
psychic approaches (IX, 60).
Feeling a feeling-state, then, is not merely an individual fortuitous
phenomenon, but this emotional capacity of man is underneath his-
torical and social development and change, and furthermore, it is
both immediately experienced as well as reflected upon and under-
stood. However, feeling-states are facts of emotional depths. Scheler
distinguishes four different strata of feeling-states which correspond
to the whole structure of human existence (II, 334; VI, 39 and 331):
1. Physical feeling-states (e.g., pain, sensation of tickling, itching,
etc.)
2. Body or vital feeling-states (e.g., weakness, anxiety, illness, health,
etc.)
3. Psychic feeling-states (e.g., sorrow, joy, sadness=Wehmut)
4. Spiritual feeling-states of person (e.g., blissfulness, despair, pangs
of conscience, Geborgenheit, peace of heart, rue, etc.)
Physical feeling-states are fundamentally different from the other
three states in that they are local and extended, on or in a body. As a
given state they are never a function or an act. Their extension in-
creases with intensity, not vice versa (II, 335). They are not subject to
fellow-feeling (Mitgefühl) or a reproduced feeling. Their form of be-
ing is exclusively in time and place in a body. They are subject to
willful removal, guidance, and arbitrary change. In their sequence
the four feeling-states lose their functions of will: vital feeling-states
already are much less changeable in practice, and again psychic feel-
ing-states are more removed from willful control, and in spiritual

feeling-states there is no willful control at all, because they originate
spontaneously out of the “sphere of person” itself. Physical feeling-
states are subject to possible narcosis, whereas a feeling-state of weak-
ness, strength, illness, or one of growing or declining life (feeling-states of
youth or age) cannot be willfully mastered or willfully produced in the
same way as physical feeling-states. The latter states are already much
dependent on individual and racial dispositions and constitutions.
Vital feeling-states are not restricted to a specific area in an organ-
ism, and in this sense they are extended. Although health, illness,
vigor, strength, etc., are not restricted to a specific organ, such feel-
ing-states are still organic in nature. Physical and vital feeling-states
belong, therefore, to all animals. Vital feeling-states spread through
the body, and the whole of body is given to us through them, which
makes them deeper in depth than physical feeling-states. All feeling-
states are tokens for values and disvalues. Whereas physical feeling-
states are tokens for values only with respect to the respective organ
in its relation to the whole of the body, the other three feeling-states
are, besides tokens of values and disvalues, also foretokens, prog-
nostications (Vorzeichen), warnings or summons for the execution of
reactions to avert forthcoming dangers. There is something given in
a vital feeling-state, in growth, decline, health, illness, pertaining to
life’s future and dangers (II, 342). This value-content pertains to our
life, to another’s, and to the environment (fresh air of a forest; power
of growth in young trees). On this level of vital feeling-states there is
a presence of fellow-feeling (Mitfühlen) and reproduced feeling, i.e.,
active participation for and in the other’s feeling-state. Thus, weak-
ness of a bird can be participated by us, whereas we can never place
ourselves into his physical feeling-state, since its local manifestation
in the bird’s organ cannot be “known.” The value content of a vital
feeling-state is present before any damages or advantages in a living
being occur. It contains values which are not yet given to us, and
only those values pertaining to what is forthcoming and not to the
present are given.
Very different and much lower in depth are psychic feeling-states,
because they are direct qualities of the ego. They are related to ob-
jects of environment including other persons, and can be shared.
Thus they differ from the former feeling-states which are only within
the subject itself. The feeling-state is here intentional and can be re-
felt (Gefühlserinnerung ; II, 342; VI, 332) and participated in

(mitgefühlt) in form of sympathy. Psychic feeling-states are genuinely
communicable. This is also true in a restricted sense for vital feeling-
states, but not for physical feeling-states. Psychic feeling-states can
hardly be changed through changing body conditions because they
are closely attached to imagined objects which are mostly independent
of the body and its conditions.
Spiritual or metaphysical feeling-states, finally, pour forth directly
from the core of the person (e.g., the feeling-state of pangs of con-
science ) and shine through the person and his life. They are in a
sense absolute, because we cannot be despaired or blissful (selig) about
something as we can be happy about something. Ultimately, one can
only be despaired or blissful, so that our whole world and person is
filled with this state. Blissfulness cannot be attained by technical pro-
duction of good works, nor can despair be eliminated through them
(II, 345). To have or not to have spiritual feeling-states is not de-
pendent on willful intentions at all. They appear only “on the back”
of comportment and never as a given content for purposeful willing
(VI, 332). Let it be only mentioned here that all four feeling-states
possess correlates-of-state (zuständliche Korrelate ; II, 125-26) for the
respective hierarchy and order of values, which we will discuss later
in detail. One of the most fruitful investigations of the emotional
spheres in man is Scheler’s analysis of inter-human emotional rela-
tions or “Sympathy” (contained in The Nature of Sympathy [VII],
2nd enlarged edition [1923] of the 1st edition, which was entitled
Zur Phänomenologie und Theorie der Sympathiegefühle und von Liebe
und Hass [Halle, 1913]). Scheler distinguishes here four types of in-
ter-emotional experience:
1. Community of feeling (Miteinanderfühlen)
2. Fellow-feeling (Mitfühlen, Mitgefühl)
3. Psychic contagion (Psychische Ansteckung)
4. Emotional identification (Einsfühlung)
Whenever Scheler makes reference to the above forms of sympathy
he does not seem to be consistent in the usage of the words “Gefühl”
and “Fühlen.” For instance, he speaks of “Nachfühlen,” and
“Mitfühlen” in the Formalismus, and of “Mitgefühl” everywhere in
volume X. The question arises how, in fact, these feelings of emo-
tional relation are related to the above-mentioned feeling-states. He
did not treat this question systematically, and we are dependent only
on inferences obtainable from numerous passages scattered through-

out his writings, and which also reveal some inaccuracies. For in-
stance, he states that “only on this level (psychic feeling-states ) the
feeling-state becomes intentional…” and “that psychic and spiritual
feeling-states can be reproduced and are subject to fellow-feeling,
and that physical and vital feeling-states are only within the subject”
(VI, 39). However, he also states that “whereas physical feeling-states
reveal themselves as more or less dead states, vital feeling-states have
always already functional and intentional character” (II, 342), the ques-
tion being then, if vital feeling-states are, or are not, intentional (both
statements were made in 1916), and we are left with the question
what relation the above types of emotional communication have to
the four feeling-states.
Reality and the Types of Inter-Emotive Experience
To be a human person implies, first of all, the essential relation to

“the other” for Scheler. To live with others is not a sheer fact alone,
but this relation to the other is essentially ontic. The being of man is
both a being-self and being-with (other persons) (Fürsichsein,
Miteinandersein; V, 371). The forms of human togetherness are not
always artificial constructs, nor are they institutions artificially set up
subsequent to such natural communities already to be found in ani-
mal life. Man is both individual and social being, he is Gemeinschafts-
wesen in the sense of Aristotle’s zoon politikon. With this Scheler pos-
its that the relation between the “thou” and the “I” in the emotional
sphere is of an ontic significance, which has to be exhibited in phe-
nomenological analysis. The thou-I phenomenon among men is con-
stituted by a multitude of individual and social acts, which we will
discuss in the chapter: Man as Person. The thou is always fundamen-
tal and given prior to the I. There is no ego without “we” (VIII, 52),
and experiencing the thou is an experience of a reality. Reality as a
whole is experienced and lived in four fundamental fashions of which
the thou-I phenomenon, and therewith emotional communication
(sympathy), is second in order. The four spheres of reality possess
their laws of order (VIII, 56), which remain constant in human spirit
(VIII, 373), and they are not reducible to one another. The experi-
ence of all reality takes place in the following order:
1. The sphere of the absolute and holy. Its givenness is prior to

direct immediate reality in the sense that all that which is known or
expected in immediate reality is being judged, evaluated and com-
prehended on the back-ground of a (historically changing content of
the sphere of the absolute [des Gotthaften, VIII, 374]). Strictly speak-
ing, then, it is the following experience of reality which is ontologically
fundamental.
2. The reality of Mitwelt (with-world), i.e., of togetherness with
others: thou-I and the we-experience. This sphere is given prior to all
reality of live and inanimate nature. As an independent ontic sphere,
the existence of this inter-human reality would not cease even if all
extra-human nature were annihilated (VIII, 374). Within this sphere
the “we-experience” is prior to the ego, which knows itself only within
the “we.” This is why self-observation is only an observation of an “as
if one were another,” i.e., observation of an as-if-ego. Thou-ness is
the most fundamental existential category (VIII, 57).
3. The experiencing of the external and internal reality as well as of
body-environment. The experience of the external precedes that of
the internal reality (of man), This third experience manifests itself as
resistance and suffering (both in a wide sense) of exterior reality.
4. The sphere of external inanimate bodies is experienced after that
of all living reality.
The order of priority prevailing throughout these four kinds of
experience of world is reflected in man’s spiritual development (VIII,
376), viz., in the development from child to adult, from primitive to
civilized man, and in developments of culture. For instance, as to the
fourth type of reality experience, the world of a child is essentially a
live world. Dead objects are for the young child experienced as live
objects, and life is projected by the child into (dead) objects until,
with growing age, a change of reality experience takes place, making
room for experiencing the inorganic, and this is not infrequently with-
out feelings of disappointment. The world of primitive man is essen-
tially organismic, governed and permeated by demons. Only in later
stages of development this world becomes to him more “real.” Also his-
torical processes take place always from organismic communities to soci-
eties, understood to be artificial and conscious types of togetherness (V,
237). Finally, this sequence is reflected in the history of ideas.
The organismic Aristotelian view of nature, for instance, preceded
in cultural development a view of nature determined by scientific
concepts of theoretical physics, dealing with dead matter in its vari-

ous forms. These ideas of Scheler are fundamental to his Sociology of
Knowledge, but he explained in detail only the first and second type
of reality experience (V and VII). We shall refer to these in the chap-
ter on Man and God. The thou-I reality experience, however, is the
platform from which an understanding of the forms of sympathy
must be gained, because it is the ultimate ontic foundation for sym-
pathy and all emotional relations to the “other.” The third and fourth
type of reality experience was treated by Scheler in his lectures on
The Nature of Death and Metaphysics. We have described the place of
the ontic layer of the thou (we) within all forms of reality-experience.
Within this independent layer all inter-human emotional experiences
take place, viz. that of community of feeling, fellow-feeling, psychic
contagion, and emotional identification. These may now be briefly
outlined.
For immediate community of feeling Scheler gives the example of
parents standing side by side in front of their dead, beloved child (X,
284; VII, 23). Their sorrow is the same and one in that both possess
a feeling-in-common in their sorrow. Scheler distinguishes this feel-
ing-in-common from a feeling of sorrow that is causally related,
namely if one is feeling sorrow only by an act of sharing. He also
distinguishes community of feeling from an act of knowing the other’s
feeling of sorrow. But in the example above there is a togetherness in
sorrow in which the other’s sorrow is not an external matter or ob-
ject. This type of identical feeling is only possible in mental respect,
not in physical pain or sensory feelings, which are by nature external,
since there cannot be anything like a common organic pain. The
communality of this feeling of sorrow is not reducible to the other’s
feelings. This experience is ultimate and immediate in that the other’s
feeling of sorrow is one’s own and vice versa, so that there is no object
relation to the other’s feeling. Both parents are a unified subject of an
irreducible unifying sorrow.
A case of fellow-feeling would be in a friend entering the room, in
which the sorrow-stricken parents are standing. This feeling is strictly
intentional towards the sorrow of the parents as object of fellow-
feeling (X, 284). Whereas community of feeling is a feeling-with some-
one, fellow-feeling is quite different because it involves intentional
reference to the other’s feeling of sorrow (or joy) as having become an
object of understanding. There is a commiseration of the other’s suf-
fering in contrast to community of feeling. This implies that fellow-

feeling presupposes always an act of a reproduced feeling, as a reac-
tion to the state and value of the feeling of the other (the parents).
Psychic contagion is in many ways different from the first two feel-
ings. It differs from fellow-feeling because it lacks intentionality to-
wards someone; it differs from community of feeling in that there is
no active participation in someone else’s feelings. Thus, strictly speak-
ing, psychic contagion does not fulfill the requirements of what is
called sympathy in Scheler’s sense. This is also true in some sense
with respect to the fourth feeling mentioned later. Scheler uses the
term sympathy, however, in a wide sense, as an inter-human emo-
tional correlation and complexus, which is implied in the verbal sense
of the Greek word, “syn” (with, together, alike) and Greek “pathos”
(suffering), in which the prefix “syn,” however, does not imply inten-
tionality, but integration and togetherness. Scheler gives a number of
examples for psychic contagion throughout his writings (VII, 25-29;
III, 102) of which we choose to mention a few. It appears from what
Scheler says that psychic contagion occurs in two forms, namely, ei-
ther between only two people or a small number of people, or it can
occur in a mass of people (e.g., a mob). Psychic contagion spreads,
for instance, between two old women when, in increased emotional
excitement, they literally work themselves up into crying without
having commiseration and sometimes even without actually know-
ing what they are crying about. A curious infection takes place in
them that somehow combines them into one psychic atmosphere,
which can even be self-generated into extremes by them. A person
entering the room where such women give air to their woes while
becoming more and more tearful, is immediately involuntarily caught
up by their state of feeling prevailing among them, even if he had
been in a joyful mood before. Scheler mentions also the experience
of entering a beer-garden where there is a psychic contagion (of joy)
always taking over any newcomer, who is gradually being swept away
by the gaiety prevailing among the people. The author may mention
in this connection a typical instant of psychic contagion, which oc-
curred in Cologne’s “Fashing ” time. It is the fashion during this Mardi
Gras season to have a number of people go on stage to launch the
latest of Rhinish jokes. It happened that someone went on the stage,
not saying anything while just staring at the waiting crowd with a
dull look. But rather soon laughter started among some people, which
rapidly infected the entire crowd, and when the hall was roaring with
laughing people the person on the stage retired because his time of
performance had run out. In a similar way, psychic contagion (with-
out speaking) takes place when someone is looking at the facial ex-
pression of someone else in extreme pain (physical feeling-state as
cause of emotional infection, II, 337; III, 102), in which the on-
looker is caught up by the state of pain-feeling of the sufferer. This
case, Scheler emphasizes, must be strictly differentiated from fellow-
feeling. Psychic contagion is most conspicuous, however, in a mass
(mob) of people. Throughout the emotionally infected mass of people
the “other member” is almost completely, in extreme cases completely,
undistinguished and as an object “dissolved” within the avalanche of
mass-agitation (or extreme herd-agitation, e.g., in the case of stam-
peding buffalo). The individual is so much absorbed by psychic in-
fection that he is not aware of possible effects which the mass excite-
ments might entail, nor can he direct his will against it while being
swept away by the whole state of such mass-emotion, e.g., in panics,
revolutions, revolts, demonstrations, strikes, etc. Laws prevailing
throughout such mass phenomena are of extreme complication but
seem to be at least similar to those in animal herds. In general, there
is a disappearance of personal responsibility, a domination of drives
over thinking, a decrease of intelligence level (mass as “overgrown
child”), and a readiness for submission (to a leader, alpha-animal in
herds). Typical in such cases of psychic contagion is that any knowl-
edge of something or any participation (as in fellow-feeling) in the
other’s feeling (joy, sorrow, hate, etc.) is not a presupposition for its
occurrence. The entire state seems to be held together by a psychic X.
Psychic contagion can be reproduced and self-generated to bring it
up to higher and more concentrated forms. This is, for instance, so
in a mass subject to political guidance and influence. Readiness for
submission to any leader on behalf of the mass can play an immense
part in revolts, demonstrations, etc., because this characteristic of
emotional contagion can relatively easily be exploited in the absence
of feelings of responsibility in psychic contagion.
An extreme case of psychic contagion is the fourth form of sympa-
thy, emotional identification, taking place between one’s own ego
and another’s ego. This can take place in two fashions. Either one is
feeling with the other to such an extent that one’s self dissolves into
the other’s (heteropathic type), or that one takes the other’s ego wholly
into one’s own (idiopathic type). In both cases there is no “individual”

consciousness. Scheler gives the example of the primitive man iden-
tifying himself with his ancestor, a parrot, or a stone. In such cases of
primitive feeling the identifying subject is emotionally the correlate
of identification. Scheler holds that such primitive identification with
the ancestor precedes ancestor-cult historically, and that it has sur-
vived in forms of self-identification of a mass with its leader, and that
it is a source of beliefs in reincarnation, which he understands to be a
rationalization of original forms of such identification. Identifica-
tion occurs also in mysteries of ancient times where the mystic be-
comes divine in a state of ecstasy, it occurs in hypnosis and in a child’s
way of playing mother with a doll or with a puppet-show. In the
latter cases the child loses itself into her mother in complete emo-
tional identification and identifies herself with the doll. Concerning
the puppet show, the child plays “in earnest” by identifying himself
with the puppets, whereas for the grown-up, it is just a “play.” Scheler
distinguishes a third case of emotional identification apart from the
idiopathic and the heteropathic type. This is sexual intercourse. Here
he mentions suspension of both partner’s personality, relapsing into
a stream of life in which nothing of their individual selves remains
distinct. Such mutual coalescence Scheler attributes also to the group-
mind, in which there is, besides identification of the members with
their leader, coalescence into a single stream of instinct and feeling
which dictates the pulse of the behavior of the members, “so that
ideas and schemes are driven wildly before it, like the leaves ahead of
a storm” (VII, 36). In all emotional identification man expresses him-
self as a vital being, since consciousness of personality and individuality
is dissolved, so that between any members, for instance between
mother and infant, there is a complete emotional identification and
unity.
Emotional identification is, besides its anthropological and psy-
chological relevance, also of sociological significance. Scheler points
out that civilized man has lost the capacity of identification more
and more, whereas there is much more of this capacity retained in
children, primitive peoples, dreamers, neurotics, hypnotic subjects
and in the maternal instinct. This means that civilized man did not
only gain capacities but also lost some. In the same sense as the adult
has lost the capacity of identification of his childhood (playing “in
earnest”), civilized man has lost that of the primitive. But certain
types of knowledge can only be acquired through emotional identifi-

cation, and Scheler qualifies here a German proverb: “that which
little Jack does not learn, Jack (the adult) will never do,” saying that
this proverb does not only pertain to the quantity but also to the
different “qualities” of knowledge that Jack as a boy and adult has.
Modern man has lost, in this connection, the true sense of the super-
natural in religion, given through emotional identification, and he
replaced it by “faith.” Types and ways of knowing always belong to a
specific phase of historical development, and within the whole pro-
cess there is for Scheler one common denominator: an advance of
intellectual capability implies a decline in emotional power (i.e., in
our case the capacity of identification). Civilization is not only in
progress but it involves decay as well. Scheler demands, therefore, a
synthesis between progress and maintenance of tradition with the
integration of the sequence of tasks given in each period in history,
from child to adult, animal to man, from the primitive to the civi-
lized. With this Scheler wants to save such kind of knowledge and
values given to children and primitives. We shall see later that for
Scheler the future of humanity is characterized by an increasing inte-
gration of the rational and emotional spheres in man in that the lat-
ter will play a role in man it by nature should, and that on this basis
European “rational man” and Asia will come to adjust more and more.
Historic development, he argues, is not a matter of the sovereignty of
the civilized European alone, but involves all powers within man as a
whole, no matter if some of them have been subdued (emotional life
on behalf of the rationalization in Europe) or if reason has played a
secondary role (for the sake of the stress of the emotional participa-
tion and comprehension of nature in Asia).
We are now in a position to draw some conclusions as to the rela-
tions that hold between feeling-states and the forms of sympathy.
First, there is evidently no intentional relation in immediate com-
munity of feeling between the parents referred to in the example
given. But there must be intentional relation towards the object of
the parent’s joint sorrow, viz., the dead child. Their feeling pertains
only to mental suffering and cannot take its origin in and have its
relation to physical and vital feeling-states. Second, fellow-feeling
implies intentional reference to the other’s joy or sorrow, and because
of the kind of feeling shared ( joy, sorrow, grief ) it also cannot have
relations to physical or vital states and must be related to spiritual
and psychic feeling-states. Third, since Scheler explicitly states that

psychic contagion can take its origin already in physical feeling-states,
there appears reason to assume that psychic contagion is mysteri-
ously interwoven with all feeling-states. This implies spiritual feel-
ing-states, too, because there is no ground to assume that, since laugh-
ter in a group of people is contagious, peace within such a group of
people should not be so. Fourth, emotional identification clearly takes
origin in the vital sphere. It follows that only psychic contagion and
emotional identification could have reference to vital feeling-states.
But both are non-intentional and since fellow-feeling (intentional)
and community of feeling (non-intentional between the persons who
have it, but intentional towards the object) do not pertain to vital
feeling-states, we can conclude that the statement in Scheler’s
Formalismus (II, 342), according to which “a vital feeling-state has
always already functional and intentional character,” is not consis-
tent, because it follows from the foregoing considerations that both
emotional identification and psychic contagion are not intentional
in character, although they are the only feelings related to vital feel-
ing-states. Exactly this, in fact, he states in VI, 39, viz., that within
the four levels of feeling-states (1. physical, 2. vital, 3. psychic, 4.
spiritual) it is only from the level of psychic feeling-states on where
there is presence of intentionality.
We may summarize, then, the relations existing between man’s feel-
ing-states and inter-human emotional relations (sympathy) in the
following way: Since physical feeling-states (pain, tickling, itching,
etc.) are, as Scheler put it, “dead” in the sense that they cannot be felt
in or shared by someone else, they do not constitute an emotional
participation. They are only in an organism and cannot be felt by
someone else, although they can be known to someone else. Hence,
physical feeling-states do not enter into inter-human emotional com-
munication. Both fellow-feeling and community of feeling are re-
lated to psychic feeling-states (e.g., sorrow, joy, sadness) and spiritual
feeling-states (e.g., peace, pangs of conscience, despair, bliss). Emo-
tional identification has a relation to psychic and spiritual feeling-
states and, in addition to this, it relates to vital feeling-states (e.g.,
weakness, anxiety, illness, health). It has, therefore, a threefold rela-
tion to feeling-states. Psychic contagion is related to all feeling-states
and is, therefore, the strongest inter-human emotional phenomenon.
Chapter Four
Ordo Amoris
The Priority of Love
W e pointed out before that for Scheler the emotive sphere in

man possesses its own lawfulness of acts not deducible from
reason and will, and that the emotive has its own a priori content,
which can only be exhibited in ethics, and not in logic. The seat of
the value-a priori is in acts of feeling, preferring (or rejecting), and
ultimately in love and hatred, where cognition of values and value
intuition (Wert-Erschauung) take place (II, 87). Emotional cognition
of values is specifically different from acts of perception and think-
ing, and it represents the only access to the realm of values. It is in
such acts of preferring, rejecting, loving, hating, as intentional func-
tions, where values become apparent, i.e., during the pursuance of
emotional acts the a priori value-content is given. This value-evi-
dence, as such, is absolutely independent of judgements or propositions
about them. All ethics has to go back to facts of moral cognition and its
a priori conditions. But moral cognition and insight themselves are not
ethics. Ethics is constituted by the formulation of that which is given in
moral cognition, and it is philosophical ethics if it restricts itself to the a
priori content of that evidently given in such cognition.
Man is, before he can think or will, ens amans (X, 356). This propo-
sition of Scheler’s is the core of his philosophy of man. If this is not
understood, Scheler’s philosophy as a whole is not understood. Love
is the fundamental spiritual act. It is an irreducible and spontaneous
movement (X, 118; VII, 147). Both love and hatred are independent
of sympathy, because as acts they remain unaffected during changing
feelings (X, 119). Love and hatred, then, are no feelings at all. For
instance, our love for someone does not change if the beloved one
causes feelings of grief or pain, nor does hatred change if the one
hated causes in us joy and pleasure. Love and hatred among human
beings remain unaffected throughout all variations of accompanying
feelings. The pursuance of love and hatred, however, is the deepest
source of sorrow, joy, blissfulness and despair as feeling-states (X,
370-71.), and they in turn are fundamental to all feelings. For in-
stance, unhappy love is still accompanied by a feeling of happiness,
or if the distress of a person hated causes joy in us, the hatred itself
remains as basis of such joyful glee. Love and hatred are not feelings
about or of something, rather one can only love and hate something,
because a thing can be felt to have positive values in the absence of
love. They are unique attitudes towards objects of value in that they
comprehend values and their grades and they refer to objects them-
selves inasmuch as they have values. Value comprehension is a matter
of preferring one value to another, or placing one value after another,
but love itself is the very foundation to such acts of value compre-
hension. Love (and hatred) is an immediate mode of response to
objects of value and does not in any way have anything to do with
judgements about objects and their values. This is why one cannot
give reasons for one’s loving another (or hating another), unless such
reasons are looked for after the inner movement of love or hatred has
taken place. In such cases reasons never give a complete account of
genuine love (or hatred), because they never exhaust this basic sphere
of emotional state, and secondly, because love and hatred are directed
towards the very core of individuals or objects, which cannot be ana-
lyzed in judgements or apprehensive feeling. This is why Scheler holds
love and hatred to be fundamental movements of intentionaly, which
govern all standards of appreciation of values exhibited in objects. It
is not the appreciation of things which governs love and hatred. The
evidence given in both, then, is autonomous, and not susceptible of
rational judgement — one reason why they cannot be defined, but
only exhibited because the immediate presence of a value or a disvalue is
within the pursuance of the act of love and hatred.
Love is always a movement from lower to higher values; hatred is a
movement of opposite direction. All that Scheler says about love per-
tains to hatred, too, only with a negative sign. In love, higher values
flash out from a value given. This vision of a higher value in an object
is for Scheler the essence of love. Furthermore, love is not a mere
reaction to a value already felt, nor is it an attitude to a pair of extant
values subject to preference. The visualization of higher values in the
beloved object sets up an immediate idealized paradigm of value in
the object which awaits fulfillment and emotional confirmation on
the part of the lover. This tendency of enhancing values is love’s cre-
ative force. Genuine love is not concerned about the existence of
such higher values in its object; it basically does not even care if such
higher values in the beloved object can be reached, nor if the higher
Chapter 4 Ordo Amoris 43
values are loved because they are actually in the object as qualities to
be detected. If love moves in terms of a continuous prospecting for
higher values in its object, love is unsatisfied. The higher value must
stream by itself from the object, without the lover’s exertion or wish.
Love is in this sense not blind, but opens always our eyes to higher
values, in which the beloved object appears. It is only the lover who
can see such values, as it were, and so-called blindness belongs only
to sensual impulses which accompany love. This would sufficiently
explain a familiar attitude of a third person observing a lover and his
beloved one: “I do not see what he can find in the person he loves.”
The higher value of the beloved object appears to the lover during
this movement, and it is not previously given in him, so that there
could be room to seek or wish it in the beloved. In case of an active
seeking for higher values there is hardly love involved, but merely
interest, because such a “movement” does not relate to the beloved
object in an ideal state.
For Scheler love extends to all value-objects, except to the value of
moral goodness. He emphasizes this point in his book on Sympathy
and points out that the degree of goodness in a person is only deter-
mined by the love a person acts out. Love for a good is “pharisaism”
whose formula runs: “Love men insofar as they are good, and hate
evil and men insofar as they are evil.” Scheler touches here on a prob-
lem with which we will have to deal later in detail, namely, the es-
sence of Christian love, which excludes love for a good. Christian
love extends to all, the good and the wicked, the poor, the sinner, etc.
Christian love is a major point of interest for Scheler, since he detects
a number of inconsistencies with respect to Christian notions of man
and God, which have been historically influenced by pre-Christian
Aristotelian thinking, and which have been used for the sake of un-
derstanding and rationalizing Christianity.
The Microcosm of Values
Since love is fundamental to feeling, and feeling itself fundamental

to thinking, all objects perceived and brought to cognition, in short
everything which man does, chooses, wills and thinks, is founded on
the attracting and repelling movements of love and hatred. Genuine
understanding of an individual or any social unit (family, people,
nation, race, etc.), or any historical epoch, can only be obtained by

way of cognition about their feeling and conceiving values as well as
the respective structure of their value-order, as it appears in acts of
preferring or rejecting. Such a framework and order of values through-
out the changes of human forms of sociation in history Scheler calls
“ethos,” and the core of such an ethos is the order and direction of
love and hatred which determine it. A worldview of a people, as an
example of an ethos, as well as deeds and actions committed within
such a worldview, is guided by a specific order of loving and hating
(X, 347; II, 305-13). A most conspicuous example for a disclosure of
an entire new realm of values in a new specific order of love is for
Scheler the Sermon on the Mount: “But I say unto you…” (II, 309).
All acts of preferring or rejecting values follow from a specific order
that prevails in the movement and direction of love and hatred. Love,
not being a mere response to values felt, is a discoverer of values, and
always new values. It is thus the pioneer of all value feeling (II, 266).
All ethics would be perfected in the determination of such laws of
love and hatred (II, 267), because the ordo amoris is that which the
formula of crystal is for crystal (X, 348), consisting in the a priori
structure of emotive acts (IX, 110).
Man’s social and historical environment is determined by the struc-
ture of the scale of values within which always objects appear. All
goods, objects of volition and practical deeds are gauged to the se-
lecting mechanism of man’s ordo amoris. It is always the same kind of
values (and not things) that attract man according to constant rules
of preference, wherever he looks around in his environment (X, 349).
The ordo amoris, then, is a constant disposition of attracting (love)
and repelling (hatred) within man’s environment, whose value-struc-
ture does not change throughout the factual, historical and social
changes of environment in time. Whatever man sees, wills, does, and
knows, has gone through this immutable structure of values, which
he carries with him like a house, and all he sees through its windows
is only that which these windows permit him to see. Love, then, is
the presupposition for any act of knowledge about objects, since it
constitutes the immediate contact with the world before all acts of
thinking. Scheler says: love is the mother of spirit and reason itself (X,
356). It is the source for all spiritual acts of participation with and in
objects of world. Without the act of taking part (Teilnahme, love)
man cannot have part (Teilhaben, knowledge) in world events (IX,
111-12). It is the power of love in man which encompasses the di-

mension of contact with the world in that it is directed to the struc-
ture of values within which there are the cognizable things. Such
values are subject to varying rules of preference and rejection, which
determine respective worldviews, world-knowledge, and the will to
master nature in different ages. This pertains to all forms of sociation
such as races, nations, cultures, peoples, families, parties, classes, and
to individuals themselves.
The realm of values towards which acts of love are directed shows
differences of fortuitous and constant lawfulness. Strictly speaking,
laws of preference and the ordered levels of values could be said to
exist only in the absence of the human beingness. But combinations
of qualities of such laws which enter into practical goods of human
beings, and the system they form for forms of human sociation, their
partial or total presence or their absence in social units and peoples,
their perceptibility (Fühlbarkeit) in social units, their becoming or
not becoming norms and goals in them—all this changes, as history
of man shows, from one formation of human beings to another, from
age to age. The ordo amoris does, therefore, not contain an order of
all existing goods and evils (X, 366). Rather the objective graded
realm of values is open to true and false love (hatred). Love can con-
form to the realm of values and contradict it. And this also within
certain ranges of values that belong to a particular age or social unit.
With this Scheler maintains, that the human heart (Gemüt) as the
seat of the ordo amoris, is not a chaos of emotional states but an
ordered counterpart of all possible values, a microcosm of the world
of values (X, 361). The heart in its own sphere of being possesses a
strict analogy to logic: one can love with (emotional) insight as well
as one can form judgements with (logical) insight (X, 362). How-
ever, insights through the ordo amoris are as blind to reasoning as is
color to the blind man. This point of Scheler deserves close atten-
tion. He considers it a groundless convention that we attribute inves-
tigations into emotional life to the science of psychology alone (X,
364), which is primarily concerned with thinking comprehension of
emotional states. But acts (of thinking, willing, loving, hating, etc.)
are never “there,” which implies that they cannot be objects of think-
ing, because such thinking is itself also an act.
An act is not a state which can be observed by way of reasoning. If,
for instance, a person moved by the beauty of a landscape, starts to
look at his feelings about it (caused by this movement) or if a lover,

instead of giving himself wholly away to the beloved, pays attention
to his feelings, or if someone praying pays attention to his thoughts,
folded hands, etc., such persons are in a state of self-perception and
asking: what is going on in myself when I look at the picture, my
lover or prayer? He is looking then for causal relations between his
state and his object. Scheler considers it sheer arbitration to subject
love and hatred to thinking consideration and acts of thinking, which
relate a state to its object. He holds: we live first in things and the
world. In all emotional and logical acts we make experiences, which
do not have anything to do with the experience of that which is go-
ing on during the pursuance of acts. Within emotive acts there is an
immediate content, not being present to thinking and logical analy-
sis. One can make it an object of thinking only after the emotive act-
experience has extinguished.
False Love, Kinds of Love, and Erotic Fate
We have reached a point where we expect Scheler to tell us in con-

crete terms when love is in ordered direction and when the ordo amoris
becomes manifest in a practical example. We have thus far estab-
lished the following points:
1. Love and hatred are states, fundamental to both feeling-states
and feelings.
2. Love is prior, in order and essence (Wesen), to knowledge.
3. The ordo amoris governs the rules of preferring and rejecting values.
4. The ordo amoris is a microcosm of the heart, in which an abso-
lute scale of values is mirrored, or not mirrored, i.e., twisted, misrep-
resented and falsely felt (hatred). Emotional acts form an ordered
whole having its own lawfulness, corresponding to a certain immu-
table scale of values.
Scheler was never too generous in furnishing practical examples,
and at points of discussion when we expect him to give examples he
does not give them most of the time. If he does give them we find the
same example repeated in different volumes and contexts. Ortega y
Gasset mentions disorder as one of Scheler’s weaknesses; but so is
repetition, although rarely. For example, parts of his treatises
Erkenntnis und Arbeit (VIII, 203-11) and Die Formen des Wissens
und die Bildung (IX, 111-19) are almost literally identical. Manu-
scripts of the former date from 1923 to 1925, and the latter, a speech
he held in Berlin, January 17, 1925. Other repetitions seem to per-
tain only to subject-matter (e.g., community of feeling in volumes
VII and X, rather than textual identity).
The lack of practical examples in Scheler’s work is due to his asser-
tive style. The form of his writings is often address and speech, lack-
ing explanation for the reader’s benefit. The difficult situation in which
the reader finds himself, however, is not only due to Scheler’s atti-
tude implying an: either you understand or you don’t. It is rooted,
last but not least, in the subject-matter itself: if acts cannot be de-
fined (since thinking operations themselves are acts of conscious-
ness, as well as reflections upon them) then there is no way to reach
an act as an act as it is, except in terms of focusing on an act by
phenomenological exhibition. The ordo amoris is only erschaubar (in-
tuitable), and at this point the reader of Scheler’s works is left up
with himself. Our exhibition of the ordo amoris must, then, proceed
in negative fashion, viz., in demonstrating incorrect loving and Scheler
refers us in this regard to what he calls “metaphysical aberration” (X,
367). This takes place when an object of value belonging to the realm
of relative values is loved in the same manner as one of absolute value.
In such a case man “deifies” a relative value-object by making it an
idol, for instance, if a person is filled with love towards his country so
that this love takes possession of all his love including love to God.
We shall elucidate this metaphysical aberration in the chapter: Man
and God. False love is also given when a higher value is placed after
(nachgesetzt) a lower one within the order of values. However, it is
Scheler’s position that every object of love has its unique place within
the scale of values, which corresponds to a specific nuance of the
movement of the heart. If this place is hit by the act of love, love is
correct and ordered (X, 367). From this we can understand Scheler’s
statement that hatred as the opposite act of love is always a conse-
quence of incorrect and aberrated love. “Every act of hatred is founded
in acts of love” (X, 368). Nevertheless, both love and hatred have one
criterion in common: a taking interest in objects of value, and this
taking interest is always and primordially a positive interest as love
(in the widest sense of the word). “Our heart is primarily disposed to
love, and not to hate.” Hatred, then, is only a reaction of false love.
“It is not correct what is often said as a saying: ‘he who cannot hate
cannot love.’ It should be rather: ‘he who cannot love cannot hate’”
(X, 369). Hatred is always a revolt of the heart against a violation of

the ordo amoris, and Scheler wrote one of his most famous treatises
on this kind of man’s revolt within himself: Das Ressentiment im Aufbau
der Moralen (III, 33-131).
Ressentiment takes place in virtue of the confusion of the ordo amoris.
It presupposes, however, the ordo amoris, and the ordo amoris remains
transparent in hatred. Both are interwoven in man and they can only
be understood in their polarity and interconnection. To be able to
grasp the ordo amoris it is necessary to demonstrate violation against
it, i.e., false love as its negative opposite extreme.
Scheler wrote the treatise Ordo Amoris (X, 345-74) after his
Formalismus. The manuscripts date from 1914–1915 and 1916. Both
were merged by the editor into the treatise above. The term ordo
amoris occurs mostly in Schriften aus dem Nachlass, but direct rela-
tion to this concept is obvious in Formalismus IIA, and V, and his
book on Sympathy, part B. The treatise on Ressentiment was first
published in 1912, then enlarged in 1915, and again with numerous
additions in the second edition of 1919. We consider it an indirect,
technical justification for our approach to grasp the ordo amoris
through Ressentiment, and vice versa, in the fact that Scheler dealt
with both subjects during the same number of years of his second
period, and by Scheler’s original intention to entitle his treatise: On
the Ordo Amoris and Its Disturbances (Verwirrungen).
Before we enter the treatment of Ressentiment a few more words
may be added with respect to love. In his book on Sympathy Scheler
sets up a threefold classification of love: its forms, modes, and kinds.
He divides all acts into vital acts of the body, mental acts of the self,
and spiritual acts of the person. Love and hatred have three forms:
vital and passionate love (and hatred), mental love (and hatred) of
the individual self, and spiritual love (and hatred) of the person. Let
it be added that he also distinguishes three kinds of knowledge and
values, which we shall discuss later. The following scheme of all these
notions in their interrelations throughout Scheler’s writings may bring
in some order and facilitate comprehension.
Acts Forms of Love Values Knowledge

vital acts vital love vital values k. of control (science)
mental acts mental love cultural values k. of essence (metaphysics)
spiritual acts spiritual love values of holiness k. of salvation (religion)
This scheme could be extended by vital, psychic and spiritual feel-

ing-states and sensible values. Physical feeling-states do not enter into
a relation since they are no acts, being dead in their state (II, 342),
and we discussed the relation of feelings and feeling-states before.
The above forms of love break down in kinds and modes. Kinds of
love manifest themselves as different qualities of emotion itself, inde-
pendently of considering the objects, for example, maternal love, fil-
ial love, love of country and home, and sexual love. All these are
distinct as to the quality of the emotion implied in them. Modes of
love are conjunctions of acts of love, mostly in social dispositions
and feelings of sympathy. For instance, good will, liking, fondness,
kindness, grace, favor, amiability, affection, courtesy, friendliness, de-
votion, loyalty, gratitude, and intimacy are modes of love in this sense.
The extent with which Scheler treats the theme of love is unique in
contemporary philosophy. However Scheler’s thinking might influ-
ence the further course of philosophy in this century, and whatever
judgments and criticism will be made for or against it, he will always
remain the great philosopher of love. In the history of philosophy,
love has been rarely treated as a philosophical subject par excellence,
and this includes, strangely enough, the philosophemes of the Chris-
tian Middle Ages, save for St. Augustine. The scope and depth of
Scheler’s philosophy of love can only be compared with that of Plato,
St. Augustine, Pascal, and Malebranche. It is not surprising that he
often refers to these thinkers, in a positive sense with regard to
Malebranche, Pascal, and St. Augustine, but he is not always in agree-
ment with Plato. Scheler rejects Plato’s innate ideas of objects of love,
which have been given a number of versions of interpretation. One
of these Scheler sees in a theory saying that ideas of love are inher-
ited, and he finds some valuable and usable points in it. Scheler holds
that there is no doubt that directions, qualities and ways of loving are
inheritable, which are manifest in patterns of vital aversion and at-
traction within the environment of living beings. For example, man’s
inborn aversion against darkness and certain scents, racial animosity
or affinity, or the hen’s fear of the hawk and the bull’s reaction to the
moving cape, are such vital aversions and attractions. Dispositions of
aversion and attraction are inherited, but not in Plato’s sense of in-
nate ideas of lovable and hatable objects. Scheler notes that such heri-
tage of love- (and hatred-) directions pertain to the human male and
female in their selection for their mates. A direction of preference for
a certain “type” of the other sex goes through generations of families

and tribes. He illustrates this with an old Japanese story, which tells
us of the determination of the mate-selection by the wishes, sighs,
aversions and preferences, of ancestors of the lovers. As soon as the
mate corresponds with their preference-pattern, love is enkindled (X,
375). False in this Japanese conception, says Scheler, is its exclusive-
ness, but he maintains that there is something like a patterned selec-
tion prevailing through generations of people: there is a selective el-
bow-room for the eros, which is inborn. A girl has a tendency to
copy her father, and the boy his mother, which plays a role in the
later selection for the mate. Inherited preference is at hand when the
boy or girl is guided, ceteris paribus, by the same or similar directions
of love as the parents had towards each other. There is not yet enough
material collected for these interesting facts of the case, and Scheler
held that future research will eventually lead to what he calls certain
schemes of erotic fate (X, 376), which will reveal inherited rhythms of
erotic impulse going through generations. Individuals appear to seek
in their love towards another person the material for the realization
of an inherited model-pattern of selection. Thus far Scheler. The
question arises if such patterns pertain only to small forms of sociation,
as a family and a tribe, or if such patterns also prevail within different
peoples (nations) and races, forming their “face” so to say, or, if all
peoples and races have the same patterns of preference. In any case
Scheler’s idea deserves close attention in future philosophical anthro-
pology. It is the opinion of this author that, if certain schemes of
erotic fate can be clearly established, these would then exhibit a vital
aspect of the ordo amoris. Parallel schemes would have to be estab-
lished in the mental and spiritual aspects of the ordo amoris. The ordo
amoris of man could then be exhibited as a whole as that what Scheler
formulates in deep metaphysical language: “das Urbestimmende
dessen, was dauernd Miene Macht, sich um ihn herumzustellen —
im Raume seine moralische Umwelt in der Zeit sein Schicksal…”
(X, 348), which we translate: “the primordial, determining factor of
that which incessantly sets about placing itself around man—in spa-
tial dimension his moral environment, in time his fate….” For “he
who has the ordo amoris of a human being, has man” (X, 348).
I cannot find any other possible interpretation of that which Scheler
says is continuously setting about placing itself around man than the
kind of values, which open themselves up to the ontic sphere of the
human person. These kinds of values will be subject of Chapter 5.

They are the primordial factor determining man’s world in its nature
and structure. Such value qualities are neither abstractions nor char-
acteristics of real things, which represent themselves in them, but
they are given in terms of their subjective counterpart, the ordo amoris
of man, by way of the world-openness of the sphere of the person in
whose acts they appear. As we shall see later, the realm of values must
not be understood as an ideal being with Platonic implications. Rather,
they appear only in acts of preferring and rejecting one value to an-
other, and they are ultimately the genuine correlates of love and ha-
tred, analogous to concepts in acts of thinking or objects in acts of
perception. Such values possess an a priori order of higher and lower
values, of which the ordo amoris of man is the emotive resonance.
This order of values, however, can be twisted and overturned in the
presence of passion, drives and especially in the presence of
ressentiment.
The ordo amoris is the primordial factor of man’s fate in that values
constitute man’s “world.” They and their structure are that which
man always carries with himself mostly unconsciously, and in hid-
den fashion. It is within the boundaries of the realm of values that
man’s factual history and ideas take place according to various ways
of acts of preferring and rejecting them over and against each other.
It is only from here, Scheler holds, that we can come to an under-
standing of the factual variations of historical ages, sociological
changes, and theological and philosophical worldviews. Within this
entire historical change of world-views, forms of aesthetic apprecia-
tion, changes in ideas of education, politics, economy etc., the ranks
of values as such remain immutable. It is only the variations of the
historical acts of preferring and rejecting values which change man’s
historical environment. In time, then, the ordo amoris is man’s des-
tiny, since it forms, as the subjective and emotive counterpart of the
kinds of values, the specific elbow-room (Spielraum) within which
man’s history is acted out. He cannot get outside this composition of
the kinds of values “however far man will move into space.”
Chapter Five
Ressentiment
Initial Forms of Ressentiment
I n his treatise Ordo amoris Scheler makes the following statement:

“Also man, filled with ressentiment, originally loves such objects
which he hates in his state — and it is only hatred towards absence of
their possession, or his weakness (Ohnmacht) to acquire them, which
radiate secondarily into these objects” (X, 369). Scheler then sets out
to explain that the confusion and entanglement of ordered love, caus-
ing a person A to hate a person B is not necessarily caused by A
himself, but can also have been caused by B, C, or D, and even any
form of sociation among men, to which A belongs. Hatred can origi-
nate within a community of men from where A is at first far re-
moved, and hatred is not always determined by a confused directed-
ness (of ordered loving) of the person who hates. Only if there is
hatred in the world then there must also be confusion of ordered
love. Man cannot hate unless a disvalue takes possession of higher
values. Hatred is always at hand as soon as a person makes a com-
parison between different levels of values, so that the values of higher
levels are sought to be pulled down to lower levels of values, or the
nature of lower values is injected into that of the range higher values.
In any case the order of value-feeling is violated and disturbed.
“Ressentiment” is a loan-word from the French language and it
was Nietzsche who introduced the word as a philosophical term. In
both English and German there is no direct term corresponding to
this word. Ressentiment is, broadly speaking, an emotive reaction
against some one or something. It is not, however, an impulsive reac-
tion because — and this is significant — it is lived or felt before a
practical reaction could or does come into effect. Ressentiment is a
state of emotion which is related to a forgoing comprehension of a
reaction, and it is an emotional response taking place always during a
span of time. It can last as long as a lifetime, and in that case
ressentiment reveals itself as an emotionally reactionary attitude against
all world experience. Ressentiment arises in persons having been
emotionally hurt or injured, and it is prompted by a reactionary re-
sistance to such injury or hurt. Essentially, ressentiment is a re-feel-
ing of a specific clash with someone else’s value-qualities, in which

process of re-feeling the reactionary emotion usually increases with
time. Since ressentiment is the reliving of a feeling it is related to
sympathy (Nachfühlen). The reproducing trait of ressentiment is al-
ways accompanied by a feeling of hostility, first without practical
hostile intentions, which may, however, develop later. This hostility,
mixed with ire, choler and indignation against the object, creeps
through the darkness of the soul, independently of any activity of the
ego during the time ressentiment has taken possession of a person, or
a group of persons, who are held back in this state of hostility from
any direct action against its cause or causes. Ressentiment-persons
suffer, so to say, from a state of hostile reaction within themselves.
Ressentiment has different forms in which it can occur, and of which
each is only a contributing part of this sneaking poison in man. Res-
sentiment as such is reached if these forms develop into extremes, by
merging into it, so to speak. Such initial forms are hatred, revenge,
malignity (Bosheit), envy, enviousness (Scheelsucht), and malice
(Hämischkeit). The English language is, in comparison to the Ger-
man, not rich in words relating to emotional states (influence of Pu-
ritanism?) and, therefore, we must use in some cases the German
word to differentiate between two English words of the same root, as
in envy and enviousness. The distinction between these two is not so
sharply felt in the English language as their respective counterparts
are in German. The German Hämischkeit and Scheelsucht cannot be
sufficiently translated.
The significance of ressentiment lies in its formative power as to
the moral valuation and sources of moral judgment and value-decep-
tion, and it was this point which Friedrich Nietzsche clearly saw in
its importance in moral philosophy. (Genealogie der Moral, I, 8, 10,
14). Scheler defines ressentiment as a psychic self-poisoning, which
originates by a systematical withholding of an inner explosion of cer-
tain feelings and affectations, which are as such normal components
of human nature. Ressentiment is reactive in nature and not an ac-
tive or aggressive impulse. Furthermore, it is always a result of impo-
tency (Ohnmacht) and occurs, therefore, often among serving or ruled
classes of people. Scheler illustrates aspects of ressentiment by one of
its typical forms: revenge. In revenge a previous state of emotion,
caused by having been emotionally hurt or attacked, is re-lived so
that the injured or hurt one feels within himself a reactive hostile
Chapter 5 Ressentiment 55
response. This response does not coincide with any possible acting or
practical defence or immediate counter-attack. Response is not such
an immediate counter-attack which is already found in animals. It is
typical for revenge and ressentiment in general that counter-impulses are
held back, since they are checked by an underlying feeling of weakness of
the person charged with ressentiment against some one else.
There is an increasing intensity of this feeling from revenge to envy,
and from enviousness (Scheelsucht) and malice (Hämischkeit) to
ressentiment strictly speaking. In revenge and envy there are specific
people as causes from which revenge and envy may result. Removal
of such causes extinguishes envy and revenge. In enviousness, how-
ever, there are no direct ties to specific people, rather, a person filled
with enviousness is looking for objects in order to satisfy his feeling of
enviousness in them. He tries to find any convenient object-person
so that he can pull his values down to his own state of weakness. The
values of the object are in such a case felt as “more,” and are being
narrowed or maliciously belittled by the sufferer of enviousness. He
attributes negative aspects to the values which he feels attack him
and, thus, obtains a kind of inner satisfaction through such a nega-
tive injection into the values enviousness is directed against. In mal-
ice (Hämischkeit) this tendency of pulling down the attacking, hurt-
ing, and threatening (positive) values of the object is so intense that
there is a continuous awaiting for any occasion to construe inner
satisfaction. Sudden impolite gestures or a sudden mean smile, which
are often not quite understood by the victim to whom they are di-
rected, leave an uncomfortable feeling with the victim, determining
future relations between the two, as in a conscious neglect of the
ressentiment-person which increases the enviousness of the person
poisoned by ressentiment. Ressentiment in the strict sense occurs if
the following conditions are fulfilled: 1) There must be absence of
attempts of moral overcoming it in the person who suffers from it,
e.g., genuine acts of forgiving some one or apologizing; 2) there must
be absence of outer expression (certain kinds of laughing or chiding
some one); 3) there must always be weakness in the ressentiment-
charged person, be it physical weakness or spiritual weakness of any
kind. This weakness is always linked with Verbissenheit (psychic dog-
gedness), which banishes all hostile affectations into the dark corners
of the soul, which is continuously being filled with material (the ob-
ject) nourishing this emotional poison against its objects. Such ob-
jects can be a whole class of people, a social state in which the sufferer
lives, and it can even be the very existence of a person or persons, and
even the existence of all humanity. The degrees of ressentiment ap-
pear to be determined by the decrease of cognition and distinction of
the object against which ressentiment moves. As we mentioned above,
this decrease progresses in the sequence of the initial forms. How-
ever, revenge, the first in this sequence, can be so strong that it leads
equally to a blind drive, a passion, or a mania (Sucht). In such a case,
revenge seems to be also accompanied by an increased feeling to be
“right.” In revenge, as in malice, the occasions for satisfaction are
also sought for, as they are in enviousness. A literary example for
such an intense revenge (Rachsucht) as blind mania seems to be
Heinrich von Kleist’s Michael Kohlhaas.
Weakness as Source of Ressentiment
Some more aspects of the notion of ressentiment may be eluci-

dated in revenge. There is always in this state of ressentiment a cer-
tain tendency to bring and pull the values of its object down to those
felt by the weak or hurt ressentiment-person. Hence, a human being
of ressentiment must feel and know about higher values, which emo-
tionally disturb him. Pride and personal high claims to life on the
part of the attacked and injured are always favorable to the forma-
tion of revenge. Scheler mentions in this context that a slave, who
lives his state so that he feels what he is is his being, will not hold
ressentiment against his master, as is the case in the Greek-Roman
“natural” institution of slavery (III, 121). Likewise, a young child
will not develop ressentiment against his parents after punishment,
since he lives his being without comparing it to other social levels.
Ressentiment occurs only if a difference is felt in the subject with
respect to the object. The degree of difference determines the degree
of intensity of the ressentiment. The cry for equality during the French
Revolution is for Scheler a classical example of social ressentiment,
resulting from unequal distribution of property among the have-nots
and the nobility and the king and their rights. Equality as a value
tore the old values of authority down, and this to such an extent, that
the concrete object (the king) became “blurred” or undistinguished
to the ressentiment-stricken mob, leading to a blind mania in some
cases when the tombs of the old kings were torn open in fury and
rage and the earthly remains dragged through the streets to the inner
satisfaction of the ressentiment-charged mob, carried on by psychic
contagion, which easily links up with all social ressentiment. Socio-
logically, ressentiment builds up very easily as soon as there is a dif-
ference between the constitutional rights of people and their factual
position in their communities. It is this degree of political or social
differences which invites this psychic dynamite to build up against
its objects. Where there is a political tendency toward equal distribu-
tion of property, political and social ressentiment is less likely, but if
everyone has the right to compare his values. with other person’s while
being in a weak social position, in such a society intense ressentiment
feeling is almost certain (III, 43). The tendency and characteristic of
ressentiment to always pull down the values of the one who hurts,
injures and attacks (without planned intention) onto the level of the
subject’s disposition of weakness (be it physical, i.e., bodily deficien-
cies, economical disadvantage, etc., or spiritual, i.e., intellectual, psy-
chical, etc.), is of course, qualitatively different within the different
initial forms of ressentiment. The direction of ressentiment may be
illustrated as follows, where W = the weak ressentiment-subject and
O = the object of ressentiment feeling:
Emotional Detracting O
Cognition of Higher
of Higher Values Values of Object Persons
(Ressentiment) W
In increased ressentiment feeling the object becomes undistinguished

so that the ressentiment person picks out his victim at random out of
a class of objects against which he feels. This may be illustrated thusly,
where “V” stands for an entire class of possible victims of the hostile
weak “W” ressentiment person:
V1 V2 V3 V4 V5 V6 V7 V8 V9
W
In this illustration of ressentiment, V3 and V9 are the random ob-

jects in which ressentiment seeks its satisfaction. From these graphs
follows the most extreme case of ressentiment. If the ressentiment-
subject suffers throughout his entire life from continuous acts of com-
paring his weakness to higher values an entire class of object-persons
is a target of this feeling. In this case, ressentiment often mixes with
a feeling of fate, because the feeling of weakness is so intense and the
emotional distance to the higher object-values so large that no satis-
faction in practice can ever occur. This is the case, for example, in the
well known cripple-ressentiment, which is directed towards the en-
tire class of physically normal human beings. The cripple experiences
the state of his being continuously below that of his normal fellow
men as a personal fate. The same holds for people with less than
normal intelligence. Both Scheler and Nietzsche mention also the
racial ressentiment of Jews, nourished by an age-old pride resulting
in feelings of a racially historical fate. This intensity of ressentiment,
for which the cripple ressentiment seems to be most illustrating, can
also be found with respect to only one object person, namely, when
the very existence of the other is a threat to the ressentiment-subject.
This is the case in extreme envy when the subject, despite his pos-
sible willing to forgive everything the object-person does, cannot stand
the very existence of the other in his qualities. This occurs, for ex-
ample, in envy of beauty, of racial standing, of possessions, of social
state, of reputation and of honor.
From the few foregoing examples follows that different degrees of
intensity of ressentiment are found throughout its various initial forms,
besides the progression of the ressentiment feeling in the given se-
quence of such forms. The common denominator throughout all
degrees of intensity, constituted by the distance between the weak-
ness felt in the subject and the higher level of values of the object, is
an act of comparing on the part of the ressentiment-person. Funda-
mentally, all human beings compare with each other as to their quali-
ties and values; ressentiment, however, builds up against the other if
there is presence of weakness as an inner disposition from which the
object-values are experienced as a personal threat, attack, injury, or
hurt. Ressentiment occurs in certain individuals (we call them
ressentiment-subjects) or groups (ressentiment-group). It can be en-
kindled by the structure of a society as in racial ressentiment or that
of civil wars. We wish to emphasize once more that ressentiment
rests on a feeling and presence of weakness, and that this implies

always a comparison with another’s values, which can be of different
kinds, as they can be symptomatic for a certain society, or an histori-
cal age, in which the ressentiment-subject lives.
Besides the inner emotional disposition, the sociological structure,
and weakness, there is another stimulating factor for ressentiment:
the situation in which a person lives. Scheler mentions that women
are more likely to be subject to situational ressentiment than men.
Women in relations with men are, by nature, exposed to competi-
tion of fellow-women, whereas a man does not have this immediate
feeling of threat from other men. A woman is naturally destined to
play a passive role in love relations, because she is the chosen one and
she is, therefore, in a position of awaiting love, mixed by continual
feelings of threat from real or even only possible competitors. Be-
sides, pride and an innate feeling of shame prevent her from express-
ing and explaining herself, which places her right from the beginning
into a weaker position of facing emotional threats coming from an-
other. She has generally less free or more limited means of defense
than a man would have in analogous situations of weakness. These
descriptions, of course, may not hold so much today as they used to
in the past. The social situation of the old spinster, for instance, is
never free from ressentiment which shows itself in continual relations
to her fellow-people and fashions, and Scheler holds that such a nega-
tive attitude towards sex on the part of the spinster is actually a last
resort of sexual satisfaction (X, 99; III, 53). Suffice it to add that the
spinster in her situation of comparing herself with the greater part of
society, and for the better part of her life, does not have a male coun-
terpart. There were only (female) witches (III, 52). Similar situational
ressentiment builds up in the ever tragic figure of the mother-in-law
(as the mother of the son), whose life-long love for her son is all of a
sudden challenged by someone who has not done anything yet for
him, but still demanding everything. The fact that in sagas, songs,
and literature of all peoples the mother-in-law is described as mali-
cious is no wonder. Another example for situational ressentiment
both Scheler and Nietzsche find in priesthood. The situation of the
priest in society is very much exposed to ressentiment feelings since
he has to represent peace in profane struggles of any sort, he must
disattach himself from earthly means of support and defense (at least
by intention) and he is called to suppress all human affectations (ire,
etc.). His position is ultimately that of a servant of divine institu-

tions. These situational facts place him in socially weak positions
among his fellow men. Scheler refers to the frequent error commit-
ted by the ecclesiastical teacher to adhere to imperativistic ethics,
which holds that only that has moral value which can be forbidden
or commanded (by authority) and that morals can be directly influ-
enced by giving orders (II, 231). Last but not least, we wish to men-
tion of the instances of ressentiment Scheler gives throughout his
works, the apostate. At one time of his life the apostate radically
changes his political, religious or philosophical convictions by taking
up all possible means of argumentation against that which he for-
merly held to be true, and lives now for the sake of its negation. His
new ideas and opinions consist in continuous acts of revenge of his
spiritual past. Nietzsche exemplified this spiritual ressentiment by a
passage taken from Tertullian, stating that the chief source of bliss-
fulness of those in Heaven consists in their looking at Roman offi-
cials being burnt in hell. Scheler understands Tertullian’s entire de-
fense of Christianity as Tertullian’s revenge of the ancient world of
which he was a pagan part. Every way of thinking, which is charac-
terized by a mere negative critique, is based on ressentiment, which
Scheler attributes also to trends of contemporary philosophy in which
only negation and critique are thought to be constitutive (III, 58). In
such a kind of negative thinking there is no direct contact zu den
Sachen selbst (to things themselves) but only a personal opinion, which
permeates such criticism against the opinion of others so that appar-
ent judgements and valuations remain hidden negations and devalu-
ations. It would seem that the philosophy of Sartre stems from a
strong feeling of ressentiment, because only that is regarded as Sache
selbst which can stand negativistic criticism, and the question arises if
his tendency to uglify all reality is the expression of a deep personal
ressentiment (visual asymmetry).
Ressentiment as Source of Value-Deception and Moralities,

and the A Priori of Values
We have furnished examples of ressentiment feeling occurring in

different contexts and have a platform from which we can now re-
sume our discussion of disordered love and value distortion. The philo-
sophical significance of ressentiment lies in deceiving value-feelings

and their consequences with respect to individual and historical judge-
ments on values as well as in the varying rules of preferring and re-
jecting values in different systems of moralities resulting from
ressentiment. Already the preceding examples of ressentiment reveal
that ressentiment determines false valuations (Wertschätzungen) and
subsequent false judgements on values and disvalues. True morality
(Sittlichkeit) rests, for Scheler, on an eternal and immutable order of
values, with which we will deal in the next chapter. Ressentiment,
however, is the source of the reversal or downfall (Umsturz) of values
present to human consciousness (III, 63), and it causes deception in
the comprehension of the order of values and their realization in life
and history. The distorted and falsified valuation and feeling of val-
ues presupposes fundamental and original laws of preference and their
corresponding eternal and immutable order of values as that which
can be falsified. If this were not so, Scheler holds, then neither a
system of values nor any ordered relation between values could ever
be true. Thus, ressentiment can bring to light different moral sys-
tems and valuating dispositions of human beings and societies
throughout different ages of history. Any intense striving and cona-
tion directed towards the realization of higher values in the presence
of weakness results in the overcoming of this tension between weak-
ness of the ressentiment-subject and the higher values of the object-
person or persons by an emotional denial of such positive object-
values. Ressentiment can be so intense that the positive values be-
come felt as negative values, and the negative values of the ordered
scale of values as positive values. This point deserves some clarifica-
tion. If a ressentiment person endeavors in vain to gain love from a
person he truly loves, there is a trend of gradually seeking and locat-
ing negative qualities in him, so that the ressentiment-subject per-
suades himself that his love is not really worthwhile because the be-
loved person appears to lack such values by which the lover was pre-
viously so much attracted. However, during such a process of self-
convincement and rehabilitation the object-values of the beloved as
such are still recognized and are in this instance only blurred, so to
say. The tension, however, between the lover’s impotency (Ohnmacht)
and the unreachable object-person diminishes, so that the subject’s
love becomes more or less unmotivated, and the feeling of impo-
tency turns into a self-generated emotional disposition of relative
strength. To a certain degree all human beings make this (uncon-

scious) experience when we are confronted, say, with an expensive
object we cannot afford to pay for, and an inexpensive one of the
same type and hold the cheap one for “just as good” as the quali-
tatively better one (real qualitative difference presupposed); or if a
business man sets out to assess his debts to the effect that he con-
cludes that they are “not as bad” as they seem to be (on the presuppo-
sition that this is not actually so). But — and this exhibits Ressenti-
ment as such — the ressentiment-subject is possessed by an immedi-
ate and continuous emotional disposition of this kind, which furnishes
the material to develop envy, malice, revenge, etc., into a general
state of ressentiment. It is an immediate disposition because already
the perception of objects and even only expectations are mixed and
permeated with ressentiment-attitudes, and the subject feels always
surrounded and emotionally attacked by higher values such as power,
beauty, wealth, health, happiness, benevolence, etc. He cannot pass
by them without having a ressentiment relation to them. Their oc-
currence in other fellow-men keeps on vexing and annoying him,
while he still has a curious and arbitrary tendency to attempt to dis-
regard them (without success). It is only a look at such occurrences
of higher values in his environment which suffices to immediately
release this poison of impulsive hatred and hostility against an indi-
vidual or a group, in whom higher values occur. The distortion, re-
versal, and deception of values of the absolute scale comes about as
soon as the continuously experienced weakness in the ressentiment-
subject, being aware of his impossibility to attain respective positive
values of his fellowmen, is combined with an emotional recognition
of lower values (e.g., poverty, evil, mental or physical suffering, death).
This emotional turn of value-cognition in ressentiment is what
Nietzsche calls sublime revenge. Hatred and revenge against the strong,
healthy, rich, beautiful, etc., extinguish in this process of feeling val-
ues in a reverse order and subsequent judgements on them. This value
distortion can happen to individuals and entire groups of people as
well. Moreover, the ressentiment-subject may even start to live in a
state of having pity and sympathy for those who share and possess
such “evils,” while he deems himself to represent the good, the strong,
or the blissful sufferer. Such ressentiment-conditioned feeling of (re-
verse) values can be fundamental for a whole morality system, and
can be stimulated by way of suggestion, education, tradition, etc.,
whereby the “slaves” infect the “masters” (Nietzsche). But, and this is
essential for a preliminary understanding of Scheler’s Non-Formal
Ethics, the genuine order of values always remains transparent
throughout such ressentiment values of illusion constituting a moral
world in a ressentiment-subject (III, 67).
From the above we are in a position to see that for Scheler decep-
tion and distortion of values is not based on false, conscious moral
judgements, but only a result of organische Verlogenheit (organic men-
dacity): only that is relevant to the ressentiment-subject which serves
the interests and dispositions of instinctive attention, modifying all
content of objects of higher values towards which they are directed.
Organic mendacity is an involuntary automatism of emotionally ne-
gating and reversing values. Only after such emotional acts in which
the plus and minus signs of values are reversed, false judgments can
be made on values and rules of preference, obtaining between the
“higher” and “lower” values.
How, then, does Scheler go about exhibiting ressentiment as an
emotional factor behind a whole moral system? In his Umsturz der
Werte he shows that modern bourgeois morality (moderne bürgerliche
Moral ) is constituted by a good deal of ressentiment, and that Chris-
tian morality (Moral ) is, in emphasized contrast to Nietzsche, not
based on ressentiment. The exhibition of ressentiment in the above
instance of a whole moral system is the only one Scheler gives in his
works. But he gives clear evidence of his opinion that there have been
more than one falsification and reversal of the objective order of val-
ues in history (II, 310), and he leaves it up to further research to
bring out the ressentiment factor in different moralities as history
presents them to us. For it is for Scheler one of the most significant
achievements of modern ethics to have found out that different morali-
ties (Moralen) have existed (III, 68). This is not to be taken as the
standpoint of ethic relativism, but as that of an ethic absolutism so to
speak: moral systems in history have a relation to an eternally valid
ethics (III, 69) or an absolute scale of objective values, comparable to
different world-systems, e.g., the Ptolemaic or Copernican one com-
pared to an ideal astronomical system, which science looks for. Thus,
moral systems have had only more or less adequacy to eternally valid
ethics of values. A morality (Moral ) is a system of rules of preference
between values which can undergo evolutions and variations in con-
trast to any form of moral relativism (Comte, Mill, Spencer). Scheler
holds that historical variations of both valuation (Schätzungsweisen)

and rules of preferring between values take place on the background
of evident, eternal laws of preferring and an evident order of values,
which is as objective as mathematical truth (III, 63). The positive
insight into the dimensions of the relativity of moralities requires a
treatment of five distinct problems (II, 300):
1. Variations of value feeling (emotive cognition) and the structure
of rules of preferring, and of love and hatred. Such variations Scheler
calls: “ethos.” In the intellectual sphere such an ethos is a
Weltanschauung, i.e., a way of conceiving and looking at the world (world-
view), and in religion the ethos is the structure of faith and its content as
the foundation of respective dogmatic and theological forms of faith.
2. Variations of value-judgement as variations of different ethics
(in the widest sense).
3. Variations of types of actions, institutions and goods, such as
marriage, monogamy, murder, theft, lying, etc.
4. Variations of practical morality, which pertains to factual acts of
human beings relative to their ethos.
5. Variations of customs and habits, whose execution is rooted in
traditions and whose changes presuppose acts of will.
It is likely to assume that Scheler intended to incorporate all these
dimensions of thought in detail into his future works on philosophi-
cal ethics, anthropology, and philosophy of sociology.
As to modern morality, Scheler reduces four of its characteristics to
emotional value-distortion and falsification, which may be briefly
explained. First, he argues that modern humanitarian love, i.e., love
for humanity (allgemeine Menschenliebe) is not only an idea but a
movement, which must be strictly differentiated from the Christian
notion of love. The difference between humanitarian and Christian
love was not recognized by Nietzsche, when he attributed to the lat-
ter the most refined blossom ressentiment has ever grown. This point
alone suffices to show that Treitschke’s labeling of Scheler as a Catho-
lic Nietzsche is at least a gross exaggeration. Modern humanitarian
love is a protest of the 19th century against love for God and one’s
neighbor. Humanitarian love seeks to replace God by love for all
humanity, and not for one’s neighbor or minority groups alone. Its
objective is advancement and accomplishment of the general well-
being and welfare of humanity, not the salvation of individuals. Indi-
vidual love is supposed to contribute only to the whole of humanity
for its well-being as a common good. Hence, there is the tendency to

increase the number of institutions which should help to bring about
the advancement of common welfare (Wohlfahrtseinrichtungen) which,
however, leads to the replacement of Christian individual and per-
sonal acts of love towards the fellow-man. Most appropriately al-
ready Goethe said in the Italienische Reisen that he feared the world
will finally become one great hospital, in which everyone is the other’s
nurse. Scheler sees in this movement of humanitarian love a protest
and hatred, an envy and revenge against the ruling minorities repre-
senting positive values, and the well-being of humanity as an objec-
tive is only a means, and not a recognized value as such, which is used
against the objects or underlying ressentiment, first against God who
is to be replaced by the new humanitarian ideal, then against patrio-
tism, organized society, and last but not least, against altruism, in
which everyone is supposed to contribute to the well-being of the mass,
not by acts but by escape from one’s self. Humanitarian love towards the
whole of humanity is a sociopolitical principle, which Scheler regrets to
see influencing Christianity in its so-called Christian socialism.
Secondly, Scheler reduces modern rules of preferring such values
to ressentiment that are relegated to one’s own work. That which ev-
eryone himself achieves possesses a high value, and he believes that in
this there is the implication that all men have basically the same moral
powers, and that all are qualitatively equal. From this tacit implica-
tion the value of work accomplished can relatively easily be deter-
mined, for the measure for such values of individual work is the sweat
and labor put into work. All modern cry for equality of men, be it
social, political, economical, religious, or moral equality, rests, for
Scheler, on ressentiment. It is the desire to degrade those of innate
higher qualities and talent; it is a revolt of the slaves against the mas-
ters. Only those demand principles of equality who fear to lose (III,
121), and Scheler considers it a law that to the same degree as men
are supposed to be qualitatively equal they can be so only by the
criterion of lowest values. Ressentiment, which cannot enjoy and stand
the looks of higher values, only covers its presence with this demand
for equality, and strives to decapitate and degrade the bearers of high
quality, because it is they who are the emotional object of hatred and
annoyance. Needless to say that in this it is the aristocrat Scheler who
speaks, and needless to say that as to education he pleads unmistak-
ably for an education for an elite, and again, needless to say that he
reveals himself (as everywhere evidenced, in his own writings) as a

sworn antisocialist.
Thirdly, the subjectivation of values in modern morality or the
tendency to reduce values to subjective judgements expresses for
Scheler modern man’s feelings of a burden in the face of the ranks
and graded order of objective values. Subjectivistic morality leads to
an anarchy in moral problems because nothing can be said anymore
with certainty; and further, it leads to an elementary form of a surro-
gate: “thou shalt” (as inner voice), in which all objective values are
seen relative to races, peoples, nations, cultures, etc. The “thou shalt”
pertains only to that which is generally accepted to be valid and valu-
able, e.g., in terms of conventions or traditions. The recognition of
the subjectivity of value judgements relieves the ressentiment-sub-
ject of the arrow of self-evident moral judgement of his acts.
Fourthly, the reversal of two value-modalities in modern morality
are characteristic for the distorting function of the ressentiment in
the recognition of values and value feeling itself. As we shall see in
the next chapter on values, Scheler distinguishes between four value-
modalities. The first modality encompasses all pleasure-values
(sinnliche Werte) . All values pertaining to the agreeable and disagree-
able belong to this modality. The second modality, higher in order, is
that of vital values (Vitalwerte, Lebenswerte), which we might also
call in English, life-values or welfare-values. Pleasure-values are func-
tions of sensible feeling (sinnliche Gefühle) and they correlate to physical
feeling-states (e.g., pain, pleasure, etc.). The series of these values have so-
called consecutive values, one of which being the value of utility, useful-
ness or efficiency (II, 120-21) though Scheler considered later on as an
additional rank. On the other hand, vital values are functions of vital
feelings, and range from the noble to the vulgar, and such values cor-
relate to vital feeling-states. It is of extreme significance in Scheler’s
ethics of values that vital values cannot be reduced to pleasure values,
nor can they be reduced to the next higher modality of spiritual val-
ues. Vital values are totally independent, and the failure to see this
Scheler calls a fundamental deficiency of hitherto existing ethical sys-
tems. The reason for the independence of vital values lies in Scheler’s
conviction that life is not a mere empirical generic concept
(Gattungsbegriff ), but a genuine (phenomenological) essence. (Wesenheit).
The subordination of vital values to the consecutive values of the
first modality, is the most conspicuous reversal of value ranks in mod-
ern morality. It has been nourished by the industrial and business

mentality of our time: the subordination of the noble (das Edle) to
what is useful (III, 131). This reversal has resulted in the general
recognition of such values as skills (Klugheit, in contrast to wisdom,
if we understand Scheler correctly), quick adjustability, successful
calculating and scheming thinking and sense of security, at the ex-
pense of talent, courage, fortitude, humility, ability to sacrifice etc.
In addition, a respective change of meaning in certain concepts has
taken place in values like faithfulness, self-control, veracity, thrifti-
ness and justice. For instance, justice is equated with equal treatment
and equal distribution of profits and goods for all men, not consider-
ing their different nature and talents. A legislation for a group or a
part of a human community may be considered to be unjust by those
excepted from this legislation (III, 132). Furthermore, the value of
the life of the individual, the family, or the people has been subjected
to their usefulness to higher and larger forms of sociation. The exis-
tential justification of life is seen to a high degree in the mere useful-
ness of the human being within the mechanism of our utility-civili-
zation. He who cannot and will not adjust to this mechanism is
doomed to failure, no matter how noble he is and which his talents
and individual qualities are. The preference of the useful to vital val-
ues reveals the ressentiment of the untalented mass against the gifted,
and it is the ressentiment of the rising class of business-minded men
and industrialists who, with their increasing influence in public life,
politics, and (western) government, have had their effect even in cul-
tural and intellectual life by imposing their own way of life, their
judgements, taste, inclinations, and valuations. Values of usefulness
have started to become generally accepted above the values of the
noble. The spirit of modern civilization shows a decline, because it
expresses the domination of the qualitatively weak over the qualita-
tively strong, the clever over the noble, mere quantity over quality,
the general deterioration of the central guiding powers in man against
the rising anarchy of automizing intentions, and the growing neglect
of purposes for the sake of development of mere means (III, 147).
Nature, which man wanted to conquer, is being reduced to mecha-
nisms in whose wheels he becomes more and more entangled, and it
is in this process the transvaluation of the noble and the useful takes
place. The entire age of mechanism is only the symbol of the ressen-
timent of the “slaves” in the sense that a false dignity has been attrib-
uted to metaphysical truth assertions on mechanism. This does not

mean for Scheler, however, that mechanistic views as such are with-
out a value.
The preferring of the value of usefulness to those of life may fur-
ther be illustrated in a practical example. If a business employee is so
much burdened with work for his firm he may be expected to do
extra work at home so that he will catch up with all that he could not
do during the week. If he does so his overtime work done during the
(unpaid) weekends will be recognized by his boss as useful to the
firm. He himself, too, will be assessed as a person on the basis of his
usefulness. The more overtime he works the more his value (of use-
fulness) to the firm will increase, which will eventually bear effect on
his future career and promotion. Other employees might be in the
same situation of being overburdened, but as a rule, a businessman
will recognize him who has the best record of usefulness to the firm,
i.e., whose work was the most effective; and the others, less effective
and useful, will have to wait for their promotions. But, let us say, that
among the latter there is someone who, no matter how much he is
behind his work assignments, consistently devotes sufficient time of
the weekend to his family, his wife and child who is suffering from a
severe illness. This man’s usefulness for the business firm is consciously
limited, and it is likely to happen (and it does) that he will be among
the first to be dismissed in a phase of restructuring the firm. If he had
neglected his family life for the sake of business, however, his posi-
tion in the firm would have been more secure and promising. The
value implied in family devotion and moral responsibility, in short,
the man’s noble act, is here placed after the value of usefulness (un-
less, of course, the employer happens to be a man of heart). It is
Scheler’s viewpoint that the recognition of the lower value of useful-
ness has penetrated all modern morality, and in our case the quantity
of usefulness is placed before the quality of the noble act of the em-
ployee. The noble quality of the employee may stimulate even
ressentiment in the employer in that he sets out to exercise so much
pressure on him that the ressentiment-object does not find a way
out, resulting either in a disordered family life or final dismissal which
itself is likely to result in disordered family life. It seems at first sight
that Scheler exaggerates by making this kind of transvaluation a char-
acteristic of modern morality. It does not take too much time and
effort, however, for one to find out by a close observation of life and
situations around us, how much this tendency of recognizing useful-

ness at the expense of vital values has become an unconscious part
and parcel in our lives. This transvaluation pertains even to religious
activities, where it should be the least expected. After having explained
the sense of obligation in faith and love (II, 227-29). Scheler points
out that symbolic or outer sorts of religious expression can easily be
falsely taken for acts of faith and love. This is the case when a person
takes regular going to Sunday mass for an act of faith, i.e., the mere
quantitative compliance with obligation and church laws, or when
he has the feeling that the more he goes, the more prospect for salva-
tion he will have. And again, the usefulness of someone to the church
(practical services, donations, etc.) may result in a value-deception,
namely, if a genuine religious act of love is identified with the accu-
mulation of quantitative or useful activities resulting in a false inner
religious satisfaction.
Ontologically man is the place of the occurrence of feelable (fühlbar)
values. Ultimately, psychic functions of attraction and refusal (love
and hatred) are the a priori foundation for all feelable value-cogni-
tion (Wert-Erschauung) as well as the ordered interconnection of val-
ues. The sphere of feeling values is totally different from perception
and reasoning, and feeling is the only access to values. Ordered and
correct love is a sensible apprehension of the absolute scale of values
or sections thereof. Such values in their order make their appearance
within all feelable (fühlbar) contact with the world (psychic, spiri-
tual, physical, cultural). It is the pursuance of the intentional and
sensible functions of love and hatred which lays values bare. That
which is thus given in immediate sensible presence, i.e., in these acts
before any intervention of reason or will, is a priori value-content (II,
82). All moral conduct, willing, Donation, desire, etc., is directed
towards the actualization of values already given in feelable (fühlbar)
acts of love and hatred (attraction and repulsion). Values can be given
in different degrees of intensity, Scheler holds, but once a value is
given in feelable (fühlbar) self-evidence, its willing it, is necessary by
the evidence of a value. Feelable (fühlbar) comprehension of values is
both prior to and independent of all forming of judgements, which
can be made only about values, i.e., after their immediate feelable
(fühlbar) presence.
In contrast to Kant, Scheler’s a priori rests on emotive experience
made in contact with the world. Further, his a priori notion pertains
to man’s emotive sphere and this likewise in contrast to Kant. And,

last but not least, the a priori pertains to content (the “Material”)
and not to form, and this again in emphasized contradiction to Kant
(II, 67-72). This is actually only a consequence of Scheler’s previ-
ously mentioned philosophico-anthropological stand that man’s spirit
(Geist) encompasses emotion, reason, and will power, and that feelable
acts are prior to rational and voluntary acts. He considers it one of
the greatest deficiencies of Kant’s ethics that feeling, and even love
and hatred, are assigned to the sensual (sinnlich) sphere, since they
could not be assigned by him to reason. Scheler’s ethics rejects the
old prejudice that human spirit (Geist) exhausts itself in reason and
sensibility (Vernunft and Sinnlichkeit). Also the emotive (das
Emotionale) of spirit, man’s feeling, preferring, rejecting, loving, hat-
ing, as well as his willing possess their own autonomous a priori,
which is not borrowed from reason. As Pascal put it: “le coeur a ses
raisons.” Axiomatic relations between values are independent of logical
axioms, and are not applications of logical axioms to values (II, 82).
The higher and lower levels throughout the scale of values are com-
prehended in the acts of preferring. However, preferring a value to
another does not mean choosing it. To choose a value is a subsequent
act to preferring, since the higher value must already be given in the
act of preferring in order to be able to be chosen. Preferring, then, is
not to be taken as choice, conation, or willing. Scheler distinguishes
between two kinds of preferring. “Empirical preferring” which ob-
tains with respect to goods (Güter) and “a priori preferring,” which
obtains with respect to values themselves and independently of goods.
The “a priori preferring” encompasses always a whole complex do-
main of goods. This means to say that he who will always prefer the
value “noble” to the value “agreeable” will be concerned with very
different domains of goods than some one who does not do so, since
the latter would place purposes of lower values above the value of the
noble, and this again would result in a deception of preference
(Täuschung des Vorziehens ; II, 105). The height of a value within the
scale of values is a priori preferred, because this height rests in the
essence (Wesen) of values in their order. The ordered ranks of values
(Rangordnung der Werte), then, are invariable, whereas rules of pre-
ferring one value to another remain throughout history variable. It is
clear, then, that Scheler attributes a major cause of the historical vari-
ability of rules of preference to ressentiment, i.e., a damaged and poi-
soned ordo amoris.
Chapter Six
Non-Formal Ethics of Values
The Historical Place of Ethics of Values
S cheler’s philosophical ethics must, within the framework of our

presentation, restrict itself to the central problems. We mentioned
before that Scheler’s Formalismus in der Ethik und die materiale
Wertethik is the only one of four comprehensive works that he could
complete before death overcame him. It unquestionably represents
the chief contribution to ethics in this century and is, along with
Aristotelian Ethics and Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason, the most
profound, erudite, and ingenious work on ethics to be found in the
history of philosophy.
The dearth of reference to Scheler in the wide majority of contem-
porary writings on moral philosophy, anthologies, or analyses of mod-
ern ethical theories in America is almost inexplicable. With very little
exceptions, Scheler is either not mentioned at all (!), or referred to
only in peripheral context. It appears that at this time in America the
significance and uniqueness of Non-Formal Ethics of Values has not
been generally recognized yet as a major break-through in ethics.
It is now seventy years ago that Scheler finished this work. Part
One was first published in the famous Volume One of the Jahrbuch
für Philosophie und Phänomenologische Forschung (1913), which con-
tained among other writings Husserl’s Ideen zu einer reinen
Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. The year 1913
is a milestone of European contemporary philosophy of which Scheler
remained rather critical and at whose beginning are Husserl’s Logische
Untersuchungen (1900–01) of which he also remained critical since
1904/05 (XIV, 138-56; 442). We say “milestone” because in this year
both pure (Husserl) and applied phenomenology (Scheler) had been
established. In Scheler’s non-formal ethics of values, phenomenological
insights are applied to the realm of values.
At the outset of the first part, Scheler informs us that he considers
his work only as Grundlegung, i.e., as a basic outline, or foundation
to a philosophical ethics, and that he treats only fundamental prob-
lems, restricting himself to the most elemental points of departure
(Ansatzpunkte). Hence, Scheler’s goal is not extension and further
elaboration of the discipline of ethics as such. It was a later work in

which he planned “to develop a non-formal ethic of values on the
broadest basis of phenomenological experience.” This is of signifi-
cance concerning the evaluation and criticism of non-formal ethics,
since the work, as we have it, can not be considered the last word of
Scheler’s on ethics but is only Grundlegung for another, more de-
tailed investigation, which death prevented him from completing.
He considered his foundation of ethics of values as an effort “to clear
the way” for future research. By “clearing the way” he had in mind
especially some tacit presuppositions contained in Kant’s Critique of
Practical Reason, which as a whole Scheler regarded as the greatest
masterpiece ever produced in ethics. But Kant’s “colossus of steel and
bronze” has obstructed philosophy on its path to reach insights into
moral values, their order and their ranks, and the norms which rest
on them. Scheler’s intense criticism throughout the Formalismus
against Kant is not the result of a sheer anti-Kantian attitude, which
rather often marks neo-Thomistic criticism against Kant. Scheler,
the scholar, nowhere shows willful or emotional bias against or for
any thinker of the past. He is not anti-Kantian ex cathedra, he in-
forms us, but he intends to go beyond Kant, in a similar sense as
Kant went beyond Aristotle when he, with unmistakable argumenta-
tion, rejected teleological ethics, i.e., all ethics of goods and purposes
(Güter und Zweckethik). Scheler’s non-formal ethics of values pre-
supposes Kant’s refutation of all ethics of goods and purposes. This
achievement of the Critique of Practical Reason remains for Scheler
its ultimate value. But both Kant and Scheler clearly exhibit the short-
comings contained in eudaemonistic ethics, and this is one of the
few points on which they agree.
The Formalismus lacks, as do many works of Scheler, continuity
and consistent structure. It is not easy to read. In the preface, Scheler
apologizes that the disposition of the whole lacks clarity. This lack of
clarity is the more regrettable since he refers to the Formalismus as
the central work of his philosophy (Preface, 2nd edition). To sim-
plify matters, we are going to list only the major points in which
Scheler disagrees with Kant, i.e., that which Scheler refers to as Kantian
presuppositions. It appears that many of these are subject to future
research as to the correct or incorrect Schelerian argumentations. Tack-
ling these problems in this chapter would be far beyond the scope of
our discussion of Scheler’s philosophy. In summary then, Scheler holds
Chapter 6 Non-Formal Ethics of Values 73
the following points as presuppositions contained in the Critique of

Practical Reason:
1. Reason is of constant organization throughout changing his-
tory.
2. The a priori does not pertain to experience (Erfahrung).
3. The a priori only pertains to the formal.
4. The equalization of the “material” with the “sensible,” and the a
priori with thought (das Gedachte) or reason.
5. Moral acts of love and hatred lead, if posited as fundamental
acts, to deviations into empiricism and the sensible (Sinnliches).
6. The a priori rests on a synthetic activity of subjectivistic nature.
7. All non-formal ethics must necessarily be ethics of goods and
purposes and, therefore, of a posteriori validity.
8. All non-formal ethics is hedonism.
9. All non-formal ethics is heteronomous; only formal ethics au-
tonomous.
10. Only formal ethics can give the foundation of the dignity of
the person.
11. All non-formal ethics must place the foundation of all valua-
tions into the egoism of human nature as a natural drive. Only for-
mal ethics can establish a formal universal moral law (Sittengesetz)
independent of man’s natural being.
Scheler holds that the Kantian alternative: ethics of purpose and
goods — formal ethics (in which formal ethics leads ethics of pur-
pose and goods ad absurdum by the establishment of inevitable, rela-
tivistic consequences), is overcome by the possibility of a non-for-
mal, nevertheless absolute ethics of values. A few general remarks
may precede the analysis of values with the intention to cast at least
some light on the position of non-formal ethics of values among other
contemporary ethical theories. It has to be noted here that the Ger-
man adjective “material ” in the title of Scheler’s Formalismus corre-
sponds to English “non-formal,” and not to English “material,” as it
has been translated here and there. German “material” is to be under-
stood in contrast to Kant’s “formal” and connotes in German “content”
in contrast to German “materiell” which corresponds in English to “ma-
terial.”
Moral judgements rest on the conviction that moral acts always are
in relation to other person’s interests which ought to be taken into
consideration. For instance, either others should not be harmed when
we pursue our own interests, or the other is not in some way to be

advanced in his interests at the expense of our own, or his interests or
very being should be advanced and enhanced at the expense of our
own sacrifice. This conviction that the interests of the other ought to
be accounted for appears throughout historical epochs in different
peoples, communities, cultures, etc. in the form of moral laws, com-
mandments, demands, obligations, and rights, which, however, show
different and changing content throughout all history. Frequently
such forms of moral obligation are accompanied by the acceptance
of a highest good, from which all rules of moral acting are derived.
Throughout history there have existed many different moralities
(Moralen) among tribes, peoples, races, nations, cultures, etc., and
essential to such different moralities is their frequently unconditional
claim for moral validity. But this characteristic is, first of all, only an
expression of the particularity of a common moral attitude or feel-
ing, obtaining among the bearers of a morality. This is so because in
practice such unconditional validity can either be ignored or regarded
as doubtful. A well known point made against an unconditional moral
validity is the reference to the above mentioned historical fact that at
all times of human existence there have been different, and even very
different moralities. Chinese, humanitarian, Mohammedan, Chris-
tian, Buddhist, Teutonic moralities, those of tolerance and fulfill-
ment of duty, to mention only a few, unmistakably show differences
of moral tenets, rules of acting, purposes, and claims, which here and
there reveal contradictions and incompatibilities among them. As is
well known, this led to the assumption of a relativity of values or of
moral norms. But this assumption of a moral relativity has been bal-
anced since Socrates by endeavors to establish indisputable insight
into that which is morally good. In all such endeavors (Socrates, Plato,
Aristotle, Kant) one was aware of the differences of moralities through-
out such theoretical investigations. The indisputable a priori insight
into that which is universally obliging is the task of ethics, and Scheler
strictly distinguishes in this sense between the term “moral” and
“ethic,” which are and have often been interchangeably used. Above
all moralities in history, then, there is a unity of ethics (N. Hartmann),
whose task is not a development and recommendation of rules of a
particular morality but to gain insight into universal norms.
Generally speaking, three fundamental questions have been raised
in straight ethics. First, the question of a highest good; secondly, the
question of what is morally correct acting; and thirdly, the question

of free will. These questions have been given different answers. This
does not imply, however, that ethics turns out to be relative in itself.
That which appears to be different in ethical systems is a method-
ological aspect or a different point of departure rather than the ulti-
mate objective of ethics as such. Such differences frequently come
about because of an unclear distinction made between ethics (as phi-
losophy of morals) and a morality. For it is easy to see that, for in-
stance, such kinds of ethical tenets can be established which ulti-
mately are nothing else than a philosophical superstructure on a par-
ticular morality, and it is sometimes extremely difficult for the phi-
losopher to exhibit such fusion between ethics and a morality or the
mere growth of an ethical system out of an existing morality.
Although the first question of the highest good is part of the foun-
dation of ethics, it seems that rational deliberation thus far has been
unable to determine the highest good. The highest good was, for
example, seen in “complete self-contentment” (galenismos, Epicurus),
“union with nature and suppression of feelings” (nomos, Stoa), or
“pleasure” (hedone, Aristippus). In theological ethics, which is to be
distinguished from philosophical ethics, the highest good, namely
God, is not the result of rational insight or historical considerations,
but rests on divine revelation. From a strict philosophical stand, theo-
logical ethics must be subjected to forms of morality, although both
philosophical and theological ethics have much in common. Divine
revelation is primordially a matter of faith which cannot be rational-
ized in itself. But faith, as a source of theological ethics, is a phenom-
enon of and within historical time, because there have been many
faiths throughout history. Christian faith is also, from a philosophi-
cal viewpoint, historical in that it took its origin at a specific point of
historical time. Its absoluteness and relation to eternity is not, from a
strict philosophical viewpoint, subject to philosophical inquiry or
ethics, because it rests on faith as such.
With respect to the second question of what is morally correct
acting there are also differences, but the ultimate goal of determining
the answer remains the same. For example, non-formal ethics of val-
ues, founded by Scheler, and systematically developed later by N.
Hartmann ( 1882-1950), reveals intuitive cognition of values, which
are independent in their being and of their realization by man. Val-
ues are ideal objects, and immutable. But if such values are realized
by any one person, correct moral acting is the result. Moral judge-
ments presuppose the cognition of value-qualities in the same sense
as in perceptive judgements something is said about sensible quali-
ties of things. In formalistic ethics (Kant) the source of morally cor-
rect acting is placed into reason, and “Sittlichkeit” exists in a moral
categorical principle. In utilitarianism it is maintained that all men
strive according to their natural disposition toward a certain state of
happiness, and moral acts are pursued to accomplish it. Finally,
psychologistic ethics refrains from establishing common obligations
and is concerned with the “how” of possible obligations which is
explained in terms of psychic or social conditions and developments.
Moral acts are said to rest in certain psychic reactions (approval, dis-
approval), and value judgements are said to be the result of psychic
dispositions of the individual. In such different ethical stands, moral
conscience is regarded as either an a priori consciousness of values, or
as a rational institution positing obligation, or as a result of educa-
tion and social life. In theological ethics, conscience is often consid-
ered as the voice of God.
The advantage and depth of non-formal ethics of values over these
and other ethical theories lies unquestionably in the fact that here
the whole of man is the object of investigation, i.e., not only the
“animal rationale,” or the “homo faber” as an evolutionary result and
blind alley of nature, or any other variation of the ideas of man.
Non-formal ethics of values deals both with such ideas of man
throughout history and goes beyond them in that man, as an emo-
tional, voluntative, rational, social, historical, and evolutionary phe-
nomenon is the object of investigation. The scope of the moral
beingness in man is much wider and deeper than in Aristotle, Kant,
or utilitarianism. The whole of man — often an unclear phrase in
discussions on man without a clear meaning — is the object. This is
the reason why Scheler so intensely deals with historical, social, eth-
nical, evolutionary, and many other aspects of man in detail. For
non-formal ethics of values must be understood in conjunction with
Scheler’s philosophical anthropology. One cannot be fully understood
without the other. During his last years Scheler pointed out that all
questions of philosophy ultimately reduce themselves to the ques-
tion of “what is man?” The reason why non-formal ethics of values is
still under ardent discussion in Europe in both positive and negative
aspects lies in the far-reaching relations Scheler’s ethics has to so many
other branches of knowledge. To develop further that for which

Scheler has only given as a Grundlegung appears to be a primordial
task in contemporary philosophical ethics. One must not point to
Scheler’s inaccuracies, which resulted from his personality abound-
ing so much in ideas that he did not manage to put them down in a
clear order. The way he handled his research only proves too well that
we are concerned with a thinker who did not restrict himself only to
matters philosophical, but who, like Nietzsche, was in addition al-
ways in a continual close contact with many other branches of knowl-
edge. Scheler could start on a subject by writing on a menu in a train
and end up writing on it on empty pages in the back of a book in his
study. We do not know how much got lost this way. The Formalismus
is, as he himself admits, not of a clear disposition and not easy to
read. This, however, should not prevent us from seeing the essential
message of non-formal ethics of values. As Schopenhauer said, it is
easy to criticize a thinker, but difficult to understand one. What,
then, are the chief ideas of Scheler’s ethics of values?
Phenomenological Givenness in Intentional Feeling
The a priori of the emotional are intentional objects of feeling:

values. Values are given to intentional feeling immediately, as colors
are to seeing or sounds are to hearing. Value-feeling must be strictly
distinguished from any states of feelings which are not intentional.
Value-feeling is in itself an original relation towards its objects (II,
261). An imaginary being only endowed with reason and perception
would be blind to the realm of values, since values make their ap-
pearance first in their being felt. We showed before that Scheler cat-
egorically attributes priority to the emotive and ultimately love as a
pure attraction and pure interest in the world. Since values like lovely,
charming, noble, courageous, are felt, we can easily understand when
he speaks of values as first messengers of the special nature of all
objects. This messenger appears in feeling. A value can be very clear
to us while the object to which a value refers is still obscure. This
priority of the givenness of a value is evident, for example, when a
person we meet at first sight is sympathetic, repulsive, friendly, or
unsympathetic, without any possibility to know the reasons for this
relational feeling. And again we may enter a room for the first time
and have the emotive experience of its being inviting, agreeable, or

unfriendly, without being aware of that which makes such values
present to us or which are the bearers of such value qualities. The
prior givenness of values pertains both to the psychic and the physi-
cal as these two examples show. Even in acts of remembering, expect-
ing, imagining or perceiving something, values antecede as if they
always silently walk ahead of objects to which they refer. This apriorism
of value-feeling is independent of the things to which they refer. But
values given in the emotive sphere of man have ordered relations to
each other (higher and lower values) which, too, are independent of
things with their particular relations. Before things can be called nice,
lovely, charming, etc., such values are, as it were, at hand in our feel-
ing. Scheler rejects, therefore, any theory holding that values are quali-
ties of things, and especially that all good and noble things have com-
mon properties which make them good or noble. Attempts to reduce
values to common properties are doomed to failure, for already one
single act or one individual suffices to comprehend (erfassen) a real
value. Nor are values derived from so called common properties be-
cause it is as non-sensical to ask for the common property of all blue
things (since it consists in their being blue) as to ask for the common
property of all good men.
Values always exhibit a specific content. This is why their emotive
a priori is non-formal (in German: material), in contrast to Kant’s
formal a priori. Their content and the ordered ranks among them
possess apriorism of givenness in the order of experience because value-
feeling is prior to a given thing. But in the order of reality, values and
things form an insoluble interconnection (Zusammenhang). And, fi-
nally, in the order of essence (Wesensordnung) values are independent
of being, i.e., they are not reducible to being, although they belong
to given substrates (in Aristotle’s sense of hypokeimenon). Therefore,
in this order of essence, being is in a sense prior to values. The inde-
pendence of values in their being is clear for Scheler by the fact that
values like “agreeable,” “lovely,” “charming,” are accessible to us with-
out their being attached to or associated with things. This holds true
in the same sense for colors, which can be present to us without
being perceived as a layer of a surface. Likewise, ordered ranks of
spectral colors do not change with colorations of objects which rep-
resent themselves in them. Likewise, values do not change with chang-
ing objects. Poison remains poison, no matter if it is mortal or nutri-
tious to different organisms. The value of friendship remains a value,

no matter if my friend turns out to be a rascal. All kinds of values
form an absolute order and they are immutable. A recognized rela-
tivity of values comes about only through a false human cognition
(Erkennen). Scheler assaults with emphasis all subjectivistic ethical
relativism which reduces values to changing life conditions in his-
tory. It is in this context that he speaks of the variations of ethos, the
variation of value judgments, the variations of feeling, and the varia-
tions of traditional customs throughout history. Such variations, which
we mentioned in the preceding chapters, only take place on the back-
ground of the ordered relations and ranks of values given a priori in
intentional feeling.
In this ordered realm, there obtain also a priori formal laws. Values
fall into two groups: positive and negative values (e.g., good–evil).
The existence of a positive value is itself a positive value. The non-
existence of a positive value is a negative value. The existence of a
negative value is itself a negative value. The non-existence of a nega-
tive value is itself a positive value. One value cannot be at the same
time both positive and negative. (This should not be understood as a
mere application of the principle of contradiction [II, 133], but these
formal laws obtaining among values are grounded in the: “le coeur a
ses raisons”). Finally, every non-negative value is positive and vice
versa. The most important a priori relations of values consist in their
ordered ranks (Rangordnung) which prevail throughout all qualities
of values. They are called “value-modalities.” These ranks form the a
priori of value-insight (Werteinsicht), and the insight into laws of
preference. The order of ranks of values is absolute, i.e., it is indepen-
dent of the historical change of goods and norms. Thus, this order is
an absolute ethic reference system, on the background of which all
moral judgments, norms, variations of ethos, and moralities in his-
tory take place. Scheler says (VIII, 154): “The theory of the dimen-
sions of the relativity of value relations (II, V, 6) does not only give us
the possibility of relating all historical moralities and forms of ethos
to a universal system of reference — however only one of the order of
valve-modalities and qualities, not of goods and norms — but it also
gives — although only a negative — domain in which each positive
historical age and each specific group has to find its own, always only
a relative system of goods and norms.”
Emotive Axiology: The Graded Realm of Values
The a priori order among values in non-formal ethics is the follow-

ing:
1. Sensible values (Sinnliche Werte). The series of values of this
lowest modality ranges from the agreeable to the disagreeable. This
modality corresponds to sensible feeling (sinnliches Fühlen) with its
functions of enjoyment and suffering (Erleiden), and to the feeling-
states of sensible (sinnlicher) pleasure and pain. In every modality
there are values of things (Sachwerte), values of function (Funktions-
werte) and values of state (Zustandswerte). Although among different
people and organisms, the values of the agreeable and disagreeable
appear in different manifestations in that something can be agree-
able to one organism and not for another, the order as such of the
agreeable (as a higher value), and disagreeable (as a lower value) is
absolute and evident before such knowledge about different organ-
isms. The fact that the agreeable is preferred to the disagreeable is not
given by way of induction or observation, rather, this order lies in the
essence (Wesen) of these values as well as in the essence of sensible
feeling. If someone would tell us that he has met living beings which
prefer the disagreeable to the agreeable, we would not be forced to
believe this. Rather, we would think it impossible, for these beings
would either feel different things as agreeable or disagreeable than we
do, or they would not prefer the disagreeable but only take it as a
sacrifice for the sake of another value modality (unknown to us), or
there may be a case of perversion of appetite so that things destruc-
tive to life are felt to be agreeable (pathological cases). The preference
of the agreeable to the disagreeable lies in the essence of these values
and is a priori presupposed in all observation and induction. The a
priori relation between the disagreeable and agreeable cannot be ex-
plained in terms of an evolutionary theory either which holds that
the agreeable “developed” to be preferred to the disagreeable, because
this preference proved to be purposeful and useful to life. Whatever
can be explained in evolutionary terms pertains only to states of feel-
ing in relation to impulses directed to things, but never to valves
themselves and laws of preference, which are independent in both
their evidence and givenness of organisms.
The first modality of values has, as is the case of all four modalities,
consecutive values, which are technical and symbolic values. In the
first modality, technical values are those pertaining to the produc-

tion of agreeable things or values of civilization, for example, the
values of utility, enjoyment and luxury. (However, in contradiction
to this, Scheler speaks in his essay Vorbilder und Führer [X, 255-56]
of five value-modalities, making the consecutive values of utility a
separate modality. This is why he distinguishes five, instead of four
types of model-persons of value [Wertpersontypen] to which we will
refer later.) A symbolic value is, for instance, a flag, representing the
dignity and honor of a nation. This value has nothing to do with the
value of the cloth of the flag. Symbolic values must not be confused,
therefore, with symbols of values, (e.g., paper money) which serve
only as an artificial quantification of values.
2. The next higher modality is that of values of life, or vital values
(Lebenswerte). The values of this modality range from the noble to
the vulgar (edel, gemein), or also from the good (in the sense of Ger-
man “tüchtig,” i.e., mutatis mutandis, excellent, able) and bad (schlecht,
i.e., not “evil”). Consecutive values of this modality are those per-
taining to the general well being (Wohlfahrt). Corresponding states
of this modality are those of health, disease, states of aging, feeling of
forthcoming death, weakness, and strength. The vital value modality
(noble–vulgar) is completely independent of other modalities. It can-
not be reduced to the former modality nor to the next higher modal-
ity of spiritual values. Scheler sees the reason for this in that life is
phenomenologically an essence (Wesenheit) and not an empirical ge-
neric conception (Gattungsbegriff ). Failing to realize that vital values
are autonomous is what Scheler calls the fundamental error
(Grundgebrechen) of all ethical theories of the past. Formalistic, he-
donistic and utilitarian ethics reduce vital values to the agreeable and
useful, and others reduce them erroneously to spiritual values.
3. Spiritual values (geistige Werte) reveal their peculiar place as a
modality by the evidence that vital values ought to be sacrificed for
them. They are given in spiritual feeling (geistiges Fühlen) and spiri-
tual acts of preferring, love and hatred of the human person. They
are phenomenologically different from vital functions and acts by
their own lawfulness and are, therefore, irreducible to biological law-
fulness. The main kinds of spiritual values are:
a. The values of the beautiful and ugly (Schön, hässlich) or the whole
realm of aesthetic values.
b. The values of right and wrong (das Rechte, das Unrechte) as the
basis for all Rechtsordnung (legislation). Law is a consecutive value of the
value of Rechtsordnung. The values of right and wrong must not be un-
derstood in English in the sense of “correct,” “incorrect,” because they
apply to that which conforms to a law (einem Gesetze gemässen).
c. The values of pure cognition of truth (reine Wahrheitserkenntnis)
as it is sought for in philosophy.
Truth itself is not a value. Scientific values (Wissenschaftswerte) are
consecutive values to all of these. All values of culture (Kulturwerte)
are also consecutive to spiritual values as, for instance, the cultural
value of a piece of art (Kunstschatz), of a scientific institution, or of a
positive legislature, etc., which already belong to the values of goods
(Güter). Corresponding feeling-states of spiritual values are spiritual joy
and sorrow, in contrast to the vital states of being glad (froh) and not
being glad (Unfrohsein). Spiritual joy and sorrow exist independently of
any vital states. They vary only in dependence of the values of respective
objects themselves, and this according to their own lawfulness.
4. The value-modality of the holy and unholy (Werte des Heiligen
und Unheiligen). They appear only with objects pertaining to the
absolute. All objects of the sphere of the absolute (to which we will
refer in the chapter on “Man and God”) belong to these values. This
value-modality is as such independent of what at different times was
held to be holy. Corresponding states of feeling are those of blissful-
ness (Seligkeit) and despair (Verzweiflung). Consecutive values are
those of things of value (Wertdinge) in cults, sacraments, forms of wor-
ship, etc. That which Scheler establishes, then, is the following a priori
order of value-modalities: the values of the holy are higher than spiritual
values: the vital values are higher than sensible values (sinnliche Werte):
1. The values of holiness
2. Spiritual values
} Values of the Person
3. Vital values
4. Sensible values }Values relative to Life
The order of these modes of values is given in value-feeling and

here in acts of preferring and placing-after (Nachsetzens). Preferring a
value is by no means a secondary act taking place after the emotive
comprehension of a value. A value is felt in the act of preferring or
placing-after. It is these emotive acts themselves which reveal the ranks
of values and, therefore, these ranks cannot be logically deduced.
There exists in these acts what Scheler calls the intuitive evidence of
preference (II, 107). Beside this intuitive evidence given in acts of
preference there exist a priori interconnections of essence between
such ranks which show why values are constituted by a specific order.
They are the following: Values are “higher” the more they are endur-
ing in time (dauerhafter) and the less they partake in extension and
divisibility. They are higher the less they are founded in other values,
and the more they yield inner satisfaction. Lastly, they are higher the less
their feeling them is relative to the positing of certain bearers (Träger) of
feeling and preferring. These points deserve clarification for the under-
standing of value-ranks and for the determination of the place of moral
values which are, at this stage of the discussion strangely enough, not
contained in the four modalities.
A value is enduring when “ability”-to-exist-through-time (Durch-
die-Zeit-hindurch-Existieren-“könnens” ) belongs to its essence. To its
essence, it must be emphasized, to distinguish duration from a good
to which this value may refer. Also goods (Güter) persist in time, i.e.,
in objective time. Duration (Dauer) with respect to values, however,
is a qualitative phenomenon of time, for duration is “filled” here
with a content. The duration of values is independent of objective
time in which their bearers exist. This is the case in love, which al-
ways implies a qualitative duration (not a succession). It does not
make sense when we say to someone: “I love you now,” or for a cer-
tain time. The value of the act of love as well as the value towards
which we are directed implies a qualitative duration (Fortdauer). The
sub specie quadam aeterni is the essence of genuine love. If love turns
out to be false and we cease to love someone, one can say, “I did not
love this person” or “I am deceived” or “It was only a communion of
interest.” The qualitative duration of genuine love is different from
objective time, in which things occur. Thus, any community of in-
terest also “lasts” in time and its values intended rest on utility which
is only transitory. Something agreeable to the senses, any good which
is enjoyed, also “lasts” in (objective) time, and along with it the feel-
ing of this value. But it lies in the essence of the value of the agreeable
to be subordinated in its lasting to the vital value of health, since this
value persists throughout feelings of “agreeable” or “disagreeable.”
And again, blissfulness endures throughout all changes of happiness
and unhappiness. Happiness and unhappiness again persist through-
out changes of pleasure and suffering, and they, in turn, persist

throughout agreeableness and its opposite. Finally, the agreeable en-
dures throughout sensory states of well-being and pain.
Secondly, values are higher the less they are divisible, i.e., the less
they are divided up in the participation of any number of people.
The participation of a number of people in a material good (e.g., a
loaf of bread) is only possible by the divisibility of this good. Sensory
agreeable goods are, therefore, essentially extensive, which does not
only mean measurable. Pain in an organ, for instance, although ex-
tensive, not “spatial.” Values of material goods are determinable by
the divisible proportions of a good. Thus, half a bread is about half
the value of a whole one. Its value is determinable by the space its
bearer takes up. But in strict contrast to this, a work of art (master-
piece) is not extensive. The value of the beautiful is not divided up by
the number of on-lookers but it can be shared to a much larger de-
gree than values of extensive goods. All values of the sensibly agree-
able can only be felt with respect to the divisibility of their bearers.
Striving after such divisible values of the agreeable (Interessenskonflikt)
is essentially determined by such a divisibility: individuals who feel
them are always divided by them, not united, an interesting point of
Scheler’s with respect to the social function of values of material goods.
An extreme contrast to divisible values form those of holiness and
the above mentioned value of the beautiful. There is no possible di-
visibility in such values. The value of a work of culture can be compre-
hended without being divided up by any number of persons because
the essence of such a value is unconditionally immediate. Such non-
extensive values unite, and nothing unites persons more, Scheler points
out, than worshiping the holy, which excludes a material bearer. The
value of the divine is the most immediate, however it may present
itself to man in history, and however religious wars may have divided
men. It is the intention towards the holy itself which unites. All dif-
ferences of religious viewpoints and religious attitudes, and all spiri-
tual warfare in religion, pertains only to symbols and techniques (con-
secutive values) but not to the absolute holy itself.
Thirdly, a value is higher the less it is dependent on another value.
A value “A” is founded on another value “B” if “A” cannot be with-
out “B.” The underlying value being always the axiological condition
for the lower value. If value “A” can only exist on the condition of
value “B,” value “B” is preferable. Thus, the value of utility has its
foundation in values of the agreeable, because the useful is a means

(e.g., a tool) to achieve the agreeable. Without the presence of the
agreeable, there would be no possibility, then, for values of utility.
Again, the value of the agreeable is based in vital values, for instance,
that of health, which is felt by a living being in its vital, not sensory
sphere. The feeling of the agreeable takes place on the basis of the
feeling of a living being as a whole (freshness, strength, illness, etc.) and
cannot be without the vital value modality. Spiritual values are not con-
ditioned by vital values, since the comprehension of these is independent
of any vital constitution. Spiritual values are not relative to life. If they
were, so Scheler argues, life itself would be without a value. It is obvious
that Scheler is here in complete disagreement with Nietzsche’s trans-
valuation of values, for whom values of life play a central role.
Fourthly, a value is higher the deeper it yields satisfaction or inner
fulfillment as in the peaceful possession of a good of value, i.e., when
all striving is silent or has not occurred at all. The mere comprehen-
sion (Erfassen) of a value yields deeper satisfaction the higher the
value is. Such contentment is reached when the feeling of a value is
not related to another value. Sensory pleasures yield the more satis-
faction the more they are felt in a central sphere, i.e., where they
become serious. Non-contentment of sensory feelings is always ac-
companied by a search for other values of enjoyment: all forms of
hedonism are only tokens of inner non-contentment with respect to
higher values, for the degree of searching pleasure is reciprocal to the
depth of inner discontentment and, hence, the height of a value.
Relative, Absolute, and Moral Values.

The Ought and the Ideal Models of the Person
All these criteria for the higher and lower levels of values, however,
do not give us a convincing evidence for the graded order among
values. That which gives this evidence, Scheler argues, is beyond rea-
soning, judging, and even their apriorism and aposteriorism. The ranks
of values are ultimately determined by the relativity of values, i.e.,
their relation to absolute values. This relation is given in (not after or
before) preference-feeling, and not in any sort of reflection or ratio-
nal consideration. Independently from any judgement, the relativity
of a value is felt in immediate feeling. What does “relativity of val-
ues” mean? What does “absolute value” mean? These two questions
are important for the understanding of non-formal ethics of values,
because the absoluteness of values can be easily misunderstood to
have a platonic implication; and the relativity of values can be easily
taken in the sense of an ethical relativism. There is certainly some
criticism against non-formal ethics concerning absolute values, but
it seems that such criticism results, not infrequently, from a misun-
derstanding of Scheler’s notion of “absolute,” on which in part non-
formal ethics of values rests. First, Scheler does not equate “relative”
with “subjective.” A hallucinated thing-body (Körperding), he informs
us, is relative to an individual, but it is not subjective as is a feeling. A
hallucinated feeling is both subjective and relative to the individual.
A real feeling is subjective but not relative to the individual. On the
other hand, if someone mirrors himself, the picture in the mirror is
not relative to this person, although it is relative (as physical event)
to the mirror and the mirrored object. Whenever Scheler speaks of
relative values it must not be equated, then, with subjectivity.
Values exist whenever they relate to corresponding acts and func-
tions. For instance, a being without the capacity of sensible feeling
(sinnliches Fühlen) would not have the value “agreeable.” This value
only exists in the presence of sensible feeling and it is, therefore, rela-
tive to a living being of sensible capacity. The same pertains to vital
values (noble-vulgar) because they also are only extant in so far as
there are living beings. Absolute values, however, are such values which
are not dependent on the essence (Wesen) of sensibility and the es-
sence of life. They exist only in independent, i.e., pure acts of prefer-
ring and love. Moral values and those of the 3rd and 4th modalities
are of such a nature. They are comprehended emotively (gefühlsmässig)
without sensible functions of feeling, through which we experience,
for instance, the agreeable and disagreeable. Such values themselves
are not felt in the ordinary sense of the word, nor are they felt as
values of the sensory and vital modalities. However, one can say at
this point that such absolute values are still known to us and that, no
matter if we are partly sensible creatures or not, they at least remain
relative to our comprehension. This is the stand of Nietzsche when
he speaks of man as Eckensteher (human beingness occupying a small
ontic perspective as all animals) who constitutes a perspective Dasein.
But Scheler appears to be in complete disagreement with Nietzsche
on this point. For Nietzsche and Kant, values are posited by man,
whereas for Scheler, man (as a person) is only an ontic bearer of (moral)
values (II, 506). Moral values reveal their absoluteness in their phe-
nomenal detachment of simultaneous feelings of life and sensible
states. The value of a person genuinely loved is detached from all
feeling of our value-world belonging to sensory and vital modes be-
cause this value is immediate in its kind of givenness, guaranteeing
absoluteness. For even a thought of denying, rejecting, or preferring
another value to this value of the beloved, brings about feelings of a
possible guilt and defection from the height of this value rank. The
absoluteness of this value is given immediately, and acts of compar-
ing, of induction, and of judging cannot contribute to its evidence.
Scheler says, “There is a depth in us where we always secretly know
what the case is with respect to the relativity of experienced (erlebten)
values” (II, 116). The essential criterion for the height of a value is,
then, the degree of the relativity a value has with regard to an abso-
lute value, i.e., a value which is not relative to life. The less relative a
value is to an absolute value, the higher this value. This inter-value
relativity is one of first order since it has nothing to do whatsoever
with the relativity of values and goods (Güter), which Scheler calls
“relativity of second order.” The distinction between these two mean-
ings of relativity of values is essential in non-formal ethics, and it
appears that in this respect, Scheler has radically cleared ethics from
a lot of confusing notions, especially with regard to any form of
eudaemonistic ethics.
The second relativity obtaining between values and goods casts
some more light on absolute values. The relativity of the first order,
obtaining only among values themselves, is by no means determined
by, or in any way dependent on the relativity of the second order.
There are many goods (Güter), for example, material goods (goods
of enjoyment and utility), vital goods (e.g., all economic goods), spiri-
tual goods (cultural goods as those of science, art, “Kulturgüter”).
Values pertaining to such goods are Sachwerte, which we translate by
“values of things.” They represent Wertdinge (things of value), in con-
trast to Dingwerte (values of things). The second relativity of values
and goods differs from the first because it is known through acts of
thinking, judging, induction, or comparing. Since the first relativity
of values themselves is immediately felt (a priori) and the second
relativity of values and goods only known through acts of reasoning,
it follows for Scheler that the relations among contents of values them-
selves are the axiological condition for the existence of the second rela-
tivity of values and goods, although both relations are independent
from each other (II, 37-38). Scheler also recognizes the relations be-
tween goods and things which form, we might add, a third relativity.
Also these relations holding between goods and things have their
own lawfulness. Scheler then distinguishes between the following
relations, and it should be noticed that such relations appear to be of
a horizontal nature, in contrast to any ethics which rests on vertical
relations, be they upward relations (ethics of purpose as in Aristotle) or
downward relations (Nietzsche). This horizontality of Scheler’s ethics is
also in marked contrast to Kant, whose practical reason exhausts itself in
a (non-relational) universal form of obligation (categorical imperative):
Relations of first order:

Values Values
Relations of second order:
Values Goods (representing themselves in values)
Relations of third order:

Values Things (representing themselves in goods)
In the first order of relations the ranks of values are not variable,
nor is a preferred value higher because it is just preferred (II, 107-8).
The height of a value within the ordered ranks lies in its essence
(Wesen). Rules of preference, however, change throughout history.
The ranks of values in these relations are only comprehensible
(erfassbar) in acts of preference and rejection. This intuitive evidence
of preference is not reducible by logical deduction, because it is given
before acts of thinking, i.e., in the a priori intuiting feeling of them.
Nevertheless, the ranks of values, as ordered value-contents of inner
intuition, are given in concrete ethical experience, although insight
into the ranks of values is obtainable in immediate intuition, no matter
if the experience of such intuiting a value is in fact correct. It is sense-
less, for instance, to prefer the value of cleverness to that of the noble,
no matter whatever experience in fact may tell us in different situa-
tions. These value relations are independent and autonomous, and
form their own graded realm. They are not subject to rational con-
struction, induction, or deduction, neither are they results of subjec-
tive deliberations, in the sense of Kant and Nietzsche. Scheler’s theory
of values is, therefore, objectivistic, in contrast to Kant’s and

Nietzsche’s subjectivistic understanding of values. By objectivistic he
means that the emotive a priori of the givenness of values and their
ranks does not follow subjective, social, or historical factors, but the
givenness of values contains its own transcendental lawfulness within
its realm. The very apriorism of the emotive sphere, viz., ordered love
(ordo amoris), is the place in which the ordered realm of values makes
its appearance. “…it is characteristic for the high standing moral
nature of a human being that already the involuntary automatic oc-
currence of his strivings and the non-formal values, toward which
they aim, happen in an order of preference, and that they represent —
measured against the objective order of ranks of non-formal values
— a widely formed material for willing. The order of preference be-
comes here — to a more or less high degree and for different non-
formal domains of values in different degrees — the inner rule of
automatism of striving itself, and already of the kind how the striving
(Streben) reaches the central sphere of willing” (II, 63). The ordered
ranks of values are the transcendental (not transcendent) objective
correlate of the Ordo Amoris. Scheler’s Non-Formal Ethics, then, is
an emotive, transcendental objectivism.
Moral values (good-evil) cannot belong to the four above men-
tioned value-qualities because they are of a different level in that they
realize all non-moral values of the four modalities by way of moral
acts. Moral values are directed towards non-moral values, and ride,
as Scheler puts it, “on the back” of acts realizing non-moral values.
Thus, a moral act consists, for example, in the act of preferring vital
values to those of pleasure, or spiritual values to those of the vital
value modality. The value “good” is the value which appears in the
act of realizing a higher (or highest) value, and the value “evil” is a
value which appears in the act of realizing a lower (or lowest) value.
A morally good act corresponds to the felt preferred value content,
and rejects a value lower in rank (nachgesetzt). A morally evil act re-
jects a preferred value, and corresponds to a value placed-after it. The
value “good” is attached, so to speak, to an act of realizing a positive
value, and the value “evil” is likewise attached to an act of realizing a
negative value. The criterion of “good” (or “evil”) consists in the cor-
respondence (the contradiction) with the value felt in the realization
and the preferred value, or in the contradiction (in the agreement)
with the value placed-after. It cannot be stressed strongly enough
that “good” and “evil” are not a content (Materien) for a realizing act.
He who considers “good” and “evil” as contents to be intended in the
act is truly a pharisee: for he who takes the opportunity to be good
for the sake of a mere end (e.g., helping someone) is neither good,
nor does he do good, but he only wants to appear good to himself
(II, 48). The value “good” is only present in the realization of a value
(given in preferring) if the value “good” is not intended in an act of
willing, but if it is on (“an”) the act, for which reason “good” can
never be a content of an act of will (II, 48). This is the meaning of
Scheler’s well-known expression that the value “good” only rides on
the back of an act.
“Good” and “evil” are, it follows, essentially different from all other
non-formal values, because they exist only while riding on the back
of the realizing acts which, in turn, follow rules of preference (II,
48). This is why Scheler calls moral values also values of the person
(Personwerte), in contrast to values of things (Sachwerte). And since
the sphere of “person,” with which we will deal in the next chapter,
consists of endless varieties of acts (e.g., forgiving, obeying, promis-
ing, etc.), it is not the act of willing alone on which the values of
“good” and “evil” may appear. “Person” is a movement of a concrete
unity of all possible acts and, hence, a person is not a thing (II, 50).
Therefore, personal (moral) acts must be differentiated from all psy-
chic and physical “objects,” because the sphere of the person only
exists in said pursuance of acts. “Person” is not an act-substance, as
M. Schneider (Phenomenological Philosophy of Values, Diss., Catholic
University, 1951) misrepresents Scheler’s concept of the person by
using Thomistic phraseology. “Person” must “never” be thought of as
a substance (II, 371; 384-85; and IX, 83).
The problem of “oughtness” (Sollen) resolves itself by the forego-
ing discussion. For it is clear now that the moral ought can only be
posited after the comprehension of values which ought to be realized.
The comprehension of values antecedes always a moral ought and
this is why for Scheler oughtness (Sollen) is grounded in values. For
oughtness is always of some thing which is earlier comprehended.
He distinguishes two kinds of oughtness: the ideal ought-to-be and
the moral ought-to-do. Ideal ought-to-be is that of possible real be-
ing (Realsein). The moral ought-to-do consists in realizing willing.
Thus, when we say: “Injustice ought not to be,” injustice is an ideali-
zation of practical experience of injustice. This proposition is one of
ideal ought-to-be. But if we say: “Thou shalt not do injustice,” there

is a moral ought-to-do involved. The moral ought-to-do rests on the
ideal ought-to-be, which forms the foundation of ethics (II, 211).
But no matter how differently the ought-to-be and ought-to-do have
been conceived in the moral history of man, in one point there is
universal agreement, namely, that the ought is always a function of
something setting the rules, norms, imperatives, etc., for that which
ought-to-be or ought-to-be-done. It is this point which exhibits non-
formal ethics of values as ethics of person. For the realization of an
ought is only possible in acts which constitute the ontic sphere of a
person. It is easy to see that non-formal ethics of values denies that
moral acts (good, evil) can be based in any moral authority. Genuine
good (and evil) can only appear on the back of a personal act. There-
fore, neither command, order, obedience, norms of moral laws, nor
moral education can, in fact, bring about genuine moral acts. The
ought can only be acted out if it comes from the sphere of the person
itself. By this is not only meant an individual- or a group-person, but also
the ideal model (Vorbild ) of a person (and its negative counterpart).
Scheler’s position that personal values are the highest values is not
only of ethic, but also of ontic implication, because the effectiveness
of ideal models of persons belongs essentially to the human spirit
and history (X, 268) and because ideal models of persons are, as his-
tory forming factors, genetically original to all moralities influencing
historical changes (II, 566-68). There are no norms of obligation,
then, without a person who posits them. Ideal personal models exer-
cise their effectiveness in both the individual- and the group-soul
most hiddenly and with great intensity at the same time. Parents, for
instance, serve as personal models for a child in that they are the
source for all personal values before parents are recognized as “father”
and “mother.” Again the model (Vorbild ) of a family or tribe is the
head or a chief in such groups. In a community again there is always
someone exemplary for the good, honorable, or the just. Such per-
sonal models are the measure against which respective activities and
values are measured. Again in a people the sovereign (Fürst), king,
Kaiser, Tsar, president, etc., may serve as models of the person. Simi-
larly, the teacher can become a personal model for a young child, and
for a whole nation there may be models like a national hero, or a
poet, for the citizen it may be a statesman, for a businessman a leader
in economic life, for a member of a church the respective founder, or
reformer, or a saint. All this shows that there exist whole sets of ideal
types of exemplary model persons, which always exercise influence
on moral acting. Such models can also have their negative counter-
parts, which not infrequently are raised in their value in historical or
social ressentiment. Let it be added that models have their different
shades in different nations and cultures when one speaks, for ex-
ample, of the Frenchman, the American, the Russian. For, in such
expressions, too, there is no empirical concrete example for what one
refers to, but only a picture-like type (Formtypus) (II, 563). The ontic
significance of the model-efficacy lies in the fact that such models
originate in acts of value cognition, and not in willful imitation or
striving. The latter follow only after an ontic draw (Zug) of a model
has taken place, giving direction, as it were, to personal acts because
models always exercise a demand of ought to-be (Sollseinsforderung)
(II, 564). There is, in other words, an experienced relation between
an individual or a group-person to the personal content of a proto-
type or model-person. The love to such a personal model shows itself
in free following (Gefolgschaft). There is nothing on earth which makes
a person good but the evident intuition (Anschauung) of a good per-
son as a pure example (II, 560). This relation to a model person is far
superior in its effectiveness to all obedience or commands and or-
ders. The models of person are, therefore, the primary vehicle of all
changes in the moral world. Of course, such models vary in their
“high” and “low,” and even their counterparts (Gegenbilder) may be mod-
els, as is the case, for instance, in value-reactive movements (protestantism,
counter-reformation, romanticism, etc.). But such Gegenbilder remain
similar in structure to that which they are against (II, 561).
The question arises if there exists throughout the large variety and
multitude of models of person (and mixtures of them) ranging from
the individual, family, tribe, people, nation, to cultures in their social
and historical changes, universal types of model persons or ideal per-
sons, which mysteriously draw mankind throughout history continu-
ously towards their ideal value structure and content. Scheler an-
swers this question in the affirmative, but he does not come to this
affirmative conclusion because of the fact that there have always been
great heroes (in a wide sense) exercising influence on the course of
history, from which some common ideal characteristics could be ab-
stracted. Rather, the greatness of a man, or abstractions from ideas of
great men, are already guided by the ideas of universal models of
person, which are a priori ideas of values in the sense that they are
independent of fortuitous historical manifestation and experience (X,
262). Every human soul is governed at every moment by a personal
fundamental direction of love and hatred, which is its Grundgesinnung,
i.e., basic directional sentiment. A model person is a personal “value-
Gestalt” silently hovering over an individual or a group. The funda-
mental ideal model persons constitute basic values, which are con-
stant throughout all historical development. “They and their ranks
are the polar star of man. For the changes of historical goods never
pertain to such values themselves, but only to things of goods in which
they represent themselves, i.e., that which passes at any time as agree-
able, useful, noble, and base, as true or false cognition, as holy and
unholy, as just or unjust (as theft, murder)” (X, 269). “The fate of
peoples forms itself by virtue of forms of thinking, looking at, and
evaluating the world in their myths — however, in the first place, in
the myth contained in their model persons. What is the meaning of
Heracles, Orestes, and Ulysses for the Greeks and what are the per-
sonal models of sagas to the Teutons?” (X, 272). The fundamental
ideal models of the person correspond to the value ranks of the mo-
dalities, and an individual person is good if it is freely ready in its
directional personal sentiment to prefer a value higher in the respec-
tive order of the modalities. Scheler distinguishes in this order five
models of person: the saint (the original saints, apostles, martyrs,
reformers, etc.), the genius (artist, philosopher, legislator), the hero
(statesman, commander-in-chief, colonizer), the leading spirit of civi-
lization ( scientist, economist ) and the master of enjoyment (he who
makes all the values into objects to be enjoyed) (X, 317). They are
not abstracted empirical conceptions, but the personal essence of the
modalities, which as models exercise a draw or pull on individuals,
groups, peoples, nations, etc., towards their own value content. An
inconsistency is obvious, since Scheler distinguishes only four mo-
dalities, as we have seen, in the Formalismus. He worked on the im-
portant treatise Vorbilder und Führer (X, 255-344) since 1912, ac-
cording to Maria Scheler’s very valuable remarks on Scheler’s manu-
scripts in the Collected Edition. The major difference between this
treatise and the Formalismus is that Scheler still considered in Formalismus
utility-values as consecutive values of the first modality, but in Vorbilder
und Führer already and always later on as a separate modality. The incon-
sistency does not do any harm to Scheler’s message as such.
The value of the holy is the highest of all values. This follows both
from the ranks of value-modalities and the sequence of ideal model
persons (Vorbilder). It is also clear that the highest good for Scheler
must be a personal good, and again that love is the purest act of a
person. Love, the value of holiness, and the sphere of the person are
intrinsically connected in Scheler’s philosophy, and in always new
formulations he tried to demonstrate their inseparability. We said at
the beginning of this chapter that Scheler’s non-formal ethics must
be understood on the background of his philosophical anthropology.
It is equally connected with his philosophy of religion: God, the per-
son of persons, is love (V). The phenomenological investigation of
values led to the envisagement of values of the person as the highest
values (values of the 3. and 4. modalities and moral values) and the
investigation into the sphere of the human person and, as we will see,
to the person of persons: God. Thus, underneath the outer disorder
of Scheler’s philosophy and style, there is a harmonious clarity of thought.
This is, I believe, what Ortega y Gasset had in mind when he character-
ized his thinking by this team of qualities: disorder and clarity.
In Die Wissensformen und die Gesellschaft (VIII, 109), the funda-
mental message of non-formal ethics is given in a passage, in which
each word deserves closest attention, and which is of great signifi-
cance to everyone setting out to study Scheler’s ethics. The passage
runs as follows: “…every kind of intellectual comprehension of what-
ness (Soseinserfassung) of an object presupposes an emotional experi-
ence of value related to this object. This proposition holds true for
the simplest perception as well as for remembering, expecting and,
finally, also for all types of thinking; it holds true for the intuition of
primordial phenomena (i.e., the basic structure of things freed from
sensation and hic-nunc-existence) and for immediate idea-thinking,
both of which lead to a priori knowledge. It holds true for all cogni-
tion of fortuitous facts which rest on observations, induction and
immediate thought: perception is always presupposed by value-ception
(Wertnehmung). The first words of a child contain wish and feeling-
expression. Psychic expression, however, is also that which is per-
ceived first. That sugar is ‘agreeable’ is comprehended by the child
before he comprehends the sensational quality ‘sweet.’”
Chapter Seven
Man as Person
Phenomenology of “Person”
S cheler’s notion of the person is intrinsically connected with non-

formal ethics, and his analysis of the human sphere of the person
forms one of the central problematics in his entire philosophy. It is
contained in Part II of Formalismus, which was published three years
after Part I, in 1916. He criticizes also in this part of Formalismus
Kant in so far as Kant conceived the being of the person as a logical
subject, or as an “X” of intellectual activity and will. For Kant held
that in every act of perception, imagination, etc., there is an “I think”
presupposed in which the “I” is the condition for the unity and iden-
tity of the object which by virtue of the “I” is identified. However,
Scheler agrees with Kant in one point, namely, that the person can-
not be treated as a “thing,” nor that the sphere of the person is a
substance. Scheler does use, however, the word “Substanz” with re-
spect to the person in Part 3 of The Nature of Sympathy, but this
usage of “Substanz” is not so misleading in German as it can be in
English, since English “substance” is generally connected with the
Aristotelian notion of substance, whereas the German word “Substanz”
is not connoted with this specific meaning in philosophical discourse,
unless it is explicitly referred to be of scholastic implication. Scheler
makes, then, a strict distinction between “person” and “ego,” and
“substance” in the scholastic sense. For Scheler, the sphere of the
person cannot be objectified as the “ego” or a “thing” can be objecti-
fied. We have to determine what this means, and in which sense
Scheler’s refutation of both Kant and scholastic thinking is appar-
ently justified.
His analyses of “person” rests on the theory of acts of conscious-
ness (Aktlehre), and he asks the question what it is that unifies all
human acts of different qualities (like loving, remembering, think-
ing, willing, perceiving, judging, feeling, etc.) into one whole. His
answer: the person. The answer appears simple, but its implication is
not. Person is the unity-of-acts-of-different-natures, and it is this dif-
ference of acts which is essential for the being of person. There would
be no problem of the sphere of the person at all, Scheler holds, if we
were concerned with a being performing only one kind of act, e.g.,
only acts of thinking. This is the case with Aristotle’s notion of God
(noesis noeseos), who is not, and cannot be, a personal God. Person is
the only foundation (not substance) for the realization of different
kinds of acts and it is the ultimate presupposition for the coming
into existence of all acts. Hence, the person is not only the sum of all
acts, performed and to be performed, nor is it an object or substance
behind such acts. The sphere of the person is in every act, and expe-
riences itself (erlebt sich) only as acting out and as an act-performing
being (Wesen). “Person is the concrete self-essential unity of the be-
ing of acts of different nature, which in itself precedes all essential
differences of acts (especially the difference of external and internal
perception, external and internal willing, external and internal feel-
ing, loving, hating, etc.)” (II, 382-83). While the entire person is in
every act, the person, at the same time, varies in and through every
different act, without being exhausted in any one of these acts. Scheler
stresses this point of the varying person in order to show that the
person cannot be connected with a rationalistic construction of a
substance or treated as a thing-object. His formulations are indeed
hard to read and he states that ultimately language does not suffice to
describe the being of the person. This is so because Scheler makes
such a strict distinction between object (ego) on the one hand, and
the person, on the other. The difficulty in which Scheler finds him-
self is that such words as “above,” ”behind,” ”underneath,” “underly-
ing,” are not applicable to the sphere of the person. They pertain
only to visual perceptions and that which is thought to be spatial,
temporal, or causal. In short, these expressions imply references to
physical being. Scheler avoids as much as possible to even use analo-
gies taken from this kind of descriptive terminology in order to get
the person into phenomenological focus.
Already the usage of the word “person” in ordinary language shows
that the form of unity which this word designates is different from
the form of unity called “consciousness” or “I.” ”Person” is an abso-
lute name (II, 389), and not a relative one as the “I” since the “I”
always points to the “thou” and an external world, whereas “person”
does not. The person represents a totality, whereas the “I” cannot be
thought of without the thou-relation. Furthermore, Scheler argues,
only the person acts, whereas the “I” does not act, and cannot act,
although language permits such misleading propositions as “I act” or
Chapter 7 Man as Person 97
“I walk.” The “I” in such propositions is only a form of addressing a

possible or real thou, but it is not the “I” which is speaking, but it is
only the whole of man which does so. “Person,” then, is transcen-
dental to the thou-I and I-world relations as well as all psychic-physi-
cal relations. Scheler can say, therefore, that the person perceives its
own “I,” but it is not this “I” which, perceived by the person, per-
ceives, acts, or walks. The sphere of the person exists, it follows, only
in the pursuance and execution of all acts of different nature, and
again, these acts themselves are only given in their execution. They
are not objects of internal perception as the “I.” This must be so
because perceiving objects such as the “I” presupposes the very act of
perceiving, i.e., a person-sphere. And since the knowing comprehen-
sion of acts of the person is transcendent to any objectification and
definition, the knowing and cognizance of other persons, including
a personal God (of Christianity), does not come about by an act of
the types pertinent to “knowing” objects. Other persons can, it fol-
lows, only be “known” by way of co-operation and co-execution
(Mitvollzug) of acts (X, 186-87). Hence, all sciences cannot deal with
the person, and it is utterly impossible to grasp the sphere of the
person even psychologically. The sphere of the person is trans-spa-
cial, trans-temporal, and trans-causal. Its acts are not extended in
time, although they exercise their influence into time. An act exists
pointwise (punktuell) without requiring a span of time (Zeitstrecke).
On the other hand, acts among themselves do have their order and
place (Lage) in time (X, 297). The question arises how Scheler ex-
plains that each person is different from another even in the execu-
tion of the same type of acts, for example, in acts of loving. This
difference of persons cannot be deduced from empirical factors, since
acts do not originate in physical being. Notwithstanding, each per-
son is unique. For instance, the person of Lincoln is unique and,
therefore, excludes all possibilities of duplication, although this sphere
of Lincoln’s person exercised, and continues to exercise, influence
into time, as all persons do in different degrees of efficacy.
The person, we have pointed out, is not a mere sum of acts or a
mosaic of acts. This sphere in man exists throughout acts, while it
varies within the multiplicity of all possible acts in which the person
is given, i.e., in the execution and pursuance of such acts, including
the act of reflection on acts which the reader executes at this mo-
ment. What is the factor, however, if the person, as Scheler says, ex-
ists through and in act-executions of all different acts, that makes

each person identical with itself, unique and a whole? When Scheler
speaks of the variation of the person, “variation” must not be taken
in the sense of a varying thing-subject or the successive changes in
objective time. The identity of the person remains only in the “quali-
tative direction of this pure becoming different” (II, 385). Scheler
attempts to explain this in the following way: “True, the person lives
into time; varying, the person executes acts into time; but the person
does not live in phenomenal time, which is immediately given in the
flux of the internally perceived psychic processes; nor in objective
time of physics, in which there is nothing fast nor slow, nor duration
(for duration is here a border-case of succession), nor the phenom-
enal time-dimension of present, past, and future, because the points
of the time of past and future of phenomenal time are treated in this
framework of concepts-as possible points of time of the present. Since
the person executes its existence just in the act of living (Erleben)
possible experiences (Erlebnisse), there is no sense in trying to com-
prehend the person in lived experiences (gelebten Erlebnissen). In so
far as we look at the so-called experiences (Erlebnisse) and not at the
Erleben of these experiences, the person remains completely tran-
scendent” (II, 385). The sphere of the person, then, is a timeless act-
being. The qualitative direction accounting for the identity of one
person is for Scheler the most hidden phenomenon of the person. It
should be understood as the peculiarity and uniqueness by which the
person permeates each execution of an act. The person lets appear, as
it were, each act in a peculiar light, which is unique for this or that
person. An act “grows” into the qualitative uniqueness of one spe-
cific person, and this is why act and person cannot, and should not,
be separated from each other. Both are in and through each other.
Any knowledge of the nature of love, for instance, cannot tell us how
a person loves, because the execution of this act or acts of love is
something totally different from love as an object of contemplation.
The qualitative peculiarity of the how of acting out acts is that which
makes every person unique. The person is, then, a concrete unity sui
generis as the center of all spiritual acts (emotional and voluntative
acts included), which are permeated by the individually specific quali-
tative direction. The being of the person is not a starting point of acts
and its being is not derivable from activities (ex operari sequitur esse).
Rather, in each act there is the entire person, which varies from act to
act without, however, being ever exhausted in its possible variations

(II, 384). The form of unity of all spiritual acts is to be seen only in
this personal sphere.
We can now point out why Scheler has to make a distinction in his
philosophy of religion between the God of religion and of metaphys-
ics. God is given in religion only through religious acts (praying,
thanking, fearing, repenting, begging, etc.), and not by acts of rea-
soning. The goal of religion, Scheler holds, is not a rational cogni-
tion and a proof for a world-cause, but is only the salvation of man
through communion with God as a person: God of religion is the
God of holy persons and the God of the people (Volksgott), whereas,
the God of reasoning (Wissensgott) is the God of the educated (V,
130). The source of religious truth can, therefore, only be faith, and
not intellectual discourse. Hence, Scheler denies any justification to
“prove” creation and the existence of a personal God by way of ratio-
nal operations (scholasticism). In any such attempts to “prove,” Scheler
holds, there is a secret and hidden presupposition of a religious tradi-
tion and belief. This is why Scheler conceives the person as a con-
crete act-center, and not as a real act-center, to avoid the misunder-
standing of any possible objectification of the sphere of person. The
personal implication of the Ens a Se in religion is only possible in
religious acts, co-operating and co-acting with their divine correlate.
The ens a se of metaphysics is strictly impersonal. Metaphysics can
never make out anything about the Ens a Se as being a person. Meta-
physics is only, and can only be, concerned with an absolute un-
personal being (Aristotle), e.g., absolute being as form of forms, pure
act, or pure being, in which existence and essence are one and im-
mutable, absolute and actless being. But this stands in contrast to a
personal God, in Whom a religious person partakes, and with Whom
he co-operates. Christianity has by way of the Aristotelianization of
large parts of its theology emphasized too much this ancient Greek
notion of a God as form of forms or pure act, at the expense of the
essential Christian message of God as love-directed person.
Every person is unique by the qualitative direction of each of its
acts. But each person finds himself surrounded by other persons and
it remains to be determined how Scheler understands the being of all
persons in their interrelationship. This interrelationship of individual
persons is concrete being, and it is not to be understood as just the
sum of individual persons. Scheler introduces the notion of a total-
ity-person (Gesamtperson), which is a complex collective personality.

Such is the case with a “nation” or a “church.” Within such a collec-
tive sphere of persons each individual person functions as co-opera-
tor (Mittäter), fellow-man (Mitmensch) and co-responsible being
(Mitverantwortlicher) (II, 510). The individual person experiences
himself always as a member of a collective, complex personality. This
complex totality-person is never exhausted by the sum of its mem-
bers, in the same sense as all individual acts never exhaust the indi-
vidual person. The membership of persons within a totality-person
is constituted by what Scheler calls “social acts.” Social acts are, for
example, all acts of love, as mother-love, love of country and home,
love of God, but also acts of obeying, giving orders (befehlen), prom-
ising, and governing. These social acts are to be distinguished from
individualizing acts like acts of self-awareness, acts of conscience, and
self-love. Social acts are the constituting factors bringing about the
inter-related act-experience and togetherness-of-acting (Miteinander-
Er-leben) within the totality-person (nation, church). Hence, “per-
son” has a twofold aspect for Scheler, an individual one, and one
pertinent to a totality of persons. Both belong to the sphere of the
person and cannot be separated from it. Social acts, constituting the
totality-person, are not derived from experience but they belong to
the core of the person as all individualizing acts do. Scheler explains
this by stating that an absolute Robinson Crusoe, who had never had
any contact with any communal form of experience or society, would
still feel his membership as a person of a social community, although
it was never given to him. The absence of togetherness with other
persons would remain in this Robinson a continuous experience of
possible relations to other beings of his species. We showed above
that the “qualitative direction” of acts of one person forms, so to
speak, the uniqueness and unity of one person. But as to the totality-
person, this remains somewhat unclear. Although Scheler does not
seem to explicitly say so, it would appear that the uniqueness of one
totality-person, e.g., that of a particular nation, exists in a qualitative
direction of a second order, to which all individual persons conform
in all their acts so that the peculiarity of a totality-person comes about.
A totality-person, as an individual person, is not a thing. It is a whole,
different from a whole of things, for example, the whole of celestial
bodies. The uniqueness and unity of a totality-person must, there-
fore, be the result not of common outer characteristics of member-
persons but of the qualitative being constituted by all member-per-

sons at any time in all their acts, which bring forth subsequently
outer common characteristics of a totality-person. Scheler says: “The
being of the person as an individual person constitutes itself within
this person and its world first of all in the special class of singulariz-
ing acts of one’s very own; the being of the totality-person, however,
in the special class of social acts” (II, 511). The total experience of
this togetherness of persons forms the world of a community of per-
sons and its concrete subject: the totality-person. The total experi-
ence of an individual person is the world of one such person. Person,
then, is essentially connected with both an individual world as the
correlate of all its acts in their qualitative direction, and a totality
world constituted by the entire togetherness-of-act-experiences of a
certain group of persons. The former Scheler calls a microcosm, the
latter, a totality-world (Gesamtwelt). With this, Scheler has opened
up the ontological problematic of the person, since he established
the connection between acts, person, and world as to both the indi-
vidual and the totality-person. To each individual person there be-
longs a world, and to each possible world a possible individual. And
again, to each totality-person there belongs a totality-world and to
each totality-world a possible collective complex personality, consti-
tuted by the total qualitative direction of all acts of its member-per-
sons. These points of Scheler’s theory of person may be further ex-
hibited by considering his alogic statement that the totality-person is
simultaneously both dependent and independent of individual per-
sons. It is dependent on them in so far as there must be individual
persons for the existence of a totality-person, but, on the other hand,
the totality person, or any subdivision thereof (e.g., a group-person),
is not dependent on this or that person, since each person is finite by
the occurrence of death, which the totality-person survives. The to-
tality-person must, therefore, experience itself in the sense that it
forms, so to speak, a continuous, universal act-dimension within or
“above” finite persons and, therefore, outliving the member-persons.
Scheler posits unmistakably that the totality-person does have its own
consciousness-of (Bewusstsein-von; II, 511-12) as each individual per-
son has. The world of the totality-person contains all worlds of indi-
vidual persons, but all individual persons do not make up the macro-
cosm of the totality-person. The latter forms only the scope
(Spielraum) within which all finite persons can experience their per-
sonal togetherness and qualitative direction of their own acts and the
qualitative direction of the second order, i.e., of the totality-person.
The totality-person is, therefore, not at all anything transcendent
and, hence, does not have any platonic implication. “Since the total-
ity-person is constituted by communal experience (Miteinander-
erleben) of persons, and since it itself, as a person, is the concrete act-
center of experiences (Erleben) within this communal experience, its
consciousness-of is always contained in the consciousness of a total
finite person as an act-dimension; it is, however, nothing transcen-
dent” (II, 512).
We pointed out before that persons constitute a totality-person in
so far as they have two kinds of acts: individualizing and social acts.
The highest form of communal experience among persons is a total-
ity-person, i.e., a cultural unit (Kulturkreis), a nation, or a church.
But again, there do exist always numbers of totality-persons in forms
of different nations and churches and, hence, each totality-person
may be conceived, again, as an individual person in relation to all
other totality-persons. Thus, Scheler envisages in this fashion a hier-
archy of “persons” which form a peak in a concrete person of per-
sons, God, in Whom all individual and social acts are bound to-
gether into one divine unity, and Whose act-correlate must be con-
sidered as the macrocosm of all macrocosms. “Thus, the unity, iden-
tity, and uniqueness of the world is given with the idea of God” (II,
395).
The Sphere of the Person and the Types of Communal Experience
Scheler’s theory of persons presents itself also in sociological and

historical respect, and this is of a chief interest to Scheler. We have
repeatedly used the phrase “sphere of person,” but we could not at-
tempt thus far to explain what “sphere” means. Scheler did not ex-
plicitly state why he himself used this term so often in his works. It is
this, a typical situation, in which the reader of Scheler’s philosophi-
cal writings finds himself, namely, that one is addressed by the au-
thor and expected to know some of his fundamental traits of thought
before one is supposed to understand him further. The term “sphere”
is extremely important in both Scheler’s theory of the person and
philosophical sociology and we have to explain this notion. Scheler
has been criticized here and there for having stated that a child is not
a person. He thinks so because a child is not yet in the possession of
all acts which constitute a person. From this tacit presupposition,
Scheler thinks that a man grows into the sphere of the person during
his lifetime. If his other position is correct that in growing age an
individual goes back to spiritual states of childhood, he should have
thought that at the end of life the sphere of the person will somewhat
disappear. In an almost obvious analogy to this process of growing
into a person as an individual, the sphere of the person “becomes,”
so to speak, also in social and historical developments. For, Scheler
distinguishes, besides the totality-person, three other kinds of com-
munal human experiences (Arten des Miteinanderseins) or social units,
which are to be found throughout history. These are not products of
a social development, rather, all these forms of communal experience
are that from which historical and social processes only follow. They
are, as it were, historical categories through which all historical pro-
cess borrows its forms. The highest form is the totality-person, and
we will briefly go down the scale of the social units and see that the
sphere of the person distinguishes, according to Scheler, gradually.
A totality-person is composed of societies or a society. Within a
society, the individual’s communal experience is characterized by con-
scious acts of self and consciousness of acts of others. Hence, there
are mutual interests, presence of classes and conventions, habits and
customs. A society is an artificial form of togetherness because con-
sciousness-of-self and of the other implies the objectification of the
structure of a society with its advantages, disadvantages, interests,
and possible improvement, etc. Society is a form of social together-
ness of adults only, and hence, the sphere of the person exists in this
communal form. (II, 518-22). The experience of togetherness in so-
cieties is neither original nor natural. It is only formed through con-
scious understanding of situations, as in acts of promising or in the
construction of treaties. The fundamental emotive disposition in a
society is distrust, because all togetherness is subject to voluntary,
conscious change on the part of individuals or groups within a soci-
ety, (e.g., private law). The sphere of the person begins to disappear
in natural forms of togetherness, already to be found in animals. There
is first what Scheler calls Lebensgemeinschaft, a life-community, as is a
family, a tribe, a people, or a home-community (Heimatgemeinschaft).
True, in such social units there is also the understanding of the other,
but not in such a way that it precedes the experience of togetherness

as in a society. There is first an immediate experience of the other,
and the content of all experience is here for all members identical,
since the togetherness with the other is experienced in terms of a
common stream of experience (Erlebnisstrom) having its own lawful-
ness. This stream of experienced togetherness does not let come up
conscious and deliberate objectification of the other, and hence there
is no judging or treaty among the members. Only the unconscious
execution of customs, habits, cults, etc. form a solidarity among these
individuals, whose experiences are only dependent on the whole of
the togetherness-experience of the life-community. Hence, there is
less individual will for responsibility which belongs to a person. This
is why domestic animals can share in such forms of togetherness with
men. Finally, the lowest form of a social unit is a herd (animals) or a
mass. There is no understanding and experience here of the other at
all. Rather, there is only involuntary imitation and psychic conta-
gion. The mass (mob, revolts, revolutions, etc.) possesses its own law-
fulness of action, which is not determined by its members. All trans-
ference of feeling takes place in the absence of knowledge, and the
individual member of a mass or of a herd is absorbed, as it were, in a
total experience. Therefore, there is no presence of individual will,
goal, planning, ambition, no individuality and sphere of person. In-
dividualizing and social acts are, so to say, neutralized.
These communal forms of experience, the totality-person, the so-
ciety, the life-community, and the mass (herd) are, of course, not
static social units. They can undergo many combinations and have
dependencies among each other. Scheler says, for instance, that there
is no society possible without life-communities, although the latter
can exist without the former. It should also be kept in mind that even
in mass-experiences there may be consciousness of some individual
members, for instance, those who foresee a tragic outcome of a mass
movement. But such cases can only serve as a support for the
Schelerian theory of the sphere of the person, since such conscious
reactions of individuals is only drowned in the psychic stream pre-
vailing throughout a mass, which seems to be blind for personal acts
and comprehension of personal values. For in each form of together-
ness there is manifest a specific relation to the ranks of values: In the
“upper” level of communal forms of togetherness (totality-person)
there is always a possible relation towards personal values, i.e., spiri-
tual and moral values and those of salvation. Societies are more gauged
to the values of the useful and the agreeable (II, 519), i.e., values of
civilization, whereas communities of life have special relation to the
values of well-being (Wohlfahrt) and the noble (II, 529). The totality-
person is what Scheler calls sovereign above life-communities and
societies. It is in their form of human togetherness that ideal models
of person find their manifestation, i.e., the “saint,” the “genius,” and
the “hero.” Of course, all models of person, which we mentioned in
our explanation of non-formal ethics, can have their social and moral
role throughout a totality-person, society, and a life-community. It
all depends if, for instance, a totality-person, e.g., a nation, tends
more towards a civilization or towards culture (ancient Greece). And
again, there is no reason to say that in a life-community there is no
possible presence of a “saint” (in a wide sense) as a moral guide or
model. This is why Scheler can make the following statement: “That
which is here historically changing is always only the special content
of a mass, of a community, a society, and of a totality person, of the
ties which these forms have to groups and their changing sizes, their
constitution, their kinds of humans and their special, prevailing ideas
of them. They are the through-way of a historical structures, e.g., of
Christianity or European economic systems passing through these
social forms ” (II, 529).
The sphere of the person as an act-center pertains, as we have seen,
to both the individual person and to two forms of socialization: soci-
ety and totality-person. In each case the sphere of the person is not a
constant phenomenon, but is subject to disappearance or appear-
ance. Concerning the individual person, this sphere appears in the
adult when there is the presence of all possible acts, and it disappears
when the totality of acts disintegrates at growing age; it appears within
the two higher forms of socialization, and this sphere gradually dis-
appears if individuals enter into lower forms of togetherness (life-
community, mass). When Scheler speaks of life-communities we
should not have in mind a “modern” family and think that he main-
tains that our family members are not persons. What he has in mind
is rather a primitive, maybe extremely rural life-community, which
has no, or only very little, relation to society or a totality-person,
such as the Amish in Pennsylvania. For, there exist naturally influ-
ences of the society on a family, and a totality-person onto a society,
taking away, so to speak, the aspects of a life-community of a family
(“modern family”). It follows that primitive man, whose form of so-

cialization is a life-community, does not have a sphere of the person
(VIII, 53-54) and that, since this sphere is extinguished in the indi-
vidual within a mass (e.g., a mob movement), there exists a “parallel
coordination” between the non-personal being of a young child, a
mass, and primitive people as well as pathological and abnormal cases
of adults. Scheler intended to make a special subject of such parallel
coordinations in his Philosophical Anthropology of which we find,
however, twelve in: Die Wissensformen und die Gesellschaft (VIII, 62).
The sphere of the person is man’s dynamic being. It is present in
the individual in terms of an act-center of all possible spiritual acts
(emotional, voluntative, intellectual) throughout which it undergoes
qualitative variations, but simultaneously retaining in each individual
its identity, unity and uniqueness by way of the qualitative direction
of these acts. It is a sphere also making its appearance as a commu-
nity-person, i.e., in a society, a nation, a church, or in cultural units,
because of the social acts of individual persons. A community-per-
son is a whole of persons constituted in (not above or beyond) the
whole of individual acts which have, according to our interpretation,
a qualitative direction of a second order, making each society or to-
tality-person specifically unique and different from another, so that
one can consider each totality-person (nation, church) as one per-
sonal whole, as one individual person (hierarchy of persons). The
community-person is both dependent and independent of the mem-
ber-persons. It is dependent in so far as there must be member-per-
sons for its existence. It is independent in so far as the community-
person “exists” only through the pursuance of spiritual, personal acts
of individuals, i.e., it is not dependent on this or that fortuitous,
finite, physical human being subject to death. This is clear when we
consider Scheler’s position that a community of human beings does
not necessarily imply individual persons or a group-person as its mem-
bers. If human beings herd together in a mass, there is in extreme
cases no presence of the sphere of person(s). For the contact within a
mass (and animal herds) exists without “understanding” and only
through a psychic infection or contagion of ideas (men) which can
originate in a leader (men), or the contagion can start with an alpha-
animal (VI, 334-35). All a mass does is not willed, and nothing hap-
pens in a mass by way of valuations. Hence, there is no responsibility
and no objective relation towards values. A mass is fortuitous and
without duration in time; it collects and it falls apart by itself (VI,

335). There is also no formation of the sphere of person in a life-
community (family, clan, tribe, etc.). Throughout a life-community
there exists only what Scheler calls “organic causality” (X, 265). The
community has a duration in time, i.e., it exists throughout genera-
tions. That which binds the life-community together is blood, tradi-
tion, customs, immediate sympathy and absence of interests, more
involuntary life experiences within and with the whole. Man is here
only an organ and member, but not yet a person (X, 265). His reli-
gion rests here on tribe-gods or family-gods. Marriage takes place
only after the parent’s advice or command. It is an organic solidarity
in which the member exists. The sphere of the person, however, comes
into existence only if the member is “above” the psychic or emotional
avalanches of a mass-psyche and “above” this organic solidarity of a
community, i.e., in society and the totality-person. We put the word
“above” in quotation marks for we could have said also under these
two forms of non-personal socialization. For Scheler holds that in a
society the natural psychic stream of togetherness of a life-community
falls apart and disintegrates (X, 266); but by way of this disintegra-
tion and extinction of non-personal communal togetherness, man is
born as a free person, having conscious purposes, interests, and as a
being of love.
The sphere of the person presents itself in Scheler’s philosophy as a
dynamic, ontic sphere in man. And since it opens up the realm of
personal values (in contrast to the vital values of a community, and
the temporary absence of values in a mass), it is only through a spe-
cific kind of personal acts that man can reach out to a personal God.
These acts are religions acts, which have as their proper correlate the
person of persons, God. They are, as we will see, essentially different
from the rest of all other acts of the sphere of the person, which leads
us to Scheler’s views on man and God.
Chapter Eight
Man and God
Phenomenological Exhibition of God and the

So-Called Proofs for His Existence
T hroughout the previous chapters we referred to Scheler’s notion

of God repeatedly in different contexts, and we are now equipped
to outline Scheler’s main thoughts concerning his phenomenological
Philosophy of Religion, contained chiefly, although by no means ex-
clusively, in Vom Ewigen im Menschen (V) of the Collected Edition.
In the preceding considerations, the notion of God presented itself
in different contexts and different fashions, namely, as “person of
persons,” as an infinite personal correlate of the macrocosm, and as
an unobjectifiable personal being. God, it was pointed out, cannot
be “known” as a person and, hence, the notion of a personal God
cannot be one of straight metaphysics, but can only be given to, or
in, a religious act. Metaphysics can only arrive at the ens a se in the
sense of a non-personal, absolute world-source (Aristotle). If a phi-
losophy attempts to make a personal God the object of rational think-
ing, Scheler holds, such a philosophy is guided by a religious tradi-
tion, and hence, begs the question. In the following, we will analyze
three major aspects of Scheler’s philosophy of religion. Firstly, we
will set out to explain Scheler’s thoughts on the existence of God, for
in the foregoing chapters we tacitly assumed that God exists when-
ever we referred to the notion of God. Secondly, we will have to
explain why Scheler considers religious acts substantially different
from all other acts, as for instance acts of thinking, willing or feeling.
And thirdly, we will present Scheler’s principal views on what is called
“Christian Philosophy.”
As to any possible provability of the existence of God, Scheler makes
a strict distinction between three notions: proof (Beweis), demon-
stration (Aufweis), and the notion of Nachweis, for which there is no
adequate English word. Demonstration, in Scheler’s usage, is a way
of pointing to something, an invitation to open the eyes of someone
not believing so that he can see for himself. To demonstrate some-
thing means to point to something that has not yet been found, and
is, cum grano salis, equivalent to a “detection.” Nachweis, on the
other hand, is the rediscovery of something which had been previ-

ously found. Demonstration, therefore, leads up to something previ-
ously not known, whereas a Nachweis can only follow upon a
demonstration. It is a way of rethinking, testing, or weighing that
which was somehow previously given. Both demonstration (in the
sense of a “pointer”) and Nachweis (in the sense of re-thinking some-
thing) are different from a proof, because only propositions that have
already been found are provable (V, 253) except in mathematics, where
the object to be proved originates in the deductive procedures them-
selves, i.e., where construction and proof go, as it were, hand in hand.
Since the Divine as a Person is given only in religious acts, the exist-
ence of a super-natural, divine, personal Being cannot be proved pre-
cisely because proofs must start from facts of extra-religious experi-
ence (V, 249). Hence, it is only by way of demonstration and Nach-
weis that anything can possibly be said about the existence of a per-
sonal God. However, this does not imply that all that can be said
about the existence of God by way of a demonstration and Nachweis
is less valid in the absence of conclusive proofs, because the extra-
natural existence of God, which must belong to His essence if He
exists, does not coincide with all areas in which proofs are applicable.
One can only come to such a conclusion if one conceives “experi-
ence” in too narrow a fashion. Indeed, Scheler points out that the
common notion of experience (Erfahrung) is a barrier and a preju-
dice, which prevents us from recognizing the justification and valid-
ity of a demonstration and a Nachweis of God’s existence. That it is
impossible to prove God’s existence is clear for Scheler. However, he
disagrees with generally accepted reasons why we cannot do so. In
the first place, the fact that God is not provable can never tell us
anything about the possible existence of God as such, unless one
takes a philosophical position which holds either that only that exists
which is provable (except in pure mathematics) or that only that is
true which has been proved. This, however, must be for the phenom-
enologist Scheler only a one-sided assumption, founded in a narrow
notion of “experience.” Such an experience and truth does not neces-
sarily coincide with existence. And further, there must be made a
distinction between experience and the type of cognition by which
experience is experienced (V, 250). It is not tenable to conceive expe-
rience only in terms of sense experience. “That which is given is infi-
nitely richer than the part of givenness corresponding to so-called
Chapter 8 Man and God 111
sensory perception in the strict sense. Sense experience is neither the

only experience, nor is this experience, in the order of origin and
time, the most original one. The structural content of its environ-
ment and world are ‘given’ to every living being before all ‘sensation,’
and only that becomes sensed which the environment of a living
being can ‘make alive’” (V, 250). No principle is so much refuted
today, says Scheler, than that contained in the old philosophical propo-
sition: “nihil est in intellectu, quod non fuerit in sensu,” of which no
one, apparently to this day, has been able to give its source by textual
evidence. Sensation has the only function of signaling life preserving
reactions of the organism with respect to its environment. It does not
have a genuine function of perception and cognition. The sensory
apparatus of the organism only analyses experience in terms of what
is useful or harmful to the living being, but it does not produce any-
thing concerning cognizance. In his detailed rejection of sensory ex-
perience as an original function of cognition, Scheler is in complete
disagreement with such “philosophemes” holding this or similar
stands, as Thomism, Marxism, and positivism. In short, that which
is given is not identical to objects given through sense experience
alone, and the word “Erfahrung” (experience) has, therefore, a much
broader meaning also in Scheler’s phenomenology than mere sense
experience. Experience, in the wide sense, is clearly established, Scheler
holds, in contemporary phenomenological philosophy, theory of cog-
nition, and experimental psychology (V, 250). For consciousness
possesses the spheres of the external “world,” the “ego,” and the “we,”
as phenomenological correlates, just as it possesses the sphere of the
“Divine” also as a necessary correlate of religious act-consciousness.
Of course, there may be numerous deceptions and errors with re-
spect to the positing of the existence concerning the exemplifications
of such essential correlates of consciousness, but this does not per-
tain to the existence of these correlates as such. It is inconclusive,
therefore, to speak in terms of “proofs” of a religious sphere of con-
sciousness, for proofs must take their starting point in facts of the
world (Welttatsachen). Nor is it conclusive to speak of proofs of the
existence of external reality or the existence of an ego. It is non-sense
to “prove” existence or reality. Only propositions about reality are
provable (V, 252). It is for Scheler a total misunderstanding and over-
estimation of the validity and power of proofs, if one undertakes to
prove existence. He says: “That one reality (Reales) underlies all ap-
pearances, and that different realities (Reales) underlie different spheres

of appearances, is a knowledge which precedes all possible proofs of
existence” (V, 252). In Scheler’s phenomenological thinking, the “we,”
the “ego,” ”existence,” and “world” are what he calls Urgegebenes,
which means, primordial phenomena or archphenomena of givenness
of consciousness. But such primordial phenomena of that which is
given cannot be proved since they belong to consciousness as essen-
tially necessary. Scheler’s philosophy of religion rests, so to speak, on
the phenomenological insight that the sphere of the Divine is an
archphenomenon of human consciousness and that there is nothing
provable in this. There is only possible an exhibition of God by way
of a demonstration and Nachweis. “To find God is something differ-
ent from proving His existence” (V, 254 ).
How, then, does Scheler demonstrate God, and how does he ex-
hibit God’s existence by “Nachweis”? Since God’s existence cannot
be an object of reasoning or logical analysis because He is the Person
of persons, it can only be an analysis of human religious acts as such
which can tell us something positive about God. In other words,
there is only the phenomenological treatment of the question of how
man experiences the sphere of the Divine in him which can show
that, if all religious acts are fictions or related to a fiction, we are
confronted with an irrational factor in man, so that we would have
to do away with all religious truth.
Religious acts are essential, necessary constituents of human
beingness. Every human being possesses within himself a sphere of
the absolute, toward which he is continually directed. Man has the
power, however, to willfully or artificially suppress this sphere by cling-
ing, for instance, to only sensible, visible, verifiable or provable ob-
jects and their relations, making them the sense of his life. But in
such cases, too, the essential religious sphere of human consciousness
persists as such, although more or less empty. Furthermore, it is pos-
sible for man to fill, so to speak, this absolute sphere with earthly and
finite goods — ”idols.” He can worship money, business, a nation
(patriot), love (Casanova), absolute knowledge (Faust); he can fill
this sphere with any material good, and even with the absolutization
of a political, social or economical ideal — and with a philosophy in
which he wholly believes as well. Scheler’s point is that man always
has, consciously or unconsciously, a metaphysical ideal or feeling
within himself, representing something which is through itself, and
from which everything else in his life is made dependent. This holds
true also for the atheist. For in the very denying of a world-source or
divine being, the sphere in which a possible divine being is denied
remains in the atheist. What Scheler tells us, then, is that the being
of man possesses a relation to a sphere which is substantially different
from all other spheres of consciousness, namely, one of an absolute
and non-contingent ideal. To deny this means for Scheler, to deny
man. No matter how and by what this sphere is filled in us, it itself is
an essential human phenomenon. Hence, Scheler can say: Every fi-
nite spirit (Geist) believes either in a God or an idol (V, 261). Man has
this relation to an absolute sphere, and he either finds the adequate
correlate of acts pertaining to this sphere or he does not. The act of
doing either is essentially an act related to an absolute sphere. The
existence of religious acts, no matter if denied, suppressed, ridiculed,
or acted out as religious acts, is an archphenomenon in man because
no human being can be without this (positive or negative) relation to
the absolute sphere in him. It follows that a “proof ” of the existence
of God is not the question at all, but it is only a demonstration and a
detection of the adequate correlate of religious acts directed to the
absolute sphere which is the question. The adequate content of a
personal God in this sphere is to be demonstrated to whom it never
appeared as such before, and it is to be re-thought (Nachweis) for
whom it once appeared as an adequate correlate, but who lost it amidst
the manifold objects, especially of the first and second value-modali-
ties, i.e., relative values of civilization and life. For “wherever man as
an individual, or as a social unit, believed to have found a final fulfil-
ment and satisfaction in his love-urge of a finite good, we are con-
cerned with the delusion and stagnation of his spiritual and moral
development and with attachments of drive-impulses, or better, with
a reversal of the function of love-releasing drive-impulses, narrowing
the objects of love down into an attaching and obstructing function”
(X, 359). And since the human heart (Gemüt) is not a total chaos of
feeling-states, but an ordered whole — as we have seen in the previ-
ous chapters — representing an ordered counterpart (Gegenbild) of
the cosmos of all possible amiabilities (Liebenswürdigkeiten) — a mi-
crocosm of the graded order of values — the finite content of the
absolute sphere is a manifestation of a désordre du coeur, i.e., a disor-
dered or damaged ordo amoris. With respect to disordered religious
acts, Scheler speaks of Vergaffung, which is freely translated a farcical
obsession with a finite, earthly object (X, 360-61). All forms of the
farcical obsession by a finite good, or any earthly object, have in com-
mon that these objects are thought to be of timeless truth, validity, of
highest nature, or as a highest good that man can live for or can
attain. On the premise that an earthly good is worshipped with justi-
fication; and on the premise that there is no need for a God, the
sphere within which man absolutizes cannot itself be destroyed even
by an agnostic. For even “nothingness” (das Nichts) can be placed
into this sphere of consciousness, and hence, a complete agnostic is
unthinkable. Scheler makes a distinction between three meanings of
the word “nothingness” in this respect (X, 204-05). First, nothing-
ness in the sense of “not something” at all (Nichtetwas), in distinc-
tion from nothingness in the sense of not-real (Nichtreal). Secondly,
he speaks of “relative nothingness,” which is still always a determin-
able not-something or not-real, in which case what is determinable
in relation to something is not present in this state of affairs. E.g. in
the statement: “There is nothing on the table.” A positive existence
of objects on the table is, in this proposition, presupposed, and “noth-
ing” is meant in the relative, possible existence of objects on the table.
Thirdly, nothingness obtains as a sign of negation. The agnostic uses
nothingness in the first sense, namely, as not-something (in the sphere
of the absolute). Nothingness in this case is given to him still in an
experienced feeling, even if he does not admit so by judgements, and
even if he conceives nothingness as an absolute emptiness. He is,
therefore, a “nihilist of the absolute” (X, 205).
Thus far the following points with respect to the demonstration of
the existence of God have been established: 1. Man’s consciousness
possesses a necessary relation to an absolute sphere, in the same sense
as “world,” “ego,” “we,” are human spheres of consciousness, and it
is, therefore, not derivable. 2. The absolute sphere in man can be
“filled” by either an adequate correlate of respective human acts, or
by finite objects (farcical obsession) and, thirdly, by nothingness, in
which case we are concerned with a border-case of finite objects. In
any of the three cases man does perform acts related to an essential
sphere of consciousness. But all this does not yet exhibit God as an
adequate content of this sphere, nor does it say anything about His
existence. We have to draw our attention now to religious acts as
such and have to show why they are different from all other acts as,
for instance, acts of thinking, willing, feeling, or judging.
Phenomenology of Religious Acts
There exists a variety of religious acts, for example, the acts of pray-
ing, thanking, worshipping, fearing, acts of repentance, humility, and
awe. There are three characteristics which show that they are of a
distinct nature.
1) A religious act transcends all world objects or contingent things
in that it unifies all possible objects into one whole in order to leave
this world behind. One intention of religious acts is, then, world-
transcendence.
2) In a religious act there is always the experience of a possible
fulfilment by the Divine only, and this is in strict contrast to all other
acts, which do not have this quality. Hence, a religious act is always
accompanied by the feeling of the impossible fulfilment by any finite
beings of this world. The fundamental formula for Scheler is in this
regard St. Augustine’s, “Inquietum cor nostrum, donec requiescat in
te” (V, 245). Praising God, thanking God, loving God, worshiping
God, but also asking God for something, expecting His help, or ask-
ing to be forgiven — in all such acts there is the implication that
nothing finite can bring about fulfilment. Religious acts have, there-
fore, always a negative aspect with regard to finite empirical things.
They are without foundation and goals as to this reality, although
they may be empirically caused. The impossibility of the fulfilment
of religious acts by finite beings lies, for Scheler, in the very existence
of reality itself, i.e., in its thisness (Sosein). But a genuine religious act
is always directed to a “totally different.”
3) The fulfilment of a religious act is only possible by a Being which
bends down to man and by a Being opening up to man. Hence a
religious act always implies an act of response. Religion is only pos-
sible if the correlate of religious acts is personal, i.e., if the correlate of
these acts is responding, which must be experienced in a religious
act. The existence of God can then only be given in a religious act,
namely, by way of Selbstmitteilung, i.e., by God’s giving Himself in
such an act. A religious act is, paradoxically, a receiving act, in which
man at the same time intends the Divine correlate and unfolds him-
self for divine fulfilment, revelation, and ultimately response.
Now, someone may say: “I do not believe in possible revelation
because I have to believe first in the reality of God, in which I do not
believe.” In such a case, we are concerned with a misunderstanding
and confusion of the types of cognition to which we will refer later.

Such a statement, for Scheler, is equal to saying, “I do not believe in
the existence of numbers, since I cannot hear or see them,” or, “I do
not believe in colors because I cannot hear them.” (X, 200). The type
of cognition involved in these propositions is essentially different from
the objects concerned. For, it is one of the principal tenets of Scheler’s
theory of cognition that types of cognition (in our case of hearing,
seeing, and mathematical cognition) are determined by the nature
and essence of the experience of the involved objects. God, as infi-
nite Person, therefore, cannot at all be known by way of spontaneous
acts but only by His self-giving. It is this type of cognition pertinent
to spontaneous acts, like seeing, hearing, knowing, which is falsely
applied to God; for real, existing things are correlated only to specific
acts (e.g., colors: seeing), with which we are most familiar through-
out our natural experience. But these acts are not the only acts which
belong to the sphere of the person, and even among those acts there
are definite limits of applicability as the above proposition about hear-
ing colors shows. To apply the act of hearing to colors is non-sense,
and even a priori non-sense. To apply the above spontaneous acts to
God’s existence, and even expect proofs from them is, likewise, non-
sense. This is why Scheler says (X, 211): “The existence (Da-sein) of
an essence (Wesen) is given in an ideal realm of being by way of pos-
iting (Setzung); in a real finite and relative realm by belief, and in the
absolute realm of existence by faith.” In each of the three cases of Da-
sein (existence) there are specific types of acts of cognition involved,
determined by the nature of the respective objects, namely, math-
ematical objects (ideal realm), real things (finite realm) and the di-
vine object (absolute realm). None of the types of acts belonging to
the three kinds of Da-sein can be substituted for the other and, hence,
“it is only philosophy and religion which are competent for the abso-
lute” (X, 219). All acts related to the absolute sphere, no matter what
its content — earthly goods, idols, or nothingness — are accompa-
nied by a faith in this or that content. Faith is in every finite con-
sciousness (X, 207), and every human being has its own metaphysics
by necessity, no matter if he is a religious person or not, because the
filling out of the absolute sphere with content (adequate or not) is
part of human consciousness itself. The agnostic is a border case be-
cause he is the metaphysician of nothingness. “Man is, therefore, neces-
sarily a metaphysician — insofar as he does not believe in the reality of
God.” (X, 207). The demonstration of God’s existence in Scheler’s

philosophy, then, appears to be the following: Since religious acts are
essentially different from all other acts by three characteristics, namely:
1) world-transcendence, 2) non-fulfilment by any finite being, and 3)
demand for (divine) response, their unique correlate must be 1) be-
yond contingent being, 2) its power must be of infinite nature (in
contrast to that of finite beings), and 3) it must be the only kind of
response that can ever be received in terms of fulfilment. If any one
of these three correlative qualities of religious acts is not fulfilled there
must be a disturbance or willful confusion of the religious act which
necessarily belongs to the sphere of person just as do acts of thinking,
willing and feeling. The reality of God, God’s existence, cannot be
proved, because proofs are valid only within a certain class of types of
cognition related to either ideal objects (mathematical and logical)
or measurable facts and their relations. They are not valid as to the
Divine, as the absolute correlate of the religious act. God’s existence,
then, is only manifest in a genuine religious act, or “the object of
religious acts is at the same time the source of their existence” (V,
255).
Since Scheler conceives the religious act as an act requiring divine
response he is again in a position to make a strict distinction between
religion and metaphysics. For acts of thinking (metaphysics) do not
require any divine response, and therefore, acts of thinking in phi-
losophy are not competent to prove the existence of God. Metaphys-
ics can only arrive at the ens a se as non-personal absolute being, be-
cause in metaphysics no demand for a divine personal response is
implied. In short, a religious act is not an act of deduction, induc-
tion, or reasoning. Hence, the givenness of God pertains only to re-
ligious experience and not to metaphysical reasoning. Religious acts,
on the one hand, and all other personal acts, on the other, form too
different classes of acts of the person. Religious acts are autonomous,
and have their own lawfulness. They cannot be deduced from psycho-
logical dispositions, nor are they deviations from logical, moral, or
aesthetic acts, although religious acts themselves can be made objects
of thinking (as we are doing here by such a non-religious act). How-
ever, religious acts as such are only if acted out in their proper rela-
tion to their correlate. If there were no proper correlate to religious
acts at all we would be faced with a totally fictional factor of man’s
consciousness. For it is also one of Scheler’s principles that there be-
longs to every act a correlate, and that to each object there belongs a
respective act; even if we posit a fictional object, a corresponding act
must be posited along with it also.
From the above follows a number of opinions of Scheler’s with
respect to a church and its functions. There are different ways in
which God gives Himself in religious acts of different religious per-
sons (homines religiosi). Scheler distinguishes the following types of
religious persons: the magician, the sorcerer, the seer, the sacred
teacher, the prophet, the sacred legislator and judge, the priest, the
Savior, the Redeemer, the Messiah, and the individual person. In all
of these, holds Scheler, there is a different religious experience of the
Divine, and the same is true in all different religions. He intended to
give a detailed analysis of these different experiences of divine revela-
tion but he could not complete it. However, we know that he under-
stood spirituality and holiness as the two fundamental attributes of a
personal God, which all forms of religious experience among differ-
ent religious persons and religions have in common (V, 159-60).
Since all personal acts are either individual or social acts, as we saw,
the Divine is given to the individual as a person and to a group as a
person: God gives Himself to a totality-person, a church, in terms of
revelation; He gives Himself as all-loving person to individuals in
terms of grace and illumination (X, 230). If an individual person
possesses its own religious experience contradicting the faith of his
church as a totality-person, the member-person must either admit
that his experience was subject to deception, or he must declare an-
other church as the true church of God. But by way of the twofold
givenness of God in the twofold sphere of the person it is impossible
to leave the church as such (Austritt), because a church is as a totality-
person the institution of the solidary salvation of finite persons. If an
individual person does not have any religious experience of God, the
claims of the faith of a church remain valid and, hence, the indi-
vidual remains bound by the faith of the totality-person. For it is not
every person who has a genuine religious experience of God. This is
not so because God does not want to reveal Himself and bend down
towards every individual in a religious act but because this experi-
ence simply does not have to take place. The person must open him-
self up so that a divine arrow of the all-loving God can hit his heart.
If a person does not do so, religious experience is not likely to take
place in a person. The failing of religious experience is, therefore, to
be attributed to a person’s own guilt, and it cannot be a foundation

for rejecting an all-loving God. Hence, it is the task of a church, as an
institution, to lead its member-persons to religious experience and
genuine religious acts, and not primarily to seek to convince them
that God exists by way of rational means and instruction. But, we
can ask, how can one ever bring an individual to experiencing the
adequate correlate of acts directed to an absolute sphere or, to use
Scheler’s words, how can one “smash the idols” (money, sex, busi-
ness, nation, ego, etc.) that have taken over a part of the absolute
sphere in man? Certainly, someone who does not want to believe in
God cannot be persuaded otherwise, nor can so-called proofs — even
on the premise that only one of them would be completely con-
sistent and self-evident — bring a person to a genuine act of faith
always contained in all religious acts. For the agnostic can still say: “I
just do not believe in a personal God.” Unfortunately, we have only
some passages in which Scheler expresses his opinion on this. They
are, however, extremely symptomatic for Scheler’s thinking. Since
faith or non-faith cannot be reduced to acts of experience and espe-
cially not to those of thinking and willing, there is no possibility of
bringing a person to a genuine religious experience of the Divine by
way of instruction or logic. Whereas in non-religious acts there can
be degrees of certainty and probability, there is no such thing as a
probable faith, or a half-way certain faith; nor can there be uncertain
faith and improbable faith. The genuine act of faith is either com-
plete or it is not at all.
We stated before that, according to Scheler, man necessarily pos-
sesses idols if he does not believe in God, and that even nothingness
itself can be such an idol. This is reflected in the presence of myths
and metaphysics. For, both are expressions of man’s tendency to fill
his absolute sphere with finite things (e.g., in metaphysics with “life,”
“will,” “soul”). This metaphysical inclination (Hang) in man is more
effective and influential the earlier it has started in history, analo-
gously to the individual’s idols that have entered this sphere during
early childhood, unconsciously exercising influence on the content
with which the absolute sphere is being filled at growing age. To
purify man from false gods or idols is for Scheler a matter of psycho-
techniques which have to be investigated. The finite content which
has settled in man’s absolute sphere during his early life can only be
removed by demonstrating its relative function within the absolute
sphere so that “room” is opened up for a genuine divine experience.

Scheler considers it necessary to study all types of psycho-techniques
of inner purification which can be found in history and to detect
their identities. He is thinking here of forms of psychic techniques of
salvation contained in all forms of exorcism found throughout his-
tory, up to modern types like that of faith-healers or those of the
Christian Science movement (X, 221). Although Scheler does not
specifically say so, we can be almost sure that he had in mind espe-
cially oriental techniques of self purification to be taken over by west-
ern civilization in order to awaken in western man the knowledge of
salvation and to avoid further development of a one-sided utility-
civilization interested primarily in control of outer nature by way of
rational and scientific thought.
From the foregoing considerations of Scheler’s ideas about the ex-
istence of God, it follows also that religious acts have, as do all other
acts, their proper correlate, with the qualification, however, that the
religious correlate is absolute, infinite, and irreducible, in contrast to
all other correlates of all other acts. The religious act-correlate can be
an idol or an all-loving person of persons, God. Man’s consciousness
possesses a relation of essence (Wesensrelation) to an absolute sphere
within which a religious act-correlate is experienced. In case of a genu-
ine religious act (praying, thanking, worshiping, etc.) this correlate is
God, Who bends down to man in response to this act and in this act.
A religious act must have, as all other acts (thinking, willing, prefer-
ring, loving, enjoying, etc.), a correlate, or else there is no act. Act
and correlate are intrinsically connected and inseparable. We are now
in a position to see why the demonstration of the existence of God is
not only pertinent to “person,” ”act,” and a proper “correlate,” but
also to the “world” as well.
Person and World
All correlates of all possible acts of a person form what Scheler calls
a person’s world. Each person possesses a unique microcosm, corre-
sponding to the uniqueness of this or that person and the qualitative
direction of all his acts and their correlates. To each person there
belongs a world, in the same sense as to each organism there belongs
a specific environment, and to each ego an external world (II, 157-
58). The sphere of the person exists in the unique execution of acts,
forming a personal unity. Person and act are inseparable, although
not identical. For, we pointed out before that one act can never ex-
haust the sphere of the person, although the person as a whole is
always translucent in each act by way of an individual, qualitative
direction. Now we can see that person and “world” are inseparable,
too. For all act-correlates must form a world of one person, or: to
each person belongs a microcosm, consisting of act-correlates. We
can even go one step further. An act can only be if there is a possible
correlate, as for instance, all possible acts of love correlate to values.
Without the correlate of a value an act of love cannot be performed
and, hence, this act could not be. But also the reverse statement must
be true; for, to each value there belongs a corresponding act of love,
and “to all cognition (even all intentional acts) there must correspond
a being, and to all being there must correspond a possible cognition”
(V, 181). There exists, then, a relation of essence (Wesensrelation) be-
tween performing being (acts) and existing being. It is a relation which
is found in man, although it must be considered to be independent
of this or that particular man: “it is true for any possible world” (V,
181). Any possible world must have spirit, or: “…all possible extra-
spiritual being is in (mutual) dependency of possible spiritual being”
(des Geistseienden) (V, 181). This insight, Scheler argues, is, although
found in the spiritual being of man, independent of man. For with
respect to human spirit, he says, there is no such dependency, be-
cause being (das Sein) exists independently of man. Being is by itself
and is as such, no matter if it is experienced by a spiritual act of a
fortuitous human being or not. But the relation of essence between
being and spirit (as act-center) in which every being is a possible
correlate of spirit, and every spirit possible correlate for every being,
is found in man as a small, remote place of spiritual manifestation in
nature. Any possible world encompasses, therefore, the following es-
sential aspects of this relation of essence between spirit and world in
Scheler’s philosophy:
Spirit (act-center) : Correlates
1. Love : Values
2. Will, drives, urge : Resistance (of Reality)
3. Knowledge and Cognition : Being
4. Person : Microcosm (“world” of a person)
5. Infinite Person (God) : Macrocosm
All of these are mutual, ontic dependencies of any possible world.

Spirit belongs to a world as a world must have spiritual manifesta-
tion. No world without spirit, but also no spirit without world. Spiri-
tual acts can only be if there are beings. Spirit exists in the represen-
tations of beings by way of all kinds of sense perceptions and in vir-
tue of all non-sensible (pure) intuition, by way of all kinds of experi-
ences, feelings, volitions, and love. Whatever spirit takes comprehen-
sion of, it is that of which we say it is. And reversely: being as such
reveals itself only to a spirit. Both spirit and world belong together.
Being is by way of spiritual comprehension, and comprehension can
only be in relations to being, i.e., being does not come forth without
presence of spirit in its various acts. This relation of essence between
being and spirit has its historical root in Parmenides’ proposition
that “Taking comprehension and being is the same” (to gar auto noein
estin te kai einai), and which underlies, from a viewpoint of the his-
tory of metaphysics, Scheler’s relation of essence between spirit and
being. Although spirit is experienced in a relatively small, remote
place in the universe (man), this ontic relation is exhibited as a fun-
damental constituent of being in human Da-sein (V, 179). The inde-
pendence of beings (objects) of spirit refers only to this or that exist-
ing man. This, we hope, casts some light on a rather complicated
argumentation of Scheler’s with respect to the ontological interde-
pendence of world and spirit (V, 182). He says:
1. This world is, in its being, independent of the existence of my
spiritual acts and independent of every act of the same kind of being
(Wesens); every object of this world is only partially and inadequately
(possibly) immanent to such spiritual acts.
2. There belongs to the being (Sein) of every possible world the
being (Sein) of a possible spirit, and to every object (Gegenstand)
there belongs a complete possible immanence of this object in this
spirit.
3. Thus, also spirit belongs to world, who — if I posit a world —
has to be posited along with it by necessity, and who (on the basis of
the first premise) cannot be a human spirit — neither in its exist-
ence, nor in its nature.
World and spirit, then, form for Scheler a constitutive relation of
essence. It is a relation transcendent to human spirit, but at the same
time analogous to human spirit and its own environment. Being as a
whole which is independent of a fortuitous human spirit requires by
reason of the dependence of essence (Wesensabhängigkeit) between

being and spirit a spirit “X,” which cannot be of human nature. This
is, in nuce, Scheler’s position concerning the existence of an infinite
spirit, God. It is clear, that there is no “proof ” involved, but only a
demonstration and “Nachweis.” A demonstration is involved in so
far as he leads us to an insight into the ontological relation of essence
between spirit and any possible world, and a “Nachweis” is involved
in so far as he rethinks that which can already be given before new
religious acts. Hence, there is no positing of the “reality” of God
involved, since a reality cannot be proved at all (II, 187-91).
Christian Philosophy — A Fabricated Illusion
Since Scheler was a Catholic convert, we have to show some of the

main features of his relation to Christianity and the Catholic Church.
We said before that Scheler’s attitude toward the Catholic Church
changed at the end of his second period of productivity, and that
Catholic writers seem to have a tendency to see in this change a kind
of deterioration of the quality of Scheler’s philosophical thoughts,
implying that his first period was the most fruitful and valuable. Only
someone who reads Scheler with a fixated perspective can arrive at
such conclusions, but no one who reads Scheler. To state that “Scheler’s
understanding of Catholic dogma and life was extremely poor and
superficial” (M. Schneider, op. cit., p. 148) is doing less than justice
to his whole work that proves the very opposite by itself. The same
author, it appears to me, characterizes a general Catholic attitude
towards Scheler in essence, when he states that it was not authority,
but feeling and intuition, which Scheler held to be criteria for truth.
It is true that there is no authority for Scheler in philosophical mat-
ters, but in a very different sense than “authority” should be under-
stood in such a statement. In the first place, not only for Scheler, but
for every philosopher and thinker concerned with straight philoso-
phy there is no authority, nor can there be any, unless the meaning of
philosophy is grossly violated. However, there might be an “author-
ity” for a philosophy. This is in some sense true, with respect to Neo-
Kantians whose “authority” is Kant, for Thomists whose “authority”
is St. Thomas. It would be a complete misunderstanding to connect
Scheler with any “school” leaning towards such an “authority” and
indeed all contemporary European philosophy is only marked by its

being outside of “schools” and “authorities,” unless there is reference
made to them in historical contexts. The ontology of Dasein and
phenomenology are no “schools.” Moreover, there is no evidence
whatsoever that either Kant or St. Thomas ever intended to form a
school for which they considered themselves authorities. “Authority”
in such cases — if one applies the word at all — is always attached to
a thinker by those who follow him in later times. There is nothing
wrong with so doing this, as long as a genuine study and philosophi-
cal inquiry is made pertaining to such original thinkers. A violation
against a philosophical attitude is made, however, if this or that par-
ticular thinker is made an authority as such, namely, if one extends
certain principles and propositions of his system into areas he, in
fact, has never known anything about. To do this would be against
both the spirit of Kant and of St. Thomas, whom we mentioned as
examples of “authority.” It will always remain a hopeless undertak-
ing, let it be added, to support, for instance, Kant’s synthetic a priori
in non-Euclidean geometries although Kant had a vague idea of it
(Critique of Pure Reason, A 220, B 268). It is equally hopeless to
speculate that an electron is compatible with a (Thomistic) material
substance. Non-Euclidean geometry and Max Planck’s quantum-
theory are areas of human knowledge which have been found only
after Kant’s and St. Thomas’ time. On the other hand, however, it
might be possible that some ideas and concepts of such original think-
ers can be applied for the understanding of later discoveries. This
may become, however, a critical affair if one attempts to explain ev-
erything in terms of principles of only one such “authority.” Con-
cerning authoritative philosophical interpretations in mathematics
and modern science, there does not seem to be too much danger
involved since mathematics and science enjoy their existence very
well in the absence of a philosophical authority, as Galileo already
showed. Things become precarious, however, if we are concerned
with “authorities” in pure philosophy, and it is here where Scheler
and contemporary European thinking reject “authority.” It is known
that the Catholic Church has repeatedly recommended and given
preference to Thomistic philosophy (e.g., Pope Leo XIII’s Aeterni
Patris). Scheler was a Catholic. Did he have to comply, for this rea-
son, with Thomistic principles and the “authority” of St. Thomas?
The answer must unquestionably be: no. In the first place, not anyone’s
recommendation of a philosophy is itself a matter of philosophy.

Therefore, recommendations are irrelevant to straight philosophy.
Secondly, no pope is (by the definition of infallibility) infallible in
matters philosophical, and hence, he is fallible in such matters. Thirdly,
faith does not imply nor lead to any particular philosophy. Neither
does faith require “a” philosophy because acts of faith are autono-
mous and distinct from acts of reasoning in philosophy. Scheler’s
attitude towards what is called “Christian philosophy” (philosophia
perennis) is, however, not primarily determined by formal implica-
tions with respect to his being a member of the Catholic Church,
but by a keen evaluation and investigation into some historical facts
that are manifest in Christian thought, and which have, according to
him, distorted the essential Christian message of love throughout the
past.
It must be stated first that the term “Christian philosophy” is not
without contradiction. Heidegger compares it with a “square circle.”
But whereas Heidegger comes to this conclusion by juxtaposing faith
and thought (Nietzsche, II [Neske], p. 132), Scheler comes to the
same finding in terms of showing Christian philosophy to be not
originally Christian. Already from a Christian viewpoint, it is diffi-
cult to determine what “Christian Philosophy” is supposed to be or
not be. In general, Christian philosophy is understood to be the work
of medieval thinkers, and indeed, Christian philosophy has remained
through modern times closely attached to medieval thought. How-
ever, the variety of philosophies of European medieval thinkers is so
large that it seems impossible to find common philosophical elements
among all of them, unless one takes their common faith as a philo-
sophical matter. Several schools of thought developed throughout
the Middle Ages. Augustinianism, developed by St. Bonaventure
(1221–74) and his disciples, rose against the growing influence of
Aristotle. Thomism goes back to the teachings of the Dominican
theologian St. Thomas Aquinas (1225–74). Scotism is based on the
Franciscan theologian John Duns Scotus. And Suarezianism devel-
oped on the basis of Francis Suarez (1548–1617), a Jesuit theolo-
gian. From a strict philosophical viewpoint there is no need, nor jus-
tification, to give specific preference to any one of such systems
(and their numerous mixtures). It can even be challenged if St. Au-
gustine, St. Thomas, St. Bonaventure, Duns Scotus, and Suarez —
as Christians — wanted to be involved in a kind of intellectual com-
petition which, to put it mildly, is a trait of the later development of

some of these schools. For the attitude implied in the writings of
modern Thomists, for instance, cannot be freed from being rather
authoritative with respect to judgements made on Suarez and Duns
Scotus, let alone modern thinkers like Kant or Nietzsche. It is diffi-
cult to determine the sense of Christian philosophy in the face of the
large variety of thoughts which, from a religious viewpoint, forms a
beautiful harmony, but from a philosophical one does not at all. If
one takes Christian philosophy as the sum total of the work of medi-
eval theologians and philosophers who taught at European universi-
ties and other institutions, and their influence up to modern times,
then in this sense Christian philosophy, as such, has failed for Scheler.
For the ultimate message and act on which Christianity rests, Chris-
tian love, is not its basis, nor even its primary concern. Hence, for
Scheler, an autonomous Christian philosophy does not even exist.
There is only for Scheler a “Greek philosophy with Christian orna-
ments” (VI, 87). Nowhere has there been a spontaneous formation
of a philosophical world-view that arose out of the immediate Chris-
tian experience itself: love. And indeed, the first Christians did not
hold it necessary to have one. However, as soon as one had to face
gnostic sects, the question of a philosophical conceptualization pre-
sented itself, and one took refuge in Greek philosophical concepts.
This, however, was an unfortunate undertaking. For the notion of
love in Greek thought was not an ultimate one, nor was it the same
as that what Christianity connected it with — unconditional, self-
less love.
Both Plato and Aristotle, who mostly influenced medieval think-
ers, are not compatible with Christian love. For, in ancient Greece
love had only one, upward direction. It was chiefly a direction or a
transition towards higher values or from lower to higher knowledge.
A highest being itself was not conceived as a loving being. God was
only “object” of possible love or knowledge, but he himself love-less,
thought of thoughts and unmoved first mover. The Greek notion of
love is characterized above all by the absence of a downward direc-
tion which is, however, exactly that which marks Christian love.
Scheler calls this: the turn of love (Bewegungsumkehr der Liebe) (III,
72). All Greek thinkers conceived love only in an upward direction,
namely, from the unformed to the formed, the lower to the higher,
from imperfection to perfection, from appearance to being, from
“doxa” to “episteme.” That which is loved is always of a higher qual-

ity according to this view. Christian love, as a totally new event, natu-
rally is also directed upwards to God, but Who in contrast to the
prime mover, is Himself all-loving and love, is only fulfilled in a si-
multaneous downward direction: the love to any neighbor, the sick,
the poor, the sinner; the good and holy bend down even toward the
bad and base, the Messiah to the sinner. In all of this there is a cancel-
lation of the typical ancient Greek and Roman anxiety to lose some-
thing of one’s self if one cares about the lower, or to become of lower
dignity if one, as a rich Roman citizen loves the poor or the slave.
There is no disgrace of this kind in Christian love. Rather, it is the
very road to Christ Himself, Who bent down to man who crucified
Him, in love and forgiveness. The aristotelianization of the new Chris-
tian experience had a number of negative effects with regard to this
advent of Christian love, which is not only directed upwards to God.
God as a loving God and men have to act accordingly toward all
their neighbors. There is Aristotelian influence already in the dog-
mas of the Church, which is for Scheler a misleading element. He
mentions in this regard the christological dogma, in which the per-
son of Christ is merged with the Greek notion of logos, the Council
of Vienne in which the thomistic theory of the soul was dogmatized
“tooth and nail,” the dogma of transubstantiation (substantial change
of Aristotle), the traditional proofs for the existence of God, as well
as the theory of freedom of the will as freedom of choice (VI, 88;
VIII, 80). The receding of original Christian love by way of con-
scious leanings toward pre-Christian pagan thinkers is, above all,
manifest in the philosophy of St. Thomas. While he took over from
“the philosopher” fundamental metaphysical concepts such as sub-
stance, essence, potency, and act, and let such concepts then appear
in Christian light, he also retained certain metaphysical principles
such as the priority of knowledge over love and will (in contrast to St.
Augustine) and the notion of the soul as not possessing love as a
fundamental act. Only the vis appetitiva and the vis intellectiva be-
came the two major powers of the soul, containing within them a
number of other different powers. Every voluntary activity is pre-
ceded here by an intellectual activity. Love and all feelings are, in this
philosophy, only modifications of the vis appetitiva ; love is neither
the fountain nor the source of knowledge and will. No matter how
one may trace inaccuracies of Scheler’s exhibition of Thomistic think-
ing, it must be conceded that Christian love does not have the cen-
tral role in this philosophy as one should expect it to have. The stress
on man’s intellect, on the idea of man as ens rationale, are dominant
notions in the climax of medieval thought.
This retaining of Greek metaphysics had also its sociological ef-
fects within the structure of the Christian Church for Scheler. Its
servants, the pope, the bishop, the priest, etc., appear like ancient
“Roman rulers” (VI, 92), in whose life the life of the Church culmi-
nates. The first servants execute an “office,” and they derive dignities
from a “legal” tradition. Redemption has to be believed in according
to dogma and obligation. Charity and love, which are as such be-
yond law and codes, have become part of a law prescribed by divine
will. What Scheler criticizes, here, is first the mixture of the Aristote-
lian notion of a highest being as a first (unmoved) mover and as
thought of thought with the new advent of all-loving God, the Re-
deemer in Thomistic metaphysics, which has exercised its great theo-
logical influence since the Middle Ages. Secondly, the stress on man’s
intellect according to Aristotelian principles, which resulted in the
priority of the teaching and regimental priest to a homo religiosus,
and in the primordial concern for law and legal (rational) codifica-
tions of faith rather than the pursuance of acts of love and humility.
And finally, the teleological world view of Aristotle, culminating in a
love-less, unmoved God, had its historical reflection in the hierarchi-
cal structure of the Church, determined by only upward dependen-
cies of offices. It is this ancient, Greek, pre-Christian influence Catho-
lic theology had in the Middle Ages which prevented St. Francis of
Assisi from returning to the original Christian experience of all-em-
bracing love to become a genuine, original, Christian philosophy (VI,
93). It is only the Augustinian tradition from St. Augustine to Male-
branche and Pascal where we can find some rudimentary renovations
of the Christian experience with respect to knowledge and love. Love,
not knowledge and cognition, is the fundamental act of Christian
man: the primacy of love to all other human acts is also one of Scheler’s
philosophical tenets, as we showed before. It determines, therefore,
his relations to the Catholic Church and the Christian tradition in
general. It is not improbable that the fundamental changes of his
ideas pertaining to religion that took place in him in his second pe-
riod of productivity were due to his being aware of an absence of
genuine Christian love in our time as well as the tendency to ratio-
nalize even this fundamental act of all-embracing love through which

Christianity changed the course of history: “Wonderful Christian mys-
tery of the coming down of God into the dark, silent prison of the body
of the wife of a carpenter. Wonderful birth of God in a stable” (V, 335).
The historical development of the aristotelianization of both Chris-
tian faith and dogma by way of introducing pre-Christian concepts
caused, for Scheler, also a false relationship between philosophy and
religion. Philosophy and religion, according to Scheler, can enter three
different kinds of relations. Firstly, there can be a relation of identity.
In such cases a religion completely exhausts a philosophy, or a phi-
losophy has become a complete religion. In both cases there is no
distinction between the two. Secondly, there can be a partial identity
between the two, and this is the case in so-called “Christian philoso-
phy.” The partial identity system has prevailed throughout Europe
since St. Thomas as a dominant factor of Christian thinking. In it,
both philosophy and religion are supposed to have common areas of
truth, in which both philosophy and religion converge. Religious
truth is supposed to be attainable by rational philosophical investiga-
tion, and philosophical truth by way of religious factors. The exist-
ence of God is determined by metaphysical means, which are them-
selves supposed to be compatible with faith. Metaphysical means that
are not compatible with religious faith (for instance, the first and
second antimonies of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason) are simply re-
jected. Scheler rejects both the systems of identity as well as of partial
identity. Religion and philosophy, as we saw before, are different in
essence, because the source of all metaphysical acts is man’s original
astonishment (thaumazo) about there being something, rather than
nothing. The source of religion, however, is the inner human desire
for salvation (V, 334). The goal of metaphysics consists in the deter-
mination of an absolute being and the cognition of the world by
rational activity. The goal of religion is man’s salvation, redemption
of sin, suffering, and death, which is to be gained by man’s humble
acts and God’s giving. The road which religion takes is faith, in which
man gives himself away humbly, so that God will bend down to give
Himself to man. The road of metaphysics, however, is constructive
and intuitive reasoning. The Ens a Se of religion is personal, whereas
that of metaphysics is not. There are also essentially different degrees
of certainties in religion and metaphysics. Scheler holds that in meta-
physics there are two certainties: there is an ens a se behind or in all
contingencies. Second, this ens a se must be the primordial principle

of being. All other metaphysical principles are for him hypothetic.
On the other hand, religious faith is either certain or blind (supersti-
tion), but there is no hypothetic faith, nor can there be probable
faith. These essential differences between religion and metaphysics
have exercised a social role. The metaphysician, as a type of person, is
the teacher; the social form of metaphysics is always a school (in a
wide sense). The central type of person in religion is a saint (in a wide
sense); the social form of a religion is a church, and not a school. The
means of expression in metaphysics are concepts; those of religion
are symbols.
The third relation between religion and philosophy is what Scheler
calls the system of conformity, and it is only in this where religion and
philosophy have their ordered relations. For, despite all the differ-
ences between philosophy and religion, there cannot be any doubt
that both have two factors in common: their ultimate origin and
their goal, i.e., human spirit and the ens a se. It is in these where both
conform to each other. But religion and philosophy do not conform
to each other in the ways, means, and acts, by which their goal is
achieved. The means and acts are independent from each other in
both philosophy and religion. Hence, it is only the origin and end of
philosophy and religion where both are on the same level. To ex-
change the means of metaphysics with religious acts, and vice versa,
on the road from the spiritual origin of man up to the goal of the ens
a se is the same as denying the autonomous lawfulness of religious
acts of faith as phenomena sui generis in man. Hitherto “Christian
philosophy” has overestimated the domains and power of metaphysical
reasoning concerning religious truth. Metaphysics in “Christian phi-
losophy” has remained what it was during the Middle Ages: only an
ancilla theologiae, a handmaid of theology.
Chapter Nine
Knowledge and Reality
The Measures of Cognition, Phenomenology and Science
I t is not easy to outline Scheler’s theory of knowledge facing the

fact that he could not complete a comprehensive investigation on
the subject, which he had treated in several lectures at the University
of Cologne. We are again in the unfortunate position to attempt a
synthesis of his ideas scattered throughout all of his works.
First of all a terminological clarification is necessary to understand
his position. When Scheler asks the question: what is knowledge? the
word knowledge has the specific meaning of German Wissen, which
must be differentiated from cognition, i.e., Erkennen. The English
term “theory of knowledge” would correspond to what Scheler would
call: “theory of cognition.” We shall start out with cognition, and
then we will attempt to determine “knowledge” in Scheler’s sense. It
appears from the textual evidence we have on the subject that Scheler’s
ideas on knowledge and cognition would have been very probably of
as much effect in contemporary philosophy as was his non-formal
ethics of values.
Cognition (Erkennen) is the knowing possession of something as
something (IX, 111), and it must be strictly differentiated from knowl-
edge. In the past this knowing possession of something as something
has been conceived in a number of different fashions in different
philosophical schools. For example, it was conceived as content formed
through judgments leading to useful action and results, as relations
between adequate or inadequate mental representations of objects,
as a copy of things outside consciousness, or cognition was under-
stood as a kind of description of perceivable facts by way of concepts
designated by symbols. Of the wide variety of theories of cognition
Scheler rejects almost all, because for him they have the erroneous
starting point of taking one science (physics, history, mathematics,
etc.) as a basis. He also finds fault with the continuous confusion of
mental operations in cognition, such as cognizing (erkennen), explain-
ing, conceiving (begreifen), understanding, thinking, and forming
judgements. The majority of epistemologists seem to have agreed
that cognition is ultimately a process of forming judgements. But
this cannot possibly be so, Scheler says, because judgements can be

true or false, whereas it is senseless to speak of false cognition (IX,
111). There exists only a “system of measures” (Masstäbe) for cogni-
tion as, for instance, the measure of adequacy or inadequacy, evident
and non-evident cognition, and in this system of measures of cogni-
tion the “true” and “false” is only one out of many. The “true” and
“false” can only follow cognition of something as something and,
therefore, true and false judgements cannot be identified with cogni-
tion itself. The study of the different criteria or measures of cogni-
tion, Scheler tells us, has been far from satisfactorily treated, and it
seems that this aspect was one of his themes of close investigation in
his planned volume on knowledge.
He distinguished the following measures of cognition (Erkenntnis-
masstäbe): 1. Self-givenness (Selbstgegebenheit) 2. Adequacy of cogni-
tion 3. The relative level of the existence of objects (Relativitätstufe
des Daseins der Gegenstände) 4. Plain truth and true-being (schlichte
Wahrheit-Wahrsein), 5. non-formal truth-falsity (materiale Wahrheit-
Falschheit) 6. Correctness-Incorrectness (X, 413). This sequence of
criteria possesses the property that the sense of the following measure
of cognition presupposes that of the foregoing. For example, adequacy
presupposes self-givenness, because the sense of adequacy lies in its
possible approximation to the self-givenness of absolute cognition,
and plain truth and being-true, as simply evident givenness of the
coincidence of that which is meant in a judgement with existing facts,
is the presupposition of non-formal truth-falsity, which relates be-
tween a plainly true proposition and the object of the judgement.
Scheler’s assertion that the six measures for cognition have this or-
dered dependency remains somewhat unclear, except with respect to
the first and second measures, partly because he did not give us de-
tailed explanations, and partly because what he says about it is awk-
wardly formulated (see X, 413). We do not know if he thought that
the above measures form a complete set, not allowing additions.
All cognition rests on the possible self-givenness of a fact (Tatbe-
stand), given in the evident unity of coincidence (Deckungseinheit) of
that which is meant and given in personal experience (Erleben) (X,
398-99). An object is given absolutely in a pure act, which is to say
that no form, method, or function of any kind, is between object
and act. This is why also for Scheler any theory of cognition has its
basis in phenomenology: the investigation of essences (Wesen) of that
Chapter 9 Knowledge and Reality 133
which is immediately given in immanent intuition must antecede a

theory of thinking fabrications (Verarbeitung) of objective contents.
The most immediate contact with world, with things given in their
being there-themselves in the act of being lived (Er-leben), is the phe-
nomenological de-symbolization of world. Phenomenological phi-
losophy must be understood as prior and fundamental to all theories
which deal with symbols and their experiential fulfillment (Erfüllung)
by induction, deduction, etc. Cognition results only from a conscious-
ness of something which, however, only emerges from a consciousness of
self-given facts of intuition. This is why Scheler can say: “Keine Erkennt-
nis ohne vorhergehende Kenntnis; keine Kenntnis ohne vorhergehendes
Selbstdasein und Selbstgegebenheit von Sachen.” This is freely translated:
“no cognition without foregoing cognizance; no cognizance without fore-
going self-existence and self-givenness of things” (X, 397).
Cognition is relative, it follows, whenever it is connected with quali-
ties or forms that belong to the carriers (Träger) of cognizing acts, for
instance, the forms of all things of perception and observation, the
laws of functional or causal nature, and the true and false. In such
cognition there is always the relation to a finite bearer (man). It seems,
at first sight, that all cognition is relative to a finite bearer, including
the above absolute cognition of the self-given in immanent and im-
mediate intuition. But this depends on what “cognition” means to
make this statement. Absolute cognition (phenomenological insight)
does not imply a bearer, because the thing in its essence exhibits itself
and is only “erschaut” (intuited) in the total absence of forms, sym-
bols, or language expression. Hence, die Sache selbst (the thing as
such) is not observable, and the pure whatness (essence) is neither
provable, nor disprovable, unless one is victimized to circuli vitiosi.
All a book on phenomenological “pure whatness” can tell is how to
bring “pure whatness” to exhibition (zur Er-schauung bringen), and
all propositions in such a book (including the above propositions on
absolute cognition) must be read with a phenomenological intuitional
direction (Einstellung), and not by way of acts of judging, defining, or
analysis, which are only relative forms of the cognition of a finite
bearer. Propositions, in a phenomenological treatment, have only the
function of a “pointer,” of a pointing to a final (inexplicable) and
ultimate: “Look, there it is!” (X, 391-92). “Reasoning” on a pure
absolute cognition is a false application of the second to the first
measure of cognition. Although it is not difficult to form judgements
on a phenomenological essence of the immediately given by means

of a relative cognition, or to belittle it because of its not yielding
something practical, it is clear for Scheler that such judging is inad-
equate on account of the false avail of secondary relative cognition.
That something is color, that something is spatial, that something is
alive cannot be observed. One can observe only that this or that is
colored, spatial, or alive. Hence, color, spatiality and aliveness are
pure essences and pre-given to their exemplifications in objects. The
pure essence, then, is the presupposition of relative cognition, in-
cluding true and false propositions about something.
Scheler only outlined briefly the different levels of relative cogni-
tion (X, 400-01) and distinguished the following:
1. Objects of cognition can be relative to life as a whole. All objects
of mechanical physics and associative psychology seemingly belong
to this (II, 421-69).
2. Objects of cognition can be relative to only human life (e.g., the
moon as moon).
3. Objects of cognition can be relative to different races (e.g., their
different opinions and ideas of the world).
4. Objects of cognition can be relative to the male or female gender
(e.g., the different experiences of certain objects).
5. Objects of cognition can be relative only to an individual (e.g., a
hallucinated object).
In each of these levels the being (Dasein) of the object is relative to
a possible cognition. The difference between number 2 (called by
Scheler “natürliche Weltanschauung,” i.e., the life-world) and number
1 is that the former is only relative to human life, while the latter is
relative to all living being. For instance, the visible spectrum is rela-
tive to human beings, whereas by far the majority of (discovered)
waves in physics exist independently of natural, human experience.
Scheler does not make it clear why science is relative to all possible
life, and that scientific concepts are also genuine phenomenological
essences (II, 373-82), except by stating that the more scientific cog-
nition is remote from human life, the more symbolized it becomes.
This is obvious since biology, which is relatively close to the essence
of life, can do very well with a minimum of symbolic descriptions,
whereas astro- and micro-physics cannot be thought without them.
All levels of relative cognition have their own criteria for adequacy
and inadequacy. Moreover, all the aforementioned measures of cog-
nition can enter a multitude of possible combinations within relative

cognitions, a point which Scheler believes theories of knowledge have
not sufficiently observed. For example, the ancient Greeks might have
had a much more adequate intuition of Zeus than we today can pos-
sibly have. In this case, the third level of relative cognition reveals the
criterion of adequacy relative to an historical epoch, culture, or a race.
Scheler emphasizes one point most strongly, namely, that adequate
cognition is not dependent on the truth or falsity of a judgement,
and that true and false judgements themselves are independent of
the levels of relative cognition in that they can be made in each rela-
tive level of cognition. Thus, “true” and “false” can be applied to
mythological objects as that of Zeus (relative to human life) as well as
to physical objects. Adequate cognition is independent of true or
false propositions of formal logic (III, 406), because the adequacy
and its limits exists only in the phenomenological self-givenness of
an object. Nevertheless, the self-givenness itself can have numerous
degrees of intensity throughout cognition. An object relative to only
one individual as, for instance, a hallucinated object, can be subject
to many different degrees of adequacies (up to self-givenness which
is present in: “I hallucinate this object”) because there can be many
shades of the object which can be given in a hallucination. With
respect to the independence of truth and falsity in adequate cogni-
tion, Scheler points out that judgements do have a universal applica-
bility throughout all relative cognition, but that their application
throughout the different levels of relative knowledge can be at the
expense of adequate cognition. Moreover, the sense of “true” and
“false” is not to be explained by way of scientific investigation alone.
He who says that the sun has not risen (although it did) forms a false
judgement, whereas he forms a true judgment if he says that the sun
did not rise. In this case the “true” and “false” are relative to only the
second level of relative cognition (i.e., to human beings). However,
these propositions would both be false in the first level of relative
cognition (science), since there is no rising and setting of the sun,
but only the turning earth. Thus, if there are two contradictory state-
ments of the form: A = B and A = non B, one of the two must be
false, but only under the condition that the A in both propositions is
on the same level of cognition. If not, they can be both true and false,
without violating the principle of contradiction. For to say that the
sun did not rise is a true proposition with respect to human, natural
world-experience, but false with regard to the first level of cognition.

In both cases the “A” (sun) possesses a different relativity of exist-
ence. This Scheler calls: Daseinsrelativität. The object sun (A) in this
example is relative to human life, and relative to life as a whole, as a
trans-human scientific object.
The main difference between the two levels of cognition, viz., sci-
entific cognition ( 1 ) and that relative to only human environment
(2) is that the latter is much closer to the “fullness” of the totality of
the world (X, 411 ), whereas the former only reveals something about
the structure and order of the world. Scientific cognition, then, is
both smaller and immensely wider than cognition relative to human
life: it is smaller in the sense that it does not reach out for content
and essence, it is larger in the sense that it reveals the order and struc-
ture of both the micro– and macro-cosmos not subject to environ-
mental natural human experience, although such structural laws,
which are found in scientific cognition, remain, Scheler stresses, still
relative to life as a whole. We can see now the main difference be-
tween scientific cognition and philosophical (phenomenological) cog-
nition in Scheler’s sense. Philosophical cognition is essentially
asymbolic, reaching out to the given in itself. Being is not, therefore,
an object to be merely filled with symbols and brought to an order.
Hence, even the very function of symbols can still be subject to phe-
nomenological treatment. Certainly, the philosopher, too, avails him-
self of language communication. But language is here not a means to
reach its goal of exhibiting pure whatness (zur Erschauung bringen)
which is not determinable by means of symbols, because a pure what-
ness is “pre-language-givenness” (X, 413). Philosophical cognition
can, therefore, never have its foundation in any one of the natural or
historical sciences (Geisteswissenschaften), but it must be always with-
out presupposition. In the past this was not sufficiently borne in
mind. Philosophy based on scientific cognition resulted in scientism,
philosophy based on historical cognition resulted in traditionalism,
and as based on theological cognition it resulted in fideism (V, 63-
64). For Scheler, then, straight philosophy is autonomous, i.e., inde-
pendent of other kinds of cognition. While it is at least possible to
state with what ultimate concepts the different sciences are concerned
(e.g., matter, energy, life), this is impossible to be done in philosophy
unless a philosophy rests on respective theories or systems of the sci-
ences. This is why Scheler holds that it is only the question of its own
nature (V, 63) in which philosophy constitutes itself, and that all
philosophizing starts with a threefold evidence (V, 93-94):
1. That there is something rather than nothing.
2. That there is absolute being through which all non-absolute be-
ing possesses being.
3. That all possible being possesses Wesen (essentia) and Dasein
(existentia).
Philosophical cognition is insight into essences and their order of
foundation. It is not cognition of the real, although it must take the
results of positive sciences into consideration (V, 147). This is briefly
Scheler’s position concerning the distinction between scientific and
philosophical cognition during his second (phenomenological) pe-
riod of productivity, and it is not difficult to see that his notion of
philosophy came very close to a phenomenological ontology. In later
years, however, he changed his ideas, because he became more and
more concerned with reality as a whole (see VIII [1926], and
“Idealismus — Realismus” [1927]) in IX, 183-340.) In On the Eternal
in Man he states: “But these cognitions, bare of existence (daseinsfrei)
alone never give metaphysical knowledge which, in its nature, is
knowledge of reality (Realwissen). For metaphysics has its deep and
broad foundation in the whole of the complexity of the existence of
the world” (V, 145). In his second period, then, Scheler started to
concentrate on the phenomenological essence and its exhibition in
the absence of positing existing reality. In his last period he concen-
trated on the question of how existing reality is given and what it is
(see especially VIII and IX).
Reality Is Vital Resistance
Scheler’s ideas of how reality is given is undoubtedly one of the

most interesting contributions to contemporary philosophy. He was
fully aware of the fact that this question of how reality is given is one
of the darkest ones in philosophy, far from being solved. Before we
can be in a position to juxtapose cognition and knowledge, we must
come to an understanding of Scheler’s viewpoint as to this question,
because it is intrinsically connected with an understanding of knowl-
edge as such. It should not be surprising for us now that Scheler’s
approach is not only an investigation into sub-logical levels of man,
but one into the most hidden and at the same time ultimate vital
contact on which even phenomenological experience rests.
Reality of something would not be given to a being endowed with
reason only. Reality is only “in the intentional experiencing of pos-
sible re-sistance (Wider-stand) of an object against a spiritual function
of the kind of willing qua willing” (V, 215). The word “willing” is to
be understood here as pure willing (II, 150), in contrast to any will-
ing to do something, as it holds for intentions, and it is tantamount
also to “urge” or Drang. Resistance is a phenomenon immediately in
all acts of conation (Streben) and appears, therefore, only where there
is an object (II, 150). Resistance against pure willing is an effect,
which we experience of something that resists (V, 215). It is neither a
feeling nor a sensation, but only in the intentional experience of pure
conation. If we think away all that belongs to cognition relative to
human life (natürliche Weltanschauung), for instance, colors, sounds,
forms of space, time and things (categories), so that all is neutralized,
as it were, to one indeterminable neutral whatness, then only a simple,
non-reducible impression of reality as resistance in us would remain.
Scheler can therefore state: reality a not object-being (Gegenstands-
sein)…but resistance-being (Widerstandssein) against the primordial
spontaneity of pure willing (VIII, 363). Reality is that which exer-
cises resistance against our conation (IX, 78). “Reality is in its subjec-
tive givenness an experiencing of our non-spiritual emotional (triebhaft)
principle in us : an experience of the uniform urge in us, no matter
how the urge may specify itself ” (VIII, 360). In always new formula-
tions Scheler attempted to exhibit this ultimate experience of reality
in man: a reality, vague, undifferentiated and indeterminable in its
whatness, a reality which is not deducible through logical and think-
ing operations, a reality which is pre-given to all experiential con-
tent. This reality is, before perception and thinking, resistance against
pure conation. It is, therefore, the acts of passive attention which are
genetically the presupposition of all intellectual acts (VIII, 364). Too,
the experience of reality as resistance antecedes all consciousness of
producing acts of “reflexio” (VIII, 370). Hence man’s relation to re-
ality is ontologically ultimate and primordial: “Becoming conscious
or to become related to the ego is always a consequence of our suffer-
ing (Erleiden) of resistance of world” (VIII, 370). Resistance is the
presupposition of the whatness of a being as perceived or thought. It
is, then, the resistance of world (or all things) which ignites the spark
of reality-experience in acts of conation against which resistance is

directed. Reality is therefore, given before intellectual acts, because
the correlate of all possible intellectual acts is exclusively whatness,
and never existence…(VIII, 372). “We comprehend the being-real
(Realsein) of an indefinite something, therefore, in the sequence of
givenness prior to its whatness (Sosein) as sensibly perceived or
thought” (VIII, 372). Reality is the foundation for all possible sensa-
tion and perception, and hence, reality is pure resistance. Sensation,
perception and the cognition of essence only “fill” that which is pre-
given in immediate, pure, voluntative experience: the empty what-
ness of resistance. It will be recalled that the pre-logical contact with
the givenness of reality-resistance takes place in a certain order to
which we referred in the second chapter: the sphere of the absolute is
in a sense basic to the “thou-(we) I” experience (Mitwelt), and both
external and internal reality precede that of live and inanimate na-
ture. This sequence of reality experienced, it will be remembered,
exercises for Scheler a role in the historical, social, and individual
development of man.
We are now in the position to point to an inconsistency in Scheler’s
theory of cognition which in present literature on Scheler has never
been mentioned. Scheler explicitly states that resistance is experienced
in the prelogical vital sphere (IX, 42-44) and involuntary drives (IX,
208-15). But, on the other hand, the above sequence reveals that the
first two events of reality experience (absolute; thou-l) are related to
the personal sphere in man, whereas only the third and forth, i.e.,
last and final experiences of reality, relate to the vital sphere in man.
One should expect that the sequence be reversed, on the premise, that
resistance is a vital experience which also pertains to animals and plants
(IX, 35-36). But in any case, Scheler remains clear in one fundamental
point, namely, that resistance takes place before all cognition of essence
as well as perception and sensation. They only emerge from this basic,
vital, transintelligible experience of neutral and empty contact.
The preceding analysis of one of Scheler’s most profound ideas
casts some more light on the justification of the sequence of the afore-
mentioned threefold evidence in which, he says, all philosophizing
starts. “That there is something rather than nothing” (1) is, as it
were, the spark of resistance that forms the immediate pure contact
with existing reality in the vital and pre-logical sphere of man. (2)
The non-absolute world emerging from it leads to an absolute through
which exists the former; and the essence of beings (3) is the thinking
consequence and result of the non-conscious vital reality-experience
as resistance.
The Ontological Meaning of Knowledge and

the Three Types of Knowledge
We may now see why Scheler differentiates between cognition and

knowledge. Cognition is only a knowing possession of something as
something. Knowledge, as the goal of cognition, must be determined
without reference to anything which pertains to kinds of knowledge,
e.g., judgements, representations (Vorstellungen), deduction, etc., or
even consciousness. Knowledge must be determined with “pure on-
tological concepts” (IX, 111). Hence, knowledge is an ontic relation
(Seinsverhältnis). It is a relation of a being having part (Teilhaben) in
the thisness (Sosein) of another being which is not changed by this
relation. This relation as purely ontic, is non-spacial, non-temporal
and non-causal. Spirit is the “X” through which such “having-part”
(Teilhabe) is possible. Through this “X” only the whatness of some-
thing becomes an “ens intentionale” whereas the “ens reale” (Dasein)
always remains outside and beyond this ontic relation. Existence (ens
reale, Dasein) is only extra mentem, but is given, nevertheless, as we
saw above, in pre-logical acts of conation and dynamic factors of
attention as vital resistance. Reality does not rest, then, on intellec-
tual factors at all, and is not an object of knowledge (IX, 112). Knowl-
edge is the relation between thisness in re and in mente Scheler can
say, therefore: “Without the tendency of a being which ‘knows’ to get
beyond itself and step out of itself for the partaking in another being,
there is no possible ‘knowledge.’ I do not have another word for this
tendency but ‘love,’ self-giving devotion (Hingabe) and, at the same
time, a breaking through the boundaries of one’s own being and
thisness (Soseins) through love. The same thisness is comprehended
in the two chief kinds of acts of our spirit: intuition (Anschauen) and
thinking, i.e., having images and meaning. And it is comprehended
‘itself ’ in the strict sense of the word (although as a whole or only in
part) where that which is meant coincides completely with that which
is intuited…” (IX, 113). “The thisness becomes then gradually clear
in increasing degrees of adequacy…in this event of coincidence (evi-
dence) of intuition and meaning. All activities of thinking, observ-

ing, etc., are only operations which lead to ‘knowledge,’ but they are
not already knowledge” (IX, 113; see also V, 19). Scheler’s notion of
knowledge, then, practically means the following: The ontic relation
(knowledge) is constituted by an ontic being “A,” partaking in the
thisness of another being ‘B’ in which ‘B’ does not undergo a change.
By “partaking” is meant a fundamental act of love (liebesbestimmter
Akt, V, 68) of the core of a finite human person. Knowledge and
cognition are, therefore, grounded in love as that which brings about
a pure, spaceless, timeless and non-causal ontic relation. This rela-
tion can only be if there is an ontic finite being (A) as the place of the
manifestation of the primordial act of love in which this being leaves
itself to partake in another’s thisness (X, 356). Man is the highest of
finite beings because he is the bearer of acts which are independent
of his biological organization: “…it is as if in him and in his history
a hole opens in which an order of acts and content (values), superior
to all life, makes its appearance and at the same time a new unity of
this order, which we have to regard as personal (in contrast to the
ego, organism, etc.) and whose bond is love, and founded on it, jus-
tice” (II, 293) . Man is that being which transcends itself and all life,
and his core (Wesenskern) is a movement as the act of self-transcen-
dence. It is not difficult to see at this point how Scheler arrived dur-
ing his last years at a theomorphism — here and there being criti-
cized — in which man as a movement is the ontic place of deifica-
tion, since the source (Grund) of all being cannot be object but only
co-executable (vollziehbar) actuality. Man’s access to God consists only
in a personal active commitment (Einsatz). Man is the locus through
which the primordial source of being (Urseiende) grasps itself and recog-
nizes itself. Man’s being is at the same time free decision (Entscheidung)
in which God sanctifies His pure essence. Hence, man is more than a
sheer “child of God,” “slave,” or “obedient servant” (IX, 84).
The ontic relation (knowledge) reveals a coincidence between a
certain class of acts and certain regions of being to which access is
given through such acts (IX, 82). It is this ontological point which
lead Scheler to differentiate between three fundamental types of
knowledge, almost everywhere referred to in the literature on him,
but, as far as I can see, nowhere mentioned in this essential connec-
tion. Scheler’s threefold division of knowledge (Knowledge of Salva-
tion, Knowledge of Essence and Culture, and Knowledge of Control
and Achievement) is not a fortuitous invention of Scheler’s corre-

sponding to holy, spiritual, and vital acts, values, and love, but this
division exhibits such certain acts in their relation to certain regions of
being, mentioned above, namely the divine, the essential, and fortu-
itous existing things. This ontic relation has its historical reflection
in man’s religion, metaphysics, and science which, on their part, show
specific sociological implications throughout history to be determined
in a sociology of knowledge.
A few words may be added as to the meaning of these three types
of knowledge. Firstly, knowledge of salvation aims at absolute being.
In this, the center of the person seeks to participate in the ultimate
being and source (Grund) of things, and the participation in ulti-
mate being falls to a person’s share by virtue of this ultimate source of
being. “Since man is a micro-cosm…and since all forms of being,
physical, chemical, alive, spiritual, meet and intersect in man, the
ultimate source of the macro-cosm can be investigated in man. Hence,
the being of man as microtheos is also the first access to God” (IX, 83).
This access is a purely personal co-operation and commitment (Ein-
satz). To make God an object of reasoning is idolatry (IX, 83).
Secondly, knowledge of culture and essence has its own lawfulness
and methods, to be strictly separated from those of knowledge of
control, i.e., scientific methods. Knowledge of essence relates only to
the thisness (Sosein) of beings and it is, therefore, only concerned
with being in the absence of observable space-time objects. What is
life, what is thinking, what is beauty, what is an animal, etc., are
questions of essence, in which all fortuitous existing manifestations
are bracketed. This knowledge of essence possesses, for Scheler, the
following phenomenological characteristics:
1. The bracketing of all drive impulses (sensible and vital sphere)
and a temporary suspension of the urge.
2. The bracketing out of real (existing) things which constitute
space-time coordinates of sense perception.
3. This knowledge pre-cedes experience, observation, measurement,
verification; hence, it is a priori. It constitutes the being of man as
man, in categorical distinction from animals. This knowledge is similar
to propositions of pure mathematics which obtain a priori necessary
relations before real nature is investigated (applied mathematics).
Whatness of something precedes ontologically the existence of some-
thing. If we bracket out the existing thing, there remains whatness.
For instance, “color” as whatness (essence) remains after bracketing “red”

from an object (this should be read in a phenomenological attitude,
Einstellung). This whatness of color is then both universal and individual,
depending on how whatness of color is intuited (erschaut).
4. Knowledge of essence is a transcendental prolongation
(trancendentale Erstreckung) in that it is over and above the small realm
of real things (IX, 82).
5. Knowledge of essence is knowledge of reason (Vernunft) and not
of understanding (Verstand). The latter must be already attributed in
different degrees to higher animals (IX, 95-98). Reason applies a priori
contents to facts of experience. Hence, the animal does not possess
“whatness” of things or world, but its environment is only condi-
tioned by organic disposition.
6. Knowledge of essence is applicable to all sciences (mathematics,
biology, physics, psychology, etc.) and to metaphysics. It exhibits bor-
der-questions and the problematics of sciences (e.g., philosophy of
science) and questions of essence in metaphysics. However, meta-
physics is, because of its essential problematics, in which things in
space and time are bracketed out, the presupposition of all science.
Thirdly, knowledge of control and achievement determines the laws
of nature in space and time. It is the knowledge of the natural sci-
ences. Basic to this knowledge are man’s drives to dominate and con-
trol his environment. Its starting point lies in their direction. For,
Scheler holds that all animal species have their own direction of drives
and impulses which form, so to speak, their environment. For in-
stance, a lizard perceives the slightest rustling in the grass, but it is
not at all aware of a shot coming out of a pistol nearby. The discovery
of natural laws in science rests ultimately on a specific human “drive-
directions,” which on their part determines the organization and func-
tion of the senses of the species “homo.” It is, therefore, not only the
organization of man’s reason (Kant), but also that of man’s drives to domi-
nate nature conditioning all world-views and scientific achievements.
Man is capable, then, of threefold knowledge. None of these three
types of knowledge exists for the sake of itself but each serves for the
transformation and the becoming of a being: the being of things, the
being of human cultures and the being of the absolute (IX, 77-78).
Religion, metaphysics, and science rest on their own motives, acts,
goals, social groups, and pertain to respective values (VI, 31). These
may be listed here briefly:
Motives of knowledge. The motive of knowledge of salvation rests

on the urge for salvage (Bergung) and salvation in holy power. The
motive of metaphysics is astonishment, and the motive of science lies
in the drive to control nature and society according to aims and pur-
poses.
Acts of religion are specifically receiving spiritual acts (hope, love,
etc.), which do not find their fulfillment in finite experience but
only through and in their divine correlate. Metaphysical acts are those
of intuiting essence of something, and pertain to reason (Vernunft).
Scientific acts are those of observation, induction, deduction, and
pertain to cognition (Erkenntnis).
The goal of religion is salvation of a person or a group, and the goal
of metaphysics is perfection of a person by way of wisdom. Goals of
science are world-views expressed in mathematical symbols, which
show relations of facts enabling man to more and more control natu-
ral phenomena.
The social groups as historical reflection of the three types of ontic
relation (knowledge), is in religion the homo religiosus (saint) and his
followers, trusting and believing in his charismatic qualities. He speaks
and acts as a person having special relation to the Divine. At his side
is the priest as cult-technician and ecclesiastical official. The priest’s
authority is derived from the charismatic qualities of the founder of a
religion, a church, or a sect (VIII, 32), which are the social forms of
religious social groups. The leading figure in metaphysics is socio-
logically the sage, who gives knowledge about the primordial, immu-
table entities of the world. The social group of his followers, i.e., the
students (in a wide sense), form a “school.” The central figure in
science is the investigating scholar (Forscher), and social groups of
science belong to universities, academies, learned societies, etc.
The values pertaining to knowledge of salvation are those ranging
from the holy to the unholy. Spiritual values pertain to metaphysical
knowledge, and all vital values pertain to science (IX, 112).
Scheler’s theory of knowledge (Wissenstheorie) presents itself
to us like a grandiose painting in which ethics, sociology, religion,
metaphysics, science, and the history of man form a huge harmony
of colors, but at the same time a painting of which we have only an
ingenious but unfinished sketch — put to us as a task.
Chapter Ten
The Age of Adjustment
The All-Humanity
“T here is no greater error than to make a mutually exclusive

contradiction between a democracy and an elite” (IX, 145-
47). The condition for the right formation of an intellectual elite is
to have an idea of both the structure of the world-age which we now
have entered and the type of man who is to correspond to it. For in
this our world-age there are historical changes, much more tremen-
dous than those of the rise of modern man from the Middle Ages
(IX, 147). Man has entered an era in which he is undergoing funda-
mental changes pertaining to his drives, his psyche and spirit. Scheler’s
prophecy that the hour of the Age of Adjustment and Balance has
struck is one of his last messages to man of this century, a historical
message, concerned with diplomacy, the future of world politics, and
the destiny of mankind.
Scheler himself was active in international politics. He was on dif-
ferent diplomatic missions for the German foreign office in Geneva
and The Hague, and it appears that he is one of the few philosophers
of our time who was in practice concerned about the future history
of man. Throughout his writings there are many references, devia-
tions, or advice, with respect to the political scene in Germany and
the world as well as to education. Scheler considered the historical
event which unleashed our new world-age to be World War 1, dur-
ing which humanity for the first time experienced an overall histori-
cal world contact, unknown in previous history. It is this event in
which man experienced and realized the differences between peoples,
nations, races, cultures, as well as differences of emotion, will, morals
and thinking among them. The World Age of Adjustment, which
has started with this event, will be determined by a gradual, however
slow, balancing-out of all such cultural, political, racial, social, emo-
tional and mental qualities and differences among societies, peoples,
nations and cultures. This process of adjusting, in which all powers
and achievements of man gradually converge, is future man’s ines-
capable fate (IX, 152). In always new formulations Scheler presents a
vision of a future humanity which will, on a historical plain, be un-
known to all historical past: a maximum of humanity, the All-Hu-

manity, will act out a new, cosmopolitan history, in which opposing
and antipodal political, psychic, emotional, intellectual and cultural
factors of mankind will balance each other out. It is the task of poli-
tics and a future intellectual elite, Scheler holds, to guide and direct
this process. All diplomacy and politics which pursues aims and ends
to impose one ideology or one type of knowledge and culture on
other groups, or which attempts to obstruct this process of the adjust-
ing and balancing of human qualities, is doomed to failure. Like-
wise, all intentions to renew past ideals or ideas of man, as moral or
political models (e.g., early Christian man, Gothic man, the Renais-
sance-man, the Latin-Catholic man, the Muschik-man, etc.), will be
side-passed silently by history’s movement toward the All-Humanity
(IX, 152).
We can see now also from a historico-political viewpoint why none
of the ideas of man of past philosophies, of which we mentioned a
number in the first chapter, can be sufficient for Scheler. They did
not grasp and exhaust the being of man as a whole. All philosophical
ideas of man have been symptomatic only for certain epochs or cul-
tural units, and all have lacked in the understanding of man as a
historical being. They are for Scheler, so to speak, only viewpoints of
and on man. From a historical stand, Scheler’s Philosophical Anthro-
pology culminates in the vision of the All-Man of the Age of Balance
(IX, 151), who is the ontic unification of all human qualities and
possibilities. This means for Scheler primarily the adjustment and
balancing out of all qualities and characteristics of the intellectual,
rational thinking West (logos) and the illuminated and less rational
East (nirvana). “It would seem to me the most noble and promising
fruit of the above mentioned new ‘cosmopolitanism of cultures,’ per-
taining to the intellectual exchange of the European-American World
with the Asian Cultures, if the inevitable Europeanization of these
peoples by scientific, technological, and industrial methods — which
cannot be stopped by such reactionary movements like that of Ma-
hatma Gandhi — would be complemented and compensated by a
systematic take-over of Asian psycho-technical principles on the part
of the European-American World — thus far a dream but eagerly
pondered over by the deeply thinking analytical psychologist Will-
iam James during his last years” (VIII, 136 and 154-55).
Chapter 10 The Age of Adjustment 147
East and West and the Revolt of Human Drives Versus Intellect
Since the twelfth century, western history is marked by a steadily

growing emphasis on knowledge of control and logical reasoning at
the expense of knowledge of salvation. This western tendency has
developed into a growing interest and primary occupation to control
outer nature, especially inorganic nature (the “augmentation” of the
sciences, Bacon). It has reached a climax today in the latest formulas
of Einstein, according to which scientific knowledge is valid for ev-
ery space-time reference system — a world-view which enables man
to knowingly control physical events according to practical ends (IX,
118). This climax of western thinking is as titanic as it is successful,
and one must not be in doubt of its value. However, it would be
erroneous, says Scheler, to either hold knowledge of control and
achievement as the only true kind of knowledge (superficial positiv-
ism) or, on the other hand, to maintain that the purposes (Zielsetzung)
of knowledge of control are empty (weak-minded romanticism). In
contrast to the European-American cultural unit, Asian cultures are
marked by their emphasis on knowledge of essence (China) and sal-
vation (India) at the expense of knowledge of control (IX, 115; 119).
Positivism and Pragmatism are only one-sided “expressions” of the
fundamental directions of western thought (IX, 115-16). It is one of
Scheler’s historical tenets that any stress or negligence of any of the
three types of knowledge, which we mentioned in the preceding chap-
ter, is a damage to the cultural development of man (IX, 118). In the
forthcoming Age of Balance and Adjustment all cultures will con-
verge, i.e., the three types of knowledge will complement each other
so that all one-sidedness of thought will be suspended. Scheler envi-
sions here a gradual and growing influence and interest in scientific
and technological thinking in eastern cultures, and a re-orientation
of western thinking, in which the powers of will and spirit will blend
into the inner life of man himself, and extend into the psycho-physi-
cal organism, in short, for all that which Buddha has set the pace: the
psychic technique of dissolving all individual desire and conation,
reality, suffering, and individuality for the sake of the silence of the
heart (Gemüt), in which both universe and individuality are deprived
of reality (entwirklicht) (VI, 54-55). Hence, the future development
of man’s history will be marked by two directions, namely, that from
logos to the emotive experience of self (West–East) and from the
emotive experiences to reasoning (East–West); or from a gradual fad-

ing away of the goals of science to objectify nature by way of math-
ematical exhibition for the sake of the salvation of the person, i.e.,
from the direction of object-knowledge to experience of self, and
vice versa. If Scheler’s premise of balance proves to be a true his-
torical prognosis it would seem that the growing existential move-
ment and the Ontology of Dasein in western philosophy is a first radi-
cal step away from speculative and rational metaphysics in the direc-
tion toward the vivo of man. Viewed from the gradual process of
adjustment, which was experienced first only in this century, it would
appear to us that all western metaphysics has taken a gradual turn
from object-knowledge to a subjectistic (sic) philosophy, i.e., from
Aristotle (logos), Kant (subjectivism), Nietzsche (Life), to Heidegger
(Da-Sein). “But the common task of the European cultural build-up
demands in this special world situation in which we live another
common goal — a goal which meets with our newly acquired knowl-
edge: I refer to a certain reversal of our whole European culture
(Bildungswesen) from the special direction it hitherto had, the East–
West to the West–East direction. All development seems to me to go
in this fashion. For one, a super-active and more than restless Europe
needs, I am tempted to say, a certain treatment of lying down and
rest in the depths, the sense of eternity, the quietude and dignity of
the Asian spirit. Since the Russian–Japanese war, let it be added, Asia
has certainly ceased to be a mere object of capitalist exploitation, on
the one hand, and of Christian missions too often only concerned
with pioneership in trade, on the other. Asia becomes everywhere
active and is rubbing a centuries’ old sleep out of her eyes, as we can
see it everywhere in Asia, in Russia, Japan, China, India and the Mos-
lem world — thus Europe has a twofold reason for a new critical
debate (Auseinandersetzung) about all its cultural possessions with
Asia and the East” (V, 429). When Scheler wrote this passage in 1917,
he was obviously already convinced that the World-Age of Adjust-
ment was on its way. In 1927 he delivered a speech at the annual
celebration of the German academy of politics in Berlin with the
characteristic title: The Age of Adjustment (Das Weltalter des Ausgleichs).
In this speech he referred to a number of historical facts which, in his
opinion, were unmistakable signs of the dawn of the new World-
Age. Among others he mentioned the balancing out of racial differ-
ences, of mentalities, of the social roles of men and women, of capi-
talism and socialism, the higher and lower social strata of people, an
increasing active participation in politics and government by primi-
tive, semi-primitive and semi-cultural peoples. He furthermore
pointed on this occasion to a gradual balancing out of ideas of man,
rationalism and irrationalism, philosophies of ideas and of life.
The fundamental trait of this World Age is, however, what Scheler
calls the re-sublimation of human powers, by which he understands a
gradual equalization of life energy in the animal called man. There is,
according to Scheler, taking place a continuous decrease of the sup-
ply of organic energy and power to the brains in favor of a steady
increase of this supply into the organic being of man, a process which
will reach a point in which life-power will be equally distributed within
humanity. Scheler held that effects of this process can be seen in the
intensifying role of sports throughout the world, the youth move-
ments, the desires for amusement, the growing world-wide “dancing
rage” and, furthermore, in the intense general admiration for sports
heroes, physical strength and physical beauty and in such pan-vitalis-
tic theories as those of Bergson and Nietzsche, but at the expense of
the recognition of the scholar (“egghead”) in society; and finally, in
the growing occupation and interest in psychoanalysis and psychol-
ogy of drives. This, and much more, Scheler points out, shows that
there is a systematic revolt of drives in man (IX, 156), a revolt seen, for
example, with youth versus adult, woman versus man, the masses
versus the elite, the blacks versus the white, the unconscious versus
the conscious (for example, in art). This revolt of the drives against
reason, so to speak, is due to the one-sided, age-old over-emphasis and
over-cultivation of the intellect since the antiquity (Plato) and Chris-
tianity (Asceticism) that has stimulated and provoked this inevitable re-
bellion of the Dionysian sphere of man against an exaggerated Apollinism
and ascetic rationalism of the past. This re-sublimation of life power, i.e.,
the re-adjustment of the Dionysian and Apollinic in man is almost an
organic necessity (IX, 155).
Cosmopolitan Philosophy, Urge and Spirit, and

Philosophical Anthropology
It is not surprising that Scheler also envisages a future philosophy

breaking away from many ancient intellectual, historical, emotive,
cultural and national ties. “He who is rooted most deeply in the dark-
ness of the earth and nature, of ‘natura naturans,’ which produces
only all natural phenomena, and he who simultaneously, as a spiri-
tual person in his consciousness of self, reaches up to the heights of
luminous worlds of ideas, will approach the idea of All-man, and in
this the substance of the very source of the world by way of a con-
stantly growing interpenetration of spirit and urge. ‘He who has
thought the deepest of thoughts loves that which is most alive’
(Hölderin)” (IX, 158). Like many rivulets finally join into one big
river, the historical and psycho-physical currents and powers of man
will converge and balance each other out in an elevated All-Human-
ity, in which the urge (Lebensdrang) and spirit will form a harmoni-
ous unity of cultural synthesis of orient and occident and result in an
all embracing cosmopolitan philosophy, in which the oriental “philoso-
phy of the forests” (Tagore) and of the communion with nature and
of contemplation and quiet endurance will merge with western ob-
jectifying logos into a world-philosophy.
The Age of Adjustment is the Dionysian road to God. For, Scheler
conceived the primordial world-source (oberster Weltgrund) during
his last years of changing and unfinished ideas in terms of two at-
tributes: the urge (whose form is life) and spirit (whose form is the
person). He conceived man as the highlight of these confluences and
interpenetrations, in whom the highest source comes to possess itself
(IX, 70-71). The movement of this primordial world-source towards
man is identical with that of man towards the source of world. For,
the latter, the becoming God, comes to itself in man in the same act
when man feels himself grounded in it. The convergence of spirit
and life in man and the becoming Deity are one, for man is “the place
in whom and through whom the primordial source of being (das
Urseiende) does not only comprehend and know itself but he is also
the being in whose free decision God can realize and sanctify His
pure essence” (IX, 84). All life is rooted in the divine urge, and man
as a living being experiences these roots in love (IX, 83). With these
controversial statements on the becoming Deity, we have arrived at
the end of our excursion through Scheler’s numerous and many-sided
works, or rather, we have arrived at the beginning of our investiga-
tions, the problem of the urge and spirit. It is not the place here to
criticize Scheler’s highly metaphysical stand of his later years, nor to
show that some criticism already made against it, before the comple-
tion of the edition of the Collected Works, had either been unjusti-
fied or untrue.
This is the place however where we have to add a few more re-
marks as to Scheler’s envisagement of philosophical anthropology.
All pre-Kantian metaphysics is a thinking in terms of a subject reach-
ing out towards the end of grasping the essence of objects in nature.
This aspect Kant rejected in the Critique of Pure Reason as an impos-
sible undertaking. With Kant Scheler holds that all object-being of
inner (human) or outside nature has to be related first to man. For
the entire object-world is a segment (Ausschnitt) only conforming to
the spiritual and physical organization of man. It is, therefore, only
philosophical anthropology which can exhibit true attributes of the
primordial source of being by way of a “reverse prolongation”
(Rückverlängerung) of man’s inner center of spiritual acts correlating
to certain regions of being. Philosophical anthropology, the study of
man as man in all his forms and ways of existence, is the philosophical
discipline bordered by knowledge of essence (metaphysica specialis)
and metaphysics of the absolute (metaphysica generalis). It has, there-
fore, a central position among all branches of philosophy. For Scheler
philosophy is constituted by a love-directed act of the core of a per-
son participating in being itself (V, 68 ), an act in which all reality
relative to the biological organization of man, as a special species of
all life, is left behind.
This is why Scheler conceives the act of philosophizing as a per-
sonal act of soaring (Aufschwung) as well as an act of breaking through
the immediate environment of this being called man. In this act,
man is above all ties with things, and love is directed in a philosophi-
cal act to the total world as such, which unfolds itself in always new
fashions and in ever new values. This act can be performed by all
men in different degrees and, therefore, it implies a multitude of
adequacies. The genius of spiritual values, the philosopher, finds in
this love-act directed towards a world redemption (Erlösung) from
the well of all civilization: Angst (anxiety), which entails fear, precau-
tion, foresight and planning as to things of this world. Angst bears
forth Sorge, in the sense of “concern” for finite things (X, 308). The
spirit of civilization with its tendency of mastering nature stands in
contradiction to the philosopher’s love for world. The above refer-
ence (X, 308) in which Scheler uses two notions all too familiar to
the reader familiar with Heidegger’s Ontology of Dasein, stems from
1913/1914, and may well be referred to as one of the essential ori-

gins of the spirit which marks contemporary western thinking, and
for which Max Scheler opened up most valuable paths.
Person and Dasein
It is customary to place Max Scheler between Husserl and Heideg-

ger in outlines of European history of contemporary philosophy. This
sequence, which we have also retained in our introduction, can only
be justified, however, if the being of the person in Scheler’s sense can
be connected with Heidegger’s Dasein. We believe that this is pos-
sible, and that upon close examination of Scheler’s ontology of the
person at least a number of parallelisms can be traced with respect to
Dasein. We have already pointed to the ontological significance of
the sphere of the person and showed that in this sphere such values
come to the fore which are not relative to life and sensibility, in con-
trast to sensible and vital values which man shares with animals. It is
therefore in this “cleft” (Spalte) in the unity of the person where be-
ing as such comes to appear. Whereas Heidegger does not take into
consideration the being of values, the being of the person, and the
being of social togetherness (Gemeinschaft) in general, it is safe to
assume that for Scheler the being of values, as it is experienced and
constituted by the ordo amoris of the person, is a gateway to the un-
derstanding of being as a whole. He refers us to his intentions of
investigating the relations of foundation between values and being
quite clearly (I, 98; II, 538). Man is the place of the occurrence of
personal values in whose operative confines all history, religion, meta-
physics, science, moralities, social life, and idea-thinking represent
themselves by way of functions of feeling, in which the variations of
preferring and rejecting certain values are grounded. The being of
values, as correlates of all directions of love or pure taking-interest-
in, cannot be disconnected from human Dasein, since the logique du
cœur of man belong to him as logos does. It is the graded realm of
values which man carries with him, wherever he may go and what-
ever he may do. Within this realm of values man’s states of feeling (as
pain, weakness, anxiety, health, sorrow, joy, despair, blissfulness, peace,
etc.) are the “echoes” of all world-experience, no matter how they are
felt in functions of feeling. For, in all value-ception a certain feeling-
state is congruent to a value which is felt, preferred, or rejected. Feel-

ing-states, like moral values, “ride on the back” of every act of preferring
and rejecting. Values, feeling-functions, acts of preferring, and feeling-
states delineate the scope of the being of the person as ens amans.
The question whether the ranks of values determine man’s under-
standing of being, or if it is being as a whole which announces itself
in the world-openness of the sphere of the person in terms of certain
values remains undecided. Either way, being as such will stay away if
values, are the “first messengers” of being. It is not far fetched to
believe that also Scheler felt that being stays away in its non-conceal-
ment in a similar sense as it is the case with Heidegger. Scheler was
rather hesitant to discuss the question of being in strict metaphysical
terms. Scheler’s philosophy was one of becoming. Almost everywhere
in his writings this question is treated in connection with the experi-
encing of values. A most conspicuous fact in determining the being
of the person in its relation to Heidegger’s Dasein appears to me in
the ontological interconnection which Scheler sets up between per-
son and world: There is no person without a world, and there is no
world without spirit as act-center of the person. Further research will
have to clarify this parallelism between Scheler’s thinking and
Heidegger’s Dasein as being-in-the-world.
It is in the sphere of the person where such values occur which are
not relative to life and sensibility. Scheler uses the term “world-open”
(weltoffen) also in this connection. Since the emotive experience of
values antecedes and exercises influence on all knowing and willing,
the metaphysical conceptualization of being has always been guided
by the immediate givenness of emotive intuition: values. Although
we cannot discuss this point in our context in detail, it must be con-
ceded to Scheler that there have always been values dominant at cer-
tain times and also with certain thinkers, as expressed in the numer-
ous variations of “ethos,” forming this “magnificent painting” of hu-
man history. Norms stemming from dominant values of life, for ex-
ample, result for Scheler in an aristocratic society, in which the “noble
blood” enjoys political prerogatives. Norms stemming from domi-
nant values of utility result for him in the equalization of biological
differences, thus tending towards political democracy and organized
society. History itself can only be the testimony of Scheler’s correct
or incorrect prognosis of the World Age of Adjustment in which all
mankind is on its way of becoming balanced out in feeling values,

i.e., the values of utility, sensible values, the values of life, and all
personal values.
The house of mankind is the structure of the ranks of values as the
emotive a priori of intentional feeling. Man cannot escape from this
structure. He is continuously drawn towards or pushed away from
the different kinds of values in terms of the personalized ideals of the
value ranks, viz. the ideal model persons. This dynamic emotive dis-
position towards the eternal values of the person is prior to all acts of
knowing them and willing them. For the “schemata” which express
in personal form the fundamental directions of all human loving and
its fundamental values “possess us, before we can make a choice be-
tween them” (X, 268-69). Every positive religion possesses its own
specific ideal of a saint, an ideal of the homo religiosus is a different
ideal in Buddhism, and a different ideal in Christianity. And in every
positive religion we can see a whole series of partly epochal, indi-
vidual, and professional exemplifications of the eternal idea of holi-
ness. Every people and every age has its own peculiar geniuses, he-
roes, leaders, and masters of enjoyment (Lebenskünstler). It is only
because of the mutual penetration of these successively rising images
during the course of history and because of the gradual extinction of
their singularities and at the same time the condensing of their posi-
tive values that the whole of the delectable contents of the chalices,
which these models represent, is being consumed” (X, 269).
The problematic of interrelating Heidegger’s Dasein and Scheler’s
sphere of the person reveals unmistakably one area of coincidence.
Both thinkers attempt to exhibit the being of man ontologically.
Heidegger conceives thereness (Das Da) ontologically, and Scheler
conceives the sphere of the person, both as individual and group-
person, ontologically. It is both thinkers’ different phenomenologi-
cal exhibition of the relation between subjectivity, more precisely
subjecticity, and beings which yields different results. For Heidegger
this relation is determined by practical Umgehen. For Scheler it is
determined by the emotive spheres or value-feeling. Hence,
Heidegger’s approach is purely ontological, Scheler’s approach is also
ontological, but at the same time anthropological and ethic. In this
respect Scheler’s philosophy has more in common with the later writ-
ings of Edmund Husserl, which are marked by many ethical and
anthropological references which at this time are not yet fully evalu-
ated. It may be mentioned though that the early Husserl draws a

sharp line between the laws of logic and those of the emotive spheres,
whereas he later on recognized the higher significance of emotive
experience of values, yet not to the extent that Scheler did. On the
other hand, the difference between Scheler and Heidegger may be
seen in the fact that the latter’s “being-unto-death” is also ontologi-
cally conceived, whereas Scheler’s investigations in the phenomenon
of death are predominantly anthropological and have little or noth-
ing to do with ontology.
This can be seen in his 1911/12 treatise on the theme: Tod und
Fortleben (X, 9-64). For death is not only shown here to be an em-
pirical fact, but death belongs to the essence of the experience of life.
The limit which is set to life is not an end point of life time, but this
limit is in every process of life at any moment (X, 24). Hence death is
for Scheler still an “actus of a living being,” for “to die one’s death is
an act belonging to the series of all acts of life,” and “death accompa-
nies the whole of life” (X, 24-26). The “direction towards death”
belongs to the essence of the experience of life.
It is remarkable that Scheler does not only speak of death as such,
but that he differentiates between the death of an individual, of a
people, of a species, and of a race. Death is in this sense for Scheler
inherent in all life. But — and here we can clearly see Scheler’s an-
thropological tendencies — death is not a gloomy affair of meta-
physics, not infrequently characteristic of French existential litera-
ture. Life is not hopeless. All living beings live their lives in a most
curious absence of both death and fear of death. We would not take
our lives so seriously, Scheler tells us, if the idea of death would be a
continuous experience in our consciousness. Indeed, it is a high de-
gree of feelings of security, relaxation, and even serenity and cheer-
fulness, which is peculiar to living beings. Scheler calls this “a most
curious phenomenon. commanding our deepest astonishment” (X,
27-29), and he explains this by stating that it is the drives of life
which push the idea of death continuously away until, at an advanced
age, the decline of vital drives is replaced by a growing fear and con-
cern of the hour of death. It is this “eery restfulness” and “cheerful-
ness” of human beings having an idea of death — no matter how
different this idea may be in different cultures — which Scheler in
the above- mentioned 1911/12 essay also calls “metaphysischer
Leichtsinn,” a term not easy to translate in its factual meaning. It
comes close to: “metaphysical indifference and carefree giddiness.”

Later on Heidegger in Being and Time (GA II, 337) came, in essence,
to the same conclusion.
The world-openness of the sphere of the person is the place of the
occurrence of spiritual values, moral values, and the value of holiness
(II, 276-78). It is also here where meta-anthropology is possible, i.e.,
the determination of man’s place in the totality of being, of the world,
and God (III, 174). The determination of Man’s Place in Nature is
the starting point also of metaphysics. But it is not so much the meta-
physical questions which “we” ask, but it is the questions which are
already given in humanity’s “metaphysical situation in the universe
which this situation asks us” (X, 62) that are metaphysical. Man is
destined to solve them, whether he wants to solve them or not. For
already in letting their solution be a matter of unconcern and negli-
gence there appears their negative solution. Such truly metaphysical
questioning is not unsolvable, because the hiddenness and “non-
postponeability” (Unzurückstellbarkeit) of such questions belongs to
their essence. “It is only the type of experiencing of world itself, such
kind of specific type of experience, which every individual, every
people, and every age, unrestingly possesses as the experience of an
Absolute, which by necessity constitutes the sense of all of man’s be-
ing and of all he may do, whether he agrees to it or not” (X, 62).
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der philosophischen Werke, ed. T.Volpi und J. Nida-Rumelin.
Stuttgart: Alfred Kröner Verlag, 1988.
——, “Schelers Phänomenbegriff und die Idee der phänomeno-
logischen Erfahrung,” Phänomenologische Forschungen, IX,
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——, “Religion und Metaphysik im Weltalter des Ausgleichs,”
Tijdschrift voor Filosofie, XLII, 2, 1980.
——, “Die Phänomenologische Reduktion in der Philosophie Max
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——, Die Nachlässe der Münchener Phänomenologen in der Bayerischen
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Meisenheim am Glan: Verlag Anton Hain, 1975.
——, “Ausgleich als solidarisches Werdeschicksal von Weltgrund,
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Deeken, A., Process and Permanence in Ethics: Max Scheler’s Moral
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—— “Capitalism and Ethics. The World Era of Adjustment and the
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——, “La fondation historico-philosophique du capitalism chez Max
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——, “Max Scheler. A Descriptive Analysis of the Concept of Ulti-
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London: Macmillan, 1972.
——, Person und Dasein. Zur Frage der Ontologie des Wertseins [Per-
son and Dasein. The Question of an Ontology of the Being of
Values]. The Hague: Nijhoff. Phaenomenologica, Vol. 32, 1969.
Selected Literature (1955 t0 present) 159
Gabel, M., Intentionalität des Geistes. Der phänomenologische Denkansatz

bei Max Scheler [Intentionality of Spirit. Max Scheler’s Inception of
phenomenological Thought]. Erfurth: Benno Verlag, 1991.
——, “Ausgleich und Verzicht. Schelers ‘später’ Gedanke des
Ausgleichs im Licht seines phänomenologischen Ansatzes,”
Phänomenologische Forschungen, 28/29, 1994.
Good, P., ed., Max Scheler im Gegenwartsgeschehen der Philosophie
[Max Scheler and Present-Day Philosophy]. Berne: Francke Verlag,
1975.
Hammer, F., Theonome Anthropologie? Max Schelers Menschenbild und
seine Grenzen. Den Haag: Nijhoff, 1972.
Hartmann, W., Max Scheler. Bibliographie. Stuttgart: Frommann,
1963.
Henckmann, W., “Max Scheler. Phänomenologie der Werte,”
Philosophen des 20. Jahrhunderts. Sonderdruck: Wissenschaftliche
Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt, 1990.
——, “Der Systemanspruch von Schelers Philosophie, Phänomeno-
logische Forschungen, Bd.28/29, 1994.
——, “Die Begründung der Wissenssoziologie bei Max Scheler,”
Philosophisches Jahrbuch, 85, 1978.
——, “Das Intentionalitätsproblem bei Scheler.” In: Brentano Studien,
3, (1990/91).
Janssen, P., “Die Verwandlung der phänomenologischen Reduktion
im Werke Max Schelers und das Realitätsproblem,” Phänomeno-
logische Forschungen, Bd.28/29, 1994.
Kelly, E., “Ordo Amoris. The Moral Vision of Max Scheler,” Listen-
ing, XXI, 1986.
——, Max Scheler. Boston: Twayne, 1977.
Leonardy, H., Liebe und Person: Max Scheler’s Versuch eines
“phänomenologischen” Personalismus. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff,
1976.
——, “Es ist schwer ein Mensch zu sein.” Zur Anthropologie des
späten Scheler,” Phänomenoloigsche Forschungen, Bd. 28/29, 1994.
——, “Edition et traduction des ‘Annotations dans le Formalisme de
Max Scheler’ d’Edmund Husserl,” in Edmund Husserl. Etudes
Phénomenologiques, 13/14, Louvain-la Neuve, 1991.
——, “La Philosophie de Max Scheler. Un essai de présentification,”
Etudes d’Anthropologie, 2, (Bibliothèque philosophique de Louvain)
30), Louvain-la-Neuve, Editions de l’I.S.P., 1984.
——, “La dernière philosophie de Max Scheler,” Revue philosophique

de Louvain, tome 79, 1981.
Leroux, H., “Sur quelques aspectes de la reception de Max Scheler en
France,” Phänomenologische Forschungen, Bd.28/29, 1994.
Liu, Xiaofeng, “Scheler’s Christian Thought and the Phenomenol-
ogy of Value,” in: Christian Thought in the 20th Century, Liu
Xiaofeng ed. Hong Kong/Shanghai: Joint Publishing House, 1990.
Luther, A.R., Persons in Love: A Study of Max Scheler’s Wesen und
Formen der Sympathie. The Hague: Nijhoff, 1972.
Mader, W., Max Scheler. In Selbstzeugnissesn und Bilddokumenten.
Reinbeck bei Hamburg:Rowohlt, 1980.
——, Die Leiden des Lebens und die Leidenschaft des Denkens bei Max
Scheler. (Unpublished manuscript, 1983. )
Mall, R. A., “Schelers Idee einer werdenden Anthropologie und
Geschichtsteleologie,” Phänomenologische Forschungen, Bd. 28/29,
1994.
Mikoshiba, Yoshoyuki, “Über den Begriff der Weltoffeneit von Max
Scheler.” (Jap.) In: Mineshima, Hideo, ed.: Shisosi-wo-yomu.
Tokio: Hokujushuppan, 1995.
Miller, G. D., “Ordo Amoris. The Heart of Scheler’s Ethics,” Listen-
ing, Vol.21, No.3, 1986.
Orth, E. W., “Husserl, Scheler, Heidegger. Eine Einführung in das
Problem der philosophischen Komparatistik.” In: Phänomeno-
logische Forschungen, 6/7, 1978.
——-, Studien zur Philosophie Max Schelers. (Co-ed.) Phänomeno-
logische Forschungen, Bd. 28/29, 1994.
Perrin, R., Max Scheler’s Concept of the Person. An Ethics of Human-
ism. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991.
Pfafferott, G., “Ethik und Hermeneutik. Mensch und Moral im
Gefüge der Lebensform. In: Monographien zur philosophischen
Forschung, 1981.
——, “Vorwort,” In: Studien zur Philosophie Max Schelers. In:
Phänomenologische Forschungen, Bd. 28/29, 1994.
Pöggeler, O., “Scheler und die heutigen anthropologischen Ansätze
zur Metaphysik,” Heidelberger Jahrbucher, XXXIII, 1989.
——, “Ausgleich und anderer Anfang,” Phänomenologische Forschung-
en, Bd. 28/29, 1994.
——, “Max Scheler. Die Stellung des Menschen im Kosmos,”
Interpretationen, 1992.
Ramos, A.P., “Schelers Einfluss auf das Denken der spanischsprachigen

Welt,” Phänomenologische Forschungen, Bd. 28/29, 1994.
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Nijhoff, 1966.
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Philosophy and Theology, Vol. 5, No.2, May 1990.
—— “A Pre-Theological Phenomenology: Heidegger and Scheler,”
International Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 28, No. 4, Dec. 1988.
——, “The Anomaly of World: From Scheler to Heidegger,” Man
and World, 24, 1991.
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Theory. Albany: State University of New York, 1987.
Schoenborn, A.v., “Max Scheler on Philosophy and Religion,” Inter-
national Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. XIV, No. 3, 1974.
Schütz, A.,”Scheler’s Theory of Intersubjectivity and the General
Thesis of the Alter-Ego,” in The Problem of Social Reality, Vol. 1 of
Collected Papers; ed. Maurice Natanson. The Hague: Nijhoff, 1962.
——, “Max Scheler’s Philosophy,” in Studies in Phenomenological
Philosophy, Vol. 3 of Collected Papers; ed. Ilse Schutz. The Hague:
Nijhoff, 1975.
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der Ethik. The Hague: Nijhoff, 1971.
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1, 1995.
——, “Scheler, Schutz, and Intersubjectivity, in Reflections: Essays in
Phenomenology (Canada), Vol.4, 1983
——, “Person, Acts, and Meaning: Max Scheler’s Insight,” The New
Scholasticism, Vol. LIX, No.2, 1985.
——, “The Primacy of the Heart: Scheler’s Challenge to Phenom-
enology,” Philosophy Today, XXIII, 1983.
——, “A Change of Heart: Scheler’s Ordo Amoris, Repentance and
Rebirth,” in Listening, XXI, 1986.
——, “The Facts of Max Scheler,” Philosophy Today, Vol.23, No.3/4,
1979.
——, “Scheler’s Phenomenological Given,” JBSP: Journal of the British
Society for Phenomenology, Vol.9, No.3, 1978.
——, “Aesthetics, Morals and Max Scheler’s Non-formal Values,”
The British Journal of Aesthetics. Vol. 16, No. 3, 1976.
——, “The Possibility of an A Apriori in Non-Formal Ethics: Max

Scheler’s Task,” Man and World, Vol. 9, No. 2, 1976.
——, “Max Scheler, Phenomenology, and Metaphysics,” The Philo-
sophical Forum, Vol. 6, 1974-75.
——, “The Non-Formal Ethics of Max Scheler and the Shift in His
Thought,” Philosophy Today, Vol. 18, No. 3/4, 1974.
——, “A New Look at Scheler’s Third Period,” The Modern
Schoolman, Vol. LI, No. 2, 1974.
Stein, E., Aus dem Leben einer jüdischen Familie. Freiburg im Breisgau,
1965.
Stikkers, K., Max Scheler. Problems of a Sociology of Knowledge, ed. Tr.
Manfred S. Frings. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980.
——, “Goals, Values, and Community in the Social Economy: Some
Implications from the Social Theories of Aristotle, Tönnies, and
Scheler,” Forum for Social Economics, 1988.
——, “Max Scheler’s Contributions to Social Economics,” Review of
Social Economy, 45, 1987.
——, “Ethos. Its Relationship to Real and Ideal Sociological Factors
in Max Scheler’s Sociology of Culture,” Listening, Vol. 21, No. 3,
1986.
——, “Phenomenology as Psychic Technique of Non-Resistance.”
In: Phenomenology in Practice and Theory: Essays for Herbert
Spiegelberg, ed. W. S. Hemrick, Phaenomenologica, 92. The Hague:
Nijhoff, 1985.
——, “Max Scheler. Toward a Sociology of Space,” JBSP: Journal of
the British Society for Phenomenology, 9, 1978.
Sweeney, R., “Scheler, Max 1874-1928,” Dictionnaire des Philosophes,
K-Z, Paris: Press Universitaires de France, 1984.
——, “Axiology in Scheler and Ingarden and the Question of Dia-
lectics,” Dialectics and Humanism, 3, 1975,
——, “The ‘Great Chain of Being’ in Scheler’s Philosoophy,” in
Analecta Husserliana, XI, ed. A. Ales ed. A. S. Bello. Boston: Reidel,
1981.
——, “‘Cognition and Work,’” in Analecta Husserliana, XIV, ed. A.-
T. Tymieniecha, Boston: Reidel, 1983.
——, “The Affective Apriori,” in Analecta Husserliana, III, ed. A.-T.
Tymnieiecka, The Hague: Reidel, 1974.
——, “Affectivity and Life-World,” in Analecta Husserliana, V, ed.
A.-T.Tymieniecka, Dordrecht: Reidel, 1976.
——, “Value and Ideology,” in Analecta Husserliana, XV, ed. A.-T.

Tymieniecka, Boston: Reidel, 1983.
Vacek, Edward, S.J., “Personal Development and the ‘Ordo Amoris,’”
Listening, XXI, FAll 1986.
——, “Scheler’s Evolving Methodologies,” Analecta Husserliana, Vol.
22, Morality within the Life- and Social World, ed. A.-T.
Tymieniecka. Boston: Reidel, 1987.
——, “The Functions of Norms in Social Existence,” The Moral
Sense in the Communal Significance of Life. ed. A.-T. Tymieniecka,
Analecta Husserliana, XX, 1986.
——, “A Schelerian Critique of ‘The Moral Sense’,” Phenomenology
Infomration Bulletin, Vol. 8, October 1984.
——, “Personal Growth and the Ordo Amoris,” Listening, Vol. 21,
1986.
——, “Scheler’s Philosphy of Love,” The Journal of Religion, Vol. 62,
No.2 , April 1982.
——, “Max Scheler’s Anthropology,” Philosophy Today, Vol. 23, No.
3, Fall 1979.
——, “Anthropological Foundations of Scheler’s Ethics of Love,” Ann
Arbor: University Microfilms, 1978.
Willer, J., “Schröder–Husserl–Scheler. Zur formalen Logik,”
Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung, Vol.35, 1985.
Wojtyla, K. (Pope John-Paul II) Primat des Geistes. Philosophische
Schriften. Einleitung: Manfred S. Frings [The Primacy of Spirit.
Philosophical Writings. Introduction: Manfred S. Frings] Juliusz
Stroynowski, ed. Stuttgart: Seewald Verlag 1980.
——, The Acting Person. Analecta Husserliana, X. Dordrecht, Bos-
ton, London: 1979.
——, “The Problem of the Separation between Experience and Act
in light of the Ideas of Kant and Max Scheler.” Roczniki Filozoficze,
1955-1957.
——, “The Principle of Imitation, following the Sources of Revela-
tion and the philosophical System of Max Scheler.” Ateneum
Kaplanskie, 1975.
——, Concerning the metaphysical and phenomenological Founda-
tion of the Moral Norm in the Conceptions of St. Thomas Aquinas
and Max Scheler.” Roczniki teologiczno-kanonicze, 1959.
Wolff, Kurt. “Gedanken zu Schelers ‘Erkenntnis und Arbeit.’” In

Wissenssoziologie. Sonderheft der Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und
Sozialpsychologie, eds. Stehr, N. and Meja V., 22, 1980.
——, “Scheler’s Shadow On Us,” In Analecta Husserliana, 14, 1983.
Index of Names
Antistines 29 Hildebrand, D. v. 5, 22, 24

Aristippus 75 Hobbes, T. 23
Aristotle 5, 8, 12, 33, 34, 71, 72, 74, Hölderlin 150
76, 88, 95f., 109, 125ff., 148 Humboldt, W. v. 23
Husserl, E. viiif., xiif., 1-5, 20f., 71,
Bacon, F. 147 152,154f.
Bergson H. 6, 15, 22, 149
Buddha 29 James, W. 146
Jaspers, K. 2
Casanova 112
Comte, A. 63 Kant, I. 4, 5, 7ff., 12, 18ff., 27, 69f.,
71-74, 76, 78, 87, 88ff., 95, 123f.,
Darwin, C. 15 143,148, 151
Descartes, R. 5, 8, 21 Kleist, H. v. 56
Dilthey, W. 6 Köhler, W. 15
Dostoevsky, F. 29
Duns Scotus 125f. Lamettrie 22
Leibnitz, G. 5, 12, 29
Einstein, A. 147 Leo XIII, Pope 124
Epicurus 29, 75 Linné 22
Eucken, R. 6 Lützeler 5
Faust 112 Machiavelli 22

Freud, S. 21f. Malebranche 49, 128
Marcel, G. 2
Galileo, G. 124 Marx, K. 22
Gandhi 146 Mill, J. S. 63
Goethe, W. 65
Nietzsche, F. vii, 5ff., 22, 53f., 58ff.,
Hartmann, E. v. 12 62ff., 77, 85-89, 125f., 148f.
Hartmann, N. viii, 24, 74ff.
Hegel, G. 7, 18 Oesterreicher, J. M. 22, 24
Heidegger, M. viii, xi, 1ff., 7, 125, Orestes 93
148, 152-56 Ortega y Gasset 5, 94
Herakles 93
Hessen, J. 5
Parmenides 122
Pascal, B. 28, 49, 128
Planck, M. 124
Plato 5, 49, 74, 126, 149
Rank, L. v. 23
Robinson Crusoe 100
Rousseau, J.-J. 23
Sartre, J.-P. 60
Scheler, Maria xi, 93
Schelling 7
Schneider, M. 90, 123
Schopenhauer, A. 77
Socrates 74
Spencer, H. 63
Spengler, O. 18
Spinoza, B. 5, 29
St. Augustine 49, 115, 125, 127f.
St. Bonaventure 125
St. Francis 128
St. Thomas 123ff., 127, 129
Stoa 29, 75
Suarez, F. 125f.
Tagore 150
Tertullian 60
Tolstoy, L. 29
Treitschke 64
Ulysses 93
Weyl, H. 12
Zeus 135
Index of Subject Matter
absolute, (see sphere of a.) 82, 143 relative, absolute 133ff.

act, Cologne Fashing 36
& being 120f. Community of feeling 32
of conation 138f. conscience 76
of comparing 57f. consciousness 16ff., 20f., 95ff., 101f.,
emotive 27f., 33, 35f., 41 111f., 114, 116, 133, 138,140
& love 44, 46f., 64f., 86 cortex 5, 24
moral 89f. Critique of Practical Reason 71ff., 88
personal 95ff. Critique of Pure Reason 4, 124, 129,
of philosophy 151 151
of preferring 41, 44, 51, 70, 82f.,
88 Dasein, ontology viii, 1ff., 122, 124,
pure 132 148, 151ff.
religious 99, 107, 109, 112-20 death 3, 101, 155
& time 97ff., 144, 150f. drives 11, 13, 15, 19f.
aberration, metaphysical 47, 112ff.,
118f. East and West 145ff.
Angst 151 education 1, 62, 65, 76, 91
a priori 5, 18ff., 69f. ego, 29, 31, 34, 37, 57, 95f., 111f.,
of values 41, 44, 51, 60ff., 77ff., 120, 138, 141
154 emotional identification 32, 37ff.
synthetic 124, 142f. environment 13f., 15f., 120, 122,
atheist 113f. 143
erotic fate 49f.
body 30f. essence (see a priori, intuition, life)
Buddhism 1, 147, 154 ethics 4f., 42, 44, 63f., 72ff.
ethos 64, 79, 153
Care, see Sorge evolution 25
China 147f. Existentialism 2, 148, 155
Christianity 63, 65, 97, 99, 105, 149 exorcism 120
Christian philosophy 123-30 experience 8, 14, 16f., 35ff.
Christian Science 29, 130 communal 100, 107ff.
Church 118 phenomenological 18ff.
Catholic 22, 123-28 of reality 33f.
Cognition 110f., 116f., 131ff. religious 116ff.
measures 132ff. of values 78, 92ff.
faith 116, 118f., 125, 128ff. love 4, 25, 41ff., 94, 121, 107, 140f.,
fate 3, 93 (see erotic fate) 151
feeling 28f., 39, 41f. act and time 41f., 83
variations of 79 Christian 43, 126
intentional 77f. classification 48f.
feeling-state 28ff., 39f., 41, 80, 82, direction 93
152f. and ethics 44
fellow-feeling 30ff., 35f. humanitarian 64
force 12 and logic 27, 45, 70, 88
and values 41f., 44, 69, 77f., 121
God, 7, 47, 64f., 75f., 94, 96f., 99,
102,107
existence of, proofs 109ff., 118, man 4f., 8, 15f., 22ff., 39, 76, 141,
121ff. 145f.
as person 110ff., 116ff. ens amans 5, 41, 107, 153
and man 141f., 150f. All Man 145ff., 150f.
good & evil 90 and God 141f., 150f.
Marxism 111
highest good 75 mass 36, 104
homo religiosus 118, 128, 144, 154 mathematics 110, 131, 142f., 148
matter 12
ideation 17 medical science 7f., 17, 29f.
India 29, 147 memory, associative 14ff., 19
instinct 14ff., 19 metaphysics 1, 99, 109, 117f., 119,
intentional, intentionality 35f., 39f., 128, 143, 151
77, 137f. moral authority 91, 123f.
intuition 5, 20, 133, 140f. morality 60ff., 66, 74ff., 79
myth 93, 119, 135
knowledge 112, 131
of culture 23 Neo-Kantianism 123f.
emotive 38f. nerve center 11, 16
= ontic rel. 140ff. non-Euclidean geometry 124
types of 141ff. Non-Formal Ethics 4, 18f., 39f., 48,
& values 94 62f., 66, 71ff.
nothingness, 114
life 11f, 21, 31
as essence 66f., 81, 134f., 149 ordo amoris 28, 44ff., 51, 70, 89, 113,
life-community 103f. 152
Index of Subject Matter 169
Other 33ff., 103f. ressentiment 48, 51, 53ff., 55ff., 58f.,

oughtness 90f. 62f., 92
mod. morals 64ff.
parallel co-ordination 106 psy. cont. 57
perception 1, 18, 77f., 110f., 122, religion 68f.
133, 139 re-sublimation 149
person 16f., 31f., 33, 43, 48 Russia 148
and act 89f.
models 91ff., 94, 195 Scholasticism 99
ontic 51, 102f., 116, 152ff. Sein und Zeit 2ff.
phen. of 95ff. society 103ff.
variations of 97f. sociology 1f., 7, 23, 33, 64
and world 110f., 120f., 140f. Sorge (care) 151
phenomenology viii, 1f., 19f., 140ff. sphere of the absolute 111ff., 114ff.,
cognition 131ff. 119f., 139
of emotions 77ff. spirit ix, 7, 8f., 20f., 27f., 30
experience 110ff. and world 121f., 140, 151
person 95ff. sublimation 21, 39f.
of religion 109ff., 115ff. substance 95
and science 135f. suffering 30, 39, 138
philosophy viiff., 2f., 7, 21, 23, 116, sympathy 32f., 36, 40, 41, 43, 49,
123ff. 54, 106f.
and religion 1, 94, 99, 109, 128ff. system of conformity 130
phen. 133ff.
cosmopol. 149f. temporality 3, 83
Philosophical anthropology 2, 7, theology 2, 99, 130
21f., 50, 64, 76, 94, 106, 151 Thomism 72, 111, 123ff.
physics 12, 131, 134, 143 thou—I relation 33ff., 96f., 103, 139
Positivism 111, 147 togetherness 103ff.
practical intelligence 14ff., 20 totality-person 99ff.
Pragmatism 1 true and false 8, 132, 134ff.
psychic contagion 32, 35ff., 40, 58,
104, 106 urge (Drang) ix, 4, 6, 11ff., 16, 138,
psychology 1ff., 7, 17, 45, 111, 134, 150f.
143 utilitarianism 76f.
reality, see resistance, experience value 25f., 31f., 41f., 69, 77ff.
religion viii, 6f., 8, 39, 106, 142ff. and Dasein 152ff.
resistance 33ff., 121, 137f. deception 53ff., 60ff.
ethos 44
modalities 66, 79ff., 82ff.
moral 89ff.
rel. & abs. 47, 85f.
togetherness 104
and world 121
vis appetitiva 127
will 30f., 37, 64, 70, 104, 121, 138

world 101f., 120ff., 134, 153
zoon politikon 33

Max Scheler: Manfred S. Frings

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Max Scheler

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Second Edition 1996

Cover photo taken by Max Scheler’s son of a 1926 painting by

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be

Printed in the United States of America

I should like to express profound gratitude to Martin

Acknowledgment is made to the libraries of the Univer-

Dedication ................................................................................... iii

Preface to the First Edition .......................................................... vii

Preface to the Second Edition ...................................................... xi

The Collected Works (Gesammelte Werke) of Max Scheler .......... xiv

Current English Translations ....................................................... xv

2. On the Bio-Psychic World ...................................................... 11

6. Non-Formal Ethics of Values .................................................. 71

Emotive Axiology: The Graded Realm of Values, p. 80

7. Man as Person ......................................................................... 95

8. Man and God ....................................................................... 109

9. Knowledge and Reality ......................................................... 131

10. The Age of Adjustment ....................................................... 145

Selected Literature (1955 to Present) ......................................... 157

Index of Names ......................................................................... 165

Index of Subject Matter ............................................................ 167

Preface to the First Edition

T here can be no doubt that presentations of contemporary Euro-

A second reason for the relative absence of works on contemporary

numerous references of German periodicals and journals with refer-

Preface to the Second Edition

O ver the past decades I had on several occasions been asked by

Lectures on Heraclitus he delivered in 1943 and 1944; a subsequent

1. Phenomenology is not to be based on a method. Any method

2. Phenomenology, instead, is to be based on pure intuition. It is

3. Time-consciousness presupposes the self-activity functioning at

spatialization of life and living beings with regard to the occurrence

4. No consciousness — be it Divine, human, or imagined as in

5. The ego is an object of inner perception and of the latter’s non-

6. The experience of the value of any individual entity is the foun-

7. Reality of the world is constituted in the capacity of life and

The Collected Works (Gesammelte Werke) of Max Scheler

The Collected Works were published in Bern: Francke Verlag, 1954-

Vol. I. Frühe Schriften. Maria Scheler and Manfred S. Frings, eds.,

Current English Translations

1. Books and Collections of Essays

“An a priori Hierarchy of Value-Modalities.” Tr. Daniel O’Connor.

“Future of Man.” Tr. Howard Becker. Monthly Criterion 7 (Feb. 1928).

A ttempts to introduce philosophical readers into contemporary

continuity throughout this immense plenitude of subjects and fields

to be occupied with Heidegger’s philosophical breakthrough until

historical being, as a dead end of evolution (no further development

ties: clarity and disorder.” It is not surprising, therefore, that some

anthropologistic. The question: what is man? has for this reason a

proaches to our goal. We choose to set out with a presentation of his

The Stratification of Psycho-physical Being and the Being of the Spirit

T hat which we call alive is characterized by self-motion, self-

show only a reactive self-motion with regard to the intensity of light,

there is, strictly speaking, for Scheler no dualism between organic

force-centers vital centers

inorganic nature organic nature

In contrast to the centers of force in inanimate nature, vital centers

of instinct and restricts himself only to descriptive analysis (IX, 17).

(IX, 28-29). We find on this level of life cunning, appearance of choice

The world of spirit is an objectified world as So-sein, i.e., the cor-

All activities of animals start from the physiological and psychologi-