Abstract

This article examines some of Scheler's short writings, written near the end of and shortly after the First World War. Scheler applied his phenomenology of social forms, developed in “Formalism in Ethics,” especially that of the “life community,” which has its model in the true and ancient Christian idea of community, to the problem of the spiritual and intellectual reconstruction of Europe, Germany, and the Christian churches after the end of the First World War in the hope that this would ease the tensions between them. However, the changed social, political and economic conditions after the war made Scheler's analyses and suggestions irrelevant, and Scheler looked for new ways to achieve the social engagement of philosophy.