Max Scheler

First published Thu Dec 8, 2011

"As a means to reawaken a sense of wonder, Scheler called for a rehabilitation of virtue, in particular the virtues of humility and reverence (GW III, 15). The philosopher lives in reverence of the world, an astonishment in a world of inexhaustible depth and secrets (GW III, 26).

Philosophical thought attends to the core meaning of knowledge as a Seinsverhältnis, an ontological relation. Knowledge, according to Scheler, is a relation of participation of a being in the Sosein, the being thus and so, of another being (GW VIII, 203). It is the humble divesting of oneself of oneself that opens one up to the other (GW VIII, 204) and presupposes the loving willingness to be open to that which is other.

Following Augustine, Scheler takes love as the foundation for knowledge, taking the affective and emotional life and the precondition for the rational (GW VI, 87). Before the world is known, it is first given. The loving human being is this openness to the world, to that which is other. This openness demonstrates that there is a moral precondition for knowledge. Knowledge is possible only for a loving being (GW V, 83). This love is the movement of transcendence, a going beyond oneself, an opening to ever richer meaning. Love is always already directed to the infinite, to absolute value and being (GW V, 90). With this understanding of the relation of love to knowledge, Scheler declares that “knowledge is ultimately from the divine and for the divine” (GW VIII, 211)." (My Bold & Italics)

READ MORE

3. Value Personalism

Scheler's first and most influential work in phenomenology was his study of ethics, Formalism in Ethics and a Non-Formal (or Material) Ethics of Value. This work was motivated in part by a critique of the highly scientific or formalistic approaches to ethics introduced by Immanuel Kant and then later developed by the Neo-Kantians during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Kant's influence on Scheler's thought cannot be underestimated. As is the case for Kant, Scheler rejects both utilitarianism and eudiamonism, and holds that ethics rests upon an a priori, an obligation non-relative to future consequences or happiness. For Kant, the a priori is expressed in the form of a categorical imperative, an imperative that is universalizable. For Scheler, such a formulation of the a priori is abstract and as a consequence fails to account for both the unique obligation one has to another person and the unique call to responsibility given in the ethical imperative (GW II, 34). The ethical imperative, Scheler insists, is given as what one ought necessarily do, but it is also experienced as what ‘I’ and not merely anyone ought to do (GW II, 94).(My Bold & Italics)

READ MORE

7. Philosophical Anthropology and Metaphysics

Philosophical anthropology is the attempt to provide a unified account of the meaning of the human being. In a much earlier work, The Idea of the Human Being, Scheler writes that the human being is undefinable (GW III, 186). The human being is no thing, but rather a “becoming,” a “between,” “a self-transcending being.” An attempt at a unified account is thus not a search of a definition, but rather an attempt to clarify exactly that which makes the human being undefinable, that which reveals human being as a human becoming. A philosophical anthropology is historical in as much as it investigates the dominant worldviews that harbor a basic insight in the meaning of being human. The three dominant insights that Scheler wishes to unify are the human being as “tool maker” (homo faber), the insight of Darwinian evolution and science, the human being as rational animal, the insight directing the ancient Greek worldview, and human being as child of God, the insight of the Judeo-Christian worldview. Each insight, for Scheler, reveals a peculiar aspect of the human being and in this sense each is a valid insight. The problem is that no one has yet to show how these insights are united to form singular whole, the unity that is the human being.

......Scheler describes the human being as the meeting point of two distinct movements (GW IX, 70). These movements are life-urge (Lebensdrang) and spirit (Geist). This distinction between these two movements follows the distinction between the real and ideal factors introduced in the sociology of knowledge. It is only in the human being that life and spirit find themselves in a process of becoming unified. In the human being, life is becoming spiritualized and spirit is becoming vitalized and embodied. Every act of the human being participates in this dual process, a process that is never completed, but recreated in every new act. Either this process participates in the realization of the deeper, spiritual values, or it is a movement toward bestialization, a realization of the more shallow and superficial values.

Life-urge is that movement found in every living being, the movement or drive to seek the greatest amount of fulfillment and vivacity with the least amount of resistance. This urge can be found in the distinct stages of evolution of life, whether in the most basic of living organism or in the higher primates and human beings. It expresses itself in the instinctual drives as well as the highly sophisticated intelligence needed to solve problems related to survival in an environment. Scheler argues in his work, Cognition and Work, that pragmatism has offered to date the best and most robust account of the human being as a living being, a being interacting with and learning from its environment.

Living beings relate to their environment and to other living beings erotically, through a type of cosmic love disclosed through the person of Saint Francis of Assisi (GW VIII, 274). It is a seeking from others of the most vivacious and beautiful of lives. A living being desires not merely to live, but to live most fully. As living beings, human beings bear an erotic relation to the natural world. This loving relation to other living beings affords the human being a connection to others as fellow living beings, an understanding of the other as living, as sharing in an environment. Having a body affords the human being a privileged access to the living world and environment, an access threatened by the mechanization of nature and the modern drive to dominate it.

What it means to be a living being takes on a much more complex and elevated significance in Scheler's later work and marks a genuinely new avenue of investigation for him. Yet, the question concerning the meaning of the human being remains very much the same. Is the human being merely an intelligent living being? Is the difference between the human being and the animal world one of degree or is it a difference of kind? Is there anything “special” or unique of the being of human being? The answer to these questions is decisive for Scheler. At stake is the meaning of the human being as person, as of absolute value. In his philosophical anthropology, Scheler attempts to demonstrate that the human being also participates in the movement of spirit and that spirit is essentially different from the movement of life. The human being has a “special” place in the cosmos because the human being participates in both the movement of life and spirit, because the human being is an embodied spirit, i.e., a finite person.

(My Bold & Italics)

READ MORE