Max Scheler: A Concise Introduction into the World of a Great Thinker, by Manfred Frings, Marquette University Press, 1 ed, 1965, 2 ed, 1996 (accessible via questia)
The Mind of Max Scheler: The First Comprehensive Guide Based on the Complete Works, by Manfred Frings, Marquette University Press,1997 (accessible via questia)
Max Scheler (1874–1928) was a less well‐known phenomenologist because his work was suppressed by the Nazis. His unique contribution was to emphasize the importance of emotional understanding in pinpointing human existence. Scheler followed Husserl’s idea that experience is what knowledge starts from and thus we should always end with experience again in a loop of verification. This led to Scheler’s understanding that human relationships are a form of participation in another person’s world and in their being. This is an important aspect of practical training as it is not the same to allow ourselves to participate in other people’s experience as to feel or show empathy. Scheler indeed spoke of sympathy rather than of empathy and this is about deeply joining with the other in their experience. Instead of disengaging in order to see the other objectively, we become subjectively connected. This is not dissimilar to Kierkegaard’s injunction that we should learn to be subjective about others and objective about ourselves and it links directly with Husserl’s notion of inter‐subjectivity, which is the idea that we are always in relationship rather than separate.
van Deurzen, Emmy. The Wiley World Handbook of Existential Therapy (p. 16). Wiley. 2019, Kindle edition.
