The Conclusions of Max Scheler
Shuster, George N.
October 20, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 579 THE CONCLUSIONS OF MAX SCHELER ...
...It must be true thing like a new reason for human hope...
...Scheler announced that only those who had stantiate the existence of God...
...in it a singular nobility was unmistak- in this case is, just as in connection with fundamental able...
...and he dared, while version" was deflected, for reasons which no one can keeping his position as a savant, to look out upon the determine...
...third, the spir58o THE COMMONWEAL October 20, 1926 itual feelings, directly attached to the ego, and func- see an impressive wealth of psychological observation tionally 'attached to objects recognized as existing, and insight...
...Edmund Hus- its centre of vitality, such as the sensations of health serl's studies in logic had attacked the subjective views and sickness, of vitality and weakness...
...In the second place, objects revealed to our has done worse...
...The pursuit of the he is an advocate of student selection...
...These lands, too, have their gesture, he would confer on them still fuller academic Nietzsches and their Haeckels and would, if they pos- and selective freedom and for fear that will not suffice, sessed the courage of their convictions, drive these sift and sort them out and raise the standard of convictions to deductions just as deadly to humanity quality by eugenics and a caste system of student selecand just as destructive to the rights of man as the phil- tion...
...Naturally, we do not visualize it so stances, thus drawing a pertinent parallel between the directly as we do sensory knowledge, for the reason mediaeval schools and the "phenomenalistic" groups...
...sight," in both its sensory ing to compare, at least flittingly, the position of Ger- and metaphysical aspects, not reasoning, is the basic man speculation since the close of the war with, say, means by which we arrive at truth...
...science of psychology gently into line with the great What once seemed likely to prove an important "con- truths of religious conviction...
...that we cannot grasp it as completely as God Himself, Naturally, this encouraged the belief that through the Being in whom holiness is fully present...
...Let us observe, in the first place, that feelings which are localized in the organism ; second, the Scheler method is based upon what has been feelings which are proper to the whole organism and termed "phenomenalistic" thinking...
...But nition of what is holy and of God...
...And so with one sublime of their Christianity...
...These are : first, upon this way...
...He is by way of being principle of chaos was a rapid-fire sketch, but an advocate of birth control for the same reason that not a highly colored one...
...The world did not see it, and will deny They are hampered by fundamentalism-which it with curses today, because the same sort of educa- blindfolds the eyes, and shackles the mind and retion has its echo in other superior lands which boast strains individual action...
...This entity, and which is nevertheless actually known to book was intimately affiliated with the life and ideals all men who can see, we realize that our knowledge of war-time...
...He himaxioms or the colors, it is to some extent independent self called attention to Saint Thomas in several inof ratiocination...
...Brooks apologetically of John Adding...
...The human subject leads into a thousand blind alleys and by-ways, product is exhibiting unfortunate animalistic tendencies and always it encounters hosts of humanity warped -not as a result of sectarianism, of course, but because and spoiled by wrong thinking-running the gamut the individual intellect is still "restrained and hamof human relations from the multifarious functions pered...
...Although, therefore, there is a will-occupies in the realm of ethical knowledge...
...fourth, feelings which are purely metaphysical which what Scheler has written reinforces the Carand of the soul, the feelings of holiness-attached to dinal's argument from conscience...
...As a con- then, thought Husserl, that our knowledge of reality sequence, it was really an important and attractive comes, not through categories as Kant declared, nor book...
...Systems of thought and emphasized the reality of qualities, so Scheler has spun out either by Kant or the biologists did little planted his doctrine four-square upon empiric and nonmore than impel men to opposite and equally unsatis- formal psychology...
...It is clearer still in the very book or any magazine containing the reflections of a newspaper of a recent morning in the dictum of a college professor, preacher, or scientist and try, if you university president who declares that the student of can, to discover one who writes to a definite concluthe future must be carefully selected from a preferred sion-who offers a clear-cut solution, or who is not class-the remainder to be declared unfit for entrance befuddled, hopeless, pessimistic, anti-Christian, and and barred from the sacred halls of learning...
...The still singing the old everlasting song of freedom, more product of the colleges and universities has fallen be- freedom, and still more freedom...
...The so-called "primate of love" : and since not only is it second two exist, says Scheler, "to reveal to us the in- central in Scheler's thought, but also the subject of creasing perfection or lessening worth of our spiritual one of his best essays, some hurried attention to it person, the moral destination and individual basic would seem to be in order...
...My present purpose is to comment briefly varieties of feeling normal to men...
...trend of which are, to a large extent, independent of What is the place which love-the eager, active our animal being...
...Only after we have it is the curse of Germany that philosophic movements seen the reality which is qualitatively the object of re- there tend to assume more than a little of esoteric ligion, says Scheler, can we use other proofs to sub- quality...
...osophy of the infidel servant and the blind, brutal This is the sort of sublime idiocy issuing out of the military overlord...
...tells us, moreover, that the youth of the nation is in Never was the process consummated in a more revolt-somebody or something is always rebelling and easily recognizable type than the exhibit of warped revolting under the sectarian system-and for the tenhumanity which directed militaristic ideals of Prussia thousandth time utters the old platitudinous parrotin the world war-and yet it went unrecognized for cry in telling why they are in revolt ! what it was...
...he brought the point of view perilously similar to oriental mysticism...
...The test of it all is so inevitable still further elimination of the slightest trace simple and so easy that it is ludicrous...
...demic and supra-capitalistic time, should have gone Next, from my statement, "This is a green tree," I practically unnoticed...
...Yet, even so, it seems to me that this world as the fresh and colorful creation of God, and man's work is, apologetically, a very useful deposit...
...for instance, blessedness, de- pher's case, the conviction that religion is based very spair, remorse of conscience, and peace...
...they matter which cannot believe in mind...
...not as a series of dusty deductions...
...truly upon man's recognition of the holy, and his need The first two varieties of feeling exist, as Aristotle for it because of his own sinfulness...
...statements were drawn by Husserl...
...ing, but by a kind of spiritual sight which Scheler It was not so much that he taught a new moral terms "feeling...
...The Scheler who had ap- opinions which Christians have sponsored over and proached so near to traditional Christianity in Vom over again until the antique armor in which they were Ewigen im Menschen later took refuge in an ethical clothed seemed dull and out-of-date...
...If ton Symonds, "because his niche in the universe was so, what is this "sight...
...From this, two the drift of French metaphysics away from Bergson...
...Those who know Newman's Grammar present to the mind, and visualized-sorrow, for in- of Assent will, however, be struck by the manner in stance...
...but through actual, active contact, through sight...
...And yet it would have been most interest- knowledge concerning it...
...The two resemble said, to express by the alternative of pleasure-pain that each other in still another striking way...
...Besharp gulf between feeling that is physical and feel- ginning with da Vinci's statement that "Every great ing that is spiritual, both lead us to the knowledge of love is the daughter of a great perception" and Pasobjective reality which is not discovered by the reason cal's maxim, "Love and understanding are one and -however much we may syllogize later on-and both the same," Scheler proceeds to prove that our appreare purposeful in the sense that they guard and pro- ciation of ethical values increases as we view them in mote what is essential to our well-being...
...This is the something is either beneficial or harmful to life...
...standable to us when we search for Him in love, but Hereupon is based Scheler's attitude toward re- in turn He Himself is distinguished above all for the ligious belief...
...The average must be lifted and he proposes of the home to the devious and sometimes devilish to lift it, not by inculcating virtue in the individual, machinations of statecraft, following always the same but by applying the hydraulic pressure of birth control dreadful deification of the human with the same dire and student selection and lifting the entire mass...
...low par, so an artificial standard must be established Unless a man orders and operates his life according...
...Between psycho- based on them, but not logically deducible from them...
...If we philosophy and sociology at the University of Col- now observe that "green" is something which cannot ogne) came to the fore as an apostle of ethics with be defined, which is not an object with its own separate the publication of Vom Ewigen im Menschen...
...This same z3.-The Editors...
...THE CONSEQUENCES OF CHAOS By THEODORE F. MACMANUS .(This is the second of two articles by Mr...
...It took him longer than most men to find him- through association as the mechanists have averred, self," says Mr...
...most eminent mouths and minds impregnated with the An echo of the same philosophy-a first faint, far- individualistic theory of life and society-filling the off trending toward the same brutal ideal-is with us front pages of the newspapers and, under gentler and in America today in the misguided clamor for cen- More cultured guise, monopolizing the pages of our tralized, bureaucratic control of education, with its so-called highbrow magazines...
...the axioms of mathematics and logic are some that Coue fooled nobody into thinking that the Sor- of these and are accepted confidently, not because we bonne had committed itself en masse to auto-sugges- can demonstrate their truth, but because we see they tion-although the Sorbonne, historically speaking, are true...
...To indicate more dearly what this philosophy, as that he taught moral philosophy in a word means in ethics, he distinguishes between four new way...
...All the the act of love, simply because of all the qualities sorrows and sufferings of creatures," says Scheler by attached to the person, love is the highest and, thereway of illustration, "have a meaning, at least an ob- fore, the most valuable...
...Pick up any of religious influence...
...Because the object was to consider "being" the coherence upon which this arrival at spiritual faith rather than here-and-now reality, a definite gift for is based...
...This I learn to know, not by adequate to an era which has followed an over-aca- any process of reasoning, but by simple, plain sight...
...Just as we see green or feel sorrow, for and understanding, in connection with problems not reasons intimately bound up both with the reality of religious...
...and there seemed to leap from its pages some- axioms of thought, based on sight...
...German thinkers have been some- consciousness force recognition of certain qualities what more satisfactorily represented...
...Against it rive at a knowledge of them by processes of reasonScheler appeared as a rebel...
...may proceed to a recognition of "green" independent Scheler, sociologist, psychologist, and something of of any object and capable of comparison with other an artist (in daily life he serves as professor of beings of the same class, "red," for instance...
...objective things and our own needs, so also do we, in It is evident that up until this point the system of a very much more profound and important manner, Scheler, although primarily a philosophy of method see what is holy...
...God is not only most underjective meaning...
...October 20, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 581 This gift, however, soon became a proudly guarded While laboring as a thinker, knee-deep in the stream treasure-"a proof," as Theodore Haecker declared, of modern thought, he found ways of expressing once "that, of course, philosophy has more right to be more, and in words of remarkable freshness, many dogmatic than religion...
...October 20, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 579 THE CONCLUSIONS OF MAX SCHELER By GEORGE N. SHUSTER THERE was hardly time or space at the Sixth of Kant by insisting upon the reality of both subject International Congress of Philosophy for any- and object as present to the perceiving mind...
...He and dreadful result...
...Our thing like glimpses of what the separate nations "attentiveness" to any "thing" is the source of our are thinking...
...First, there are a It would have been interesting if only because such number of fundamental realities upon which all our samples as we have are illusory if it be supposed they reasoning rests and which, nevertheless, we cannot give a definite impression of the sum-total...
...Modernistic attempts to account for quality of infinite affection...
...Qualities, in the ethical sense, fying poles-mind which cannot believe in matter, and are the moral "values" or hues of good and evil...
...The really great also are not independent things, but nevertheless exist achievement of this philosophy was the proof that as objective beings knowable to us...
...more essential to him than his niche in the world...
...One hopes prove...
...college president is the very fruit, flower and culminaHAT I said in a previous article about the tion of the sectarian system...
...It follows, accordingly, religion by one version or another of the theory that that our natural relationships with Him are, not those it is something demanded by man to satisfy a "meta- of servants who must obey a command, but rather physical urge," all led to the ridiculous conclusion that those of lovers who see in Him all perfection, all "man has created God in the likeness of man...
...We do not arGod speaks only faintly in syllogisms...
...The great service of Max Scheler has been to inHere is detected and admirably defined the slowing terpret this term in the realm of human conduct...
...In both there is the deepest centre of the spiritual personality taken present, though more explicitly in the German philosoas an indivisible whole...
...It is a "sight" which we cannot ac- and not of objectivity, had come close to certain probcount for entirely by ratiocination because, like the lems of great importance to the scholastics...
...been thoroughly trained in his method could use it to Naturally, one cannot indicate in a brief comment advantage...
...We see Scheler and his friends the philosophia perennis was only through the veil of finite things, and so, darkly...
...Just up process which has robbed many very fine minds as Husserl had based his views upon natural science in our time of their momentum...
...analysis, the diaries of Keyserling and theosophy, some Thus, for example, my perception of a green tree echoes of other movements have slipped through...
...to be aided in solving difficult problems of psychology It is, therefore, the "holy hour," the "hours of Christ" and epistemology, especially since they dealt with reas Dostoyevsky calls them, which intensify our recog- ligion in so traditional and even Catholic a sense...
...In the background, the reader must try to contemplation remained a prerequisite...
...He himself lays reverboth its subjective and objective aspects...
...MacManus, the and a system of selection and rejection put in operation first of which was published in The Commonweal of October in this land of freedom and democracy...
...What, beauty...
...But leads me to a knowledge of the "green" present there it is peculiar that the doctrine of Max Scheler, formu- -a "green" which is not a thing, not an object, but lated as it was in the hope of creating a view of life the quality of a thing...
...Returning to ent stress upon the ideas of Saint Augustine : in the his account of the "feelings," he finds that the one great Carthaginian Doctor alone, he says, can be thing which mankind has always most deeply and found the attempt "to formulate the basic Christian awesomely reverenced, during its religious hours, is, experience of the relationships between religious love what is holy...
...In pursuing this line of thought, Scheler is then, is religion?, Scheler asks, taking it simply as close to (though he pushes somewhat afar) the doc, something which exists, and endeavoring to analyze trine of the Catholic mystics...
Vol. 4 • October 1926 • No. 24
