Scheler, Max

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SCHELER, MAX (1874–1928). German philosopher. Scheler was born in Munich on August 29, 1874, and died, after a dramatic life filled with personal misfortunes, in Frankfurt on May 19, 1928. He taught philosophy at the universities of Jena, Munich, and Cologne.

His thought is divided into two periods. In the first, up to 1921, he concentrated on value ethics and the strata of human emotions; in the second, he was occupied with metaphysics, sociology, and philosophical anthropology. Both periods are characterized by numerous studies in religion, culminating in the thought of the "becoming" Deity that is realizing itself in human history.

The first period centered on three major works: Wesen und Formen der Sympathie (1913), Der Formalismus in der Ethik und die materiale Wertethik (1913–1916), and Vom Ewigen im Menschen (1921). It is characterized by Scheler's phenomenology and, extrinsically, by Roman Catholicism, to which he had been converted in his early life. Scheler's phenomenology is distinct from Husserl's in that (1) Scheler, unlike Husserl, did not conceive consciousness to be absolute but, rather, dependent on the "being of person," and also because (2) for Scheler all regions of consciousness through which entities are given in their particular nature (e.g., as animate or inanimate, etc.) are ultimately based in the region of the absolute, in which each person relates to what he holds to be absolute. This made Scheler the forerunner of phenomenology of religion.

In Vom Ewigen im Menschen and other works Scheler showed how this region of the absolute can be "filled" by various gods, fetishes, or even nihilism. Therefore, he posed a basic question: What is it that gives itself adequately—and how does it accomplish this—in this region of the absolute of human consciousness? His answer: God as person. For Scheler, God is experienceable only through "love" of divine personhood, not through rational acts. Love itself is an emotive act and prior to perception and knowledge. Love reveals an order (ordo amoris) in which values are "felt." The highest value is the "holy." The human heart, as the seat of love, has its own "logic" (as Pascal held). In the heart, and not in knowledge, God as person is phenomenologically "given."

In his second period, Scheler abandoned this form of theism, without however abandoning the primacy of love. He now conceived the deity as unperfected, becoming, and in strife with itself. He explained this process in terms of two opposite divine attributes: urge (Drang) and spirit (Geist). Scheler reached his conclusion about the deity through a "transcendental elongation" of humanity's own nature, that is, by setting humanity's own vital urge, which posits reality, in opposition to the human mind, which bestows ideas on reality. The vital urge is humanity's self-moving, self-energizing life center in which the deity's urge also pulsates. Without urge and drives the mind would remain "powerless" and "unreal." There is no mind unless it is "in function" with the self-propulsion of life. Hence, God's spirit also requires divine urge for its realization. The theater of this divine process is human and cosmic history, in which deity "becomes" as it struggles for its realization. Humanity is called upon to "co-struggle" with this divine becoming.

Scheler died without resolving the question whether or not the theogenetic process would ever reach completion. He held, however, that the uncreated process of the becoming of human, world, and deity had reached a "midpoint" toward both spiritualization and divinization of both humanity and life. In 1926, Scheler envisioned the future as a new, long, and perilous "world era of adjustment" between the too-intellectual and active West and the more passive East. The future, thought Scheler, would reflect gradual balance and less struggle between spirit and urge; history will become "less historical" as God ever more "becomes" in it.

The best introductory reading of Scheler's first period of philosophy of religion remains his own Vom Ewigen im Menschen, 6th ed., in his Gesammelte Werke, vol. 5 (Munich, 1968). The English translation by Bernard Noble, On the Eternal in Man (London and New York, 1960), is not always an acceptable rendition of the German original. It should be read in conjunction with part 2 of Scheler's Der Formalismus in der Ethik und die materiale Wertethik, 6th ed., vol. 2 of his Gesammelte Werke (Munich, 1980), translated as Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values (Evanston, Ill., 1973) by myself and Roger L. Funk. Scheler's Wesen und Formen der Sympathie (Bonn, 1931) has been translated by Peter Heath as The Nature of Sympathy (London, 1954). Recommended as general introductions are Process and Permanence in Ethics: Max Scheler's Moral Philosophy, by Alfons Deeken, S.J. (New York, 1974); and Max Scheler, by Eugene Keely (Boston, 1977); as well as my own book, Max Scheler: A Concise Introduction into the World of a Great Thinker (Pittsburgh, 1965). Scheler's thought of the second period is available in his Erkenntnislehre und Metaphysik, in his Gesammelte Werke, vol. 11 (Munich, 1979). Metaphysik des einen und absoluten Seins (Meisenheim am Glan, 1975) by Bernd Brenk, and my study "Gott und das Nichts: Zum Gedenken des fünfzigsten Todestages Max Schelers," Phänomenologische Forschungen 6/7 (1978): 118–140. A list of currently available English translations of Scheler's works can be found in the Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology 9 (October 1978): 207–208.