Scheler, Max

Max Scheler (1874–1928) was a German philosopher and social theorist, who significantly contributed to the anthropological and phenomenological turn in German philosophy at the beginning of the last century. Scheler studied philosophy and sociology under Dilthey, Simmel, and Eucken in Munich, Berlin, and Jena. Influenced also by the work of Brentano, Husserl, Heidegger, and Nietzsche, Scheler taught at Jena, Munich, Göttingen, Cologne, and Frankfurt/M. While his actual contribution to the laying of new foundations of contemporary European philosophy is often underestimated in the light of his influential contemporaries Husserl and Heidegger, it was Scheler who most vividly pursued an application of the new philosophical framework beyond the confines of narrow philosophical debate. He applied phenomenological thinking to subjects and topics as varied as values, capitalism, ...