The feeling, feelings and laws that govern emotional life do not find their original frame of reference in psychology, but in ethics. For that reason, when they are approached with the phenomenological method they offer a complete theory of the person and, therefore, a true anthropology.

In Essence and forms of sympathy (1923), Scheler deepens and completes the theory of feelings that he had begun to sketch in his Ethics (1916). To this end, he structures his research based on three fundamental questions. First, empathy, which he defines as those processes of congratulation and compassion that arise when the oldest substrate of sympathetic behavior is reached.

Second, love and hate, positively considered as peculiar ways of behaving in the face of valued objects.

Finally, the perception of the alien self, which defines as a type of knowledge that is only accessed through sympathy and love.

The result of this company is both theoretical and practical, because not only a direct realism is postulated when it comes to knowing one's own self and that of others, but that the latter and its feelings can be revealed and perceived internally. how to access the self.

Max Scheler (1874-1928) is a leading German thinker of the first half of the 20th century. Follower of Husserl, applied the phenomenological method to the ethics and philosophy of religion

ENGLISH: The Nature of Sympathy.

In this book Scheler applied Husserl’s phenomenological approach to the social emotions that relate human beings to one another. I especially focus on love and hate.