Nature of Sympathy

<p><em>The Nature of Sympathy</em> explores at different levels the social emotions of fellow-feeling the sense of identity love and hatred and traces their relationship to one another and to the values with which they are associated. Scheler criticizes other writers from Adam Smith to Freud who have argued that the sympathetic emotions derive from self-interested feelings or instincts. He reviews the evaluations of love and sympathy current in different historical periods and in different social and religious environments and concludes by outlining a theory of fellow-feeling as the primary source of our knowledge of one another.</p><p>A prolific writer and a stimulating thinker Max Scheler ranks second only to Husserl as a leading member of the German phenomenological school. Scheler's work lies mostly in the fields of ethics politics sociology and religion. He looked to the emotions believing them capable in their own quality of revealing the nature of the objects and more especially the values to which they are in principle directed.</p>