## 1. Biographical Sketch



Max Scheler was born on August 22, 1874. He was raised in a
well-respected orthodox Jewish family in Munich. Although he was not a
particularly strong student, Scheler did show early promise and
interest in philosophy, particularly in the works of Friedrich
Nietzsche. As a youth, he identified himself as a social democrat and
enthusiastic Marxist. In the fall of 1894, Scheler started his
university studies in Munich, but by the fall of 1895 had enrolled in
Berlin. Although he had applied to study medicine in Berlin, he
studied primarily philosophy and sociology, attending most notably the
lectures of Wilhelm Dilthey and Georg Simmel.



From Berlin, Scheler moved to Jena in 1896 to finish his studies under
the guidance of Rudolf Eucken. Rudolf Eucken was a tremendously
popular philosopher at the time, winning the Nobel Prize for
literature in 1908, but it was Eucken's ideas regarding the
inner quest for a spiritual life of every human being that primarily
drew Scheler's attention. It was in Jena that Scheler completed
both his dissertation and habilitation, and where he began his career
in philosophy. It was also during his time in Jena that he took a trip
to Heidelberg in 1898 and met Max Weber, who also had a significant
impact on his thought.



While holding his position as Privatdozent in Jena, Scheler met Edmund
Husserl at a party in 1901 and then, a year later, read
Husserl's *Logical Investigations*. The remainder of his
life would be dedicated to the development and the progress of
phenomenology. During this time, Scheler was also reading much of
French philosophy and was a major factor in introducing Henri
Bergson's work to Germany's intellectual circles.



In 1906, Scheler moved his family to Munich and started his position
there as Privatdozent. With Theodor Lipps, Scheler established a
circle of the "Munich Phenomenologists." The early group
consisted of Alexander Pfander, Moritz Geiger and Theodor Conrad,
all of whom were students of Lipps. Dietrich von Hildebrand, Hedwig
Martius, Herbert Leyendecker and Maximillian Beck later joined the
group.



Due to controversies surrounding the separation from his first wife
and reported affairs with students, Scheler lost his teaching
privileges. From 1910 to 1919, he would have to earn a living as a
private scholar, lecturer and freelance writer. Despite the economic
hardships brought about by the loss of his position in Munich, these
years were some of Scheler's most productive: he published major
works such as *Phenomenology and Theory of the Feeling of Sympathy
and of Love and Hate* (1913), *Formalism in Ethics and
Non-Formal Ethics of Value* (Part 1 1913, Part 2 1916), *The
Genius of War and the German War* (1915).



A major contributing factor to Scheler's productivity at this
time was his introduction to the Gottingen circle of
phenomenology. Along with the great master, Husserl, this circle
included such young and promising thinkers as Adolf Reinach, Hedwig
Martius, Roman Ingarden, Alexandre Koyre and Edith Stein. He
met and later joined the circle after the invitation in 1912 to give
private lectures in Gottingen. Because Scheler was forbidden to
teach at a German university his lectures would often have to be held
in hotel rooms rented by his close friend Dietrich von Hildebrand. It
was also at this time that Scheler became co-editor, along with
Husserl, Alexander Pfander, Moritz Geiger and Adolf Reinach, of
the greatly influential journal, *Jahrbuch fur Philosophie und
phanomenologische Forschung*.



After years of struggling to make ends meet as a private lecturer and
freelance writer, Scheler received an invitation in 1918 from Konrad
Adenaur to join the faculty of the newly founded research institute
for the social sciences in Cologne. The intent was to have Scheler
serve as the Catholic thinker for the institute. Scheler, officially
joining the faculty in 1919, was once again allowed to teach at a
German university. During his time in Cologne, he wrote his major work
on religion, *On the Eternal in Man* (1921).



The circle of influence continued to grow for Scheler. During his time
in Berlin and in Cologne, Scheler would meet and correspond regularly
with prominent, German intellectuals such as Max Brod, Franz Werfel,
Martin Buber, Arnold Zweig, Ernst Troeltsch, Werner Sombart, Albert
Einstein, Alfred Kerr, Walter Rathenau, Paul Tillich, Romano Guardini
and Ernst Bloch. His circle of collaboration and discussion was not
limited to philosophy. Scheler corresponded with the leading
psychologists and natural scientists such as Wertheimer, Kohler,
Buytendijk, and Wasserman. Musicians, poets and literary scholars such
as Eduard Erdmann, Otto Klemperer, Paul Valery, Rainer Maria
Rilke, Romain Rolland, Ernst Robert Curtius were also part of his
circle of influence. A very close friend of Scheler's in Cologne
up until his death was the painter Otto Dix.



This diverse array of friends and collaborators is reflected in both
the diversity and originality of Scheler's thought at this time.
For example, Scheler's work, *Die Wissenformen und die
Gesellschaft* (*The Forms of Knowledge and Society*), was
responsible for the promulgation of a new field of study, the
sociology of knowledge, and was one of the first works in Germany that
provided an in depth analysis of American pragmatism. As was common
for Scheler, he wrote many different manuscripts at once. While
writing on the sociology of knowledge, he was working on his
philosophical anthropology (*Die Sonderstellung des Menschen*
and the manuscripts compiled in *Gesammelte Werke 12*),
metaphysics (*Idealismus und Realismus* and manuscripts
compiled in *Gesammelte Werke 11*), politics (*Politik und
Moral*, *Die Idee des Ewigen Friedens*) and history
(*Der Mensch im Weltalter des Ausgleichs*). During this time,
Scheler lectured extensively throughout Germany, focusing much of his
effort to confront the rise of fascism in Germany and Europe.



Once again, Scheler's personal life (the divorce from his second
wife and marriage to his third) conflicted with his position at the
university as the Catholic philosopher. The restrictions Scheler felt
were not merely personal, but also intellectual. Disappointed by the
Catholic Church's conservatism and political failures in the
reconstructive efforts after the war, Scheler became increasingly
critical of religious institutions and dogmas. He made considerable
effort to distance himself from the Catholic Church and characterize
his work as philosophical, not religious, in nature. With the growing
tensions at Cologne, Scheler welcomed the offer of a professorial
position in Frankfurt in 1927 and was eager to work with the Critical
Theorists in Frankfurt such as Max Horkeimer and the young Theodor
Adorno. During the spring of 1928, Scheler's health continued to
worsen and he suffered from a series of heart attacks most likely due
to the 60-80 cigarettes he smoked each day. His deteriorating
health forced him to cancel his extensive travel plans abroad, and on
May 19, 1928 Scheler died in a hospital in Frankfurt from
complications of a severe heart attack.


## 2. The Meaning of Philosophy and Phenomenology



At the end of his life, Scheler wrote that the central issue in his
thought and writing was the question regarding the meaning of the
human being (GW IX, 9). This question not only guided his ever
expanding philosophical endeavors, but also defined his approach and
understanding of philosophy. Like many of the Lebensphilosophen
(philosophers of life) who had influenced him, Scheler strove to save
philosophy and thought from the reductive mindset of the positive
sciences and to a degree, American pragmatism, a mindset that defined
the human being as mere *homo faber* (tool-maker). The human
being is without a doubt a practical being, seeking to master and
manipulate his or her environment to achieve desired results and avoid
future suffering. For Scheler, practical knowledge and practical
consciousness are genetically the first form of knowledge for the
individual. Yet, human beings are not necessarily tied to practical
affairs and have the ability to comprehend and regard the world in
terms of its essence or being. Philosophy, for Scheler, is the
"*loving act of participation by the core of the human being
in the essence of all things*" (GW V, 68). Practical
knowledge is only the first of three types of knowledge. In addition
to practical or mastery knowledge, Scheler describes two other types,
erudition (*Bildungswissen*) and knowledge of revelation. All
three types have their own integrity and are irreducible to one
another. Each knowledge types thus has its own origin and is motivated
by a different feeling. While practical knowledge is motivated by
physical pain or fear of error, erudition is motivated by wonder and
knowledge of revelation by awe. Philosophical knowledge belongs to the
type, erudition.



Wonder is a loving concern for the world as it is in itself and marks
the transition from the practical to the philosophical (GW VIII, 208).
This "loving participation" of philosophy is, however,
distinct from the classical notion of love (eros) as a lack. Love is
understood by Scheler here in terms of the Christian sense of
*agape*, loving as giving. The human being as a loving,
philosophical being is not motivated to know by a sense of a lack, as
is the case with eros, but is rather motivated by the abundance and
surfeit of the meaning of the world (GW VI, 84). Modernity's
ethos of control and domination has transformed the world into a mere
object of utility. As a means to reawaken a sense of wonder, Scheler
called for a rehabilitation of virtue, in particular the virtues of
humility and reverence (GW III, 15). The philosopher lives in
reverence of the world, in astonishment of the world's
inexhaustible depth and secrets (GW III, 26).



Philosophical thought attends to the core meaning of knowledge as a
*Seinsverhaltnis*, an ontological relation. Knowledge,
according to Scheler, is a relation between beings, a relation wherein
a being 'participates' in what another being is in itself
(GW VIII, 203). Scheler rejects the idea that knowledge is a an act of
construction, as was the case for the neo-Kantians such as Ernst
Cassirer. Rather knowledge is a form of discovery, a discovery that
requires a humble divesting of oneself that opens one up to the other
(GW VIII, 204) and presupposes the loving willingness to be open to
that which is other.



Following Augustine, Scheler takes the emotional and affective life as
foundational for any form of knowledge (GW VI, 87). Before the world
is known, it is first given. Love is that which opens the human being
up to the world, to that which is other. This openness demonstrates
that there is a moral precondition for knowledge. Knowledge is
possible only for a loving being (GW V, 83). This love is the movement
of transcendence, a going beyond oneself, an opening to ever richer
meaning. Love is always already directed to the infinite, to absolute
value and being (GW V, 90). With this understanding of the relation of
love to knowledge, Scheler declares that "knowledge is
ultimately from the divine and for the divine" (GW VIII,
211).



It was not until he read Husserl's *Logical
Investigations* and learned of the idea of phenomenology, however,
that Scheler came upon a style of thinking that best captured for him
the loving disposition of philosophy. Although he was greatly indebted
to Husserl's genius and originality, Scheler was often critical
of Husserl when describing the nature of phenomenology. For Scheler,
phenomenology is unequivocally not a method, but an attitude (GW X,
380). Grasping the meaning or essence of an object has meant, since
Plato, a type of disengagement from or suspension of an object's
immediate and present existence. The intent of this disengagement is
not to abstract from an object of cognition as it exists, but rather
to look at the object as it is itself. The natural worldview or
attitude presupposes the practical and habitual context in which the
object is given and thus uncritically assumes the meaning of the
object in this context. The scientific worldview assumes a particular
understanding of the natural world in its investigations and
determination of meaning, an atomistic or mechanistic conception of a
living being. In both cases, there is no reflection regarding the
meaning presupposed in the intention. The phenomenological attitude
does not negate the practical or scientific world and way of being. It
merely holds them in abeyance, suspending judgment. Such a suspension
is motivated not by a disdain or a devaluation of the practical life,
but by a love of the world. It is in this respect that Scheler
describes phenomenological attitude as a psychic technique comparable
to Buddhist techniques of suffering (GW VIII, 139).



Scheler shares the conviction with realist phenomenologists such as
Adolf Reinach that there are essential intuitions
(*Wesensanschauungen*) or essential insights
(*Wesenseinsichten*) (GW X, 383), in which we have intuitive
and immediate graspings of the essence of the being of the objects.
This grasping of the object is never complete and assumes merely a
partial insight into the thing itself (GW V, 199). Modernity, for
Scheler, suffers from a fundamental mistrust of the world, a mistrust
that the world given in experience is not the world itself, but rather
some construct produced by the human mind. Phenomenology assumes a
trust in the world and in experience. It is the world that gives
itself to intuition, beckoning us to participate ever more fully in
its significance. By virtue of this loving trust, the world itself is
given. The phenomenological attitude is an expression on this trust
and seeks to describe the object as it gives itself, as it is brought
to self-givenness. 


## 3. Value Personalism



Scheler's first and most influential work in phenomenology was
his study of ethics, *Formalism in Ethics and a Non-Formal (or
Material) Ethics of Value*. This work was motivated in part by a
critique of the highly scientific or formalistic approaches to ethics
introduced by Immanuel Kant and then later developed by the
Neo-Kantians during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.
Kant's influence on Scheler's thought cannot be
underestimated. With Kant, Scheler rejects both utilitarianism and
eudaimonism, and holds that ethics rests upon an a priori, an
obligation non-relative to future consequences or happiness. For Kant,
the a priori is expressed in the form of a categorical imperative, an
imperative that is universalizable. For Scheler, such a formulation of
the a priori is abstract and as a consequence, fails to account for
both the unique obligation one has to another person and the unique
call to responsibility given in the ethical imperative (GW II, 34).
The ethical imperative, Scheler insists, is given as what one ought to
necessarily do, but it is also experienced as what 'I,'
and not merely anyone, ought to do (GW II, 94).



Scheler argues that a material or a non-formal a priori arises in
experience, specifically in the experience of value. All experience is
already value latent (GW II, 35). An object of perception such as an
oak tree is not only green or large, but also pleasurable, beautiful
and magnificent. Objects of experience are bearers of values.
Historical artifacts bear cultural values, religious icons bear the
value of the "holy." To suggest that an object bears a
value is not to imply that a value inheres in an object. Just as the
color red does not inhere in the tricycle, but is only given in the
act of perception, the beauty of the painting is only given in the act
of valuing. The value an object bears is given intuitively through a
type of value-ception. We "see" the beauty of a painting
just as we "see" its colors. The grasping of value is our
most original and primordial relation to the world. An object has
value for us before it is perceived or known (GW II, 40).



Following Franz Brentano, Scheler conceived of positive and negative
values as given in a relation to being. Positive values are not only
given as that which entices us, but also as that which ought to be.
Similarly, negative values are given as that which ought not to be (GW
II, 100). In the relation values bear to existence, an ideal ought is
given. What ought to be is not logically derived or categorical, but
is felt, i.e., experienced. Values not only draw our attention to the
world and others, but they also bear an ideal "ought."



Valuing is an act of meaning giving or creation and is therefore an
intentional act. The act of valuing is not an intellectual act, but an
act of the "heart," i.e., an emotional act. For Scheler,
there are two basic emotional acts, the act of love and the act of
hate. These two acts found all value-ception and consciousness (GW
VII, 185). Love and hate are further characterized by Scheler as
movements (GW VII, 191). In the act of love, the value of an object or
a person is deepened, revealing its highest or most profound
significance. Hate, by contrast, is a movement of destruction, a
movement wherein the value of an object or a person is demeaned or
degraded.



The feelings of love and hate are the acts in which the world first
comes to have meaning for us and a preferencing is inherent in this
process. We tend toward or are attracted to that which is of greater
or positive value, and tend to move away from or are repelled by that
which is of lesser or negative value. Present in every experience is a
ranking of values, a preference of certain values to others (GW II,
104). That there is an order of preferencing in experience is perhaps
best demonstrated by the act of sacrifice. For the sake of a
particular life value such as health, we may sacrifice pleasurable
experiences such as an overindulgence of ice-cream. An order of value
preferencing is present in every experience and every individual
possesses such an ordering, what Scheler calls "an
ethos."



It is in the experience of value preferencing that Scheler further
clarifies the ethical a priori. There is, according to Scheler, an
objective ranking of values, a ranking of the "lower" to
the "higher," or better expressed, a ranking of the more
superficial to the deeper. The ranking of value types from lowest to
highest is as follows: pleasure, utility, vitality, culture, and
holiness. How the different types of value stand in relation to one
another is grasped intuitively in the experience of value. Evidence of
this ranking is felt through experiences like duration (GW II, 108) or
depth of fulfillment (GW II, 113). Claiming that there is an objective
order of values, or in Pascal's terminology, an "ordre du
coeur" (order of the heart), necessarily entails that the higher
values "ought" to be preferred to the lower. We ought to
act in such a manner that promotes the higher or positive values. This
non-formal or material a priori of value is not given prior to
experience, but it is present in the experience of the particular
value modalities. A religious icon is given not only as holy, but also
as that which is to be preferred to the merely useful or vital. What
types of value an object has is relative to the individual or culture.
A cow certainly has a different value for the Hindu than for the
rancher. Nonetheless, that the holy is to be preferred to the vital is
not historically or culturally relative.



Both the experience of value and the objective rank ordering of values
are felt by a distinctive type of being, what Scheler calls
"persons." "Person" is a notion that Kant also
uses and this is one of the reasons why Scheler uses the term. In a
manner quite similar to the problem of the a priori, Scheler wants to
retain Kant's understanding of "person" as absolute
value, an end in itself Scheler is critical of Kant in so far as Kant
grounds the absolute value of the person in the universal category of
reason.



Scheler describes the person as the concrete unity of acts of
different types and nature (GW II, 382). The person is present in each
and every act, but the person is not reducible to any one act.
"Unity" here is meant as a particular style, a style of
act execution and being. Every individual has his or her unique style
of loving, of assigning meaning, and necessarily has his or her own
access to the world. When a person dies, not only is that unique style
of loving and assigning meaning lost, but so is that world.



Understood as the unity of acts or an act center, the person is
necessarily non-objectifiable (GW II, 386). Objects only take on the
meaning as objects through intentional acts. Persons execute
intentional acts. The meaning of a person is determined by the way in
which a particular person brings meaning to the world. It is never a
question of what a person is, but who a person is. Scheler takes great
pains to distinguish his notion of person from the traditional notions
of subject, ego, mind or psyche. All of these traditional,
philosophical notions are objectifications, i.e. names given to
particular states, functions or capacities. Who a person is cannot be
captured by a definition and can only be grasped through value
insight, an immediate and direct grasping of the other as a person in
and through the act of love (GW II,
 483)[1].
 The human being is constituted as person most profoundly through
loving. 



The imperative that is given in the value a priori, the objective rank
order of values, is only felt by persons and, consequently, persons
are the only beings who are ethically responsible. Because every
experience is value latent, a person is responsible to love the object
or a being of that experience most fully, realizing the highest or
deepest value of that being. In relation with other persons, this
responsibility is ethical. In loving another person, one is called
ethically to love ever more fully and deeply. Failing to do so and
responding to this calling through acts of hate is not only ethically
irresponsible but it is also morally evil. Any act that compromises or
reduces the person to a lower value such as mere pleasure or utility
is pernicious and evil.



The good in itself is thus a movement and openness to the higher or
deeper values. In the experience of positive values, we, as persons,
are called to love others ever more profoundly. In the experience of
negative values, we are called to act in such a manner that ends the
destructive acts of hate and consequently brings an end to negative
values. The call to act for the sake of the good itself is, for
Scheler, not general or universal, but radically individual or rather,
unique. There is no experience of the good in itself in general, but
only the good in itself for me, and this constitutes in part the
experience of vocation peculiar to each unique person as creatively
becoming (GW II, 482). The deeper the value, the more individual, the
more personal, the call to act for the sake of the good becomes.
Ethical experience, the experience of being called to act for the
good, is a process of individuation (GW II, 501). The call becomes
ever more personal as the value deepens. In acting ethically, I come
to realize my unique place and contribution, and as a result, I become
more conscious of my obligation and duties to the world and to others.
A material value ethic, in contrast to a formal ethic, reveals both
the radically unique manner by which each person is called to act and
the radically unique value of each and every person.


## 4. Others, Community and Solidarity



There is, for Scheler, no problem of the other. This is not to say
that he rejects the alterity or difference of the other. What Scheler
rejects is the presumed starting point of the so-called other minds, a
starting point that posits one mind over and against another, assuming
that we are first alone and then enter into relationships with others.
The consciousness of oneself as a self and as a person is always
experienced within the context of a "member of a totality"
(GW II, 510). Every experience, in other words, assumes as background
the "experiencing with one another" (Miteinander-erleben)
as well as the responsibility for others and the co-responsibility for
the community. All investigations that begin with the problem of the
other presuppose this primordial communal background.
Phenomenologically, the task is not to take this background for
granted but to clarify the different types of experiences that
constitute this communal background and those experiences that give
rise to a sense of mine-ness and otherness.



Scheler's investigation into this primordial background begins
at the affective or emotional level of experience. The affective life
precedes the intellectual life. In the case of the experience of
others, there is an affective or emotional understanding of others
prior to any intellectual or rational understanding. The work
dedicated to this investigation is Scheler's *The Nature of
Sympathy* (original German title, *Wesen und Formen der
Sympathie* literally means the *Essence and Forms of
Sympathy*). His main intent in this work was to show that it is
impossible to derive an ethic from merely shared feelings and
consequently to show that ethics assumes as original an intention of
love. In order to demonstrate this point, Scheler provides a detailed
analysis of the different types of shared feelings, which are
themselves irreducible to loving.



There are at least five different types of shared or co-feelings:


1. Feeling with one another (*Miteinanderfuhlen*):
  

Two or more people feel the *same* feeling together. Scheler
gives an example of two parents. They share a love for their child and
they also share the pain or joy felt for that child. In the tragic
death of a child, parents share the same pain, feeling the same
sadness and loss together. Certainly, parents of a child will have
many different feelings for their child between them. Scheler is only
describing the phenomenon of when parents feel the same feeling
together.
2. Vicarious feeling (*Nachfuhlen*):
  

Scheler refers to this type of shared feeling throughout his analysis,
but does not include it in his discussion of the specific types of
co-feelings. In vicarious feeling, there is no genuine sharing or
co-experiencing of a feeling. It is a type of grasping a feeling in
the other without any subsequent feeling of the grasped pain or joy, a
feeling at a distance. This grasping is not necessarily an
intellectual comprehension, but an emotional or bodily comprehension.
Any recognition of the feeling of others, including empathy, assumes
some form of vicarious feelings.
3. Fellow feeling (*Mitgefuhl*):
  

This form of co-feeling is often referred to as sympathy or pity. Here
there is the intention of the other, a feeling for the other. When a
friend is in pain, not only do I share his or her pain, but I feel for
my friend. The shared feeling is not the same and there remains a
clear distinction between me and the other. To distinguish fellow
feeling from vicarious feeling, Scheler uses the example of cruelty
(GW VII, 25). The reason why human beings are so good at torture is
that we can vicariously feel and comprehend what it would be like to
be harmed in such a manner. In vicarious feeling, we do not feel the
other's pain. In genuine cases of fellow feeling, we not only
share in the suffering the other feels, but we also feel for the
person who suffers, often motivated to act to end the
suffering.
4. Psychic Contagion (*Gefuhlansteckung*):
  

Experiences in which a person is overtaken by a feeling to such an
extent that he or she gets lost in it with others is the phenomenon of
psychic contagion. Scheler uses the example of being taken over by the
joyous atmosphere in a bar to make his point. After a difficult day
"at the office," you walk into a bar and are immediately
overtaken by the celebratory atmosphere, completely forgetting your
day and troubles. In contrast to the other types of co-feeling,
psychic contagion is the experience of losing yourself in the feeling
or mood of the group. The "I" and "you" become
a "we." In the midst of this experience, we do things we
would not necessarily do in a different setting. Psychic contagion
can, thus, be quite dangerous, as is the case with mob violence, for
instance.
5. Identification (*Einsfuhlung*):
  

Not to be confused with *Einfuhlung* (empathy),
identification is a limit case of psychic contagion. In
identification, the "I" is lost and literally becomes the
other. I no longer feel the pain in me, but only in the other. There
is no distance between the I and you and I am transported, so to
speak, into the other, inhabiting his or her body as if it were mine.
I may identify with the experience so deeply that I live it in the
other. The experiences Scheler has in mind here are mystical
experiences where a person "becomes" the god or hypnotic
experiences where the individual thinks and wills according to the
hypnotist. (GW VII, 31)



All of these experiences of co-feeling are involuntary and take place
regardless of whether we want to experience them. We become conscious
of them only after the fact, realizing perhaps that we are already
laughing or crying. They demonstrate that at the most basic level, we
are drawn to others and are inclined to participate in the lives and
feelings of others (GW VII, 241). This is most clearly evident in
cases of self-deception or confusion, cases when two or more persons
confuse their ideas and experiences with each other's,
forgetting whose experiences or ideas they were originally.



In *Formalism in Ethics and a Non-Formal Ethics of Value*,
Scheler builds upon these analyses to describe the distinctive types
of communities in which human beings participate. This description
falls under the heading of "Collective Person"
(*Gesamtperson*). Persons are act-centers, the unity in the
execution of acts. "Collective Person" refers to a
distinctive unity of the execution, what Scheler calls "social
acts." Social acts are inherently directed at other persons and
are only fully executed in relation to others. Examples of social acts
are acts of promising, commanding, and obeying. A promise is not a
promise until the other accepts it; a command is not a command if the
other does not hear it, etc. These acts are distinct from the intimate
or singularizing acts, acts such as self-consciousness, self-love,
self-respect, etc. (GW II, 511) They are directed at the self and are
fulfilled with reference only to the self. These different types of
acts show that the person is both an individual and a member of a
community or collectivity. Distinguishing between different types of
acts does not entail that we are many different persons. It means,
rather, that our person, our style of being, is expressed both as an
individual and as a member of a community.



Scheler identifies four different types of communities or social
unities.


1. The Herd or Mass:
  

This community type refers to a group formed through psychic contagion
and other forms of involuntary repetition. As a member of a herd, one
has no self-consciousness. In the herd, one's actions are
dictated by the whims and the irrationality of the masses. Caught up
in the excitement or throes of the herd, one is no longer fully
responsible for his or her actions. For this reason, mass movements
are potentially liberating as well as dangerous and susceptible to
dictatorship.
2. Life-Community (*Lebensgemeinschaft*):
  

This community type is formed through genuine acts of co-feeling and
co-living. The subject of these shared feelings and experiences is,
however, the community and not the individual. There is a sense of the
self and a sense of belonging to a community with the others. But this
self is not radically distinct from the community and the others.
One's striving is the striving of the community, a shared
preferencing and valuing developed through traditions, rites, norms,
etc. In a life-community, there is a sense of solidarity, a sense of
being responsible for others and for the group. This responsibility
is, however, not fully moral and the solidarity is a
"representable solidarity." By
"representable," Scheler means that anyone in the group
can represent the others, can take responsibility for the others in
the same manner.
3. Society (*Gesellschaft*):
  

All communal bonds in a society are formed artificially and
consciously by each member (in contrast to the organic and unconscious
bonds of a life-community). A society is made up of individuals who
choose to form relations for the sake of personal welfare,
particularly at the level of pleasure and utility. It has no reality
beyond the individuals who make up the collectivity; the whole is
equal to the sum of its parts (whereas a life-community is a whole
that is greater than the sum of its parts). The formation of society
is motivated by a fundamental mistrust in others, creating bonds for
the sake of security.



Much of Scheler's characterization of society has a negative
ring, particularly in comparison to what he says of the
life-community. He does make clear that society is the introduction of
the mature individual and the self-conscious human being. A member of
the life-community, by contrast, is not yet an individual and is, in
this respect, immature (*unmundig*). For Scheler, the rise
of society is a genuine development in history. Nonetheless, the
life-community is foundational for society. This is shown by virtue of
the contracts forming the bonds of society. Contracts are grounded in
the promise and assume a level of trust, a trust that is first
cultivated in the life-community.
4. Collective Person:
  

"Collective Person" is the deepest and the most profound
level of community. To a certain extent, it is the evolutionary
outcome of both the life-community and society. But
"ontologically" speaking, the loving community
(*Liebesgemeinschaft*) is foundational for the other forms
listed above. What most distinctively characterizes the collective
person is its sense of solidarity. Each member of the community is not
only fully responsible for his or her actions, but is also
co-responsible for the actions of others and of the community. In
contrast to the life-community, each member is self-aware of him or
herself as an individual, as a fully realized person. Yet, in contrast
to society, the individual is caught up in a network of relations with
others. The sense of solidarity in the collective person is that of an
"unrepresentable" solidarity. Every member of the
collective person is absolutely unique. No one can stand in for anyone
else and each bears responsibility for others and for the
group.



Within the notion of the collective person, Scheler describes three
different types: the state (or nation), culture (or people) and the
church. The main difference between these three types is the range or
extent of responsibility. Every citizen of the state is co-responsible
for every other citizen, a limit defined by state or national borders
(as well as recognized members of the citizenry). A culture is
demarcated by the borders created by shared values, beliefs, and
ideas. These borders are often more expansive than a state, but many
different cultures can be found in a state. The church is the most
expansive of the types of collective persons and includes all finite
persons. It is the fullest realization of what Scheler calls
"the love community" (*Liebesgemeinschaft*). The
sense of solidarity concerns the salvation of all finite persons,
past, present and future. Although these different types of collective
persons can be ranked with respect to their related values (life,
spirit, holy), they enjoy their own autonomy and Scheler insists upon
a clear divide between not only church and state, but also culture and
state.



The most crucial notion that arises from Scheler's analysis of
the collective person is that of solidarity. Solidarity assumes two
distinct types of responsibility: a responsibility for one's own
actions and a co-responsibility for the actions of others.
Co-responsibility does not compromise the autonomy of the individual.
Every person is fully responsible for his or her actions. For Scheler,
co-responsibility is a radical form of questioning. When another
person commits an act of hate or violence, the questions implied in
solidarity are how such acts are possible and how I have participated
in creating a world wherein such acts are possible. The act of hate
committed by another person signals that I (and each member of the
given community) have not loved deeply enough and that we as a
community have failed to bring about a world wherein hate does not
exist (GW II, 526). Solidarity assumes the manner in which we have
shared our lives and feelings with one another in a community, but
also the necessity for a person to act to end evil and injustice. The
presence of evil in one's community demonstrates that every
member ought to love more fully and act so that evil is not possible.
At the level of the collective person, this call to responsibility is
felt uniquely by each person, revealing the uniqueness of one's
role in and for the community.



Sharing a community with others and sharing the responsibility for the
community with others is the context in which the person is formed and
realized. It is not the answer to the epistemological question
regarding the knowledge of the other or of other minds. In his
relatively brief analysis of this question, Scheler agrees that the
core of the person is not given in perception, at least not in the
sense that his or her physical body is given as an object of
perception (GW VII, 238). Perception, however, is only one means of
givenness and hence only one means of access to the other. It is only
in the act of love that the other person is given (GW II, 483). The
givenness of the other is irreducible to any physical or psychic
characteristics. In the act of love, there is an immediate intuition
of the person, an "ungrounded" plus (GW VII, 168).
Evidence of this plus is our inability to state the reasons and prove
why we love the other even though we are certain of our love.



Love, therefore, does not afford us a rational understanding of the
other person. What it offers is a means by which to participate in the
way of being and loving of the other. In order to
"understand" the other, we have to love like the other (GW
II, 169). Afforded in this experience of loving is access to the world
of the other and the moral (or ideal) value of the other. It is not a
matter of reading the other's mind, of knowing what the other is
thinking. Rather, love grants us an understanding of who the other is.
The deepest experiences of love for the other reveals the absolute or
holy value of the other, grasping who the other could be or ought to
become. For Scheler, it is possible that another person may know me
better than I know myself and he or she may be able to direct me to my
ideal way of being (GW II, 483). The understanding of the other
through love is a value comprehension. This is not a full disclosure
of the other, but a deepening of appreciation of who the other is, an
appreciation that calls me to love the other ever more profoundly.


## 5. Religious Experience



Scheler's work on the phenomenology of religious experience is
one of his most significant contributions to the phenomenological
tradition. Contrary to his contemporaries such as Husserl and
Heidegger who persist on bracketing out the question of God or the
holy, Scheler examines the experience in a direct and explicit manner.
Scheler's insistence on the possibility of a phenomenology of
religious experience, an insistence that it is possible to provide a
description of the essential qualities and conditions of the
experience of the holy, is itself a critique of modernity and of the
positivistic tendencies growing in philosophical and scientific
thought.



According to Scheler, the modern worldview harbors a prejudice with
respect to what counts as an experience or what is evidential. For the
modern thinker, only those experiences that can be proven in a
rational or logical manner are true or evidential experiences (GW V,
104). The prejudice is not that matters of faith or religious
experience are not meaningful, but that they are not subject to
rigorous scientific or critical investigation. Because they lie
outside the bounds of reason, we are, as Wittgenstein would say, to
remain silent. For Scheler, the problem in modernity is that only one
type or form of evidence is regarded as objective or true, the mode of
rational proof. Inherent to the practice of phenomenology is the
openness to distinctive modes of evidence. Any presupposition about
what counts as objective or subjective, as true or merely
psychological must be held in abeyance. For Scheler, the experience of
the holy or of the absolute is not given through rational proof, but
in the distinctive evidential mode of revelation (GW V, 150). All
rational proofs already assume the experience or the revelation of God
and thus come too late in the attempt to grasp how the holy or the
absolute is experienced (GW V, 249). Scheler's approach is to
grant revelation its own integrity and to treat it as a meaningful
experience subject to philosophical investigation.



It is important to note at the outset of a discussion of
Scheler's work on religious experience that he prefaces his
major work on religious experience, *Vom Ewigen des Menschens*
(*On the Eternal in Man*), with a description of the religious
and existential crisis that humanity faced at the end of World War I.
Many, including Scheler, had hoped that the Great War would reawaken a
sense of dignity both in one's culture and in humanity in
general. The war failed miserably in this respect and has left
humanity only "drunk" with suffering, death and tears (GW
V, 103). In this moment of despair comes the call to a religious
renewal, a call that concerns the very meaning and purpose of human
existence. For Scheler, World War I was the first collective
experience of humanity as such, i.e., an experience shared by all (GW
V, 104). Consequently, the call to renewal, the desperate seeking of
the meaning of existence, is a call experienced by all of humanity. It
has thus never been so crucial to understand the meaning of revelation
and the experience of the absolute, for the danger of the rise of an
idol or a false god has never been so imminent. Whoever or whatever
may step in to answer this call to renewal during these times of
crisis potentially has the power to determine the meaning and course
of humanity.



A phenomenology of religious experience is, for Scheler, a description
of the essential characteristics and the meaning of revelation.
Scheler defines revelation simply as the specific type of givenness
wherein the divine or the holy is given (GW V, 249).
"Givenness" is a term used by Scheler and other
phenomenologists to name that which is experienced in a particular
act. It is, more precisely, the objective correlate of the intentional
act. There is the intending on the part of the person and that which
is given, the object or meaning. To suggest that revelation is a
peculiar mode of givenness is to say that the divine or the holy is
given to the person in a unique manner that is wholly distinct from
perceived objects or rational judgments. The attempt to describe the
essential characteristics of revelation, characteristics that show how
revelation is distinct from other modes of givenness, assumes that
revelation has its own particular sense of lawfulness (GW V, 242).
This means that the investigation into the nature of revelation must
follow the logic demonstrated in the revelatory experience itself and
on its own accord.



Scheler distinguishes three essential characteristics of the act of
revelation that are unique to the religious act.


1. The intention of the religious act is world transcendence. Scheler is
committed to the idea that the religious act is an intentional act.
The intention is the so-called subject correlate of the act of
intentionality. In the case of revelation, this intention is a
transcendence of anything finite (i.e.of this world) (GW V, 245). This
is not to say that revelation is not of this world or does not take
place in this world, nor does it mean that the holy is not experienced
in a finite object such as a religious icon or a finite person.
Rather, it means that what is posited in the act of revelation is
always other than this world, a meaning transcending the finite or the
relative.
2. The objective correlate of the religious intention is also infinite in
its meaning and value. Only the divine or the holy fulfills the
intention of the religious act. No finite thing of any kind, no finite
good or object of love can fulfill the religious act. This is not to
say that we are not at times mistaken and erringly take a finite
object as infinite, as in the case of idolatry. What is sought in the
religious act is precisely that which in principle could not be
experienced in this world. We are seeking a happiness that would never
be possible on earth and we are hoping in the religious act for that
which is impossible and unimaginable (GW V, 246).
3. Finally, the religious act is only fulfilled through a reception
(*Aufnahme*) of the divine that reveals itself to another
being. (GW V, 245). In revelation, something is given, i.e.,
experienced. Scheler rejects the idea that the experience of the
divine is wholly immanent and could be explained through an
objectivization of an immanent experience, an experience motivated by
and in the person. For this reason, the religious act is not
subjective. It is a response to that which is given, a response to the
divine that gives itself. The essential difference between so-called
natural religion (where the world is given as God's creation)
and positive religion (where the experience of the divine is personal)
lies in the way that the divine reveals itself. The revelation found
in natural religion is generic: God is given in nature for all to see.
Revelation in positive religion is the experience of a wholly unique
relation. God gives him or herself to me in a manner that is
particular to me (GW V, 249).



It is this third and final aspect of the religious act that marks
Scheler's contribution to the investigation of revelation.
Scheler's claim is that for there to be a religious act, the
divine must be given in experience. The question that immediately
arises, particularly within the context of the modern worldview, is
how we know that this experience is real and not imaginary or merely
subjective. Scheler agrees that there is no way to prove deductively
or rationally that this experience was indeed real or that the divine
exists. The givenness of the divine is its demonstration. Scheler uses
the German term *Aufweis* to distinguish the particular way in
which the reality or truth of the experience is given in revelation.
An *Aufweis* is a pointing out or a showing of. The divine
shows itself in such a manner that its existence cannot be proven by
the use of reason. In the experience of the divine, the existence of
the divine is given. For this reason, it is impossible to prove to
anyone who has not had a religious experience that God or a god
exists.



As with much of his research, Scheler's investigation into the
religious act is ultimately rooted in a a study of the meaning of the
human being. For Scheler, the religious act is a fundamental and
essential aspect of being human (GW V, 261). Each and every human
being executes the intending of the absolute or the divine and is
always a response to the givenness of the absolute. A human being is a
God-seeker. This is not to say that everyone believes that there is a
God, but only that each and every one of us executes the religious
intention, an intending of the absolute.



Atheism is not a disproof of Scheler's claim; it is only a
rejection of God's existence. That there is a negation of the
divine in atheism only demonstrates that even the atheist executes the
religious act. The negation of the divine only makes sense in the
context of the religious act. For the atheist, one may very well
intend the divine, but such intentions are only met with great
disappointment. The agnostic, on the other hand, holds open the
possibility that the divine exists. For Scheler, the agnostic is a
metaphysical nihilist, a person who rejects that we could ever know
with certainty that there is a God.



Scheler's claim that the human being is a God seeker allows for
the beliefs of atheists and agnostics, but it leads him to a much
stronger claim: "Every finite spirit believes either in a God or
in an idol" (GW V, 261). An idol is a finite object that is
treated as if it were infinite, as if it were God (GW V, 263). The
atheist is not really, according to Scheler, a non-believer. Rather,
the atheist believes in a no-God, that there is no absolute value or
meaning. This is still a religious act and a religious belief.
Scheler's point is that there is always an intending of the
absolute, a seeking of a God. What is in question is necessarily the
object intended as absolute. In the act of idolatry, this God is a
finite object or a good such as wealth, fame or power. The risk of
idolatry is ever present, a risk entailed in the radical openness of
the human being to absolute value. Whether God exists or not is
irrelevant here. What the investigation of the religious act and
religious experience demonstrates is that being human is an opening; a
human being is open to the absolute and the divine.



A final note and a useful transition into the next subject heading
concerns the relation between religions themselves and the question
concerning the diversity or variety of religious experience. The image
Scheler uses to depict the relation that different religions and
cultures bear to one another is that of a tributary all flowing into
the same river toward the same end point (GW XIII, 92). Religious
experience yields only a glimpse of the holy and provides only a
partial, but original insight. Although all religious insight yields
such a partial glimpse, not all insights are of the same depth. Some
of the deepest insights into the holy have formed and led to the major
religions of the world. These rivers may intersect, divide or share
certain pathways, but none serves or can serve as the disproof of the
other. Religious faith and beliefs are of the most deeply rooted and
significant, and consequently can often lead to great conflict with
other faiths. In his more hopeful moments, Scheler thought that the
increasingly shrinking world promised the opportunity to understand
the different religious insights and form a greater understanding of
the divine. Yet, he also warned that these conflicts of faith may
continue to lead to the bloodiest of wars. Acknowledging a genuine
religious diversity does not commit one to the view that all religious
ideas or beliefs are of the same value, but rather to the realization
that there are genuine and irreconcilable differences between them.
How we reconcile and live in a smaller world with these differences
will determine whether the future will be one of war or one of
peace.


## 6. Social and Political Theory



Scheler's social and political thought matures in the fertile
intellectual ground of the sociological and political debates of the
early 20th century. The context of Scheler's thought
is the creation of sociology as a discipline and Scheler seeks to
place himself in the critical exchange with the major players of this
time in sociology and politics, such as Max Weber, Emile Durkheim,
Wilhelm Dilthey, Oswald Spengler, Herbert Spencer, Ferdinand
Tonnies and Karl Schmitt. Scheler's socio-political thought
was born from within the cultural crisis experienced in Germany both
preceding and most emphatically following World War I.



Early in his writings, Scheler represents the Christian voice of the
left. The central question for Scheler and for socio-political thought
at this time in Germany was whether an alternative to either
liberalism or socialism was possible. Scheler argues early that
Christian democracy is the most profound and viable alternative,
showing how the resource for a cultural and political renewal is the
Christian notion of love and solidarity. The explicitly religious
aspect of Scheler's socio-political thought lessens to a degree
in the latter stages of his thought, but he never abandons the idea of
solidarity as the basis for a more just and peaceful future, a future
where the people collectively and in solidarity take up the task of
transforming the world in which we live.



Scheler's premature death would prevent him from experiencing
firsthand the unthinkable and horrific consequences of the social and
political crises Germany faced during the early 20th
century. The crisis was for him not merely a German problem, but the
problem of modernity in general. Scheler did not hesitate to speak in
general and singularizing terms like "the German culture,"
"the European culture" or even "the West."
With such generalities as "the modern worldview," Scheler
could identify the underlying ethos, i.e., the order of valuing, of a
culture and describe the dominant tendencies responsible for the
social and cultural crisis. However, Scheler used the terms "the
German culture" or "the European culture" as a means
to preserve a unique and irreplaceable spiritual development of a
people. The attempt to defend the meaning and culture of a people
continued to be a cause for tension in Scheler's thought, a
tension that would lead him to defend German aggression at the outset
of World War I and a tension that motivated his critique of fascism
and his support for the necessity of the ideal of peace.



The crisis of modernity was, for Scheler, the result of three central
factors or mindsets: (1) the rise of late capitalism, (2) the
mechanization of nature, and (3) liberal individualism.
Scheler's description of these three as "mindsets"
(*Denkformen*) is purposeful. Particularly in respect to
capitalism, he wants to distinguish his work from that of Weber and
Sombart, specifically from their work on the "spirit" of
capitalism. On the other hand, he wants to retain an understanding of
capitalism, for instance, as not merely an economic system, but as an
approach and a way of configuring the world.



Capitalism, the mechanization of nature and liberal individualism are
reductive mindsets. A reductive mindset is a way of viewing the world
that devalues all other possible views. The mechanization of nature,
for example, becomes not merely one form of knowledge of nature, but
the only way in which to know it. All reductive mindsets are, for
Scheler, ultimately rooted in a value reversal. The value reversal
that all three of these mindsets share is the promotion of utility
over the value of life. As a consequence, a living being only has
value in so far as it is useful. Late capitalism is the economic
expression of the value reversal. All goods, objects and beings are
valuable only in so far as they are able to generate more wealth. The
mechanization of nature is the reduction of a living being to a
mechanism or a machine for the purposes of manipulation and control
and for achieving some useful end for human beings. Liberal
individualism is the reduction of all forms of community to society.
As a result, all interpersonal relations are regarded as artificial
and contractual, relations formed for the benefit of the
individual's interests.



Together these different but related mindsets create a worldview, the
modern *Weltanschauung*, and succeed in transforming the world
into an object of utility. The value reduction to utility poses not
only a threat to the life and the welfare of living beings, but also
to the cultural and spiritual values. Utility, as the dominant value,
does not destroy the higher values. It cultivates, rather, a type of
value blindness. People lose sight of the value of spiritual pursuits
such as the arts, philosophy and religion. Spiritual values are only
noticed through their usefulness. When a culture becomes blind to the
higher values, it also loses sight of its uniqueness as a culture and
as a people. At the level of utility, people are more alike. Cultural
differences matter very little when the goals become efficiency and
productivity. It is the higher, spiritual values that reveal the
uniqueness of a specific culture. The end of the modern worldview,
Scheler maintains, is an internationalization of all cultures, a
making of all peoples and cultures one and the same (GW IV, 600).



Scheler has little interest in merely remaining a spectator to the
crisis and his writing offers the means to overcome it. While he
analyzes the main factors responsible for the crisis of modernity,
Scheler's suggestions for overcoming it change dramatically. His
first and most troublesome response to the crisis was war. During his
time earning a living as a freelance writer, Scheler worked for the
state's office of propaganda during the year leading up to and
immediately following the outbreak of World War I. Like many
intellectuals at the time, Scheler was a vociferous defender of German
aggression and thought that the war could function as a means to
awaken the German people from cultural slumber and value blindness. In
his major work on the war, *Der Genius des Krieges und der deutsche
Krieg* (The Genius of War and the German War) Scheler
distinguishes three different levels on which war functions as a
cultural renewal.


1. Scheler argues that war is quite natural to life as it is a natural
consequence of the organism's growth. More importantly, these
conflicts among living beings function as an important reminder of the
value of life and the types of trusting and communal relations that
emerge through a sharing of life with other human beings.
2. War is also a significant factor in the growth of a culture. The Great
War was a war of culture and lifestyles. Through this conflict,
Germany would be reminded of its uniqueness. Conflict serves as an
incredibly stark reminder of how one's own culture differs from
someone else's. This must not necessarily be a judgment of which
culture is better, but rather functions as an awakening to one's
own particular culture and one's particular role in preserving
and promoting one's own culture.
3. Finally, Scheler discusses the value level of the holy and it is at
this level that the war finds its greatest significance. Scheler
begins this analysis by showing first how war and violence are not
anti-religious acts, but are very much a part of religious belief,
attempting to make sense of loving one's enemy on the
battlefield. These remarks are only preparatory. The genuine holy
significance of the war for Germany comes from the realization that
the war is a battle for justice. Scheler is not pro-war and argues
that the only justified war is a defensive war that defends against
the annihilation of the significant values of a culture (GW IV, 101).
For Scheler, Germany is not the aggressor, but England is. This
aggression is only made explicit through the type of worldview and
mindset analysis that Scheler gives. At stake is the annihilation of
the German people, a wholly unjust act. Hence, when Germany rises to
battle, it is defending not only itself, but also justice, fighting
against tyrannical forces aiming to destroy a culture and a
people.



Scheler's analysis and justification of German aggression
leading to the war is confused for many reasons, many of which Scheler
himself acknowledges in his later writings. A central confusion
Scheler recognizes concerns the meaning and the possibility of
renewal. Renewal, as Scheler writes later, only takes place through an
act of repentance and thus can never be motivated by hatred. Scheler
writes specifically with respect to the possibility of a political
reconstruction that what is necessary is a collective proclamation of
guilt, not merely for the war, but also for the cultural depression
and value degradation for which every member of the German and
European community is responsible (GW V, 416). Acts of repentance,
individual or collective, assume a moral transformation. Whereas war
finds its resource for renewal through the violent conflict with the
enemy, repentance grounds its renewal in the ethical insight into the
person I ought to be. The act of repentance and the expression of
guilt are acts of disclosure, revealing what kind of person one ought
to be in contrast to the kind of person one has been. These acts
demonstrate that the person has become a more loving human being.
Transformation, either for the individual or for a people, is
motivated by this moral ideal disclosed in the act of repentance.



Scheler describes this sense of transformation as a transformation
"from above" (GW IV, 397). It is a rejection of what
Scheler takes to be the socialist form of transformation, a
transformation from below. What Scheler thinks is lacking in socialism
and Marxism is a sense of the absolute value of the person. A
transformation from below, a transformation fueled by class conflict
or other economic factors, fails to recognize the uniqueness and the
value of each person. Such recognition is possible only at the
spiritual or ideal level of insight. Socialism, according to Scheler,
regards the person only in terms of the basic life values and
consequently seeks only to transform the given social and political
context from this perspective, a perspective which treats all person
as if they were the same.. A transformation from above takes the
person as the highest value and transforms the given conditions in
accord with uniqueness of each and every individual.



Scheler is not interested in a revolution and at no time speaks of a
possible overthrow of the existing governments in Germany or in
Europe. The revolutionary act comes in the form of an act of
resurgence in the community and the specific sense of responsibility
developed through the bonds of solidarity. Solidarity is the principle
that guides the generation of a Christian community and it is on this
form of community that Scheler hopes to found a new Germany and Europe
(GW VI, 264). In this second phase of Scheler's social and
political thought, he was attracted to the manner by which the person
as absolute value was realized in the bonds of solidarity. In
solidarity, a person comes to realize not only his or her
co-responsibility for every member of the group, but also his or her
unique calling to act on behalf of the good and the just. The bonds of
solidarity not only overcome the individualism of liberalism and the
value reduction of socialism, but they also reveal the call to act and
thus to participate in the social and political reconstruction.



"Christian democracy" is the title Scheler gives to the
political expression of the sense of solidarity he develops in the
second phase of his social and political thought (GW IV,
676-687). Scheler does not return to this notion again, but it
does isolate the three basic aspects of his political thought that
grew out of this period of his thought and that informed his later
thought as well. These three aspects of Christian democracy are as
follows: (1) Each and every member is called to act by virtue of a
sense of co-responsibility for every other member and for the group as
a whole, an expression of collective self-governance, (2) the basic
vital needs and goods are provided to all, preserving the
life-community of a people, and (3) dignity and humility are the
central virtues that preserve the radical uniqueness of each and every
person. A Christian democracy is a model of collective governance
wherein each person is concerned about the basic welfare of all while
promoting what makes each person unique. Or, in Scheler's words,
it maintains an aristocracy "in the heavens" and a
democracy "on earth" (GW II, 500).



The beginning of the third phase in Scheler's social and
political thought is marked by the publication of his work,
*Problems of a Sociology of Knowledge*. Although this idea of a
sociology of knowledge is a new approach for Scheler, it does not
raise a new question. In this work, Scheler investigates the manner in
which values and ideals determine the course of history, i.e., what is
both possible and actual for a culture. This is the same concern that
Scheler raised in his work on value theory. What is novel about his
later approach is an understanding of history as an interplay between
two wholly distinct factors, real and ideal. Whereas Scheler's
earlier work focused primarily on the ideal or on the role of values
in history, the later work places much greater emphasis on the
so-called "real" factors or drives of life. This change of
emphasis was motivated in part by his disappointment with the
reconstructive efforts immediately after the war and the recognition
that ideals and values are incapable on their own of instituting
change.



There are, for a human society, three basic real factors: family,
politics and economics. These three factors are rooted in the basic
life-drive structure of the human being. The family is rooted in the
sex drive, politics - in the power drive and economics -
in the appetitive or the acquisition drive (GW VIII, 19). Life or
existence is a basic urge to be (*Drang*) and in the human
being, this urge to be is expressed in terms of the three basic
drives. These drives are what makes all that is possible and in terms
of the development of history, the drives are what makes history
possible.



Ideal factors are activities such as art, philosophy, science and
religion. These factors are rooted in spirit, a movement expressed in
each human being that discloses the higher values and ideals. The
ideal factors enjoy a development independent of the real and have
their own logic of development. The real or actual does not determine
what is or what can be thought. Culture is the arena in which spirit
unfolds, but this unfolding is particular to each and every culture.
Scheler adamantly rejects any idea of a world-spirit or eternal
objective logos directing the course of human history and of every
culture (GW VIII, 27). There is, by the very nature of spirit itself,
a diversity of cultures, each having its own organizational structure
and function (GW VIII, 25). The development of a culture rests on the
particular insights of its people and proceeds along the course
particular to that culture.



With respect to existence, however, the ideal factors are powerless.
They cannot on their own accord realize any idea or value. Their power
lies in their ability to direct and channel the real factors of
history. They are parasitic in this manner upon the real factors,
having power only in so far as they are able to determine the course
of the real factors. The life drives are what gives spirit its power
to exist. History, therefore, takes place through the interplay of the
real and the ideal factors. Its course is determined by which ideas
and values become dominant in directing the life drives.



This process of determining the real factors and realizing the ideal
is the process of spiritualization and it defines the task of being
human. A sociology of knowledge is an examination of how certain ideas
and values have shaped the real factors, giving rise to diverse
expressions of the family, politics and economics. Politically,
spiritualization is not only the process by which the drive to power
is directed by the higher values of spirit, the transformation of
physical power into political power, but also an understanding that
ideas alone do not change the course of history. Politics is an
activity that engages the real and thus must unfold through action.
The loving bonds of solidarity may give rise to deeper insights
regarding the value of a person, but these insights only come to have
an effective force if they are realized in the acts of persons.



Throughout his political writings, Scheler was prone to raising
ultimatums for Germany and Europe. During the events leading up to
World War I, either Germany would fight for its and Europe's
cultural dignity, or Europe would cease to exist. Immediately after
the war, it was once again an "either/or" frame in terms
of the existence of Europe: either Europe would generate itself again
from the loving bonds of community and solidarity, or it would
collapse under the pressures of capitalism, liberalism and the
mechanization of nature. Scheler never stopped fearing the destructive
ideals and values inherent to modernity. Yet, his greatest political
fear was political indifference (GW XIII, 72). Indifference leads only
to despotism, he writes, and with the looming threat of fascism
throughout Europe it was more important than ever for the people of
Europe to act. Despite a history that only knows violence and war,
peace remains a possibility. In his essay on the eternal ideal of
peace, Scheler writes that peace is always a future possibility, but
that this eternal ideal will not realize itself. The realization of
peace requires direct political action that must spring collectively
from each and every member (GW XIII, 121). Scheler's mature
social and political thought demonstrates the necessity of action and
the possible terror that will ensue when indifference and apathy
become the cultural norm.


## 7. Philosophical Anthropology and Metaphysics



In the Preface to the volume, *The Forms of Knowledge and
Society*, Scheler remarks that the works contained in the volume,
*The Sociology of Knowledge* and *Cognition and Work*,
are a means to understand both his philosophical anthropology and
metaphysics (GW VIII, 11). Many of the themes present in this volume
are developed in a more speculative manner. Scheler has been often
criticized for taking this metaphysical turn, a turn apparently
defying his earlier phenomenological investigations and a turn taken
at a time that many were declaring to be the end of the metaphysics
and metaphysical systems. For Scheler, the move was necessary to
counteract the forces found in the mindsets that underpin those
positive sciences that render metaphysical and philosophical
investigations meaningless. More importantly, this metaphysical turn
was also necessary to grasp more profoundly the crisis haunting
modernity.



The social and political tensions erupting in Germany and Europe,
tensions Scheler feared would lead to a second and even bloodier World
War, had their roots in a much deeper crisis, an ontological crisis, a
crisis of the human being. This crisis is perhaps best captured by
Scheler in his essay, *The Human Being and History*. Scheler
writes, "In our ten-thousand year history, we are the first time
period in which the human being has become fully and totally
'problematic'; the first time period in which the human
being no longer knows who he or she is, but also *knows that*
he or she does not know" (GW IX, 120). The purpose of the later
speculative work was not merely to clarify the nature of the crisis,
but also to problematize what had become unproblematic, to show that
the human being is a question that ought to be considered.



Philosophical anthropology is an attempt to provide a unified account
of the meaning of the human being. In a much earlier work, *The
Idea of the Human Being*, Scheler writes that the human being is
undefinable (GW III, 186). The human being is no thing, but rather a
"becoming," a "between," a
"self-transcending being." An attempt at a unified account
is thus not a search for a definition, but rather an attempt to
clarify exactly that which makes the human being undefinable, that
which reveals human being as a human becoming. A philosophical
anthropology is historical in as much as it investigates the dominant
worldviews that harbor a basic insight into the meaning of being
human. The three dominant insights that Scheler wishes to unify are
(1) the human being as "tool maker" (homo faber), the
insight of Darwinian evolution and science, (2) the human being as
rational animal, the insight directing the ancient Greek worldview,
and (3) the human being as child of God, the insight of the
Judeo-Christian worldview. Each insight, for Scheler, reveals a
peculiar aspect of the human being. The problem is that no one has yet
shown how these insights are united to form a singular whole, the
unity that is the human being.



A rejection of any attempt to define the human being is a rejection of
the traditional attempt in philosophy to think of the human being as a
substance. Scheler describes the human being not as a substance, but
as the meeting point of two distinct movements (GW IX, 70). These
movements are life-urge (*Lebensdrang*) and spirit
(*Geist*). The distinction between these two movements follows
the distinction between the real and the ideal factors introduced in
the sociology of knowledge. It is only in the human being that life
and spirit find themselves in a process of becoming unified. In the
human being, life becomes spiritualized and spirit becomes vitalized
and embodied. Every act of the human being participates in this dual
process, a process that is never completed, but is recreated in every
new act. Either this process participates in the realization of the
deeper, spiritual values, or it is a movement toward bestialization, a
realization of the more shallow and superficial values.



Life-urge is the movement found in every living being, the movement or
drive to seek the greatest amount of fulfillment and vivacity with the
least amount of resistance. This urge can be found in the distinct
stages of evolution, whether in the most basic living organism or in
the higher primates and human beings. It expresses itself in the
instinctual drives as well as in the highly sophisticated intelligence
needed to solve problems related to survival in an environment.
Scheler argues in *Cognition and Work* that pragmatism has
offered to date the best and the most robust account of the human
being as a living being who interacts with and learns from his or her
environment.



Living beings relate to their environment and to other living beings
erotically, through a type of cosmic love disclosed most emphatically
in the person of Saint Francis of Assisi (GW VIII, 274). As
erotic-vital beings, humans seek the most vivacious and beautiful of
lives. A living being desires not merely to live, but to live most
fully. As living beings, we bear an erotic relation to the natural
world. This loving relation to other living beings affords us a
connection to others as fellow living beings, an understanding of the
other as living, as sharing in an environment. Having a body affords
the human being a privileged access to the living world and the
environment, an access threatened by the mechanization of nature and
the modern drive to dominate it.



What it means to be a living being takes on a much more complex and
elevated significance in Scheler's later work and marks a
genuinely new avenue of investigation for him. Yet, the questions
concerning the meaning of being human remain very much the same. Are
human beings merely intelligent living beings? Is the difference
between the being human and being some other animal one of degree or
is it a difference of kind? Is there anything "special" or
unique about being human? The answer to these questions is decisive
for Scheler. At stake is the meaning of the human being as person, as
absolute value. In his philosophical anthropology, Scheler attempts to
demonstrate that the human being also participates in the movement of
spirit and that spirit is essentially different from the movement of
life. The human being has a "special" place in the cosmos
because the human being participates in both the movement of life and
spirit, because each human being is an embodied spirit, i.e., a finite
person.



There are at least four ways in which Scheler distinguishes spirit
from life.


1. Spirit is the activity of objectivizing, a rendering of the world and
of beings in terms of what they mean. Mere living beings, by contrast,
relate to objects in their environment not as objects, but as that
which satisfies the drives. For example, for the living being, the
apple is experienced as merely something to fulfill one's
desire, whereas for the spiritual being, the apple is given as apple,
as a kind of food.
2. Related to this first characteristic, is the value latent quality of
spirit. The movement of spirit is the disclosure of value. According
to Scheler, life-urge is value blind and is motivated solely by
greater fulfillment. Spirit is motivated by the good and is structured
according to *agape*, a charitable and self-sacrificing
love.
3. Spirit is self-consciousness. Each living being, by virtue of having a
body, exhibits a type of body-consciousness, a relating of oneself to
others in a given environment. Spiritual beings not only can take
themselves to be objects of reflection, and thus can be critical of
who or what they have become, but are also aware of themselves as
being seen by others, as having a different world of experience than
others.
4. The final distinguishing characteristic is spirit's quality of
world-openness. Spiritual beings are not restricted in their
reflections to the here and now, or even to the specific context of
their immediate life concerns. This type of world-openness is what is
captured by the Greek sense of wonder, a metaphysical wonder and
astonishment that there is something rather than nothing. Spiritual
beings are able to contemplate the meaning of being, time, death as
well as the purpose of existence itself. These are not merely
theoretical concerns, but that which transcends, or is beyond,
life.



It is the sense of spirit as world-open that leads Scheler to
undertake his final reflections regarding the ground of all being or
*Weltgrund*. These final reflections are taken not from a
religious perspective, but from a metaphysical one. In this final
stage of his thought, Scheler becomes increasingly critical of
religion and finds that philosophy remains more true to the
significance of the human being as world-open. Religion, writes
Scheler, tends to conceal this openness by positing some fixed or
secure notion of God (GW IX, 69). The radical openness that is spirit
reveals, to the contrary, that the ground of all being is itself
caught up in a process of becoming. Scheler's understanding of
God also changes. In his later thought, God is a becoming that takes
place in and through the acts of all spiritual beings. It requires
great courage to face a world that has no fixed meaning, a world whose
meaning hangs upon the actions of each and every human being.



Outright rejected by Scheler is the creator God of the Judeo-Christian
tradition. Spirit wholly lacks the power to create *ex nihilo*,
and God as pure spirit is utterly powerless in this sense. The power
of spirit lies in its ability to guide and direct the becoming of the
world. God did not create the world, but allowed it to become (GW XI,
203). The world, i.e., life-urge, is the realizing factor of spirit
and, in allowing the world to become, God makes it possible for
goodness to be realized. Hence, the becoming of the world is, by
virtue of God's love, *agape*. As the meeting place of
spirit and life, the human being is responsible for the becoming of
God, and consequently for the realization of goodness. This task of
the realization of God is one and same as the task of the realization
of the deeper spiritual values. As the deeper spiritual values are
realized, existence takes on a more meaningful form and ultimately
points to the deepest value, the divine. Scheler's metaphysics
is the revelation of human responsibility in its most profound
designation. Whether human existence is the expression of the divine
or is merely relative to the basest of values depends solely on the
manner in which human beings take responsibility for a future that is
open. Rather than shift responsibility for the uncertain future to a
particular religious practice or dogma, each person must live out the
wholly indeterminate becoming of the world, the human being and
God.



Scheler's commitment to the distinctive nature of the human
being and to the two irreducible movements of the Weltgrund, spirit
and life-urge, leaves his final thought in a kind of dualism. He is
readily aware of this and argues that his is a new type of dualism. It
does not suffer from the problems introduced by the Cartesian dualism
of mind and body. Yet, due in part to the unfinished nature of both
his philosophical anthropology and metaphysics, we are left with more
questions than answers about the relation between life and spirit. For
instance, how do spirit and life interact when life is value blind and
spirit is powerless? How is the human being a unity when it
participates in two essentially different movements? What is clear is
that these two movements constituting the unique place of the human
being interpenetrate one another through a discourse of loving, the
eros of life and the *agape* of spirit. Through his or her
existence, the human beings is the unification of both forms of loving
and is afforded the unique insights that arise through eros and
*agape*. Scheler's attempt at a metaphysics is a more
speculative approach to an examination of human existence, but this
speculative move is motivated by a fuller understanding of the
original and loving openness the human being bears to the world.


## 8. Concluding Remarks



Scheler occupies a precarious position in the history of the
phenomenological movement. Unlike many of the giants in the tradition,
Scheler was not a student of the master, Husserl. Phenomenology is an
"attitude" to which Scheler arrives after he completes his
formal studies. His first published works are not, strictly speaking,
phenomenological. Husserl and the phenomenological approach provided
Scheler access to phenomena he had previously only hinted at or viewed
from afar, phenomena such as moral and emotional experience. When
Scheler was introduced to phenomenology, it was in its infancy, still
discovering itself as a distinctive approach. Both of these factors,
Scheler's maturity as a philosopher and phenomenology's
immaturity as a movement, provided Scheler the freedom to develop
phenomenology in his own unique style as well as to test its
limits.



Many of the differences between Scheler and his fellow
phenomenologists, whether in terms of style or content, could be
attributed to a difference in their personalities. Yet, there are at
least notable and substantial differences between Scheler and other
phenomenologists such as Husserl, Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty. For
example, Scheler draws a much sharper line between existence and
spirit, between the real and the ideal, between object and act. This
can be seen most acutely in Scheler's understanding of the
intuition of essences and how such an intuition participates in the
becoming-God. In terms of style, Scheler worked solely from insight
and refused to follow any prescribed method or pedagogy. His tendency
was to move directly to the most profound or deepest of insights,
rather than develop levels of phenomenological analysis, e.g., static
and genetic, or hermeneutic. As a result, Scheler does not hesitate to
take up subjects such as ethics, politics and religion. This lack of
method in Scheler is in part due to the foundational nature of the
emotional life, his conviction that love is the ground for knowledge
- a foundational relation in direct opposition to Husserl. If
there is a single point or thought that best captures the distinctive
nature of Scheler's approach in contrast to that of his fellow
phenomenologists, it is his notion of the human being as person. This
"choice" of human being as person in contrast to
Husserl's transcendental ego, Heidegger's Dasein or
Merleau-Ponty's lived-body gives a particular directedness to
Scheler's thought, an emphasis on the personal dimension of
experience. Scheler's world is cast in a much different relief
and as a consequence, is illuminated by such personal experiences as
the love of others and the divine.