Max Scheler’s Socratesism. An Introduction of a Phenomenological Normative Ethics

Abstract

Socrates’s question is the starting point of all ethics. In his phenomenological value-personalism, Scheler transformed it to the question: “How ‘should’ ‘I’ be and live?” Fundamentally, “I” refers to the person, and “should” means the “ideal ought.” Ultimately, “I” as the person should engage in self-becoming towards its own ideal ordo amoris and ideal value-essence. In this sense, the end-result of Scheler’s material ethics of values is precisely a phenomenological normative ethics, which is neither a normative ethics in the general sense nor an Aristotelian ethics of virtue, but a more essential ethics of person.

Keywords

• person
• ideal ought
• phenomenology
• ethics
• m. scheler