Es sei an dieser Stelle Frau Maria Scheler fur die von ihr er- laubten Einblicke in den Nachlass ihres Mannes gedankt, ins- besondere fur die langen und eingehenden Gesprache, die mir fur die Erkenntnis der wahren Intentionen Max Schelers unerlasslich gewesen sind. Ich danke nochmals Herrn Professor Dr. Martin Heidegger fur die wertvollen Hinsweise bezuglich Max Schelers Aufnahme von Sein und Zeit. Fur einige Berichtigungen in der deutschen Ausdrucksweise, die dem Verfasser durch seine langjahrige Tatigkeit in Amerika einerseits, und durch den deutschen Sprachgebrauch Max Schelers und Martin Heideggers andererseits, erschwert wurde, danke ich Herrn Professor Dr. Wilhelm Dupre, De Paul University, Chicago, und Frau Dr. Ingeborg Schussler von der Universitat Koln. Fur einige technische Hilfe danke ich Herrn Professor Dr. Henry J. Koren, St. Leo College, Florida, und Herrn Professor Dr. K. H. Volkmann-Schluck, Universitat Koln. Chicago, im Februar rg6g M.S.F. EINLEITUNG Das Nichtgesagte eines Fragmentes gehort zu dem, was es sagt. Zu dem, was das Fragment Sein und Zeit (SZ) sagt, gehort das Offenbleiben einer Reihe von Fragen. Eine dieser Fragen lautet: "Was besagt ontologisch Wert"? Auf dem Boden der materialen Wertethik versteht sich diese Frage als eine nach der sittlichen Seinsweise der Person. Dies nicht nur, weil die Person ein aus- gezeichneter Trager von bestimmten Wertarten ist, sondern weil zum Menschen uberhaupt - gleich wie man ihn ontologisch freilegt - personales Wertsein gehort. Jede Ontologie vom Menschen muss deshalb dem Personsein und seiner sittlichen Seinsart Rechnung tragen.

Upon Scheler's death in 1928, Martin Heidegger remarked that he was the most important force in philosophy at the time. Jose Ortegay Gasset called Scheler 'the first man of the philosophical paradise.' ""The Human Place in the Cosmos"", the last of his works Scheler completed, is a pivotal piece in the development of his writing as a whole, marking a peculiar shift in his approach and thought. He had been asked to provide an initial sketch of his much larger works on philosophical anthropology and metaphysics - works he was not able to complete because of his early demise.Frings' new translation of this key work allows us to read and understand Scheler's thought within current philosophical debates and interests. The book addresses two main questions: What is the human being? And what is the place of the human being in the universe? Scheler responds to these questions within contexts of his projected larger works but not without reference to scientific research. He covers various levels of being: inorganic reality, organic reality (including plant life and psychological life), all the way up to practical intelligence and the spiritual dimension of human beings, and touching upon the holy.Negotiating two intertwined levels of being, life-energy ('impulsion') and 'spirit', this work marks not only a critical moment in the development of his own philosophy but also a significant contribution to the current discussions of continental and analytic philosophers on the nature of the person.

This book is designed to fill a long-standing gap in the general literature of 20th century philosophy in that it offers a comprehensive view of the philosophy of Max Scheler (1874-1928) and opens up substantial discussions that have hitherto been largely overlooked. The book is solely based on the original texts of the German Collected Edition as well as posthumous and untranslated materials. References to English translations have been made whenever available. The Mind of Max Scheler familiarizes the reader with strains of European thought that are rapidly gaining interest in the Americas, Asia, and Europe itself. Already the pivotal questions, "Who are we?" "What is a human being" reveal the relevance Scheler's thought has to the self-questioning stance that appears to mark this century's philosophy as a whole. He also presents us with a cosmic view of what it means to be human, and one is amazed at the scope of his approach that goes beyond his better known European contemporaries Heidegger, Husserl, Ortega, or philosophers of our present time. He addresses spurious value patterns that suffuse the age of capitalism and provides answers, among them, the gleaning of historical textures that are emerging toward the future and through which a lingering awareness of the eternal will eventually surface from the depths of human existence.