Giving form to life according to Max Scheler

Precisely at the heart of his most mature phenomenological work, Der Formalismus in der Ethik und die materiale Wertethik, in the section “Fühlen und Gefühle”, dedicated to showing the existence of an “ordre du coeur”, an affective intentionality on the same level as cogitative intentionality, Max Scheler brings up “the class of the intentional affective functions”. The affective intentional functions belong in the ambit of that “by means of and because of” which the intentional acts of the spirit can effective relate themselves with object-entities, reaching them not only on the plane of ideal intentioning but also in reality. According to Scheler functionalization is a spontaneous behaviour of the living spirit: nourishing itself with cogitative, axiological and volitional “essences”, spirit acquires and develops the variety of its form of act, becoming ever more capable of interacting with the other spirits and with extramental reality. Together with intentional and functional praxes, Scheler examines work too. Human perception is represented by Scheler as the cooperation of vital and spiritual force.