MAX SCHELER'S CONCEPT OF THE PERSON

MAX SCHELER'S CONCEPT OF THE PERSON

Max Scheler's Concept of the Person An Ethics of Humanism Ron Perrin Professor of Political Theory University of Montana Missoula, U.SA. Palgrave Macmillan

ISBN 978-1-349-21401-3 ISBN 978-1-349-21399-3 (ebook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-21399-3 Ron Perrin 1991 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1991 All rights reserved. For infonnation write: Scholarly and Reference Division St. Martin's Press, Inc., 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 First published in the United States of America in 1991 ISBN 978-0-312-05308-6 Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data Perrin, Ron, 1934- Max Scheler's concept of the person: an ethics of humanism I Ron Perrin. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-312-05308-6 I. Scheler, Max, 1874-1928-Ethics. 2. Ethics, Modem-19th century. 3. Ethics, Modem-20th century. 4. Philosophical anthropology. I. Title. B3329.S484P47 1991 170'.92--dc20 90-43341 CIP

For Sandra and Sasha

Contents Acknowledgements Xll Introduction 1 PART I SCHELER'S CRITIQUE OF KANT 5 1 The Ethical Implications of Kant's First Critique 7 The Case Against Empiricism 7 The Transcendental Idea of Freedom 14 Man as Phenomenal and Noumenal Being 16 Summary 20 2 The Fonnal Ethics 21 A Note on Method 21 The Moral Law and its Foundation in Freedom 22 Wille and Willkiir: The Two Moments of Freedom 24 The Intelligible World 27 Efficient and Formal Causality 30 Moral Experience 31 Personality and the Person 35 The Ethical Significance of Personality 38 Personality and Man 39 The Idea of Morality as Final Cause 43 Summary 45 3 Scheler, Phenomenology and the Two Orders of Reason 46 Scheler and Kant 46 Scheler's Theory of Values 50 Scheler and Phenomenology 55 The Material a Priori 57 The Materialist Reduction 61 The Two Orders of Reason 63 Summary 64 VB

viii Contents PART II THE MATERIAL ETHICS OF VALUE 4 Scheler's Hierarchy of Values Vorziehen as Evidence for a Hierarchy of Values The Criteria of Valuation The Hierarchy of Values The Value Hierarchy Appraised Scheler's 'Transcendental Objectivism' 5 The Person The Transcendental Deduction of the Person The Person and Morality Individual and Collective Person Life-community and Society Society as a Moral Association 67 69 69 73 76 80 85 87 88 92 97 100 104 6 The Primacy of Philosophical Experience The Moral Upsurge and the Whole Man The Object of Philosophy The Ideal of the Total Man 7 Towards a Radical Humanism Scheler's Idealism Scheler's Humanism Man and Nature The Dynamic of Aggression Limited Transformations Notes Index 109 109 114 117 125 125 130 133 139 141 146 155

Preface... man is more of a problem to himself at the present time than ever before in all recorded history. At the very moment when man admits that he knows less than ever about himself, and when he is not frightened by any possible answer to the question, there seems to have arisen a new courage of truthfulness - a courage to raise the essential question without any commitment to any tradition, whether theological, philosophical or scientific, that has p~evailed up to now. At the same time he is developing a new kind of self-consciousness and insight into his own nature based on the vast accumulation of knowledge in the new human sciences. Max Scheler Man's Place in Nature Max Scheler was born in 1874 and he died in 1928. His life was shorter than many but far richer than most. Into his 56 years he managed to pack three marriages and two religious conversions, a host of love affairs, and a teaching career which embraced four universities, lecture halls throughout Europe and innumerable cafes. And then there is his writing: 13 volumes worth, which reveal a restless and often violently contradictory nature. War and pacifism, asceticism and sensuality, catholicism and pantheism; each of these themes received the concentrated attention of his mind and, in turn, made lasting demands upon his soul. But if his life's work displays a spirit often at odds with itself, it also bespeaks an effort to faithfully record all that comes within the compass of human experience. It is here, in his persistent concern for what he calls 'the problem of man' that we find the unifying thread of Scheler's life and thought. Like his contemporary, Edmund Husserl, Scheler saw the state of philosophy and science at the dawn of the twentieth century as one of critical disarray. But his attention to the human condition led him to interpret the conflicts and uncertainties that afflicted these disciplines as both counterpoint and contributor to a far more primordial crisis, a desordre du coeur, which distorted and ix

x Preface perverted Man's vision prior to the formulation of any given theory of knowledge or of any science.1 In Scheler's view, this distortion was most evident in the Kantian portrayal of Man as, in essence, an autonomous rationality; an image that effectively left the human being stranded on the shoals of Reason's self-governing and self-limiting principles and functions. In order to once again speak to the total Man - the loving, willing, creating, living human being - Scheler challenged himself and philosophy to think anew. We must, he insisted, approach the problems of philosophy and the world with a new and transformed consciousness, one that would listen and heed the voices of Man's entire environment. For example, Scheler was convinced that once philosophy was free of its Kantian presuppositions it would gain accesss to a hitherto unknown and a priori realm of values, values that are immediately given in our most primal and immediate experience of things and others. In his effort to support these claims and demands Scheler did not hesitate to draw freely upon the insights and achievements of disciplines beyond philosophy. His work is richly larded with evidence from theology and psychology, as well as from the social and natural sciences. And, as his curiosity refused to accept the constraints of the academic division of labour, so too it would not easily accept the confining boundaries of any single philosophical school. At various points, and with what were often remarkably differing results, transcendental idealism and British empiricism, phenomenology and Lebensphilosophie, were among the many contributors to Scheler's unique Weltanschauung. But, Scheler was no undisciplined eclecticist. Rather, his approach is akin to that of the artist who selects from his or her pallet those shadings of colour which can best lend substance to the vision. Scheler's vision was large and fresh: its expression demanded a pallet of many and various hues. One possible misconception must be laid to rest at the outset of our study. Scheler's treatment of his philosophical forebears was neither frivolous nor disrespectful. On the contrary, few thinkers have ever demonstrated a greater esteem for the past. Scheler well knew that any contribution he might make towards humankind's expanding self-awareness, no matter how radically it might seem to depart from the tradition, would not be in the manner of a creation ex nihilo. Instead, it would involve a rediscovery of capacities and modes of expression long inherent in the human

Preface xi condition, and the regaining of a philosophical stance that might point the way towards their fulfilment. This, then, is some of the mood and purpose that characterises Scheler's thought. In the work at hand we shall find that some of the themes to which he devoted himself are thoroughly developed, while others demand a further elaboration that will thrust us beyond Scheler and into our own time and space. While this move may at first seem to take us far beyond the scene in which he moved, in a deeper sense there is no change in context between his world and ours. For who can deny that our politics and ethics, in disjointed concert with our technology and our ecology, are in disarray, and that the crucial task of philosophy is still the articulation of the human condition: of what it is and what it might become? The dominant theme of this study, and the vehicle by which I propose to draw Scheler into the crises of our time, is his concept of the Person. Increasingly, those who are most wary of the events and forces that have come to define the present age are prompted to echo an admonition uttered by Lewis Mumford some thirty years ago. In The City in History Mumford called attention to: an ultimate decision that confronts man and (that) will, one way or another, ultimately transform him: namely, whether he shall devote himself to the development of his own deepest humanity, or whether he shall surrender himself to the now almost automatic forces he himself has set in motion and yield place to his dehumanized alter ego, 'Post-historic man'. That second choice will bring with it a progressive loss of feeling, emotion, creative audacity, and finally, consciousness.2 Fortunately we have projects such as Scheler's to help us in charting the alternative to this second choice. As his concept of the Person unfolds we will find him striving over and over again to sound the depths of that deepest humanity of which Mumford speaks. To be sure, Scheler's reflections often lead him down false paths and, occasionally, to the brink of failure. Yet, as with all pioneers, the way of those who follow is made surer and safer if they will but take the time to observe and learn.

Acknowledgemen ts It was Herbert Marcuse who first encouraged me to undertake the study of Scheler's ethical writings. For that, and for many other kindnesses, both professional and personal, he occupies a very special place in my memories. Along the way I was also encouraged in this effort by Harry Hausser and Calvin Schrag. The friendship and help of Ulrich Klee have been invaluable resources, as has the more tangible support provided during the summer of 1989 by my Dean, James Flightner. Lastly, the assistance of Kermit Hummel at St. Martin's Press, the kind words of Pauline Snelson, and the patient care of my editor, Sophie Lillington, have made it possible for me to bring this work to its present stage. None of them, of course, bear any responsibility for whatever shortcomings the reader may find. Permissions An earlier version of chapter 2 appeared in Philosophy Research Archives, Vol. 1 (1975) and an earlier version of chapter 3 in The Journal of the History of Philosophy, Vol. XII, No.3 (July 1974). Permission has been granted to incorporate those materials into the present study. xii