Sympathy and solidarity. Max Scheler's phenomenology of the social Max Scheler's phenomenology of the social – SympaSoli

The aim of the project is to reconstruct Scheler's social philosophy by showing how various of Scheler's major themes are systematically interrelated .
The starting point of Scheler's social philosophy is the problem of intersubjectivity, which, for Scheler, can only be understood from an anthropological perspective. It is because human beings behave sympathetically towards one another through the expressive behaviour visible on their bodies that they can understand one another. It is only because human beings are linked together by the bond of vital love, only because their feelings can act on others in the expression of their bodies and become comprehensible, that human intersubjectivity is possible. Human beings are bound together by the various forms of sympathy, by shared feeling and by compassionate participation in the lives of others. In Scheler's social philosophy, it is not only the human being who is involved. In contrast to many other social philosophies, Scheler thinks of the living being, the human being, as being in vital contact with the living nature around him, this contact being thought of as a particular form of participation (understood in the classical sense of "being part of something"). In this way, Scheler succeeds in highlighting the interpenetration of the descriptive and normative dimensions of human existence, starting from the simple forms of the encounter.
Our aim is to understand the major sets of problems discussed here - love, life, sympathy, nature, sociology, solidarity - in their interaction. To do this, we want to distinguish epistemological, ontological and metaphysical perspectives much more strongly than in current research and show that a full understanding of Scheler's social philosophy, conceived as a system, is only possible if these three perspectives are clearly distinguished and considered in their respective right. The reconstruction of Scheler's social philosophy is done with the intention of showing that it has great potential to make an important contribution to the great pressing questions of our time, but above all to set them in context. These include, on the one hand, theoretical questions about the nature of empathy and compassion, the fundamental importance of vital sympathy (resonance), shared feelings, feelings of protection and exclusion (shame and resentment), and, on the other hand, practical questions about how solidarity is possible in highly complex and socially differentiated societies, and how we can think about our relationship with nature in ways other than simply in terms of cost-benefit calculations.