Zu Max Schelers Konzeption des emotionalen Apriori

Abstract

The paper aims to explore the meaning and significance of the concept of emotional a priori in the phenomenological philosophy of Max Scheler. It is well known that according to Max Scheler, there is a hierarchical structure of values, organized in accordance with an emotional a priori. Scheler attempts in his famous book «Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values» and in several of his other works to disclose this structure phenomenologically as an order of love and hate. The emotional a priori is not only the essential foundation of this structure, but also the main principle according to which various human acts constitute the unity of the acting person. Thus, it connects emotional and rational acts of the human person (from the perspective of phenomenology of acts) and the human essence as a being open to the world (from the perspective of the phenomenology of the essence) into one and the same existential unity of human life.