Pace e guerra nel pensiero di Max Scheler

Abstract

The inception of World War I produced enthusiastic reactions all over Europe, for different and sometimes opposite reasons, from intellectuals and political leaders beloinging to very differentiated political areas. The five years that followed the summer of 1914, with their unbearable weight of destruction and extermination, delivered a very strong reply to that enthusiasm, and sparked a new set of reflections on political violence and on the value of peace. Max Scheler participated in both the season of exhilaration, in 1914-1915, and in the difficult process of post-war reinterpretation of political violence, in the 1920s. Tracing certain aspects of Scheler’s intellectual and political elaborations is therefore useful to understand part of the complex cultural legacy of the conflict.