Max Scheler

And so this period in philosophy contains some of the richest, most sophisticated philosophy that there's ever been.

I'm talking about people like Hegel and Schelling and The Schlegel brothers, Schleiermacher, you know, eventually that moves into a whole spirit of German philosophy that was the most sophisticated philosophy that we had until... not excepting the phenomenological philosophers, Heidegger, Meloponty, Husserl, particularly for me, Max Scheler and so on.

So the word romantic applies to an era that was rich in thought, scientifically very important era.

And a lot of these people were also scientists.

even though phenomenology challenges that exclusive approach to things, I think phenomenology ultimately is at the service of a reawakening to the metaphysical foundation of reality.

You know, the stuff of acting potency, substance and accidents, form and matter, of the Aristotelian hylomorphism, going through the Scholastic theologians, going through Neo-Thomism, Gary Gula Grange, you know, who John Paul II also studied with and wrote his first doctoral thesis on the theological virtue of faith in the work of John of the Cross, wrote his second doctoral thesis, his habilitation on the ethical phenomenology of Max Scheler.

So we see these thinkers in the 20th century, Carol Wojtyla become John Paul II, Edith Stein, Eric Shavara, Paul Ricoeur, Carl Rahner, a lot of these thinkers, you know, bringing together the best of these both worlds of metaphysics and phenomenology.

So I love talking all about phenomenology, but I always want to make sure which I didn't always do in my earlier studies, a rapprochement between these two phenomenology, contemporary phenomenology and classical metaphysics, you know, the old and the new together.

both, both recover the word, as you say, Ian, and, and then as all, all three of us say in other contexts, you know, evolve the word.

And I think, you know, Scheler's Right.

You know, I, I had never looked at Scheler until Zach, a young man from Cambridge, Jasper, said to me, "How could you have never read Scheler?" So I said, "Okay." So I went, [laughs] you know, um, and read a little bit and, um, just in the last two years.

And actually I would...

I mean, he's great, and I would just take strong issue with his distinction, the way he structures values in many, many levels, and one of them is, is, is what he- h-how he looks at primary and secondary values.

Exactly.

Um, and that doesn't, doesn't mean I don't talk about values, but my subject there is not values, but value in itself.

Um, and I, I, yeah, I mean, we certainly don't want to, um, leap in and defend the great Max Scheler, but, uh, w- maybe I will come on to talking about that at a later point.