FENOMENOLOŠKA TANATOLOGIJA MAKSA ŠELERA
Max Scheller’s phenomenological thanatology

Summary/Abstract: Max Scheler is credited with the first elaborated thanatology within the phenomenological tradition. Although it is primarily a matter of manuscripts and fragments, Scheler’s thanatology is very systematic. It also encompasses a phenomenology of the post-mortem state, or more precisely, of what it means to ‘live on’. Scheler’s phenomenological thanatology focuses on the ‘intuitive fact of death’, or death as the experiential background of life. Unlike many other phenomenologies of death, Scheler does not start from the death of the Other, but from our own death, drawing on the phenomenon of ageing and the temporality of human life. Furthermore, Scheler’s thanatology includes historical analyses, as well as a consideration of the relationship of non-European cultures to death. It is in this context that the distinction between the normal and the pathological repression of death appears. Having critically analyzed Scheler’s thanatology from 1911 to 1916, the article pays particular attention to the lectures of 1923-1924, which are characterised by a metaphysical attitude towards the spiritual dimension of death (and immortality).

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