“The highest and ultimate personality values are declared to be independent of contrasts like rich and poor, healthy and sick, etc. The world had become accustomed to considering the social hierarchy, based on status, wealth, vital strength, and power, as an exact image of the ultimate values of morality and personality. The only way to disclose the discovery of anew and higher sphere of being and life, of the “kingdom of God” whose order is independent of that worldly and vital hierarchy, was to stress the vanity of the old values in this higher order.”

—  Max Scheler

Source: Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912), L. Coser, trans. (1961), p. 98

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Max Scheler48
German philosopher 1874–1928

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