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On Feeling, Knowing, and Valuing

Selected Writings

Edited and with an Introduction by Harold Bershady
One of the pioneers of modern sociology, Max Scheler (1874-
1928) ranks with Max Weber, Edmund Husserl, and Ernst
Troeltsch as being among the most brilliant minds of his
generation. Yet Scheler is now known chiefly for his
philosophy of religion, despite his groundbreaking work in
the sociology of knowledge, the sociology of emotions, and
phenomenological sociology. This volume comprises some of
Scheler’s most interesting work—including an analysis of the
role of sentiments in social interaction, a sociology of
knowledge rooted in global social and cultural comparisons,
and a cross-cultural theory of values—and identifies some of
his important contributions to the discussion of issues at
the forefront of the social sciences today.

Editor Harold J. Bershady provides a richly detailed
biographical portrait of Scheler, as well as an incisive
analysis of how his work extends and integrates problems of
theory and method addressed by Durkheim, Weber, and Parsons,
among others.

Harold J. Bershady, professor of sociology at the University
of Pennsylvania, is the author of Ideology and Social
Knowledge and the editor of Social Class and
Democratic Leadership.

Heritage of Sociology series

278 pages | 6 x 9 | © 1992

Heritage of Sociology Series

Philosophy: Philosophy of Society

Sociology: History of Sociology

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction by Harold J. Bershady
I. The Emotions and Social Life
1. The Planes of Feeling
2. Community of Feeling, Fellow Feeling, Vicarious Feeling, Emotional Infection
3. Emotional Identification
4. Fellow Feeling, Benevolence, Forms and Kind of Love
5. The Meaning of Suffering
6. Negative Feelings and the Destruction of Values: Ressentiment
II. Knowledge and Social Life
7. Love and Knowledge
8. Problems of a Sociology of Knowledge
9. Formal Problems of the Sociology of Knowledge
III. Values and Social Life
10. The Spheres of Values
11. The Experience of the Value Nature of the Collectivity
12. The Structure of Values and Their Historical Variations
Bibliography
Index of Names
Index of Subjects

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