Abstract
The vertical table of values and disvalues according to their relative worth that was presented in Chap. 2 as part of Scheler’s phenomenology of cognitive acts of feeling and preference is now developed by Hartmann in several dimensions. He (1) distinguishes moral values and non-moral values; (2) studies how some of the latter’s contents causally condition the content of the former; (3) discovers kinds of modal, relational, and linear antinomies among values; (4) analyzes qualitative and quantitative oppositions among values; (5) extends Scheler’s scale of values in a horizontal direction, i.e., locates additional moral and non-moral values on each of Scheler’s five levels of values. A key to Hartmann’s strategy to fill out the “valuational spaces” in the table of values is his allowing the phenomenology of the moral sense to be guided at first by the ontological categories postulated by his metaphysics. On the side of the value-agent, dimensions of acting persons as bearers of moral obligation are revealed. The question of the individual and the collective agent is considered, specifically whether collective entities such as nations can carry moral predicates; this is a question that divided Scheler and Hartmann. The distinction between values and goods, and the non-moral values that condition the latter, is crucial for the transition to the phenomenology of moral action and moral obligation. Finally, the a priori relations that condition the material content of values are considered. Values are “intertwined” in a lawful way and the substance of these laws will eventually assist us in the examination of the question of the possible unity of the table of values.
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Notes
- 1.
Hartmann adds to this that the objects of knowledge are essentially independent of, indeed indifferent to, their being known. Scheler appears to hold that the notion of a realm of objects that cannot become objects of knowledge is simply incoherent. A necessary condition of being an object is that the object be knowable, even if it is unknown at present.
- 2.
We recall from our discussion in the previous chapter a similar argument in Scheler for the thesis that our knowledge of such abstract categories of reason as the principle of non-contradiction is derived from the essential self-identity of a thing with itself.
- 3.
To avoid ambiguity, “act” is used throughout the text to refer to the act of cognition, or an intentional act. “Action” is used to refer only to the execution of a human purpose.
- 4.
Scheler noted this peculiar moral phenomenon also: “An ethics which (like Kant’s), bases itself in the concept of the Ought, even more the Ought of duty, and in this Ought finds the primordial ethical phenomenon, can never do justice to the factual moral realm of values, for according to it in the very measure that the mere content of an Ought of duty becomes real, for example when an imperative, a command, a norm is realized by an action, the content no longer remains a ‘moral’ state of affairs.” Formalism, 185–86.
- 5.
- 6.
A contemporary reader will recognize in this antinomy the conflict Isaiah Berlin found in Leo Tolstoy. Cf. his classic essay, “The Hedgehog and the Fox,” Russian Thinkers (New York: Viking, 1978 [original edition 1948]).
- 7.
This was one of the problems attacked by Scheler’s doctoral dissertation, which we will examine later.
- 8.
Die Wissensformen und die Gesellschaft, Gesammelte Werke, Band 8, 55.
- 9.
Cf. “Nachwort der Herausgeberin,” Gesammelte Werke, Band 10.
- 10.
Cf. “Vom Sinn des Leides,” Gesammelte Werke, Band 6.
- 11.
Philip Blosser has criticized Scheler on his failure to consider moral values separate from non-moral values. Cf. Scheler’s Critique of Kant’s Ethics, op. cit., also “Moral and Nonmoral Values: A Problem in Scheler’s Ethics,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 48 (September 1987), 139–43.
- 12.
The values of the holy also include the value of reverence, which is carried by an act; sublimity appears in Kant’s “starry sky above.”
- 13.
Husserl was perhaps the first to stress this distinction; it was part of his refutation of hedonism. He accuses hedonism of confusing the two phenomena, imagining that the pleasure of realizing a value in action was the purpose of performing it, while in fact the purpose of the action was the realization of a value. As a result of this error, psychological hedonists could claim that all actions are driven by the desire for pleasure. This position of Husserl is consistent with that of Hartmann.
- 14.
For an account of the doctrine of “real” and ideal” factors in history, cf. Max Scheler, “Problems of a Sociology of Knowledge,” op. cit., especially Part One.
- 15.
To clarify this point consider that “life” is a value, the first of those that condition the content of moral values, but it is also an existential category; the axiological and the ontological elements are incommensurate, each possessing its own material and subject to essential laws of its own.
Bibliography
Blosser, Philip. 1987a. Moral and nonmoral values: A problem in Scheler’s ethics. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 48(September): 139–43.
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Kelly, E. (2011). Values and Moral Values. In: Material Ethics of Value: Max Scheler and Nicolai Hartmann. Phaenomenologica, vol 203. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-1845-6_4
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