LIEBE UND WERTE. SVILUPPI E LIMITI DELLA FENOMENOLOGIA SCHELERIANA DELL’AMORE

Federico Nicolosi

This paper explores the main directions taken by Max Scheler’s phenomenology of love, focusing on the essays Liebe und Erkenntnis (1915) and Ordo amoris (1914-1916) and discussing their peculiar ethic-assiological view of the phenomenon of love. I will then compare Scheler’s proposal with that of a later phenomenologist, Dietrich von Hildebrand, who gave a more specific ethic-theological reading of love in terms of «value response». Having analysed both the pros and cons of the theory of Wertantwort as presented in Hildebrand’s main work Das Wesen der Liebe, I will then approach a onto-phenomenological proposal which seeks to concile a metaphysical realism towards the known object (the beloved is there indipendently from me) with a non-phsycologist gnoseology that gives epistemic value to ‘illusions’ without just considering them some sort of a pathological condition having nothing to do with authentic love.