Max Scheler’s Phenomenological Criticism of Kant’s Formal System

To solve a philosophical problem, the philosopher needs to recognize the problem first. According to an old prevalent notion, feeling must be subordinate to reason. Traditionally, knowledge, and specifically morality, considered to be formal and rational, as a priori, or experiential and emotional, as relative. Hence a philosopher like Immanuel Kant, through the formal– material classification considers the formal reason as the only way to gain absolutely certain knowledge. Max Scheler opposes this formal rationalism. Formalism of Kant’s philosophical system is the major challenge to which Scheler faces up. Hence he tries to stand against Kant’s formal system by means of an informal system which is based on a kind of phenomenology that neither is mixed with relativism and empricism nor needs to accept the formal rationalism. This article is going to clarify Scheler’s position on Kant’s formal rationalism.