Clarification of the Phenomenon of Love at the Metaphysical Level of Reality

Abstract

As formulated between 1913 and 1923 two factors stand out in Scheler’s metaphysical view of reality: the uniqueness of persons in their being, and the unity of the primordial concrete existential situation. As to the first factor, there is a common view or natural attitude in which persons are seen as cores with changeable accidents. Such a view develops out of a thing-mentality in which realities are looked upon as finished or complete in their givenness. Within this thing-mentality the core of persons is the same for all. The term “nature” signifies this core. Persons as persons are the same in this view insofar as they share a common nature. This common nature is and remains “eternally” the same. Scheler rejects this view entirely. A person for him is in no sense a thing, is in no sense given as finished or complete. A person is a center of originality, a creative source, a richness of possibility fundamentally unique. In Scheler’s phenomenological view persons are the same in their uniqueness, and this uniqueness is the intrinsic coherence of a dynamic orientation. Persons are irreducible. The being and value of a person is absolute.