BETWEEN PHENOMENOLOGY AND THEOLOGY. ON THE INSPIRATIONS OF SCHELERS LATE PHILOSOPHICAL ANTHROPOLOGY

An investigation of Max Scheler's late anthropological position reveals the crucial influence of Christian thought on his basic intuitions, in spite of his declared rupture with Catholicism. Direct references to the ascetic ideal, and more implicit references to the doctrine of original sin and the notions of loving God and man as 'imago Dei', all re-interpreted and 'phenomenologised', reveal a new attempt to ground eidology upon the framework of phenomenologically restored Augustinianism. The article sheds light on the connections between theology and phenomenology that motivated Scheler's voluntaristically inclined metaphysics and led him to the idea of a 'theologically founded superhumanity'. The present interpretation reconstructs first and foremost the standpoint of Felix Hammer (1972) and emphasizes the continuity in Scheler's philosophical development.