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Scheler's Metaphysics Of Tijdschrift voor Filosofie, 79/2017, p. 801-817 SCHELER’S METAPHYSICS OF WAR by Rainer Schäfer (Bonn) 1. Introduction Max Scheler’s The Genius of War and the German War contains four parts and an appendix: a) “The Genius of war”, b) “The German war”, c) “The spiritual unity of Europe and its political demands”, d) “Renun- ciation of Britain”, and the appendix “On the psychology of the British ethos and hypocrisy”. “Genius”, in this context, refers to a paradigm, an original idea, or an essence of war.1 In the first part of the Genius text Scheler develops a concept of ‘just’ war in general, arguing that it must inevitably be rooted in human life, supportive of the meaning of life. Then he tries to show how war is an expression of the worldview (Weltanschauung) of a people, which adds a socio-psychological and ethical dimension to the war phenomenon (cf. 8-115). Thereafter he argues that the just war has a metaphysical Rainer Fritz Schäfer (1971) is professor at the Department of Philosophy, University Bonn (Ger- many). His research areas are epistemology, ontology, theory of subjectivity, and classical German philosophy. Books: Hegel (München: Fink Verlag, 2011); Ich-Welten: Erkenntnis, Urteil und Identität aus der egologischen Differenz von Leibniz bis Davidson (Münster: Mentis Verlag, 2012); Was Freiheit zu Recht macht: Manuale des Politischen (Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 2015). 1 Max Scheler, Der Genius des Krieges und der Deutsche Krieg (The Genius of War and the German War) (Leipzig: Verlag der Weissen Bücher, 1915; 2nd ed. 1916; 3rd ed. 1917). I quote according to the third edition. The German title is suggestive, because Scheler capitalizes ‘Deutsch’, which is gram- matically unusual, for it means that World War I is a particularly German matter. That Scheler was not simply grammatically inaccurate is evident by the title of the second part of the Genius: “Der deutsche Krieg”. There exists no translation of this writing. Other writings of Scheler concerning WW I are: Europe and the War (1915), The War as Overall-Experience (1916), and The Causes of the Hatred against Germans (1917). In addition Scheler wrote numerous articles on WW I. Therefore one can say that he really was strongly committed to the subject. doi: 10.2143/TVF.79.4.3284702 © 2017 by Tijdschrift voor Filosofie. All rights reserved. 802 Rainer SCHÄFER fundament (cf. 117-162), forming a particular reality in the moral and historical world, which culminates in the “idea” that a just and meta- physically grounded war is God’s judgment (cf. 91, 127-153). This implies criteria for distinguishing just from unjust wars (cf. 154-162). In the sec- ond part, Scheler applies those general determinations to the case of World War I (cf. 163-248). He argues that WW I is almost alone in world history in being a just war, since if war is an expression of the worldview of a people, expressing the volonté général, it is necessary that the whole nation be involved in the war. It is also necessary to fight with a chival- rous attitude, and it is imperative for the enemies to have people’s armies. Since Scheler wrote and published The Genius of War at the very begin- ning of WW I, it is clear that he could not have known the bestial slaughter, the gas attacks, the attacks on civilian populations, and the industrialized killing that were to come. This certainly does not excuse him, because he makes the fundamental mistake of judging WW I with- out fully understanding what was going on. Obviously, he was very naïve to think that a war in the 20th century could be carried out with the mediaeval and somewhat old-fashioned virtue of chivalry (Scheler also mentions: courage, willingness to take risks and danger, nobleness, hero- ism, loyalty, sacrifice, and fame, cf. 34). The third part of the Genius text (cf. 249-332) predicts what will happen after WW I. Scheler tries to forecast how a spiritual unity will be politically realised in post-war Europe. He argues that only Germany and the allied Austro-Hungarian Empire are cosmopolitan and thereby represent the true idea of Europe. The last part and the appendix of The Genius of War (cf. 333-413) argue that this unity of Europe could only be realised if Europe were completely to renounce modern British values (pragmatism, utilitarianism, capital- ism, biologism, internationalism).2 2 In Scheler research, the Genius writing is mostly ignored, although Scheler claims that it is not only war propaganda, rather a philosophy and metaphysics of war as well as an advancement of his phenomenological material value ethics. For example, Ron Perrin, Max Scheler’s Concept of the Person: An Ethics of Humanism (Basingstoke: MacMillan, 1991) and Eiichi Shimomissé, Die Phänomenologie und das Problem der Grundlegung der Ethik: An Hand des Versuchs von Max Scheler (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1971) completely ignore Scheler’s war writings; likewise Ute Kruse-Ebeling, Liebe und Ethik: Eine Ver- hältnisbestimmung ausgehend von Max Scheler und Robert Spaemann (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 2009). Heinz Leonardy, Liebe und Person: Max Schelers Versuch eines “phänomenologischen” SCHELER’S METAPHYSICS OF WAR 803 2. Forerunners, enemies and political aims of the ‘Genius’ In the Genius text Scheler tries to make German propaganda for World War I using the typical oppositions: culture vs. civilisation, com- munity vs. society, cosmopolitism vs. internationalism, hierarchy-order vs. liberal-egalitarianism, aristocratic vs. republican, morality vs. econ- omy, material values vs. utilitarianism, religious faith vs. capitalism, organic vitalism vs. contractualist mechanism, life vs. biologism. The chief enemies of Germany in Scheler’s view are Britain (cf. 73) and Rus- sia. France, regarded as the main enemy in Thomas Mann’s Reflections of a Nonpolitical Man, is not regarded as such by Scheler, who argues that France was merely seduced by Russia and Britain for their purposes and still wants revenge for the defeat of 1871 in the Franco-Prussian War and the loss of Alsace-Lorraine.3 It is interesting that Scheler and Mann use nearly the same oppositions, but argue against different enemies. Scheler’s interpretation of WW I holds that it is a conflict of different material values, which characterise the different essences of the nations. That different nations adhere to different sets of values makes conflict and war necessary, for each nation tries to promote the values it adheres Personalismus (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1976), 1 simply states that the war writings of Scheler are external to philosophy. In the center of Scheler’s war metaphysics in the Genius stands love as a uniting power between God and a nation. Therefore, it is important to consider the war philosophy if one wants a complete picture of Scheler’s material value ethics, and what it means to apply it to a concrete historical phenomenon. At least this was Scheler’s own claim until the end of WW I. Manfred Frings, Lifetime: Max Scheler’s Philosophy of Time: A First Inquiry and Presentation (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2003), 162 ff. at least mentions briefly a relation between Scheler’s material ethics and his war philosophy. Brilliant articles on the subject are Daniel Weidner, “Das Absolute des Krieges: Max Schelers Kriegsdenken und die Rhetorik des Äußersten,” in Texturen des Krieges: Körper, Schrift und der Erste Weltkrieg, ed. by Galili Shahar (Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2015), 85-114 and Sebastian Luft, “Germany’s Metaphysi- cal War: Reflections on War by Two Representatives of German Philosophy; Max Scheler and Paul Natorp,” Clio: Internet Portal on History, Themenportal Erster Weltkrieg, published in 2007, accessed in 2017, http://www.erster-weltkrieg.clio-online.de. 3 Kurt Flasch, Die geistige Mobilmachung: Die deutschen Intellektuellen und der Erste Weltkrieg; Ein Versuch (Berlin: Fest, 2000), 16 ff. is amazed that most German war philosophers (Max Scheler, Georg Simmel, Paul Natorp, Friedrich Meinecke, Enst Troeltsch, Rudolf Christoph Eucken etc.) repine with the British and not with France, which is usually seen as the German ‘archenemy’. But, after the British declaration of war, after it became known that Britain had secret navy contracts with Russia, and par- ticularly after the sea blockade during the war time (at that time illegal in international law) with many civilian German hunger deaths, it was due to the concrete war situation common among the German intellectuals to direct their hatred and propaganda against Britain (cf. the review on Flasch’s book from Eberhard Demm, “Sinngebung des Sinnlosen,” in Die Welt, April 15, 2000, 27). 804 Rainer SCHÄFER to, and strives for political power in order to realise those values. War is a basic form of political competition, and this is a competition of ideas or ideal values. Scheler agrees with Heinrich von Treitschke’s famous statement that war is history and “politics κατ’ ἐξοχήν” (cf. 16, 41), for in war a state comes to its highest, truest, most basic, creative actuality. In its bellicism, this goes even further than Carl von Clause- witz, to whom war was ‘just’ an instrument of politics; according to Treitschke and Scheler, war is the very essence of politics. Germany holds the moral-religious values of true (Catholic) Christian- ity, a people as unity formed by loyalty, honesty, cosmopolitism and love, not economy. All of these values were already presented as core features of Germanness in Fichte’s Addresses to the German Nation. Cosmopolitism is an especially interesting moral value, for Scheler adopts from Fichte the somewhat contradictory idea that one nation in particular is able to per- form true cosmopolitanism, because only German intellect is able truly to understand foreign cultures. Meanwhile, Russia pursues the ideal of Pan-Slavism and the goal of establishing an empire for the Eastern Ortho- dox Church (with the final goal of reconquering Istanbul/Constantino- ple).
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