Non-formal ethics of values as framework of sociology of community in Max Scheler

Book excerpt: Previous studies on Max Scheler’s philosophy have either exclusively discussed his moral philosophy or his social philosophy. The present project explicates the link between Scheler’s non-formal ethics of values and sociology by showing how the former serves as framework for the latter. To realize that, this study adapts the qualitative-historical method using Scheler’s main texts, Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values: A New Attempt toward the Foundation of an Ethical Personalism and Problems of a Sociology of Knowledge as well as his related works, analyzing them through the methodological hermeneutics as analytic framework. The results of the analysis show that Scheler’s phenomenological ethics goes beyond the generally teleological ethics of the classical period, and predominantly deontological ethics of the modern time. Whereas the ancient-medieval finds its moral life in following the natural moral law, and the modern, in the obedience to the categorical imperative of duty, fundamental in Scheler’s ethics is the operation of the logic of the heart. This logic brings about the reality of the person who is the center of valuation and moral action. It is also through the heart that values become accessible. For Scheler, values are a priori, immutable, and hierarchically arranged. They are variedly expressed by and actualized in a person who is primarily considered as a loving being. With the variations to values come the ideal persons, and the extent of their knowledge as well as their possible inversion called ressentiment. In social life, sociology investigates this extent of application of values. In particular, Scheler’s phenomenological sociology penetrates into the ethos and logos of community, exploring its sympathetic, intersubjective relations i.e., the co-feelings, co-experiences. Such a phenomenological sociology aims at a synthesis of Eastern and Western tendencies, and projects a World-Age of Adjustment. Arguably, non-formal ethics of values is the conceptual framework for sociology to proceed.