Customer Reviews (1)

The best study of sympathy
Max Scheler is a now almost forgotten early phenomenologist. He made very objective studies of values, sympathy, sociology of knowledge and sociology of culture. This is one of his masterpieces in which he tries to phenomenological differentiate and explain the meaning of 'sympathy'.

The book differentiates the concept of sympathy from related concepts like fellow-feeling, commiserisation etc. He argues how sympathy is not the same as these concepts and why sympathy is not a form of enlightened self-interest either.

Particularly interesting are his arguments against Adam Smith's theory of moral sentiments in which fear motivates sypathy and Freud's concept of guilt as source of such feelings. He also shows how Buddha's concept of universal misery blocks compassion by accepting misery matter-of-factly and expecting everyone to accept and live their misery. The book concludes that sympathy is made possible by empathy but is an irreducible feeling. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Excellent response to Nietzsche's criticisms of Christianity
This monograph constitutes a response to the criticisms of Christianity outlined in Nietzsche's GENEOLOGY OF MORALS, in which Nietzsche argues that Christianity is a "slave revolt" of the weak--an attempt by the impotent to bring down the vitality of the capable nobility.Scheler's response is multi-faceted but centers on Nietzsche's failure to understand the nature of Christian love.Christianity is not a destructive enterprise trying to bring everyone down to the same low level of its impotent faithful, who must put their trust in the next world because they can get nowhere in this one.Rather, it attempts constructively to bring everyone UP to a new level of human flourishing.Christianity's preoccupation with the poor, weak, and marginalized stems from a recognition, through divine love, of the miracle of God's creation and infinite possibilities present even in them.The following quotation well represents Scheler's position (and Nietzsche's perspectival error):"Those people [modern nihilists] saw something bug-like in everything that lives, whereas [St.] Francis sees the holiness of life even in a bug." (p. 70).This monograph is certainly not the last word on Nietzsche's famous anti-Christian polemic, and it contains many avenues of argumentation that are not described here; but it is fair to say that it articulates a capable response to the core of his arguments.And like the Texas Cottonwood tree, when the core of the trunk rots, the result is obvious during the next storm. ... Read more

Book Description
Peter Spader has written a magisterial study on Max Scheler, one of phenomenology’s earliest and greatest figures, whose theory of ethical personalism has become a major voice in the formulation of phenomenological ethics today. Spader follows Scheler’s use of the classic phenomenological approach, by means of which he presented a fresh view of values, feelings, and the person, and thereby staked out a new approach in ethics. Spader recreates the logic of Scheler’s quest, revealing the basis of his thought and the reasons for his dramatic changes of direction. This remarkable study provides a framework that allows us to understand Scheler’s insights in the context of their dynamic evolution of his thought. It corrects imbalances in the presentation of his ideas and defends Scheler against key misunderstandings and criticisms. In short, Spader’s work continues the process of developing Scheler’s pioneering theory of ethical personalism. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A highly informative account
Spader has devoted an entire career and countless philosophical articles to analyzing and explicating the philosophy of Max Scheler, one of phenomenology's seminal figures and a major voice in the development of a phenomenological theory of ethics. This book is Spader's culminating masterpiece, his magnum opus, on the subject of a lifetime of research. Like all of Spader's work, it is clearly written, and represents a badly-needed addition to the growing English-language scholarship on Max Scheler.
Spader traces the classic phenomenological approach by which Scheler developed his theory of values and staked out his new personalist approach to ethics, and then offers a compelling reconstruction of the underlying 'logic' of Scheler's philosophical development. He reveals and examines the reasons for the dramatic shifts in direction throughout Scheler's career, which have usually been treated as all-but incomprehensible in the extant Scheler literature. Spader clearly indicates why Scheler, in his early period, neglected to fill out the phenomenological evidence he had promised to provide for his non-formal alternative to Kant's ethics; and, again, why he then, in his second phase, shifted to religious and metaphysical considerations without completing his ethics; and why, yet again in his third period, he embraced a 'pantheistic' view, as a result of an impasse in his thinking concerning the problem of theodicy. The personalism underlying Scheler's ethics naturally drove him towards theological considerations of how an infinite "person of persons" (that is, God), might be related to questions of a moral bearing. Thus Scheler was driven to undertake a religious and metaphysical investigation of the concept of God as a means of clearing a way for the completion of his ethics.
Spader corrects distortions and imbalances in existing studies of Scheler and defends him against key criticisms levelled by scholars such as Stephen Strasser, Karol Wojtyla (Pope John Paul II), Dietrich von Hildebrand, Eugene Kelly, Philip Blosser, and Parvis Emad. Spader's treatment is not only a major contribution to Scheler scholarship in the English language; it is a contribution that allows those interested in Scheler to grasp the 'logic' of his total work in such a way that they can themselves carry out and 'complete' what he left unfinished, incorporating his insights into their continuation of his work. Spader's work is of inestimable value for students of Scheler's thought, providing insights nowhere else available in English. Highly recommended. ... Read more

Book Description

Book Description
In comparison to Husserl and Heidegger, Max Scheler's philosophy of time as first presented here, is considerably wider in scope. Using posthumous manuscripts, Frings shows that Scheler conceived the origin of time in the self-activating center of individual and universal life as threefold "absolute" time of a four-dimensional expanse. This serves as a basis for establishing the phenomenon of objective time in multiple steps of constitutionality, including the physical field theory and theory of relativity.
For Scheler, objective time, even though anchored in absolute time, deserves "maximum attention" in a technological society. Frings focuses here with Scheler on time experience of values and among social groups, time experiences in the mind-set of capitalism, in politics and morals, in population dynamics, and time experiences in the process of aging, all of which were signposts in Scheler's thought before his early demise. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

LifeTime
Max Scheler was one of the most creative philosophers of the 20th Century.Usingthe phenomenological approach he explored many areas of experience, and is probably best known for his development of a new ethical personalism. As the editor of the Collected Works of Scheler, Manfred Frings has a unique grasp of the total corpus of Scheler's work. Drawing upon his knowledge of Scheler, Frings explores Scheler's insights into one of the most familiar yet mysterious of phenomena, namely time. As the title suggests, we live time, and the time we live is not just clock-time. Indeed, Frings traces our experience of time to a lived time that is at the core of our being. Using effective descriptions of lived experience, he follows Scheler's "grand attempt to trace time in its micro-and macrocosmic constitution, in which humanity, as a process of temporalization itself, lives its existence" (p. xvi).Along the way, Fringsintroduces the reader to many of Scheler's other insights as well, and applies Scheler's insights into the nature of time to a variety of significant problems ranging from capitalism to population.This study is both profound and illuminating.I recommend it to you in the highest. ... Read more

Book Description
This digital document is an article from The Review of Metaphysics, published by Philosophy Education Society, Inc. on June 1, 1999. The length of the article is 764 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Structure and Diversity. Studies in the Phenomenological Philosophy of Max Scheler.
Author: Erich P. Schellhammer
Publication: The Review of Metaphysics (Refereed)
Date: June 1, 1999
Publisher: Philosophy Education Society, Inc.
Volume: 52Issue: 4Page: 950

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Book Description
This book explores some foundational concepts of Scheler'sphenomenological philosophy. Seldom or inadequately explored featuresof his thought, such as the concept of essence, the notion of fate andmilieu as foundational of the human person, and the pedagogical andhistorical implications of his vision of a balancing-out of worldcultures, are each related to the phenomenological procedures thatScheler adapted from E. Husserl. This is the first contribution to thespecifically phenomenological aspects of Scheler's philosophy sinceE.W. Ranly's Scheler's Phenomenology of Community, published in1966, and the only one to develop a global reading of Scheler'sthought based upon the manuscripts by Scheler that have been publishedsince 1973. ... Read more

Book Description
This digital document is an article from Modern Age, published by Thomson Gale on June 22, 2005. The length of the article is 5723 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Max Scheler and the psychopathology of the terrorist.
Author: Manfred Frings
Publication: Modern Age (Magazine/Journal)
Date: June 22, 2005
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 47Issue: 3Page: 210(10)

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Book Description
This digital document is an article from The Review of Metaphysics, published by Thomson Gale on June 1, 2005. The length of the article is 858 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Schneck, Stephen, Editor. Max Scheler's Acting Persons: New Perspectives.(Book Review)
Author: Daniela Vallega-Neu
Publication: The Review of Metaphysics (Magazine/Journal)
Date: June 1, 2005
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 58Issue: 4Page: 917(3)

Article Type: Book Review

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