Volume 79, Issue 1, Winter 2005
Max Scheler
Jonathan J. Sanford
Pages 145-161
Scheler versus Scheler
The Case for a Better Ontology of the Person
Scheler’s theory of the person is at the center of his philosophy and one of the most celebrated of his achievements. It is somewhat surprising, then, that a straightforward and sufficient account of the person is missing from his works, an omission felt most keenly in that work which is in large measure dedicated to forging a new personalism: The Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values. In his explicit accounts of what a person is, Scheler stresses its spirituality and claims that it lives and has its being wholly in the execution of its acts. But in forging his personalism, Scheler makes a number of claims which require an account of the person that reaches deeper than its executed acts. In this essay, I focus on the accounts of the person given in the Formalism and use Scheler to
improve Scheler’s theory of the person.