“Ressentiment must therefore be strongest in a society like ours, where approximately equal rights (political and otherwise) or formal social equality, publicly… — Max Scheler Copy Share Image
“One of my principal theses is that in every case the nature of a being (contingent as well as essential nature) can, in principle,… — Max Scheler Copy Share Image
Whenever convictions are not arrived at by direct contact with the world and the objects themselves, but indirectly through a critique of the opinions… — Max Scheler Copy Share Image
“What is gained by the transcendence of the object is the identifiability of the object in a plurality of acts and the identifiability of… — Max Scheler Copy Share Image
“Love loves and in loving always looks beyond what it has in hand and possesses. The driving impulse [*Triebimpuls*] which arouses may tire out;… — Max Scheler Copy Share Image
“Only after the concept of knowledge has been based on an ontological relation [*Seinsverhältnis*] can we work out the particular kind of being from… — Max Scheler Copy Share Image
“There are two fundamentally different ways for the strong to bend down to the weak, for the rich to help the poor, for the… — Max Scheler Copy Share Image
“All ancient philosophers, poets, and moralists agree that love is a striving, an aspiration of the “lower” toward the “higher,” the “unformed” toward the… — Max Scheler Copy Share Image
“We must reject entirely the frequently encountered assertion that consciousness is a "primal fact," that one ought not speak of an "origin" of consciousness.… — Max Scheler Copy Share Image
If the awareness of our limitations begins to limit or to dim our value consciousness as well—as happens, for instance, in old age with… — Max Scheler Copy Share Image
The purpose of art is... to press forward into the whole of the external world and the soul, to see and communicate those objective… — Max Scheler Copy Share Image
“All that is worthy of love [*die Liebenswürdigkeiten*], from the viewpoint of God's comprehensive love, might have been stamped and created by this act… — Max Scheler Copy Share Image
“Existential envy which is directed against the other person’s very nature, is the strongest source of ressentiment. It is as if it whispers continually:… — Max Scheler Copy Share Image
![“One of my principal theses is that in every case the nature of a being (contingent as well as essential nature) can, in principle, be immanent to and truly inherent in knowledge and reflexive consciousness as it is outside of consciousness, and therefore not only as it is represented by some image, perception, idea [*Vorstellung*], or thought. This immanence of the nature of a being to consciousness occurs, of course, with totally different degrees of adequation and on completely different levels of the relativity of its existence to the existence and constitution [*Organisation*] of the "knowing" subject. Existence, however, can never be immanent to consciousness. Rather, existence necessarily transcends knowledge and consciousness and is alien to them. Existence is essentially transcendent and remains independent of them, even in the limiting case of a "divine," omniscient Mind." In other words, the nature and the existence of any possible object are separable with respect to the possibility of their being *in mente* [in the mind]. The nature of a being can be *in mente* and actually is so in any evidential cognition of what a thing is, which excludes cases of illusion and error. Existence can never be *in mente*. I shall speak later of how existence can be "given" despite this. Existence transcends thought, intuition, and perception, as well as any cooperation of thought and intuition in that higher form of knowledge we call cognition. Cognition is the "knowledge of something as something," the coincidence [*Deckung*] of intuition and thought." from_Idealism and Realism_” quote by Max Scheler](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/d95/max-scheler-21013_different-level_one-of-my-principal-theses-is-that-in-ev_117726.jpg)
![“Love loves and in loving always looks beyond what it has in hand and possesses. The driving impulse [*Triebimpuls*] which arouses may tire out; love itself does not tire. This *sursum corda* which is the essence of love may take on fundamentally different forms at different elevations in the various regions of value. The sensualist is struck by the way the pleasure he gets from the objects of his enjoyment gives him less and less satisfaction while his driving impulse stays the same or itself increases as he flies more and more rapidly from one object to the next. For this water makes one thirstier, the more one drinks. Conversely, the satisfaction of one who loves spiritual objects, whether things or persons, is always holding out new promise of satisfaction, so to speak. This satisfaction by nature increases more rapidly and is more deeply fulfilling, while the driving impulse which originally directed him to these objects or persons holds constant or decreases. The satisfaction always lets the ray of the movement of love peer out a little further beyond what is presently given. In the highest case, that of love for a person, this movement develops the beloved person in the direction of ideality and perfection appropriate to him and does so, in principle, beyond all limits. However, in both the satisfaction of pleasure and the highest personal love, the same *essentially infinite process* appears and prevents both from achieving a definitive character, although for opposite reasons: in the first case, because satisfaction diminishes; in the latter, because it increases. No reproach can give such pain and act so much as a spur on the person to progress in the direction of an aimed-at perfection as the beloved's consciousness of not satisfying, or only partially satisfying, the ideal image of love which the lover brings before her―an image he took from her in the first place. Immediately a powerful jolt is felt in the core of the soul; the soul desires to grow to fit this image. "So let me seem, until I become so." Although in sensual pleasure it is the *increased variety* of the objects that expresses this essential infinity of the process, here it is the *increased depth of absorption* in the growing fullness of one object. In the sensual case, the infinity makes itself felt as a self-propagating unrest, restlessness, haste, and torment: in other words, a mode of striving in which every time something repels us this something becomes the source of a new attraction we are powerless to resist. In personal love, the felicitous advance from value to value in the object is accompanied by a growing sense of repose and fulfillment, and issues in that positive form of striving in which each new attraction of a suspected value results in the continual abandonment of one already given. New hope and presentiment are always accompanying it. Thus, there is a positively valued and a negatively valued *unlimitedness of love*, experienced by us as a potentiality; consequently, the striving which is built upon the act of love is unlimited as well. As for striving, there is a vast difference between Schopenhauer's precipitate "willing" born of torment and the happy, God-directed "eternal striving" in Leibniz, Goethe's Faust, and J. G. Fichte." ―from_Ordo Amoris_” quote by Max Scheler](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/cc4/max-scheler-21013_axiology_love-loves-and-in-loving-always-looks-be_248149.jpg)
![“Only after the concept of knowledge has been based on an ontological relation [*Seinsverhältnis*] can we work out the particular kind of being from which the principle of immanence-to-consciousness (the starting point of Idealism and Critical Realism) mistakenly proceeds as though from a primary insight. This is the being of "being-conscious" [*Bewusst-Seins*]. All being-conscious must first of all be brought under the higher concept of ideal being, or, at all events, that of irreal being. The mental item which presents itself in the experiences of consciousness may be real; being-conscious itself never is. However, the concept of consciousness is derivative in not only this sense. Consciousness also presupposes the concept of knowledge. Nothing is more misleading than to proceed in the opposite direction and define knowledge itself as simply a particular "content of consciousness," as we see if we oppose, to the particular kind of knowing and having-known which we call consciousness, another kind of knowledge which precedes it and includes no form of being-conscious. We will call this knowledge *ecstatic* [*ekstatische*] knowledge. It is found quite clearly in animals, primitive people, children, and, further, in certain pathological and other abnormal and supra-normal states (e.g., in recovering from the effects of a drug). I have said elsewhere that the animal never relates to its environment as to an object but only *lives in it* [*es lebe nur "in sie hinein*"]. Its conduct with respect to the external world depends upon whether the latter satisfies its instinctive drives or denies them satisfaction. The animal experiences the surrounding world as resistances of various types. Hence, it is absolutely necessary to contest the principle (in Descartes, Franz Brentano, *et al*.) that every mental function and act is accompanied by an immediate knowledge of it. An even more highly contestable principle is that a relation to the self is an essential condition of all processes of knowledge. It is difficult to reproduce purely ecstatic knowledge in mature, civilized men, whether in memory, reverie, perception, thought, or empathetic identification with things, animals, or men; nonetheless, there is no doubt that in every perception and presentation of things and events we think that we grasp *the things-themselves*, not mere "images" of them or representatives of some sort. Knowledge first becomes conscious knowledge [*Bewusst-sein*], that is, comes out of its original ecstatic form of simply "having" things, in which there is no knowledge of the having or of that through which and in which it is had, when the act of being thrown back on the self (probably only possible for men) comes into play. This act grows out of conspicuous resistances, clashes, and oppositions―in sum, out of pronounced suffering. It is the *actus re-flexivus* in which knowledge of the knowledge of things is added to the knowledge of things. Furthermore, in this act we come to know the kind of knowledge we have, for example, memory, ideation, and perception, and finally, beyond even these, we come to have a knowledge of the relation of the act performed to the self, to the knower. With respect to any specific relation to the self, this last knowledge, so-called conscious self-knowledge, comes only after knowledge about the act. Kant's principle that an "I think" must be *able* to accompany all a man's thoughts may be correct. That it in fact always accompanies them is nevertheless undoubtedly false. However, the kind of being (indeed, of ideal being) which contents possess when they are reflexively *had* in their givenness in conscious acts―when, therefore, they become reflexive―is the being of being-consciously-known." from_Idealism and Realism_” quote by Max Scheler](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/65c/max-scheler-21013_epistemology_only-after-the-concept-of-knowledge-has_492525.jpg)
![“We must reject entirely the frequently encountered assertion that consciousness is a "primal fact," that one ought not speak of an "origin" of consciousness. The very same laws and motives in accordance with which we think of consciousness' raising itself from one level of reflection to the next will apply when we think of consciousness itself originating out of a preconscious, partly subconscious, partly supraconscious condition of the being of the contents of knowledge. (And the motive is always suffering of some sort, suffering, as we shall see, at the hands of the real being [*Realsein*] which is ecstatically given prior to all consciousness.) Only a very definite historical stage of overreflective bourgeois civilization could make the fact of consciousness the starting point of all theoretical philosophy, without characterizing more exactly the mode of being of this consciousness." ―from_Idealism and Realism_” quote by Max Scheler](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/c4b/max-scheler-21013_epistemology_we-must-reject-entirely-the-frequently-e_709017.jpg)
![“All that is worthy of love [*die Liebenswürdigkeiten*], from the viewpoint of God's comprehensive love, might have been stamped and created by this act of love; man's love does not so stamp or create its objects. Man's love is restricted to recognizing the objective demand these objects make and to submitting to the gradation of rank in what is worthy of love. This gradation exists in itself, but in itself it exists "for" man, ordered to his *particular* essence. Loving can be characterized as correct or false only because a man's actual inclinations and acts of love can be in harmony with or oppose the rank-ordering of what is worthy of love. In other words, man can feel and know himself to be at one with, or separated and opposed to, the love with which God loved the idea of the world or its content before he created it, the love with which he preserves it at every instant. If a man in his actual loving, or in the order of his acts of love, in his preferences and depreciations, subverts this self-existent order, he simultaneously subverts the intention of the divine world-order―as it is in his power to do. And whenever he does so, his world as the possible object of knowledge, and his world as the field of willing, action, and operation, must necessarily fall as well. This is not the place to speak about the content of the gradations of rank in the realm of all that is worthy of love. It is sufficient here to say something about the *form* and *content* of the realm itself. From the primal atom and the grain of sand to God, this realm is *one* realm. This "unity" does not mean that the realm is closed. We are conscious that no one of the finite parts of it which are given to us can exhaust its fullness and its extension. If we have only *once* experienced how one feature which is worthy of love appears next to another―or how another feature of still higher value appears over and above one which we had taken till now as the "highest" in a particular region of values, then we have learned the essence of progress in or penetration into the realm. Then we see that this realm cannot have precise boundaries. Only in this way can we understand that when any sort of love is fulfilled by an object adequate to it the satisfaction this gives us can never be definitive. Just as the essence of certain operations of thought which create their objects through self-given laws (e.g., the inference from *n* to *n* + *I*) prevents any limits from being placed on their application, so it is in the essence of the act of love as it fulfills itself in what is worthy of love that it can progress from value to value, from one height to an even greater height. "Our heart is too spacious," said Pascal. Even if we should know that our actual ability to love is limited, at the same time we know and feel that this limit lies neither in the finite objects which are worthy of love nor in the essence of the act of love as such, but only in our organization and the conditions it sets for the occurrence and *arousal* of the act of love. For this arousal is bound up with the life of our body and our drives and with the way an object stimulates and calls this life into play. But *what* we grasp as *worthy of love* is not bound up with these, and more than the *form and structure* of the realm of which this value shows itself to be a part." ―from_Ordo Amoris_” quote by Max Scheler](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/ece/max-scheler-21013_ability-to-love_all-that-is-worthy-of-love-die-liebensw_1325365.jpg)
