Max Scheler e l'élite politica

In the dramatic context of the Weimar Republic in the 1920s, Scheler developed the crucial theme of the need for the creation of new a ruling class, a political-cultural élite. 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 harmonisation of the social differences that belong to men 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 a political society which requires first and foremost arethé, 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 élite that is up to such epochal challenges.