 Scheler’s analysis and justification of German aggression leading to the war is confused for many reasons, many of which Scheler himself acknowledges in his later writings. A central confusion Scheler recognizes concerns the meaning and the possibility of renewal. Renewal, as Scheler writes later, only takes place through an act of repentance and thus can never be motivated by hatred. Scheler writes specifically with respect to the possibility of a political reconstruction that what is necessary is a collective proclamation of guilt, not merely for the war, but also for the cultural depression and value degradation for which every member of the German and European community is responsible (GW V, 416). Acts of repentance, individual or collective, assume a moral transformation. Whereas war finds its resource for renewal through the violent conflict with the enemy, repentance grounds its renewal in the ethical insight into the person I ought to be. The act of repentance and the expression of guilt are acts of disclosure, revealing what kind of person one ought to be in contrast to the kind of person one has been. These acts demonstrate that the person has become a more loving human being. Transformation, either for the individual or for a people, is motivated by this moral ideal disclosed in the act of repentance.