Das Schicksal des Personenbegriffs im Spätwerk Schelers

Abstract

We argue that concepts in Scheler’s late metaphysics and philosophical anthropology vitiate, without his awareness and against his intentions, his earlier phenomenology of the person, which had played a central role in the material ethics of value. An examination of a new groundbreaking work on Scheler’s late thought by Guido Cusinato enables the isolation and analysis of the issues in question: the notion of the creation of ideas cum rebus, the ideal of humankind as a microcosm participating in the coming-to-be of the world, and the function of Vorbilder in the rebirth of the human spirit. It is further argued that the concepts developed in the earlier phenomenology do the task of explicating these issues far better than the concepts developed in the late work.