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Spring, 2007

PHIL 444
TOPICS IN RECENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY
"Max Scheler:  Emotions and Value Theory"
3 undergraduate hours, 4 graduate hours
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39170/39171 UG/G          
2:30 - 3:50  T R            
217 GH
Schroeder, W.

Max Scheler's name is hardly known today.  But as a phenomenologist he was easily the equal of Husserl and Heidegger.  Moreover, he was Nietzsche's greatest critic and one of Kant's more penetrating challengers.  Scheler wrote two entire books deepening and responding to Nietzsche's analyses of sympathy and resentment.  We will begin the course with these debates.  In addition, he developed an entirely different kind of ethical theory that argues that values are entirely "objective" but are "apprehended" through human emotions, not through sensory perception or rational cognition.  Thus, Scheler provides exceptionally powerful elucidations of key emotions such as love and hate, shame, rebirth, suffering, sympathy, and resentment.  We will explore each of these.  He also provides a foundation for his value theory via an analysis of the will and action and what he calls the "hierarchy" of value.  In addition to all this, he virtually founded the discipline of philosophical anthropology and made major contributions to philosophical sociology via a complex theory of groups and a new understanding the operative factors governing history.  This course will critically examine all of these contributions in depth.  We will also take an independent look at some of the key issues.

Depending on the interests of students, the last part of the course will engage in one of three tasks:  examine the development of Scheler's approach by his contemporary Nicolai Hartmann into the theory of virtues; explore the response to Scheler's ideas by a European analytic philosopher, Aurel Kolnai; or discuss a contemporary value theory very similar to Scheler's, that of Michael Stocker.

Scheler's goals are very similar to Nietzsche's; he just thinks Nietzsche gets some significant points wrong.  So we will begin with Scheler's critique of Nietzsche and Nietzsche's attack on the value of sympathy and his rejection of much of religion because it is rooted in resentment.  Then we will examine Scheler's major ethical treatise: Formalism in Ethics (i.e., Kant) and a Non-Formal Ethic of Value (i.e., Scheler), which contains rich critical and creative discussion of many key topics in psychology, sociology, and value theory.  Finally, we will look at Scheler's analysis of various particular emotions (especially love, suffering, and rebirth) and his contributions to philosophical anthropology.  We will also look at some of his important shorter essays, e.g. "Other Minds" and "Types of Heroes and Leaders".

The requirements will be a mid-term assignment, a final exam, and a term paper.  Scheler also had much to say about philosophy of religion. Though we will not emphasize that aspect of his work in class, interested students could explore it in their term papers.  Scheler's ideas provided the philosophical foundation for the books written by the recently deceased Catholic Pope.