Max Scheler

Known for his work in phenomenology and philosophical anthropology, famous for his phenomenological insights, Scheler developed further the philosophical method of the founder of phenomenology, Edmund Husserl, and was called by Ortega-y-Gasset "the first man of the philosophical paradise." Max Scheler extended the phenomenological method to include a reduction of the scientific method too, thus questioning the idea of Husserl that phenomenological philosophy should be pursued as a rigorous science. Natural and scientific attitudes (Einstellung) are both phenomenologically counterpositive and hence must be sublated in the advancement of the real phenomenological reduction which, in the eyes of Scheler, has more the shapes of an allround ascesis (Askese) rather than a mere logical procedure of suspending the existential judgments. The Wesenschau (or Wesensschau), according to Scheler, is an act of blowing up the Sosein limits of Sein A into the essential-ontological domain of Sein B, in short, an ontological participation of Sosenheiten, seeing the things as such (cf. the Buddhist concept of tathata, and the Christian theological quidditas). In 1953, Pope John Paul II defended a thesis on "evaluation of the possibility of founding a Catholic ethic on the ethical system of Max Scheler".

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