Value-Based Ethics and Ethics of Rules

Abstract

In an earlier chapter, we noted that Christian thinkers in particular have taken exception to the apparent absence in Scheler of an ethics based upon moral rules. Some of this dismay may be based upon a misreading of Scheler’s intentions and, perhaps, to an underestimation of the power of Scheler’s value-ethics to support an ethics of norms. Yet one must concede that his theory is closer to a Classical model of virtue-ethics than to a Judeo-Christian rule-based ethics. Scheler states the point succinctly: The doctrine of virtue is prior to the doctrine of norms.⁶⁷ Must we choose between these two kinds of moral theory, and, if we must, what are the conditions of the validity of such a choice? It would be interesting to reread Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morals with the contrast in mind between the Jewish insistence upon a moral system that set forth the principled adherence to injunctions of the Torah even at the expense of human excellence (e.g., the Pharisees), and the Greek and Roman admiration of great individuals even despite their breach of moral injunctions (e.g., Alcibiades). For the Roman, the excellent man was not one who obeyed moral rules, nor for the Jew was the righteous man thereby excellent in the Roman sense of virtue. To use a modern expression, the two moral theories are incommensurable: the gap between them is one of ultimate and criterion-less moral principle, and is hence far wider than Nietzsche’s picture draws it. To him, one moral theory inspired scorn among the noble Romans and the other inspired ressentiment among the “impotent” Jews. The Jews, at least, appear to Nietzsche to have understood Roman values quite well, though they rejected them as vain. In Scheler’s view, the two theories are commensurable, although they are by no means equivalent or isomorphic. They simply represent different functionalizations of the same moral universe available to all persons. Yet although his moral theory judges actions with reference to values and not primarily to rules, and although he does not insist upon uncompromising adherence to moral law, as does Kant, his axiology provides ample space for a concept of moral norms.