Max Scheler

Max Ferdinand Scheler (1874 to 1928) was a German philosopher known for his work in phenomenology, ethics and philosophical anthropology. Born in Munich, he began as a medical student, then abandoned medicine for philosophy and sociology in Berlin, where he studied under Wilhelm Dilthey, Theodor Lipps, Carl Stumpf and Georg Simmel. He moved to the University of Jena in 1896, studied under Rudolf Eucken, completed his doctorate and habilitation there and became a lecturer in 1901. In 1898 he met Max Weber, who also had a significant impact on his thought. Scheler developed the philosophical method of Edmund Husserl, the founder of phenomenology, but disagreed that phenomenology is a method of strict reduction, describing it instead as an attitude of spiritual seeing grounded in love. Considered in his lifetime one of the most prominent German philosophers, he was praised after his death in 1928 by Martin Heidegger as the strongest philosophical force in modern Germany.