Max Scheler

Within the phenomenological school of 20th-century Continental philosophy it was Max Scheler who turned his sustained attention to the study of ethics. Scheler insisted that by engaging in a rigorous and unbiased description of such acts of evaluation as desire and love, rejection and hate, philosophy could discover an order of morality and values that, while independent of any particular ethical system, is the foundation for all such systems when they are properly conceived. In Part One of this book Professor Perrin evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of Scheler's pioneering study, with particular attention to its avowed intention to transcend the formalism of Kant's ethical studies without sacrificing any of their considerable rigour. Part Two provides an explication of the main features of Scheler's ethics and explores their implications in light of more recent studies of moral cognition and development. Perrin argues that Scheler's chief contribution to our moral understanding and experience rests with his conceptions of the person and personality.