Sympathy and the Non-Human: Max Scheler's Phenomenology of Interrelation

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9-2007 Sympathy and the Non-Human: Max Scheler’s Phenomenology of Interrelation David Dillard-Wright University of South Carolina - Aiken, [email protected]

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Publication Info Published in Indo-Pacific oJ urnal of Phenomenology, Volume 7, Issue 2, 2007, pages 1-9. Dillard-Wright, D. (2007). Sympathy and the non-human: Max Scheler's phenomenology of interrelation. Indo-Pacific oJ urnal of Phenomenology, 7(2), 1-9. © 2007 Indo-Pacific ourJ nal of Phenomenology Permission for use per Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License

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Sympathy and the Non-human: Max Scheler’s Phenomenology of Interrelation

by David Dillard-Wright

Abstract

German phenomenologist and sociologist Max Scheler accorded sympathy a central role in his philosophy, arguing that sympathy enables not only ethical behaviour, but also knowledge of animate and inanimate others. Influenced by Catholicism and especially St Francis, Scheler envisioned a broad, cosmic sympathy forming the hidden basis for all human values, with the “higher” religious, artistic, philosophic and other cultural values enabled by a more basic regard for non-human nature and insights gained from the human situation within the non-human world. Sympathy for the non-human is thus both integral and fundamental to the cultivation of other values in the development of both the human person and humanity in general.

Scheler’s concept of sympathy is valuable for contemporary animal ethics because it insists on acknowledgement of and respect for difference as constitutive for the experience of sympathy. By thus allowing for sympathy to occur in the absence of complete knowledge of other subjectivities, Scheler’s phenomenology of sympathy eliminates the need for complete understanding of the consciousness of other animals as a prerequisite for interspecies sympathy. Despite their inability to completely inhabit non-human perspectives, humans can thus sympathize with other creatures.

While Scheler is a foundational thinker and, to a large degree, maintains hierarchical structures contested by many contemporary animal theorists, he remains a valuable source for contemporary theory insofar as he acknowledges a “fundamental basis of connection” between species and affirms that all animal bodies are communicative. The occasioning of sympathy by gestural signification opens a path of insight that can increase human openness to non-human others.

Sympathy for other animals is not a “special interest” interactions, and conclude with some suggestions as province of philosophy, is not a sidecar to ontology or to how this phenomenology of sympathy can mobilize ethics. Rather, understanding animals is a crucial key concern for the extra-human orders of nature, arguing to philosophical anthropology in a post-Darwinian, throughout that concern for the extra-human is also ecologically conscious era. Scheler’s philosophy of deeply humanitarian. sympathy is valuable because it provides a point of entry into the experience of animals, which can lead Beware the child who burns ants with a magnifying to a more humane and sustainable future for life on glass, the now widely recognized wisdom goes, Earth. This essay will analyse Scheler’s philosophy of because cruelty to non-human creatures results in sympathy, with special concern for human/animal abusive human relationships later in life. This

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Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology, Volume 7, Edition 2 September 2007 Page 2 of 9 realization has a precursor in Max Scheler’s careful relation to its disparate descriptions in the sciences: phenomenological description of sympathy. Scheler philosophical anthropology is in the unique position underscored the importance of sympathy with nature of articulating a unified picture of human nature that in the formation of human morality: human draws from these disciplines (the social and “hard” sympathy, he argues, is impossible without concern sciences) without being overwhelmed by them. While for all forms of life, including plants and other Weiss faults Scheler for drawing too strong a division animals. Scheler’s concept of sympathy or “fellow- between the matter and the spirit of the human, he feeling” resolves many problems in environmental recognizes that Scheler’s “wholeness task” is relevant and animal ethics, as it eliminates a major stumbling in a time in which humans are beginning to recognize block when it comes to ethical treatment of animals: commonalities between human intelligence and the the notion that humans can never fully understand capabilities of other animals and even machines what it is like to be a non-human animal and therefore (Weiss, 1998, pp. 239, 247). These recent discussions cannot enter into moral relations with them. Scheler reveal how Scheler breaks with the Kantian tradition resisted concepts of sympathy that rely on some form by insisting on moral obligations that relate to of mental substitution or reconstruction from prior individual personality and emotional states, by experience that enables the sympathetic response by breaking with the demands of formal duty ethics in the sympathizer. Similarity of experience is not a pre- favour of intuition and sympathy, and by situating requisite for inter-human sympathy, nor is it humankind within extra-human nature while yet necessary for sympathy with other animals. Using St claiming human distinctiveness. Francis as an example, Scheler even holds open the possibility that one can sympathize with inanimate Efforts to apply Scheler’s work to a variety of ethical nature. By holding open the door to sympathy as situations outside the bounds of phenomenology widely as possible, Scheler articulated a philosophy demonstrate the viability of sympathy to transcend that was ecologically aware and yet appreciated the subject-object boundaries (Gallagher, 2004; significant differences between humans and other HaCohen, 2001; Jeffreys, 2006; Reilly, 2006). creatures. Richard Zaner (2003), for example, examines real and fictional instances of extreme disability occasioned by Until recently, Scheler enjoyed little of the stroke and battlefield trauma and the ways in which posthumous attention that contemporaries like severely disabled people are able to reach outside Heidegger and Sartre received, partially due to Nazi themselves through the sympathetic link with a censorship of his writing as well as the relatively slow caregiver. Zaner describes how magazine editor Jean- publication of the complete works (Frings, 1998, p. Dominique Bauby lost almost all of his motor 271). The recent upsurge in scholarly interest in functioning after a massive stroke (2003, p. 188). Scheler’s work corrects the gap between Scheler’s Able to move only his left eyelid, Bauby writing and the available secondary literature. Several painstakingly dictated his memoire using a letter chart recent commentators have shown how Scheler’s and sequences of blinks. Bauby’s loss of his usual personalism improves upon neo-Kantian rationalism ability to communicate with family and friends was in developing an ethics that precedes logical maddening, but, if it had not been for the sympathetic constructions. Manfred Frings (1998) argues that attention of his caregivers, even that fragile thread of Scheler’s extension of Pascal’s “ordre du coeur” in communication would have been lost. It would have his value ethics is a correction to rational moral been easy to have missed that one fluttering left calculus in that it precludes the possibility of thinking eyelid; it would have been easy to have discounted its of ethics in terms of cost-benefit analysis. The actions series of blinks. A “readiness to listen” is constitutive that one “ought” to do can and should be determined for the experience of sympathy, and such care and not only by a reasoned internal dialogue, which is concern has not only ethical but also epistemological actually secondary to the properly ethical sphere, but significance (Zaner, 2003, pp. 201-203). Sympathy is also by emotive factors linked to a scale of values and a precondition for knowledge of other subjects. For a radical personalism (Frings, 1998, pp. 272-274). Scheler, “the heart has a place even in the knowing John Crosby stresses this radical individuality in operations performed by persons, even to the point of Scheler’s ethics as one of its strong points: each making them possible at all” (Crosby, 1998, p. 39). person has moral requirements that are completely Human beings know each other and themselves by unique, because each individual possesses a distinct acts of sympathy that take place in co-responsibility essence which can properly be called an essence (or what Merleau-Ponty called intersubjectivity or despite its dependence on biological and social factors even “interanimality”), and without this “fellow- (Crosby, 1998, p. 26). Dennis Weiss (1998) stresses feeling”, the human intellectual/ emotional world is Scheler’s role in reconciling the human person in impoverished (Crosby, 1998, p. 39; Merleau-Ponty

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1964/1968, p. 172; Scheler, 1912/ 1979). Failure to enactment” (1912/1979, p. 42) from sympathy proper sympathize with other creatures is failure to is that he sees that, in order for sympathy to remain understand them, and failure to understand them is genuine, it must preserve both the foreign nature of failure to understand ourselves. the other and my own wilful capacity to sympathize. Scheler reserves the label of sympathy for cases in The term “sympathy” was used by Max Scheler as a which I feel for another despite my inability to really blanket term for the host of states explored in Wesen know what the other person is experiencing. und Formen der Sympathie (1912). In choosing the term “sympathy” (Sympathie) as the “generic term” to Scheler even goes so far as to say that the “truer” the encompass such diverse notions as Mitgefühl (fellow- sympathy, or fellow-feeling, the less reproduction - feeling), Mitleid (pity, commiseration), Einfühlung understood as an interior rehearsal or representation - (empathy), and even Cosmovitale Einsfühlung happens in the person sympathizing. In the experience (defined as “identification, etc. with the ... Cosmos”), of sympathy, I am so involved in feeling for the other Scheler gave priority to sympathy, signalling that the that I do not reconstruct what the other might be diversity of states described in the book are all feeling on the basis of my own experiences, or, variations of sympathy, or different rooms within the worse, recount a story of my own to make the other house of sympathy (Scheler, 1912/1979, p. liii). That feel better (1912/1979, p. 47). If reproduction were said, Scheler does articulate his own theory of necessary for sympathy, I would have to have had the sympathy, which seeks not only to describe the experience of drowning in order to sympathize with a different types of sympathy, but also to understand person who is drowning. I need not go through a how the diversity of sympathetic experiences are process of deliberation or ask myself how the other possible at all. Scheler situates the experience of person might be feeling in order to sympathize: sympathy within the development of the human sympathy happens on a more basic, visceral level and person and humanity in general, giving sympathy an only secondarily results in a reconstruction of the absolutely central role. Before turning to these larger foreign subjectivity in my own terms. Sympathy implications, Scheler must explain what he means by operates on an intuitive level for Scheler, working in sympathy and how sympathy takes place. concert with the bodily organism. His explanation of gesture is crucial for understanding his theory of Throughout his writing, Scheler works to preserve sympathy and would later inspire Merleau-Ponty, difference as a foundational part of the experience of whose discussion of gesture in the Phenomenology of sympathy: sympathy need not form an ecstatic union Perception is directly indebted to Scheler (Merleau- between two people nor convey positive knowledge Ponty, 1945/2002, p. 214 & note 13). about another’s inward state. Scheler argues against theories that would blur the boundaries between In gesture, the expression is given simultaneously individuals or between people and the natural world. with the object, such that clasped hands mean His careful, methodical parsing of terms is an “please”. “It is in the blush that we perceive shame, in expression of this concern for preserving the integrity the laughter joy” (Scheler, 1912/1979, p. 10). We do of human subjects and non-human entities. In his not have to go through a process of interpretation to theory, sympathy is not a transfer of another’s know what these bodily configurations mean. experience into my own consciousness, nor is it a Gestures are not signs that refer to something else; reproduction drawn from my own experience in order rather, the sign itself is the signified (Scheler, 1912/ to approximate the other’s experience. Scheler 1979, p. 10 & note 1). In this way, Scheler avoids preserves a sphere within the other that remains overly rationalistic, disembodied analyses that would unknown to me, that is forever private and enclosed, place our comprehension of others in a mental which he refers to as the “permanent limit of formula of reconstruction. He cites the example of advance” (1912/1979, p. 71). Sympathy can advance babies recognizing their mothers’ pleasure or anger as to the boundary of that inner realm, but never beyond. evidence that no process of extrapolation need take For Scheler, the knowledge conveyed by sympathy is place for the understanding of gesture (Scheler, 1912/ metaphysical, not strictly “data”, in that it is a 1979, p. 12). Just as a baby does not need to mentally realization, on my part, that the other possesses the reproduce its mother’s perceived mental states in same hidden inner life that I also possess. The foreign order to understand her joy or displeasure, fully subject then becomes not only relatively equal developed human beings can also sympathize with (“relatively real”) to me but actually equal their fellow human beings and with other animals (“absolutely real”) (1912/1979, p. 59). The reason based on the signing activities of the body. These Scheler spends so much time separating arguments outward “signs” are not separate from the inner states based on emotional “infection” and “vicarious re- which they “represent”. Scheler insists that this is no

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Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology, Volume 7, Edition 2 September 2007 Page 4 of 9 question at all of “re-presentation”: the frown is the entails a discussion of the natural. The “cultivation of sadness or anger, and it is in this fleshly medium that human nature”, then, requires a cultivation of both the “sender” and “receiver” correspond. Such identification with nature in general, a task which “correspondence” does not imply, as in a letter, a Scheler regards as “the first task of our educational message encoded, sent and received, but rather the enterprise” (ibid.). Realizing the interconnections sense of paralleling one another. The frown itself is between humans and the natural world on an intuitive thus the medium through which the two interact, with level is foundational for Scheler, the basis for all or without the mental processes that accompany this humanitarian values. We might expect, then, that event or attempt to reproduce what the other might be Scheler would agree with any theory that might thinking. bolster his case for greater human identification with the natural world, but he does not. For example, It is important to note Scheler’s exclusion of Scheler believes that Nietzsche mistakenly identifies reproduction - the imaginative rehearsal of another’s certain negative human emotions on seeing the inward state - from genuine sympathy, because it has suffering of animals, such as “seeing a fowl’s neck consequences for the scope of sympathy’s reach. If wrung”, as fellow-feeling. Scheler sees this as an sympathy is based on my own experiences, and not example of a form of selfishness masquerading as those of the other, it is not sympathy at all, but an act fellow-feeling, in which it is unpleasant for me to see of introspection. Sympathy based entirely on intro- the sight of blood, to see the dead bird, and so forth. spection must thus be a contradiction, in that In my selfishness, the pleasure or pain of the other is sympathy must necessarily reach beyond solipsistic actually masked by my own sensitivities (1912/1979, analysis and attend to the other. Beyond this p. 41). objection, my ability to sympathize would be greatly limited if sympathy depended upon reconstruction, Scheler does not believe that we can have access to because I could only sympathize with those sharing the sensory experience of animals. This would not be similar experiences to those I’d already had, or with an obstacle to fellow-feeling in and of itself, because those sufficiently similar to myself that I could Scheler associates sensory experience not with extrapolate from my experiences to make up the fellow-feeling but with reproduction. The more pure difference. If sympathy is primarily cognitive and the fellow-feeling, then, the less the sensory element. primarily reproductive, the picture that emerges is a While not having access to the sensory lives of pastiche of various memories that achieve a animals could thus be said to heighten the possibility simulacrum of what I believe the other person might of fellow-feeling with them, Scheler categorically be experiencing. Having said this, Scheler does not states that “fellow-feeling is no longer operative in believe that reproduction is without value. Surely such cases” (1912/1979, p. 48). However, he goes on people do draw from their own experiences in order to say, somewhat contradictorily: to understand others. Scheler only wishes to place reproduction, however valuable it might be, in a Nevertheless so far as the various modes of different category from sympathy itself. Reproduction vital feeling are concerned, understanding may take its place alongside fellow-feeling and and fellow-feeling are able to range understanding as among those phenomena that allow throughout the entire animate universe, us to “enlarge” our own lives and “transcend” our even though they rapidly fall off in respect own limitations (Scheler, 1912/1979, p. 49). In his of specific qualities as we descend the theory, sympathy acts as a kind of leading edge in the organic scale. (1912/1979, p. 48) understanding of an/other; without this sympathy that goes beyond my capacity to reconstruct the other’s This passage indicates Scheler’s ambivalence about inward life, it is doubtful that any further attempts to extending fellow-feeling to animals, an ambivalence understand would be made. which interpreters of Scheler need not share. In light of his concern for preserving the differences between Just as Scheler wants to preserve the boundaries animals and humans, Scheler interpolates the term between individual humans, he also works to preserve “vital feeling”, but falls short of adopting it as a the distinctions between humans and the natural separate category, in that he says that, in this respect, world. Scheler’s concern is not that humans might fellow-feeling is operative. Insofar as he feels that anthropomorphize nature and thus think that they human identification with nature is necessary for could sympathize with animals. On the contrary, identification with other humans, he feels an human beings are already “cosmomorphic” (Scheler, attraction towards including animals in fellow- 1912/1979, p. 105), made of the same stuff as the feeling, albeit with the qualification that it is only in “natural” world, and discussion of the human already respect of a “vital feeling”. Despite his ambivalence,

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Scheler does say that, in our dealings with animals, identification with nature is the point of entry into we do have access to the (non-sensory) experiences of other, “higher” modes of connection, such as animals, and this is via what he calls a “universal sympathy between humans and human love of God. grammar” or a “fundamental basis of connection” Scheler stridently criticises Western culture for (1912/1979, p. 11). This takes place in much the same imagining that it could bypass a sense of connection way as we understand human gestures. To extend this with nature and still cultivate the other human values. portion of Scheler’s argument further than he does However, Scheler’s own presentation of the issues himself, we can tell when an animal is afraid because still, at times, works within the framework of human it cowers, that it is in pain because it cries out. By “as dominance over nature. For example, Scheler we descend the organic scale”, Scheler is saying that envisages a continuum of types of identification this basis of connection becomes more tenuous as we moving hierarchically from union with nature all the get to animals that are further removed from way to love of God: ourselves. However, the connection is not completely absent so long as we remain within the sphere of Thus among all the forms of sympathy and animate living creatures. varieties of love, the sense of vital unity with the cosmos stands, so to speak, at the Although Scheler does not delineate them, he opposite pole to the non-cosmic love of discusses fellow-feeling, or something akin to it, on at persons, founded upon the love of God. All least three levels: between humans, between humans the other forms lie, as it were, in stages and animals (bracketing certain false types, as in between them. Those who seek to ascend Nietzsche’s case), and between humans and the this scale [italics added] will surely fall if inanimate natural world (for example, St Francis they insist upon taking the second step calling a flame his “brother”). At every point, Scheler before they have made the first. (Scheler, tries to preserve the distinctions between the 1912/1979, p. 129) sympathizing person and the “object” of sympathy, because, for him, “fellow-feeling does not presuppose This might at first seem to be an improvement on the essential sameness but essential difference” Aristotelian chain of being so prevalent in the West, (1912/1979, p. 65). Although this position runs in that it speaks of a movement from one pole to counter to the claims of some proponents of animal another, but, even in this passage, Scheler describes a rights who say that animals should be protected “scale” which can be “ascend[ed]”. Scheler also because they are essentially the same as human speaks elsewhere of “higher” and “lower” faculties beings, Scheler’s theory shows that difference need (1912/1979, p. 104), of which identification with not be an obstacle for - and, indeed, is constitutive of nature seems to be lower. While Scheler does make - human concern for the other. the first step, as it were, obligatory, the structure of his thought still falls within the dominant paradigm, Concern for difference is also at the heart of his and, therefore, undergirds human domination. Scheler critique of theories of “metaphysical monism”, which elsewhere excoriates Aristotle’s philosophy for posit one spiritual substance underlying the whole making the relationship of master and slave seem universe. Regarding it as representative of this type of “natural”, but his own implied hierarchy view, Scheler negates Schopenhauer’s notion that pity accomplishes the same thing for the relationship gives us access to the one self-negating will that between human and non-human. He claims that he underlies our illusory, individual selves (1912/1979, does not, like Plato and Aristotle, see humanity as the pp. 51-54). Bergson’s “élan vital” and Plato’s “world- “glittering apex of Nature’s aristocracy” (1912/1979, soul” are critiqued along similar lines (1912/1979, pp. p. 79), but traces of this view remain in his writing. 63, 82). Such theories cannot help to explain sympathy, because they portray a fusion of Despite the revolutionary nature of Scheler’s critique individuals into an underlying impersonal mass. of Western culture, he still never imagines the Sympathy, which is feeling of one for another, possibility that identification with nature could be the becomes impossible in such a metaphysic. (Scheler “apex” of human sentiments, or that love of God says that his own metaphysical claims for sympathy could serve as the point of entry into an appreciation lead him to theism, but it would be a panentheistic of nature rather than the other way around. So long as sort of theism that would not fuse God with the appreciation of nature remains primal, basic, and world.) Here again, Scheler maintains a distinction, identified with non-Western marginal cultures, it will this time between God and the universe. continue to be devalued. Nevertheless, Scheler’s argument would certainly bring up short those who As has already been stated, Scheler believes that think that nature could somehow be bypassed

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Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology, Volume 7, Edition 2 September 2007 Page 6 of 9 altogether, as somehow irrelevant to human life. participants in an overall economy of pleasures and pains, interests and duties (McReynolds, 2004, pp. So far, we see how Scheler preserves a strong sense 63-85). This approach, favoured by theorists like of difference as absolutely foundational for the Peter Singer and Tom Regan, inevitably ran into experience of sympathy. The sympathizing person problems when human rationality became the fulcrum must not imagine that he or she really understands upon which sympathy for animals and extension of what the suffering person or animal is experiencing; rights to animals rested (Acampora, 2006, p. 73; this kind of presumption violates the integrity and Bailey, 2005, p. 2). By an over-reliance on rational uniqueness of the Other and substitutes or erases the argumentation for animal rights, theorists in animal other’s difference for a reconstruction based on the rights (perhaps unwittingly) re-entrenched themselves would-be sympathizer’s prior experience. In truly in a Western essentializing tradition that made an sympathetic encounters, no imagined or real fusion invidious comparison between human (male) takes place within the minds of the two partners in the rationality and animal (female) passion. As Cathryn encounter. They remain separate entities throughout Bailey writes, “Reason did not first come into the encounter, but this does not prevent the moral existence and then look for a venue to exhibit itself; choice or act of sympathy from taking place. The rather, what much of philosophy came to define as body communicates its pleasure or pain, and this reason only came into being as a result of denying communication can be apprehended by others; but and quashing those attributes regarded as feminine or this knowledge is never exhaustive, nor does it bodily” (2005, p. 4). The vitriolic denial of relational necessarily elicit the sympathetic response. No one and emotive capacities in Western philosophy on the will ever understand another’s experience to the discursive level obscured and sanitized the violence extent that it is possible to understand one’s own perpetrated against women and animals on the fleshly physical and emotional states. While there is a certain level (Bailey, 2005, pp. 4-6; Merchant, 2001, pp. 68- truth in the adage that “your friends know you better 70). Ethical speculation authorized this violence while than you know yourself”, the transparency that at the same time covering its tracks through appeals to characterizes our relations with others does have universal reason. limits. Sympathy happens when, on the basis of admittedly partial information, the sympathizer Recent attempts to reformulate animal ethics have knowingly feels for another, passionately attending to sought not only to question the unfounded dualism the pain of this other who remains mysterious between human and animal, but also to question the throughout the event. dominant role that a narrow conception of rationality has played in philosophy (see, for example, Abram, Scheler’s philosophy is valuable for animal ethics 1996; Acampora, 2006; Hamington, 2004; Light & insofar as it means that humans need not have an Katz, 1996). Animal ethics, then, becomes a shift exhaustive understanding of how animals experience from moral ratiocination to embodied relationality the world in order to sympathize with them. While it and insists that formal reflection arises from the lived is true that objective knowledge of an animal’s body and returns to engaged contexts of meaning. The interior state is impossible (just as it is impossible to animal rights and animal liberation perspectives that have such knowledge of another human’s interior arose in the 1970s (with roots in the 18th and 19th state), the gestural significations of animal bodies centuries) are now being challenged by pragmatist convey enough information about their interior states and Continental thinkers who emphasize the semiotic to justify the sympathetic response. The ethical role that the body plays in the formation of meaning decision to sympathize has its basis in a prior order of and then seek to think in terms of the human body’s signification, Scheler’s “universal grammar” of significant interrelations with non-human entities. gesture. It is this prior signification that makes With this return to the corporal, experiential- sympathy possible, and even religious feelings appear existential dimension of interrelatedness with others, as articulations or folds within the intersubjective act current pragmatist and phenomenological theorists of gestural recognition. hope to avoid the over-reliance on rationality found in Animal Rights and Animal Liberation theorists. Scheler’s cautions about preserving difference and yet insisting on certain continuities between the animal Scheler’s philosophy has much to contribute to and the human are key contributions to contemporary current discussions of animal ethics, not only as an animal ethics. The social contract and utilitarian important source for Merleau-Ponty’s theory of approaches favoured in the animal rights discourse of embodied perception, but on its own merits. Three previous decades simply extended an already trajectories of Scheler’s philosophy of sympathy inadequate moral calculus to include animals as outlined above can clarify human thinking about

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Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology, Volume 7, Edition 2 September 2007 Page 7 of 9 animals and human relationships with animals. First possible, he allowed himself to believe that his of all, Scheler insists that sympathy with non-human knowledge was somehow exhaustive and would nature is foundational for other forms of human shield him from harm. Inasmuch as Treadwell feeling. Religious feelings, for example, have their believed himself to be one of the bears, Scheler would basis in the impulse to sympathize with animal and say that Treadwell did not sympathize with them, human others, and without this “fundamental basis of because sympathy must be a feeling for the other connection”, all “higher” human aspirations and despite real difference between the subjects involved. ideals collapse. Notice here that Scheler continues to The film shows Treadwell, in his own video footage, operate within a hierarchical and foundational talking to the huge creatures in a patronizing sing- construction that would be distasteful to many song voice, standing mere inches away from the contemporary animal theorists. Scheler does posit a animals while imitating their gestures. Failing to hierarchy of values, but, careful thinker that he is, attend to the wildness of the bears and his own status Scheler does not imagine that sympathy for non- as an invader of bear habitat, Treadwell allowed human nature can simply be by-passed on the way to himself to become too complacent in his dealings higher, more philosophical modes of reflection. For with the animals, which tragically brought about his Scheler, human beings are “cosmomorphic”, and that own death and the death of his girlfriend, Amie means that they cannot simply extricate themselves Huguenard. The two were attacked, killed and eaten from embodied relationality. Sympathy with non- by an unfamiliar group of bears who had wandered human nature is built into the very structure of human south in search of food. The bears were subsequently being, and ignoring the impulse to sympathy comes at killed by rangers. In watching the documentary, one the cost of being less human. Religious and cannot help but think that Treadwell crossed a philosophical values of love and justice collapse like boundary, that he forgot that bears and humans are a house of cards if they do not allow for sympathy at not the same. Scheler would suggest that sympathy is this most basic level. not a simple fusion of two subjectivities or a return to a primal unity, but is, instead, a feeling that can only A second valuable attribute of Scheler’s philosophy is exist when difference is acknowledged and preserved. that it acknowledges that sympathy need not be based on a reconstruction from prior experience. Human A third valuable aspect of Scheler’s philosophy for beings need not know what it is like to be another contemporary animal studies is his emphasis on animal in order to sympathize with that creature, just sympathy as a moral act occasioned by pre-rational, as they need not know what it is like to be another bodily communication. Scheler insists that it is human being in order to sympathize with him or her. perfectly possible for human beings to understand the Knowledge of other subjectivities is never exhaustive pain of others, human and non-human, without and only provides clues to that person’s or animal’s therefore being affected by that understanding. The “interior” state. Strictly speaking, the interior/exterior attention to the bodily, affective dimension in recent dichotomy falls apart, and gesture provides a linkage philosophical treatments of animals is no doubt an between these two modes of knowledge. Claims to improvement upon the stance of the detached knowledge of another subjectivity are always partial, observer that plagued Animal Rights perspectives. and would-be sympathizers should recognize that Scheler, however, might caution that, without the they do not have exhaustive knowledge of another’s moral act of choosing to sympathize, bodily thoughts, feelings, and intentions. This part of knowledge accomplishes nothing in the active, Scheler’s philosophy is critical, because, without a political sphere. Animal theorists must, in addition to certain epistemological humility, sympathy can go delineating the corporal crossings of species awry by failing to attend to the differences that boundaries, enflesh those theoretical perspectives separate species. with reflection on concrete situations, as Ralph Acampora does in his treatment of zoos (2006, pp. Would-be sympathizers overstep the bounds of 95-115). Phenomenology attends to the dimension of sympathy when they assume an exhaustive lived experience, and, in addition to arising from knowledge of the other. I think right away of Werner reflection on the lived world, it must return to that Herzog’s recent documentary, Grizzly Man (Beggs & lived world. Animal ethics must respond to the Herzog, 2005), in which an errant naturalist, Timothy summons that it invokes and thus avoid stances of Treadwell, supposes that he can save Alaskan grizzly pure reflection and attend to creatures. bears by communing with them. Although Treadwell displays an uncanny knowledge of the gestural Although Scheler retains a hierarchical attitude “language” of the bears, a fact which no doubt kept towards nature and situates humanity and human him alive longer than would otherwise have been values above non-human nature, his philosophy

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Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology, Volume 7, Edition 2 September 2007 Page 8 of 9 remains valid, because it does not view sympathy its members, and the capacity for sympathy that is with the non-human as an optional step on the way to preserved for animals will be preserved for humans as care for other humans or love of God. He also well. acknowledges the sphere of corporal knowledge to be later elucidated by Merleau-Ponty, but does not rely Those working in contemporary animal studies will on gestural forms of communication to do all of the find in Scheler’s philosophy a welcome voice, one work of ethics. The knowledge of the other that that emphasizes the interconnectedness of all begins at the lived, gestural level must be carried into creatures without therefore lumping species together the existential, ethical decision to sympathize. This in a homogenous fashion. Scheler’s attention to fundamental sympathy with the non-human then difference avoids metaphysical monism that would becomes the basis for other human values. Scheler’s posit of an actual fusion between sympathizing philosophy is valuable because it speaks to those who subjects. Sympathy is valuable because it operates would not want to espouse positions of animal rights even in the midst of the extreme diversity of species or animal liberation. Even those who remain within on Earth. Despite the vast differences that separate the an anthropocentric, essentialist stance can recognize canary from the gorilla, the cicada from the whale, that sympathy for animals develops the traits and and the salamander from the human being, facets of characteristics normally valued in members of human gestural communication still operate between those society (such as caring, concern and cooperation). species. When that understanding is viewed The treatment of animals in a society serves as a sympathetically, the possibility arises for a politics of “canary in the coal mine” for the well-being of all of interspecies concern of benefit to all creatures.

About the Author

David B. Dillard-Wright teaches philosophy and ethics at the University of South Carolina in Aiken. His research centres around phenomenological explorations of human interactions with other animals and the environment. His doctoral dissertation, completed at Drew University in 2007, is entitled Ark of the Possible: The Animal World in Merleau-Ponty. The dissertation explores non-human animals in Merleau- Ponty’s works, using the concept of “flesh” to trace the emergence of linguistic and cultural forms from a prior layer of “wild Being” in which animate and inanimate entities affect one another.

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The Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology (IPJP) can be found at www.ipjp.org.