 Scheler’s investigation into this primordial background begins at the affective or emotional level of experience. The affective life precedes the intellectual life. In the case of the experience of others, there is an affective or emotional understanding of others prior to any intellectual or rational understanding. The work dedicated to this investigation is Scheler’s The Nature of Sympathy (original German title, Wesen und Formen der Sympathie literally means the Essence and Forms of Sympathy). His main intent in this work was to show that it is impossible to derive an ethic from merely shared feelings and consequently to show that ethics assumes as original an intention of love. In order to demonstrate this point, Scheler provides a detailed analysis of the different types of shared feelings, which are themselves irreducible to loving.