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(1993) Japanese and Western phenomenology, Dordrecht, Springer.

Is Scheler's ethic an ethic of virtue?

Philip Blosser

pp. 147-159

In addressing the question at issue, I consider (1) Scheler's distinction between Kant's "ethics of duty" and his own "ethics of insight"; (2) Kant's weakened conceptions of moral virtue and vice, which are roughly equivalent to Aristotle's encratês and akratês, disqualify his ethic as a classical ethic of virtue; (3) Scheler's phenomenological articulation of moral virtue as a moral disposition (Gesinnung); and (4) whether Scheler develops his theory so as to provide anything like a view of "man-as-he-could-be-if-he-realized-his-telos," which Alasdair Maclntyre finds in classical virtue-ethics. I conclude that Scheler's ethic has some of the basic features of classical ethics of virtue, but also some of the basic difficulties of "post-aretaic" ethics.

Publication details

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-015-8218-6_10

Full citation:

Blosser, P. (1993)., Is Scheler's ethic an ethic of virtue?, in P. Blosser, E. Shimomissé, L. Embree & H. Kojima (eds.), Japanese and Western phenomenology, Dordrecht, Springer, pp. 147-159.

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