Abstract
Scheler’s philosophical anthropology is introduced and applied to an exploration of how humans are oriented towards value and experience them on several levels, each of which is made a theme of analysis. The highest level, that is, the one in which values of all kinds are primordially and universally given to human emotions is love and hate. The next level is that of the fundamental moral tenor; then sympathy; then milieu and the moral milieu. These condition our receptivity to values, but they do not determine their content. The question then arises as to whether human being can escape this structural openness to value and achieve moral autonomy. Hartmann’s and Scheler’s contributions to the question of freedom and determinism are discussed and criticized, but no resolution of the problem is obtained here. The uncertain question of human autonomy and moral responsibility will be pursued throughout this work.
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Notes
- 1.
Gesammelte Werke, Band 1, 11.
- 2.
Cf. for Scheler’s doctrine that philosophy properly aspires to a global vision of things, “Die Formen des Wissens und die Bildung,” in Philosophische Weltanschauungen, Gesammelte Werke, Band 9, 85 ff.
- 3.
On the Eternal in Man, preface to the First German Edition, p. 13. Vom Ewigen im Menschen, Gesammelte Werke, Band 5.
- 4.
Cf. Manfred Frings, Person und Dasein: Zur Frage der Ontologie des Wertseins (Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1969).
- 5.
“Mensch und Geschichte,” in Philosophische Weltanschauung, Gesammelte Werke, Band 9.
- 6.
In Scheler’s view, openness to the world as ontic reality is achieved by the drives; existence as such is given in the phenomenon of resistance to the drives. Animals live in an environment determined by the existent objects that resist their drives or are the objects of them; not having spirit, animals are unable to perform acts of ideation and thereby thrust themselves beyond the environment into a world of objects carrying meanings and values.
- 7.
Cf. the posthumous essay “Ordo Amoris,” Gesammelte Werke, Band 10.
- 8.
For an excellent analysis of the concept of the Ordo amoris as “doppeldeutig und doppelsinnig”, cf. Angelika Sander. Max Scheler zur Einführung (Hamburg: Junius, 2001), 62–74.
- 9.
Hartmann uses the term “ethos” as approximately equivalent to Scheler’s “Ordo amoris.” Scheler generally reserves the term “ethos” (or plural “ethea”) for the value-systems that function in persons and groups, while the Ordo amoris is reserved for the value-orientation of individuals and groups that “found” their ethea, that is, love and its order of valuing is the noetic ground of the possibility of perceiving the world as shot through with value-objects in an order of relative worth.
- 10.
Cf. Formalism, 255; “Ordo Amoris,” op. cit., 359: “Thus the object of the idea of God … just for the sake of this essential character of all love lies at the foundation of the thought of an Ordo amoris.”
- 11.
“Der Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen,” Gesammelte Werke, Band 3, 33–147. Translation: Ressentiment (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1994).
- 12.
“Ordo Amoris,” op. cit., 348.
- 13.
For an analysis of the concept of fate and calling in Scheler, cf. Eugene Kelly, “Der Begriff des Schicksals im Denken Max Schelers,” in Ursprung des Denkens – Denken des Ursprungs, ed. Christian Bermes et al. (Bonn: Bouvier, 1998).
- 14.
“Ordo Amoris,” op. cit., 351. Thus, there is necessarily a subjective element in moral judgment. This fact will relate to the conception we will eventually develop of obligation and virtue in material value-ethics.
- 15.
Cf. “Zum Phänomen des Tragischen,” Gesammelte Werke, Band 3.
- 16.
Scheler’s position appears to be that a person’s Ordo amoris is not subject to his will. Whether he believes that a man’s basic moral tenor is subject to his will is, as we will examine in 3.3 below, uncertain.
- 17.
The articulated phenomenon of sympathy was the subject of a long early essay, Zur Phänomenologie und Theorie der Sympathiegefühle und von Liebe und Haβ (Halle: Niemeyer, 1913), which Scheler eventually developed as one of his greatest phenomenological studies, Wesen und Formen der Sympathie (Gesammelte Werke, Band 7).
- 18.
In his discussions of this phenomenon, Scheler adverts frequently to the work of Jakob von Uexküll, especially to his Umwelt und Innnenwelt der Tiere (1906), which rewards reading even today for its shrewd observations of living things. Its thoroughly secular scientific world-view is, however, anti-Darwinian.
- 19.
These terms appear at various points in Scheler’s writing, but they are not adequately distinguished. It is unclear to this reader how the value-milieu of a person differs from the milieu simpliciter, insofar as objects in a milieu always bear some reference to a value.
- 20.
Cf. “Der Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen,” Gesammelte Werke, op. cit., 43.
- 21.
Gesammelte Werke 10, 155–177.
- 22.
Scheler notes (Formalism, 206) that in the absence of a felt ability to do something, Kant’s proposition, “You can, for you ought,” becomes at best a readiness to repeat an act of duty once it has been done. “To be able” is the sense of capacity to do one’s duty prior to undertaking the obligation. The lack of confidence in such ability, Hartmann notes, is why the road to hell is paved with good intentions (Ethics I, 280): inconsistency between what one intends to do at one time and what one later feels himself not able to do.
- 23.
Gesammelte Werke, Band 10, 157.
- 24.
Cf. The Human Place in the Cosmos, op. cit., 37f.
- 25.
Gesammelte Werke, Band 10, 164.
- 26.
For a study of Hartmann’s analysis of the problem of freedom and his critique of Kant’s position on this issue, cf. Jäger, Richard. Zur Lehre von der Freiheit des Willens bei Kant und Nicolai Hartmann (Nürnberg: s.n., 1966).
- 27.
Hartmann uses the term “antinomy” as a borrowing from metaphysics. Although he does not claim that the term applies in literal fashion to oppositions between values, he finds the metaphorical application of it to axiology illuminating.
References
Frings, Manfred S. 1969. Person und Dasein: Zur Frage der Ontologie des Wertseins. Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff.
Kelly, Eugene. 1998. Der Begriff des Schicksals im Denken Max Schellers. In Ursprung des Denkens – Denken des Ursprungs, ed. Christian Bermes et al. Bonn: Bouvier.
Sander, Angelika. 2001. Max Scheler zur Einführung. Hamburg: Junius.
Band 1: Frühe Schriften (1971). Edited M.S. Frings.
Band 3: Vom Umsturz der Werte (1955, 1972). Edited by M. Scheler
Band 5: Vom Ewigen im Menschen (1954, 1968). Edited by M. Scheler.
Band 7: Wesen und Formen der Sympathie – Die deutsche Philosophie der Gegenwart (1973). Edited by M.S. Frings.
Band 9: Späte Schriften (1975). Edited by M.S. Frings.
Band 10: Schriften aus dem Nachlaß. Band 1, Zur Ethik und Erkenntnislehre (1957). Edited by M. Scheler.
Jäger, Richard. 1966. Zur Lehre von der Freiheit des Willens bei Kant und Nicolai Hartmann. Nürnberg: s.n.
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Kelly, E. (2011). The Orientation of Human Beings Toward Value. 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_3
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