Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values: A New Attempt Toward the Foundation of an Ethical Personalism (Northwestern University Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy) by Max

by Max Scheler

A lengthy critique of Kant's apriorism precedes discussions on the ethical principles of eudaemonism, utilitarianism, pragmatism, and positivism.

Genres: Philosophy, Germany, Psychology, German Literature, Nonfiction

Paperback

First published July 1, 1973

About the author

Max Scheler (August 22, 1874, Munich – May 19, 1928, Frankfurt am Main) was a German philosopher known for his work in phenomenology, ethics, and philosophical anthropology. Scheler developed further the philosophical method of the founder of phenomenology, Edmund Husserl, and was called by José Ortega y Gasset "the first man of the philosophical paradise." After his demise in 1928, Heidegger affirmed, with Ortega y Gasset, that all philosophers of the century were indebted to Scheler and praised him as "the strongest philosophical force in modern Germany, nay, in contemporary Europe and in contemporary philosophy as such."[1] In 1954, Karol Wojtyła, later Pope John Paul II, defended his doctoral thesis on "An Evaluation of the Possibility of Constructing a Christian Ethics on the Basis of the System of Max Scheler."

Reviews

[Joe Con · Rating 4 out of 5]

nothing

[Vinnakota Vikas · Rating 5 out of 5]

This read deepened my understanding. I will be re-reading this for a while.

[M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sehr schwer zugängliches Werk von Scheler, in welches einige Einarbeitungsarbeit erforderlich ist, welche dann aber sehr lohnend ist, da er hier bereits eine philosophische Anthropologie entwickelt, die weitab von seiner stark Metaphysik belastetend These in Die Stellung des Menschen im Kosmos liegt und dadurch wesentlich als wesentlich stärkere These auftritt.

[Chris Nagel]

The butler did it.

I confess to skimming some of the later, very long chapters, when Scheler started discussing the apotheosis of ethics and community represented by Christianity. I was mainly interested in his phenomenology of value and of valuing, and that stuff, embedded in his critiques of Kant and of "eudaimonism" (taken in a very broad sense) takes a lot of extracting.

In a weird way, a lot of that part of the text seemed like a phenomenological version of Hegel's critique/appropriation of Kant and Aristotle.