SCHELER AND CLAUSS ON THE POSSIBILITY OF A PHENOMENOLOGICAL THEORY OF RACE
SCHELER AND CLAUSS ON THE POSSIBILITY OF A PHENOMENOLOGICAL THEORY OF RACE

Summary/Abstract: This paper attempts to answer questions about, first, the historical motives which brought the “race” issue into the focus of phenomenological reflection, and, secondly, the theoretical grounding for calling such reflection “phenomenological.”1 The basis for this reconstruction will be the psychological race theory developed in the 1920s and 30s by Ludwig Ferdinand Clauss, a somewhat forgotten student of Edmund Husserl, and its rooting in the history of the phenomenological movement. Discussed will be both, the theory’s historical background—which, in keeping with the paper’s main thesis, is best-expressed by Max Scheler’s reflections on “European patriotism”—and its relation to Husserl’s concept of phenomenology as a “strictly scientific philosophy.”

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