Status Updates From Formalism in Ethics and Non...

WOW, ok this is getting really good. All his tedious work of critiquing rationalism and empiricism, and their various ethical counterparts (e.g., formalism, utilitarianism, pragmatism, pharisaism, or lutheran theology, to name a few) is a carefully crafted way of building up the theoretical and practical idea of the person. A true philosopher’s read; Scheler is doing both “critical” philosophy and metaphysics.

I’ve read and reread the first 160 pages about 3 or 4 times now and forced me to read Kant’s Groundwork and Critique of Practical Reason.

I can’t believe this was the standard for German high culture in the early 20th century. Scheler is one of the most interesting philosophers I have read and a serious thinker. One of those books where you will walk away with a much deeper understanding of all philosophy.

He criticizes the idea of categories as equally irrelevant philosophically as sense organs, but goes on to use expressions like "base of thingness" as an explanation for the perception of a cube. But that's equivalent to applying the category of quantity to the indeterminate data of intuition. This is a really fake way to try to bypass the basic problem.