Moral Consciousness and «Personal Truth» according to Max Scheler

Abstract

In these pages, we intend to expound on how Max Scheler conceives moral consciousness. In order to achieve it, wefollow his discourse, sketching that particular way of knowing the good by means of two features: absolute objectivity and individual subjectivity. The manner that these two characteristics are combined —more specifically, integrated— is, without doubt, subject to confusions. Scheler deals with the misunderstandings, enabling him to outline even more precisely the nature of moral consciousness. But Scheler is, moreover, a phenomenologist, and that means among other things— he always keeps in mind the intentional relation between acts and objects. The intentional relation means that the unique contents of consciousness correspond to some unique acts, with a subject as their unity. Finally, we will shed light on how Scheler conceives the same structure for the sphere of truth in general.