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Max Scheler, Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values

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Max Scheler, Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values Notes Preface 1. Throughout this study I have opted to capitalise the noun 'man' to indicate a gender-free reference to the species, when the use of such expressions as 'he or she' and 'humankind' would be unnecessarily awkward. 2. Lewis Mumford, The City in History (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1961),4. Introduction 1. Hereafter all references to this work will be cited in my text with the abbreviation FORM followed by the page number. All such citations will be to the third edition published in Bern by Franke Verlag in 1966. Unless otherwise noted all translations are mine. Readers who do not have access to the German text are advised to consult the English translation by Manfred S. Frings and Roger L. Funk: Max Scheler, Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values: A New Attempt toward the Foundation of an Ethical Personalism (Evanston: Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1973). 2. While Frings and Funk have chosen to translate materiale as 'non­ formal', my sense is that this locution is both too inclusive and too negative. Many philosophical ethics could be loosely described as non-formal. What is more, to characterise Scheler's effort in terms of what it is not may obscure his concern to establish a distinctive and affirmative foundation for ethics in the experience of an a priori order of values that formal, ethical systems such as Kant's, deny. 3. See Manfred S. Frings, Max Scheler, A Concise Introduction Into the World of a Great Thinker (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1965), p. 105. This work is recommended as a concise, yet com­ prehensive, introduction to the variety of Scheler's philosophical endeavours. 4. Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984). 5. See T. W. Adorno et al., The Authoritarian Personality (New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 1950) and Fred l. Greenstein, Personality and Politics (Chicago: Markham, 1969). The Greenstein includes a fine survey of related literature in a 'Bibliographical Note' by Michael Lerner. 6. Foucault reminds us that there have been many varieties of human­ ism. 'In the seventeenth century, there was a humanism that presented itself as a critique of Christianity or of religion in general; there was a Christian humanism opposed to an ascetic and much more theocentric humanism. In the nineteenth century there was a suspicious humanism, hostile and critical toward science, 146 Notes 147 and another that, to the contrary, placed its hope in the same science. Marxism has been a humanism, so have existentialism and personalism; there was a time when people supported the humanistic values represented by National Socialism, and when the Stalinists themselves said they were humanists'. Michel Foucault, 'What is Enlightenment', in The Foucault Reader, ed. Paul Rabinow (New York: Pantheon Books, 1984), p. 44. 1 The Ethical Implications of Kant's First Critique 1. Thomas Kingsley Abbott, tr., Kant's Critique of Practical Reason and Other Works on the Theory of Ethics (London: Longman's, Green, 1909), p. 44. 2. Ibid., p. 107 3. Norman Kemp Smith, tr., Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (London: Macmillan, 1963). Hereafter, unless noted otherwise, all references will be to this edition and cited in the text by the pagination of Kant's first (A) and second (B) editions. 4. Norman Kemp Smith, A Commentary to Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, 2nd. edn. (New York: Humanities Press, reprinted by special arrangement with Macmillan, 1962), p. 18. 5. Ibid., p. 23. 6. This statement seems inconsistent with my earlier contention that, strictly speaking, objects are the result of an act of concept­ ualisation, and not given in intuition. In support of my governing interpretation vis-a-vis the conceptual v intuitive status of objectivity, I would cite Norman Kemp Smith's observation that Kant often uses the term Objekt in its 'widest and most indefinite meaning', and that in the context of empirical intuition it may be taken to signify the content of intuition (ibid., p. 79). This is the meaning which I believe best suits its use here. Smith also points out that when Kant responded to Jacob Beck's objection that 'only through subsumption under the categories can a representation become objective', Kant sought to clarify himself by noting that what is given in empirical intuition is a content which is due to some object' (my emphasis) (ibid., p. 81). With this last observation Kant is referring to the thing-in-itself which is represented in those judgements that yield empirical knowledge but never present in experience as it is in itself, that is, as 'an object in general'. 7. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, tr. Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale, ed., Walter Kaufmann (New York: Random House, 1967), p. 35. 8. Smith translates Naturursachen as 'natural causes'. Since the term clearly means 'natural things', I can only presume that at this point the text is corrupt. 9. It is worth noting that the image of Man which emerges here reflects the attitude of liberal-democratic society towards the 148 Notes 'criminal'. There we find a recognition that behind his or her actions one can establish a series of causal events, for instance, an environment of social deprivation. Simultaneously, however, we find the claim that he or she is responsible and, with the criminal trial, enact the assumption that he or she ought to have known the difference between good and evil. Kant too made reference to this ambiguity although he offered it as illustration, rather than proof, of his argument. (A 554, B 582 - A 555, B 583). 10. John Silber, 'The Ethical Significance of Kant's Religion', in Kant, Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone, tr. Theodore M. Greene and Hoyt H. Hudson (New York: Harper & Row, 1960), cii. 11. Ibid., cii. 2 The Formal Ethics 1. Norman Kemp Smith, A Commentary, pp. 572-3. 2. Immanuel Kant, Kritik der Practischen Vernunft (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1963), pp.39-40. All translations from this edition are mine. 3. Ibid., p. 34. 4. Ibid., p. 4. 5. Ibid., pp. 36-8. 6. Ibid., p. 38. 7. Silber, 'The Ethical Significance', xciv. 8. Kant, Kritik, p. 39. Unless we recognise that, for Kant, the auton­ omy of the will, Reason's ability to determine itself in accord with principles that are uniquely its own (namely, formal principles), and the positive notion of freedom constitute a single cluster of meaning, his reciprocal use of these terms can become needlessly confusing. 9. Silber, 'The Ethical Significance', xcviii-xcix. 10. Ibid., xcv-xcvi. 11. Ibid., civ. 12. Ibid., xcviii. 13. Abbott, Kant's Critique of Practical Reason, p. 121. 14. Ibid., cii. 15. Ibid., cii. 16. Kant, Kritik, p. 50. 17. Abbott, Kant's Critique of Practical Reason, p. 132. Here, it should be noted that Kant's reference to a 'pure world of understanding' is to the intelligible world and not to the world of experience over which the Understanding holds sway in the first Critique. 18. Ibid., p. 135. 19. The Works of Aristotle, tr. under the direction of W. D. Ross, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1930), vol. 2, Physica, 194b 25-198b 5. 20. Kant, Kritik, p.83. In order to avoid being misled by Kant's allusions to the 'reality' of the 'objects' of the moral law and Notes 149 practical Reason, it is worth reminding ourselves that what is intended here is not spacial-temporal existence but, rather, ideal reality. As one study points out, 'freedom is real only to the same extent, and in the same sense, as Reason is real'. See, Wilhelm Teichner, Die Intelligible Welt (Anton Hain: Meisenheim am Glan, 1967), p. 112. 21. Kant, Kritik, pp. 97 and 137. 22. Ibid., p. 85. 23. Ibid., p. 86. 24. See, Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, tr. A. V. Miller, analysis of the text and foreword by J. N. Findlay (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), pp. 355--63. 25. Kant, Kritik, p. 88. 26. Abbott, Kant's Critique of Practical Reason, pp. 171-2. 27. Kant, Kritik, p. 94. 28. Abbott, Kant's Critique of Practical Reason, p. 175. 29. Ibid., p. 51. 30. Kant, Kritik, p. 89. 31. Ibid., p. 101. 32. Ibid., p. 102. 33. Ibid., p. 91. 34. Teichner, Die Intelligible Welt, p. 121. 35. Kant, Religion Within the Limits, p. 23. 36. Immanuel Kant, Lectures on Ethics, tf. Louis Infield, foreword by Lewis White Beck (New York: Harper & Row Torchbook, 1963), p. 23. 37. Kant, Kritik, pp. 94 and 102. 38. Kant, Religion Within the Limits, p. 42-3. 39. Ibid., p. 43. 40. Ibid., p. 43. 41. Immanuel Kant, 'The Critique of Teleological Judgement', in Kant, The Critique of Judgement, tr. James Creed Meredith (Oxford: Oxford University Press), p. 20. 42. Ibid., p. 99. 43. Ibid., p. 124. 44. Ibid., pp. 113-4. 3 Scheler, Phenomenology and the Two Orders of Reason 1. John Raphael Staude, Max Scheler: An Intellectual Portrait (New York: The Free Press, 1967), p. 27. 2. The examples of private property and the state are mine. More often than not, Scheler does not provide us with ample illustrations which might help to clarify his intent. 3. Frings, Max Scheler, p. 131. 4. Max Scheler, Die Wissensformen und die Gesellschaft, ed. Maria Scheler, in Scheler, Gesammelte Werke, 13 vols. (Bern: Franke Verlag, 1954 - ),8: pp. 109-10. 150 Notes 5. Edmund Husserl, Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology, tr. W. Boyce Gibson (New York: Collier, 1962), p. 101. 6. Ibid., pp. 99-100. 7. The effect of the epoche may be compared to that of a close-up in film, particularly when this is achieved by means of a zoom lens.
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