Dialogue and Universalism

Volume 31, Issue Supplement, 2021

Varia: Clashes of Cultures, Religions and Models of Democracy; Max Scheler’s Selected Conceptions

The Consistence of the Assumptions of the Sociology of Knowledge with those of Philosophical Anthropology (On the Example of Max Scheler)

In this article I ask about the theoretical-methodological consistence between research sub-disciplines, which their creators see as discourses or paradigms that correspond on a general philosophical level. I will base this analysis on the historical-philosophical examples of certain sociology of knowledge and philosophical anthropology conceptions developed by Max Scheler as part of a broader philosophical theory. Scheler’s intention, which he often articulated in his writings, was to show philosophical anthropology in its role as the categorial foundation of the sociology of knowledge, a reservoir of the philosophical assumptions that underlie sociocognitive theories. The interpretative hypothesis in this article is that a) some parts of Scheler’s sociology of knowledge (the so-called class idol conception) would be very difficult to see as "grounded" in the conceptual model of philosophical anthropology he proposed, and b) that there exists an anthropological standpoint that differs from Scheler’s—Helmuth Plessner’s—and is more logically coherent with the "class idol" idea.