The Nature of Sympathy (Library of Conservative Thought)

By Max Scheler

Book Overview

The Nature of Sympathy explores, at different levels, the social emotions of fellow-feeling, the sense of identity, love and hatred, and traces their relationship to one another and to the values with which they are associated. Scheler criticizes other writers, from Adam Smith to Freud, who have argued that the sympathetic emotions derive from self-interested feelings or instincts. He reviews the evaluations of love and sympathy current in different historical periods and in different social and religious environments, and concludes by outlining a theory of fellow-feeling as the primary source of our knowledge of one another.

A prolific writer and a stimulating thinker, Max Scheler ranks second only to Husserl as a leading member of the German phenomenological school. Scheler's work lies mostly in the fields of ethics, politics, sociology, and religion. He looked to the emotions, believing them capable, in their own quality, of revealing the nature of the objects, and more especially the values, to which they are in principle directed.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1412806879
• ISBN13: 9781412806879
• Release Date: February 2008
• Publisher: Routledge
• Length: 340 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.1" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

The best study of sympathy

Max Scheler is a now almost forgotten early phenomenologist. He made very objective studies of values, sympathy, sociology of knowledge and sociology of culture. This is one of his masterpieces in which he tries to phenomenological differentiate and explain the meaning of 'sympathy'. The book differentiates the concept of sympathy from related concepts like fellow-feeling, commiserisation etc. He argues how sympathy is not the same as these concepts and why sympathy is not a form of enlightened self-interest either. Particularly interesting are his arguments against Adam Smith's theory of moral sentiments in which fear motivates sypathy and Freud's concept of guilt as source of such feelings. He also shows how Buddha's concept of universal misery blocks compassion by accepting misery matter-of-factly and expecting everyone to accept and live their misery. The book concludes that sympathy is made possible by empathy but is an irreducible feeling.