Abstract

In the dramatic context of the Weimar Republic in the 1920s, Scheler developed the crucial theme of the need for the creation of a new ruling class, a political-cultural elite. Despite its difficulty, which is linked to the effectuality of the Modern, in certain ways Scheler’s proposal reflects a revival of the ancient Aristotelian manner of seeing politics as an art of ruling. An art that is not seen as the exercising of power based on a relationship of command and obedience but as the harmonization of the social differences that belong to human beings owing to their nature, and that are a part of the political community: an idea of a political-social world (which is also distant and irreversible as regards its historical fulfilment), in which a principle prevails that is tied to the organic concept of a correct guide of political society which requires first and foremost areth*, excellence and phronesis, the practical wisdom of those who are ruling. Max Scheler draws on all of this against the background of his own metaphysics, in a concept of global government that is indissolubly linked to that of solidarity as an indispensable premise for the formation of a political ruling elite that is up to such epochal challenges.