Abstract

In his interpretation of Scheler’s Wesen und Formen der Sympathie, Luther argues that although Scheler begins his analysis with an investigation of the phenomenon, sympathy, it is in fact the love phenomenon which is shown to be the more fundamental, and further, that Scheler’s clarification of the love phenomenon reveals a dynamic structure of Being. Scheler’s investigation is a phenomenological one, one intended not so much to demonstrate a thesis as to evoke a way of looking at the phenomena of sympathy and love in order that one may understand descriptively what is being lived or experienced. According to Scheler man discovers himself as already in the world in relation to persons and things and thus sympathy and love are relational structures. Given this relatedness each term of a relation is meaningful only as a reference to the other and an analysis of one term independently of the other is an abstraction. Personal being is also within this relational unity and the most significant structure of this unity is said to be love or more concretely, "persons in love." According to Scheler a person is only in relatedness and while there are various levels at which this relatedness may be described Scheler is primarily concerned in Wesen und Formen to describe it at a metaphysical level where Being is said to disclose itself.