Ordo amoris és amor inordinatus. A szeretet két fogalma Max Scheler etikájában

Abstract

In my paper, I examine one of the central notions of Scheler’s philosophy, the concept of love. Focusing on its ethical context, I attempt to disclose the significance of love for ethics. Accordingly, in the first part, I outline Scheler’s material ethics of value and situate love in its context. I conclude that the structure of love corresponds to the objective world of values and is arranged according to it. Morally justified love is equivalent to well-ordered love. Nevertheless, in Scheler’s writings, another idea of love occurs that is different from the one mentioned above. This alternative concept seems to be better grounded in experience and more phenomenological, yet incompatible with the other notion and Scheler’s value theory. In the second part, I reconstruct this other conception of love characterized by spontaneity, creativity, and „unorderedness” and discover the beginning of an alternative ethics based thereon.