Max Scheler Quotes

• All the seemingly positive valuations and judgments of ressentiment are hidden devaluations and negations.

  Max Scheler

  Judgment, Valuation, Negation

  Max Scheler, Harold J. Bershady (1992). “On Feeling, Knowing, and Valuing: Selected Writings”, p.132, University of Chicago Press

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• The purpose of art is... to press forward into the whole of the external world and the soul, to see and communicate those objective realities within it which rule and convention have hitherto concealed.

  Max Scheler

  Art, Reality, Soul

  Max Scheler (2017). “The Nature of Sympathy”, p.388, Routledge

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• It is peculiar to “ressentiment criticism” that it does not seriously desire that its demands be fulfilled. It does not want to cure the evil. The evil is merely the pretext for the criticism.

  Max Scheler

  Evil, Criticism, Desire

  Max Scheler, Harold J. Bershady (1992). “On Feeling, Knowing, and Valuing: Selected Writings”, p.121, University of Chicago Press

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• Ressentiment is a self-poisoning of the mind which has quite definite causes and consequences. It is a lasting mental attitude, caused by the systematic repression of certain emotions and affects which, as such are normal components of human nature. Their repression leads to the constant tendency to indulge in certain kinds of value delusions and corresponding value judgments. The emotions and affects primarily concerned are revenge, hatred, malice, envy, the impulse to detract, and spite.

  Max Scheler

  Revenge, Attitude, Self

  Max Scheler, Harold J. Bershady (1992). “On Feeling, Knowing, and Valuing: Selected Writings”, p.117, University of Chicago Press

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• If the awareness of our limitations begins to limit or to dim our value consciousness as well—as happens, for instance, in old age with regard to the values of youth—then we have already started the movement of devaluation which will end with the defamation of the world and all its values. Only a timely act of resignation can deliver us from this tendency toward self-delusion.

  Max Scheler

  Self, Age, Movement

  Max Scheler, Harold J. Bershady (1992). “On Feeling, Knowing, and Valuing: Selected Writings”, p.126, University of Chicago Press

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• Whenever convictions are not arrived at by direct contact with the world and the objects themselves, but indirectly through a critique of the opinions of others, the processes of thinking are impregnated with ressentiment. The establishment of "criteria" for testing the correctness of opinions then becomes the most important task. Genuine and fruitful criticism judges all opinions with reference to the object itself. Ressentiment criticism, on the contrary, accepts no "object" that has not stood the test of criticism

  Max Scheler

  Thinking, Judging, Criticism

  Max Scheler, Harold J. Bershady (1992). “On Feeling, Knowing, and Valuing: Selected Writings”, p.132, University of Chicago Press

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• Ressentiment is always to some degree a determinant of the romantic type of mind. At least this is so when the romantic nostalgia for some past era (Hellas, the Middle Ages, etc.) is not primarily based on the values of that period, but on the wish to escape from the present. Then all praise of the “past” has the implied purpose of downgrading present-day reality.

  Max Scheler

  Past, Reality, Mind

  Max Scheler, Harold J. Bershady (1992). “On Feeling, Knowing, and Valuing: Selected Writings”, p.132, University of Chicago Press

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