Abstract
As the title of Scheler’s early major work, Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values. A New Attempt Toward the Foundation of an Ethical Personalism indicates, there are two parts to the 659 pages of the German original. Part I deals with the nature of values. Part II deals with the nature of the Person. Accordingly, we now set forth to make a general description of five major types of values with special attention to the relation they have to time. The types of values concerned are what Scheler called “non-moral values” in distinction from the “moral values” of good and evil. These will also be described in their relationship to time.
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Reference
The distinction made in Formalism between a lived body (Leib) and an object body (Körper) (II 461/F 466) was elaborated on later by Merleau-Ponty who was at least aware of Scheler’s Formalism. Whether M. Merleau-Ponty borrowed the distinction from Scheler, we do not know. Concerning a more recent, detailed comparison between the two thinkers, see: Christian Bermes: “Geist und Leib. Phänomenologie der Person bei Scheler und Merleau-Ponty.” In: Person und Wert. Schelers `Formalismus“ - Perspektiven und Wirkungen. Christian Bermes, Wolfhart Henckmann, Heinz Leonardy (Eds.), München: Verlag Karl Alber, 2000 (p.139–161).
There are several observations to be made concerning some inconsistencies in Scheler’s writings, when he refers to this value rank in Formalism. In Formalism he lists only four value ranks, not mentioning the value rank of usefulness which he considered in Formalism to be a rank subordinated to the four other ranks. This is inconsistent because to each value rank there belongs a particular model person of which he mentions five types (II 570/F 585; X 262; PV 133). This does not seem to have caught his attention even when he prepared his own last 1926 edition of Formalism. Although in his essay on “Ressentiment” (III 53–147/R 23–172) he states that the pragmatic value rank has its foundation in the rank of comfort and discomfort, in a recently published 1915/16 manuscript (XV 191–220), entitled, “Vital Values” (Die vitalen Werte), it is stated that pragmatic values do represent a value rank of their own. We decide here to let five, not four, value-ranks be representative of five model persons, each of which typical of a relevant value rank. The five model persons will be referred to later in the context of time.
I have tried to explain the value of at-handedness in Heidegger and Scheler in: Person und Dasein. Zur Frage der Ontologie des Wertseins. Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff (Phaenomenologica 32), 1969, # 9 and # 10.
The German word “gemein” is translated here as “common,” rather than as the more usual translations of it as “ignoble” or “bad,” which I have also used in the past. The word “common,” however, also shares with the German “gemein” the sense of “commonplace” or sometimes the sense of “inferior” implicit in Scheler’s intention when using the term.
During my thirty years of reading Scheler’s manuscripts, I never came across any racial or ethnic bias. Faschism and Marxism known already at his time for said selective politics, were publicly denounced by Scheler in a speech delivered in Berlin early 1927 (XII 95/ID [1976] 164).
During the past century, literature on phenomenology has enormously increased, and we do best here to just refer to some essentials pertinent to our subject. For further information on phenomenology, see Phaenomenologica as listed at the end pages of this book; further, see Encyclopedia of Phenomenology. Lester Embree (Ed., plus others). Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1997; and Analecta Husserliana, The Yearbook of Phenomenological Research. Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka (Ed.). Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, and the new Studia Phaenomenologica, Bucharest, Rumania.
Fr.v.Brentano argues that values are subject to addition and substraction (II 104/F87). Alois Roth, Edmund Husserls ethische Untersuchungen. Den Haag: 1960 (Phaenomenologica, 7).
In German the use of the words “good” or “goods” is more common than it is in English. Collective goods are mostly cultural goods, such as education, government, art, laws, or all of them taken together as a unit. The opposite of “goods” are “ills” that are sometimes related to nature, as earthquakes, hurricanes, drought, floods, but also desease, suffering, and there are many other human afflictions and misfortunes that belong to ills.
“Mensch,” used by Scheler in the German quote, is equivalent to English “human being.” “Man” in the quote has nothing to do with gender, which in German would be “der Mann,” in contrast to “die Frau.” German der Mensch can also apply to “humankind.” This has been confused sometimes in feminist translations of the German word.
Scheler met Berdyaev in Berlin while he was preparing a lecture on Suffering. which was to be delivered at the Russian Academy there. See John R. Staude, Max Scheler 1874–1928. An Intellectual Portrait. New York: The Free Press. 1967, p.141. See also M. Davy, Nicholas Berdyeay. Man of the Eighth Day. London: Geoffrey Blies, 1967, p.20.
For instance, The Lord’s prayer, “Our Father Who art in Heavenchrw(133)” ends in English with “chrw(133)but deliver us from evil [vom Bösen] whereas in German it ends with ”vom Uebel“ [from ills], a difference in the two languages that is likely the result of the only Latin word ”malum“ meaning both.
For variant views of the above see Philip Blosser, “Six Questions Concerning Scheler’s Ethics.” The Journal of Value Inquiry 33: 211–225, 1999.
Scheler’s term “usefulness” stands for German “der Nutzen.” As mentioned earlier, Heidegger uses the term “die Dienlichkeit” for this, but which word means the same as “der Nutzen. ” It lies outside our subject here to take a detailed look into Scheler’s constant interest in “work” that begins with his essay “Arbeit and Ethik” (1899) up to “Erkenntnis and Arbeit” (1926) and his projection of a major volume, “Philosophy of Work” over which he died. Concerning the concept of “work” see D. Verducci’s publications in the selected Bibliography.
The two hundred or so marginal comments Scheler’s made in his 1927 copy of Being and Time that Heidegger had sent him to read, are listed in Max Scheler, Späte Schrien, Vol. 9, edited by M. Frings (IX 305–340). Pagination and line numbers in vol. 9 are those of the 1967 ninth edition of Sein und Zeit; i.e., before a new pagination of Being and Time appeared in the Gesamtausgabe, Vol. 2 of 1977. But the old pagination appears in the margins of the new 1977 edition provided by its editor, F.-W. von Hei,uiann.
A few quotes from Scheler’s critique of Being and Time may suffice to catch their gist: “A philosophy of everydayness must be countered with a philosophy of Sundays.” And: “In this philosophy the world has no sense by itself, no self-value, and it is without any independent reality with regard to manchrw(133)” “1f Dasein ‘s constitution is Angst and care as Heidegger maintainschrw(133), and if all types of Being are relative to Dasein - relative to this tiny load of Angst and care - it is inevitable for one to maintain: Da-sein and world should better not be (IX 282–3). ”The world resembles here a moral-religious prep-school of Calvinismchrw(133)that has no essential relevance - except that it is, strictly speaking, nothingchrw(133)“ ”Ultimately, I am afraid that Heidegger’s philosophy - as far as we know it today - is basically a theolo-gical opinion on faith which is in concert with the theology of K. Bart and F. Gogarten, i.e., a kind of neo-Calvinism“ (IX 394–5). - Scheler was familiar with Max Weber’s theory, which was the well-known attempt to show that Calvinist and Protestant-Puritan ethics turned man’s occupations into the vocation of work that would reveal one’s positive predestination, and which was, in turn, responsible for the ensuing ”spirit“ of capitalism.
The foregoing quotes from Scheler’s Heidegger critique must be seen also in light of Scheler’s 1926 treatise “Cognition and Work” (Erkenntnis and Arbeit) (VIII 191–382). On the first pages of the treatise, we read that a “pathos of work” is spreading over the world, which pathos began when Europe distanced itself from the Christian tradition and from the Antiquity. This pathos of work, says Scheler, was pointedly articulated in the Comunist Manifesto (1848) proclaiming work to be the sole creator of education and of culture (Bildung). And Scheler goes on to say that Pragmatism is an excellent example of man’s present self-understanding based on the phenomenon of work. This self-understanding posed the alternative of whether man is a rational being or a tool-man (homo faber).
I undertook to focus on the German work-mania of the twenties when Heidegger wrote Being and Time, in part 3 of my paper, “Is there Room for Evil in Heidegger’s Thought or Not” (Philosophy Today,Spring, 1988). It is quite obvious that during the thirties and fourties of the past century, this work-mania played right into the hands of Hitler’s various schemes of firing up psychic contagion among the masses, captivating them by such slogans as “Arbeit macht frei,” (also used by Stalin) and “Arbeit and Brot” when unemployment in Germany was reaching its peak. a value is lower or higher can, strictly speaking, only be answered in the meta-science of “meta-ethics” that connects values of things with the essence of values per se.
Life-communal time can be much more complex than we describe it here. See Alfonso Ortiz, The Tewa World. Space, Time, Being & Becoming in a Pueblo Society, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1969. See also M. S. Frings, “Time Structure in Social Communality.” In Philosophy and Science in Phenomenological Perspective. Kah Kyung Cho, (Ed.), The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1984, pp. 85–93; and the same author’s “Zur Soziologie der Zeiterfahrung bei Max Scheler. Mit einem Rückblick auf Heraklit,” Philosophisches Jahrbuch der GörresGesellschaft, 1984, pp. 118–130.
Briefly, the values of life are, for instance, represented in paintings, they can be set to music (Beethoven’s Eroica and Pastoral), and they play foremost roles in literature, in dramas, and novels. Concerning the mental value of justice, life values are a central issue in ongoing debates on capital punishment; the mental value of cognition allows an exploration of the distinction to be made between live and inanimate objects; and sacred values can pertain to gods of health, of the unborn (Artemis) in mythology; they pertain to Zeus turning into an animal, or to using the life-values of blood and bread in the Eucharist, water in baptism.
In the following we make a distinction between “spirit” and “mind” for both of which Scheler uses Geist. We will use mind when it refers to humans. The human mind exists only in the form of “person” (II 389/F 389 [sic]). We will refer to “spirit” as that metaphysical principle which is the opposite of “impulsion,” and which spirit is said to be “impotent” or powerless without being tethered to impulsion, drives, and the sociologically realizing factors. (Scheler also uses “spirit” for the sum total of human acts of consciousness, but this does not concern us here).
Concerning the World-Era of Adjustment, it would be incorrect to link the process of a gradual balancing out of mind and body with the ancient dictum sometimes falsely quoted by instructors and leaders of sports as mens sana in corpore sano, as if a healthy mind would automatically entail a healthy body, and vice versa. For, Juvenal’s (c.60–140) satyre X 356 says something very different in that the quote should start with: “Orandum est” “We must pray” to the gods that they give us both a healthy mind and a healthy body. Juvenal does not say that humans themselves can bring about a balance between mind and body.
We could find neither Greek nor Roman references to athletics saying that athletes were instructed that a healthy mind was consequential to training the body, and vice versa. In Greece, athletic activities are recorded since about 900 BC. Sociologically, they were activities pursued by the upper classes, who could afford to suspend their work to enjoy sports rather than practice sports for competition. It was only during the later democratization of the Greek people that sports was practiced also by the common man, and it also included what we today refer to as professional sports. Among other disciplines, athletics was attached to the five field and track disciplines of the pentathlon. Wrestling and boxing were practiced without rules and with extreme brutalities as twisting and dislocating joints, coercion, kicking and choking, reminding one of its leftovers today in the wrestling that fakes such brutalities.
One could, on the basis of Scheler’s premise of a “reaction” to a lopsided cultivation of athletics argue that Greek philosophy, especially that of Plato’s devaluation of the body, was itself a reaction against Greek sports at the time. Whatever emphasis on sports existed during the Antiquity, it came to an abrupt end with Christianity that objected not only to the cultivation of the body but also to the nudity of athletes that began in the eighth century when Orsippos lost his cover and, stripped to the buff, kept running right to the finish line.
Let it be added that, sociologically, sports was also in modern times first practiced by the upper classes, esp. those of the English who cold afford to play tennis, go hunting, do equestrian sports, etc. The etymology of the word “sports” as derived from middle-Latin disportus, “diversion” reflects this sociological aspect conveniently. While other modern sports disciplines as motor car racing are also representative of upper classes, modern soccer, on the other hand, is not. Soccer is reactions of athletic activity against an excessive cultivation of the mind tends to “mold” a type of human being? The following answer to the question might be an indicator of what we can expect from the generations to come. said to have started in Elizabethan times when children kicked skulls down the streets before something like a soccer ball was invented.
It is unfortunate that among the sixteen industrialized nations this obsession is so rampant in American schools. Not infrequently it begins with excessive drilling of children in little leagues, mostly unheard of abroad. In our schools, the desire for athletic competition and of winning seems, by comparison, to be at the expense not only of the three R’s, but also of learning critical thinking, geography, history, classical literature that, in contrast to sports and computer studies, provides students with a moral compass, with a foreign language and, not least, with mathematics. Excesses in sports competition may well be one reason why our high school graduates, exceptions granted, rank in terms of knowledge, especially of the humanities, last among high school graduates of the rest of industrialized nations.
Almost diametrically opposed, for instance, is the use of the word “ontology” in Heidegger and N. Hartmann. See Heidegger’s pungent critique of N. Hartmann in Sein und Zeit, GA, Volume 2, p. 276. Heidegger’s implicit critique there of Max Scheler is, to say the least, misinformed (VIII 203).
In “Idealism-Realism” this is later referred to as the “we-time” which is a form of “absolute time” discussed below.
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Frings, M.S. (2003). Time Structures Among Values. In: Lifetime. Phaenomenologica, vol 169. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-0127-3_1
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