Person and Self-Value: Three Essays

by Max Scheler, M.S. Frings (Editor)

From the mysterious powers and forces peculiar to both individual and community that can turn our lives into either good or bad lives, I wish to point to two such powers being at the same time different in their own nature and yet closely related to each The powers that emerge from exemplary persons and leaders. Understood as basic to both sociology and the philosophy of history, it comes to us as no surprise that the problem of exemplary persons and leaders - along with the questions of the qualities types, selections and education of leaders; forms of unison existing be­ tween leaders and their followers, all of which belonging to the subdivisions of this problem - must be a burning problem for a people whose historical leaders from all walks of life have, in part, been swept away by wars and revolutions. This fact we also find in all salient epochs of history characterized more or less by changes in leadership. It is precisely for this reason that in our own time every group appears to struggle ever so hard with this problem, namely, who their leaders should be. This pertains equally to a group within a party, to a class, to occupations, to unions, to various schools or present-day youth movements, and even to religious and ecclesias­ tical groupings. Beyond any comparison, there is yearning everywhere for lead­ ership.

Genres: Philosophy

Kindle Edition

First published February 1, 1987

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

[pablo! · Rating 3 out of 5]

Los primeros tres ensayos (sobre la filosofía de la vida, la idea de hombre y contra la ley de los tres estadios) están bastante bien. El resto bastante flojillos.

Por lo demás, es un racista de mierda.

[C.J. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Worth a read to balance out Heidegger and Hegel; a fair foundation for appreciating what Wojtyla does with Scheler's most insightful sentence (and subject) -- that the sense of personhood found in humanity, as observed in the phenomenon of 'shame', presupposes that person to be a transition or bridge between worlds. Why though to philosophers talk so much?