Abstract
It is the aim of material value-ethics to exhibit the a priori content peculiar to each virtue, and to extend our knowledge of the virtues as we extend our knowledge of the values in which they are founded. Hartmann’s phenomenology of the virtues has an historical orientation as a heuristic procedure, but their a priori content is independent of their historical appearance. He begins with a description of the Platonic and Aristotelian virtues, proceeds to the Christian virtues, and then to those which appeared only in modern times. The Aristotelian doctrine of the mean is given special consideration; Hartmann will supplement Aristotle by introducing the specific values that are opposed to the vices of which a given virtue is the mean, arguing that a virtue is a state of moral tension between four values. These oppositional relations among these four values/disvalues require a synthesis of them. Such a synthesis may assist us in coming to grips with material value-ethics’ rejection of obligation as the central category of ethics and its replacement not by a virtue-theory of morals, but an ethical personalism that grows equally out of virtue theory and the phenomenology of the person.
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Notes
- 1.
Scheler develops the Freudian concept of sublimation for this purpose. Cf. The Human Place in the Cosmos, op. cit., 47–51 and passim.
- 2.
For an example of Nietzsche’s teaching on this point, cf. Zur Genealogie der Moral, 2, § 1.
- 3.
Gadamer once noted that Hartmann found in Aristotle “eine Art von phänomenologischen Helfer bei seiner von Max Scheler inspirierten Ablösung vom Neukantianismus.” Hans Georg Gadamer. Gesammelte Werke, Band VII. Plato im Dialog (Mohr Siebeck, 1991), 121.
- 4.
From nemein: “to get what is due.”
- 5.
For an account of recent discussions of whether the Aristotelian virtues are essentially remedial or corrective, cf. Paula Gottlieb, The Virtue of Aristotle’s Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), I, 3, 52 ff.
- 6.
Nicomachean Ethics, II, 6, 1107a, 5–8.
- 7.
Again, it is apparent that the quality of a virtue – the amount of axiological value we attribute to an agent’s basic moral tenor in some set of circumstances – may vary independently of the goods that it aims at.
- 8.
Maria Louise von Kohoutek. Die Differenzierung des anthropos agathon: eine Studie zur Werttafel der Nikomachischen Ethik (Marburg, 1923).
- 9.
“Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen,” op. cit.
- 10.
Scheler noted at one point the “amazing” concern of Jesus for thieves, whores, and money-lenders.
- 11.
A related sentiment is expressed by Scheler in his brief essay on Kant, “Vom Verrat der Freude,” Gesammelte Werke, Band 6, 73–76.
- 12.
Max Scheler, Wesen und Formen der Sympathie, Gesammelte Werke, Band 7, A IV 3, 79 ff.
- 13.
Harry Frankfurt, On Bullshit (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), 33–4.
- 14.
We recall Hartmann’s treatment of the “noble lie,” Ethics II, Ch 25 b, 283–85.
- 15.
“Zur Rehabilitierung der Tugend,” Gesammelte Werke, Band 3, 15–31. Translation “On the Rehabilitation of Virtue,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 79, no. 1 (2005): 21–37.
- 16.
This notion was developed by Scheler with reference to the Buddhist doctrine of selflessness in the 1923 additions to his “Vom Sinn des Leidens,” Gesammelte Werke, Band 6.
- 17.
“On the Rehabilitation of Virtue,” op. cit., 32.
- 18.
Universal with regard to content, but not universally valid. Validity is a function of the ethos of a particular group, culture, or person in which certain values more than others guide the moral reasoning of its members. Piety, for example, is a universal value, though one not functional in a community of atheists: it is not a valid virtue among them.
- 19.
One is reminded by this phrase of the wonderful character of several of the Russian thinkers portrayed by Isaiah Berlin: Herzen, Belinsky, and Bakunin, each striving passionately to realize for a future Russia the values that their reason and feeling commanded them to respect. Cf. Isaiah Berlin, Russian Thinkers (New York: Viking Press 1978).
- 20.
Hartmann believes, as Scheler did, that values cannot change. Rather our Ordo amoris can change from clarity to darkness or the reverse. Hartmann calls this a “trans-orientation” of our feelings in regards to the relative grade of the value (Ethics II, VII, Ch 30 g, 322). Such a transorientation from light to darkness was effected by Hitler.
- 21.
The statement was given in English without reference. Perhaps intended was the phrase from Der Wille zur Macht, I, §98: “Der Mensch ist leider nicht mehr böse genug.”
- 22.
Shel Silverstein, The Giving Tree (New York: Harpers Collins, 1964).
- 23.
Hartmann notes in the preface to the Third Edition of Ethics that these analyses are, to his mind, the most important part of the second book.
- 24.
We are trying to intuit material values for which we often do not have words because of limited moral experience; for phenomenology, the givenness of essences or values to acts of intuition and feeling is prior to language.
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Kelly, E. (2011). Virtue Ethics. 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_8
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