Max Scheler

Max Scheler, a German philosopher with a significant teaching career (Jena, Munich, Cologne), was not only a philosopher but also served as a diplomat (in Geneva and The Hague). Born in Munich in 1874 and passing away in Frankfurt in 1928, Scheler was profoundly influenced by Husserl's phenomenology, and his entire body of work represents a long journey of phenomenological divergences (including his conversion to Roman Catholicism). His fundamental philosophical position was developed in his work "Formalism in Ethics," where Kantian ethics is critiqued through the lens of Pascal's thought. The foundation and hierarchy of values (vital values that do not exclude the religious ascent to holiness and the sacred) were his persistent philosophical concern. Issues such as death, the tragic, the eternal within man, sympathy, knowledge, and the position of humans in the world form a constellation of inquiries always centered on ethics.