Perception of someone else’s/other psychic life. N.o. Losskij and M. Scheler

Abstract

The paper compares N. Lossky’s and M. Scheler’s positions regarding an issue of understanding the psychic life of others. Two presuppositions unite them, albeit formally. The first is the another’s self reality, the second is the possibility of direct knowledge of someone else’s psychic life. There are three their significant substantive differences: 1. The rank of issues: for Lossky, knowledge about someone else’s psychic life is a special case of knowledge about the external world; for Scheler, on the contrary, a knowledge of someone else’s ego is the primary and deepest one. 2. For Lossky, observation gives access to the reality of someone else’s Ego; For Scheler, observation is not a phenomenological experience at all. 3. Lossky proceeds from the difference of experience and observation, and also from the difference in self and others’ psychic life; Scheler proceeds from the metaphysical hypothesis of the flow of experiences that is indifferent to the I-YoU.