Max Scheler (1874–1928) Centennial Essays

182 Pages·1974·3.47 MB·English

by  Arthur R. Luther (auth.), Manfred S. Frings (eds.)

MAX SCHELER (1874-1928)
CENTENNIAL ESSAYS
MAX SCHELER (1874-1928)
CENTENNIAL ESSAYS
Edited by
MANFRED S. FRINGS
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MARTINUS NIJHOF / THE HAGUE / 1974
ISBN-13: 978-94-011-6436-8 e-ISBN-13: 978-94-011-6434-4
001: 10.1007/978-94-011-6434-4
© 1974 by Martinus Nijhoff. The Hague, Netherlands
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1974
All rights reserved, including the right to translate or
to reproduce this book or parts thereof in any form
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Foreword VII
Arthur R. Luther, The Articulated Unity of Being in Scheler's
Phenomenology. Basic Drive and Spirit .
Roger L. Funk, Thought, Values, and Action. 43
Parvis Emad, Person, Death, and Wodd . 58
F. J. Smith, Peace and Pacifism. 85
Max Scheler, Metaphysics and Art. Translated by Manfred
S. Frings 101
Max Scheler, The Meaning of Suffering. Translated by Daniel
Liderbach, S.J. 121
Bibliography (1963-1974) 165
Index of Names 175
FOREWORD
It is the purpose of these essays to commemorate the one hundredth
birthday of the philosopher Max Scheler. On this centennial occasion
it may be appropriate to recall the first two major works of the
philosopher's life.
Scheler is known mostly as the author of a monumental work
on ethics, entitled: Der Formalismus in der Ethik und die materiale
Wertethik (Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values),
which is the only existing foundation of ethics written by a European
philosopher in this century. Although its two parts were published
separately (1913/1916) because of circumstances during World War I,
all manuscripts had been finished by Scheler prior to the outbreak
of the war. His ethics has been translated into various languages,
including a recent translation in English.
In the same year (1913) Scheler also published another major work
which dealt with the phenomenology of sympathetic feelings, and
which is translated into English under the title of the enlarged second
and following editions: The Nature of Sympathy.
Both these foundational works, Formalism in Ethics and the
phenomenology of sympathetic feelings, then, appeared in the same
year when Edmund Husserl had completed and published his own
well known Ideas I. A close look at these works mentioned and
published in the same year reveals that Max Scheler's concept of
the function, purpose, and significance of phenomenology, which
area of research spread in various places in Germany at the beginning
of this century, is at bottom different from that of Husserl's. Apart
from Scheler's concern to investigate emotional spheres of conscious
ness with regard to a novel conceptualization of the essence of man,
world and God; and apart from the distinctly different views of
Scheler's in matters of the ego in his two early works cited and in
VIII FOREWORD
matters of the significance he attributed to the lived body at that
time, the basic point of difference between Scheler and Husserl
is to be seen in their conceptualization of reality. Whereas Husserl,
in nuce, constituted reality in "thetic", of "positional" consciousness,
our thinker found it to be rooted in the vital accomplishment of
dynamic factors in drives and unlocalizable (individual and uni
versal) life-centers resisting against factors outside them. For life
centers can only "be" when they are able to "resist" what is outside
them, in contrast to inanimate force-centers (energy) which are
subject at least to statistical laws. Ultimate reality, therefore, is for
Scheler constituted in the resistance of dynamic, vital factors, and
not a constitutive result of consciousness as it is for Husserlians.
What is called the "mind" can account only for the "thisness" of
ob-jects, not for their there-being, or reality. And inasmuch as Scheler
held fast to his concept of reality as resistance in later works it became
an ingredient part of his (hitherto unpublished) Philosophical Anthro
pology and Metaphysics. His conception of reality places Scheler
historically in line with Maine de Biran, Schelling, Driesch, Dilthey
and, cum grano salis, Nietzsche, notwithstanding basic differences
between him and those thinkers in other areas. For reality takes,
ultimately, its origin in what Scheler termed "Urge of Life", which
as both a meta-physical and meta-biological world-ground and well
of life, he conceived later as one accessible attribute of the Divine
which pulsates through life in general, man's life, and even through
highest forms of man's spiritual manifestation. Hence Scheler saw
man's mind in its syn-relatedness to life. But inasmuch as "mind"
accounts for the this ness of objects it is also the field of the mani
festation of the sphere of the Absolute in the very form of the existence
of mind-be it human, or divine-: the person. Neither consciousness,
nor an ego, are for our thinker the essence of man. Rather, it is their
form of existence, the person, that allows a possible and ever becoming
manifestation of the Divine in man and history. As Scheler already
held in his early works, phenomenology is not to be considered as
an end in itself, but can function successfully only when it provides
bases for metaphysics. In this respect Scheler's and Heidegger's
views on phenomenology have always been the same.
Throughout Scheler's writings there emerged five central themes
interwoven with one another: Love, Value, Person, World, and God.
All of these he treated from biological, sociological, phenomeno
logical, and metaphysical aspects as well as from foundations of the
FOREWORD IX
philosophy of religion. Shortly before his early death Scheler's
thinking began to culminate in a novel metaphysics and philosophical
anthropology which were to comprize a number of volumes each.
It can be expected that relevant manuscripts will be made available
in the German Collected Works in the relatively near future.
In Germany, at least, Scheler is also known to be the author of
many special studies involving the tendencies of the social and
historical life of his time. Indeed, Scheler's writings originated not
infrequently through direct contact with, and observation of, everyday
people. Among such special studies that are pertinent to our own
time are, for example, his "Resentment in the Development of
Morals", "The Future of Capitalism", "Problems of World Popu
lation", "National Ideas of Great Nations", "Spirit and Foundations
of Great Democracies", "On Women's Liberation", "Causes of
Hatred of Germans", "Psychology of Social-Security Hysteria",
"The Bourgeois", "Of Two German Deseases". During his last
years he was profoundly concerned with "politics and morals" and
especially with the importance of seeing the correct foundation
holding between morals and politics. In one of his last essays, entit
led: "The World Age of Adjustment", Scheler foresaw the increasing
historical process in this century that would bring East and West
closer, misunderstanding and turmoil, hardship and wars tragically
unavoidable in it. In those studies of social and historical life, Scheler
reveals a subtle grasp of the mind of the East, in particular that of
India, Buddhism, and China. It may not be a fortuitous fact that
there is an increasing interest in Scheler in Japan today.
The authors of these essays have gathered in this book to comme
morate a thinker who, by the many testimonies of his contemporaries
throughout Europe (such as Berdyaev, Heidegger, Ortega y Gasset),
has often been referred to as the most brilliant mind of his time.
In light of the fact that there is rather little known about Scheler
since the Collected Works are still far from being complete, these
essays, on the whole, do not claim to cover any larger sections of
Scheler's thought. Instead, each author has cast light on themes in
Scheler on the basis of his own expertise and independent selection.
So that Scheler also himself may speak to the reader, two transla
tions have been added: "Metaphysics and Art" (1923) and "The
Meaning of Suffering" (1916/23).
Grateful acknowledgment is made to Ms. Marilyn Nissim-Sabat,
doctoral candidate at De Paul University, for editorial assistance,
x
FOREWORD
and to Ms. Thalia Papachristos, graduate student at De Paul, for
valuable help in arranging the bibliography included.
The destiny of any philosophy, or book thereof, lies in its touch
with the essence of history, and that which makes history possible,
being.
De Paul University
Chicago, May 1973 M.S.F.
ARTIIUR R. LUTHER
THE ARTICULATED UNITY OF BEING
IN SCHELER'S PHENOMENOLOGY.
BASIC DRIVE AND SPIRIT
In articles and books on Scheler it is commonplace to mention the
difficulty of his thought and the language used to express it. The
difficulty is real, but I do not think that it is attributable to the in
completeness of his thought or to its intuitive character. On the
contrary, I would say that the intuitive character of Scheler's thought
reveals its completeness in a very concrete experiential way. A careful
reading of his works as a whole reveals an impressive consistency
of vision, a vision that is not without shadows, but a vision that,
precisely because of its shadows, will be recognized as one of the
most seminal visions of the twentieth century.
The difficulty of Scheler's thought and that which gives his vision
its shadows is rooted in the phenomenon he tries to clarify, man
himself, who in the twentieth century has become problematic to
himself. The problematic character of twentieth century man is the
profound and personal realization that, where man is concerned,
a rich diversity of theory has become available. But it is a diversity
of theory utterly lacking in intrinsic unity or meaning. As Scheler
says, in spite of the Judeo-Christian view of man, the Greek-ancient
view-and the more recent view of modern natural science, there
is still no unified view of man There is no view of man that is
1.
helping man to understand himself or his place in the universe in
any meaningful, truly human and personal, sense. Where man is
concerned confusion abounds.
1 Max Scheler, Die Stellung des Menschen im Kosmos (Miinchen: Francke
Verlag, 1962), 9. "So besitzen wir denn eine naturwissenschaftliche, eine philo
sophische und eine theologische Anthropologie, die sich nicht umeinander kiim
mern-eine einheitliche Idee Yom Menschen aber besitzen wir nicht". Also, Max
Scheler, Philosophische Weltanschauung (Bonn: Friedrich Cohen Verlag, 1929),
15-46.
2 ARTHUR R. LUTHER
It is this absence of a unified view of himself that has evoked a
gripping sense of urgency and anxiety in twentieth century man.
Scheler witnessed the First World War, a war that he understood
as involving all the peoples of the world. We have witnessed a Second
World War and an incredibly persistent continuity of war, which
has within it the real concrete possibility for the total destruction
of man and the world in which he lives. We have come to a point
in which we are living within the real possibility of totally destroying
ourselves without understanding in any meaningful sense who we are,
what it means to be in the world with other persons, or what place
and task we have in the universe surrounding us. The irony here is
obvious. But there is no future in indifference or in cynism, which
might, at this point of our history, be all too human. We must live,
either to die or to be.
Man has become problematic to himself. He has reached a point
where he does not know who he is, and knows that he does not know.
It could be that man is merely the result of natural forces and causes,
with no significant task to perform in a brute universe, locked within
the limiting conditions of physical space-time, whose ultimate end
is complete disintegration or annihilation; or it could be that man
is more than this. The question itself establishes the difficulty. On
what grounds can one decide the question and confront the difficulty?
There must be no presuppositions here, no fooling ourselves in our
decision. To think the question concerning man himself radically
means that there are no alternatives. One can only confront the
difficulty by opening oneself towards the phenomenon itself. Our
hope in this regard is that the phenomenon, man himself, is "fully"
itself, which means that in some sense it is "clear" in and of itself.
Because man is "clear" to himself in and of himself questions
concerning who man is and what his place in the universe is, are not
questions concerning theories about man. Man is not, and never
has been, a theory about man; man is simply and always himself,
in the full richness, concrete presence, and mystery of his be-ing. To
mistake theories about man for the phenomenon man is a dangerous
temptation, and to the extent that this temptation has been given
into, to that extent has confusion been added to confusion about
man for centuries. Moreover, to assume that one might simply extract
the core of all available theories about man, synthesize them, and
thus establish a unified view of man is also misleading and tends
towards confusion. A synthesis of available theories about man