Chapter 3 – Scheler’s Ethics

1. Phenomenology This thesis is primarily based in the phenomenological school ofphilosophy of which Max Scheler was an early prominent member, and thephenomenological method is absolutely central to understanding hisethical theory. I also argue that the phenomenological method isparticularly suitable for ethical investigation in general as I mentionedin the previous chapter of this thesis. As such, before I begin theexplanation of the core features of Scheler's theory, I will now brieflyexplain why exactly I believe this to be the case, and whatphenomenological doctrines are particularly important to Scheler'sphilosophy, and hence the theory based on it that I am promoting in thisthesis.

The phenomenological method originated with Edmund Husserl in his'Logical Investigations' of 1900 & 19011. Husserl sought to produce agenuinely fundamental philosophical analysis. He aimed to concentrate onthe immediately given phenomenal content of human experience byabstracting from all the content of experience that represents anyscientific, philosophical or naive theory or inference. This is becausewhile all such content of an experience may be doubted, the existence ofthe phenomenal content of the experience itself is beyond doubt.2 ForHusserl all mediate content must then be phenomenologically understoodfrom this initial immediate content of consciousness. His phenomenologyattempts an analysis of the mind and experienced world from the firstperson perspective in an attempt to understand the basic constitution ofthat world from that individual human subjective position. Furthermore,Husserl argued that since each person views the world solely through theperspective of individual subjectivity, to abstract from thatsubjectivity is to erase the fundamental source of human knowledge.3

Husserl’s methodological starting point for this process was two coreconcepts. Firstly, the concept of intentionality, the recognition thathuman consciousness is the consciousness of an object: one seessomething, one hears something, one remembers something. An object isalways intended. This demonstrates an intimate connection between mentalaction and the objects of both the external world and the internal mind,and demonstrates that mental content and phenomenal experience, whether

1Husserl, Edmund. Logical Investigations Volume 1. Translated by J.N.Findlay. Abingdon: Routledge, 2012 [1900-1901].2Edo Pivcevic, Husserl and Phenomenology. London: Hustchinson & Co, 1970, p13.3A.D. Smith, Routledge Philosophical Guidebook to Husserl and the Cartesian Meditations. London: Routledge, 2003, p17.

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external or internal, are fundamentally and inseparably linked. Thus afundamental analysis of human mental action and phenomenal experiencerequires an analysis of those mental intentional acts that link the two.4

The second core concept is the phenomenological reduction that occursthrough epoche. Epoche is the abstraction from all theoretical andinferential content of experience. All theoretical inference must bebracketed, whether scientific, philosophical or naive, everything that wecognitively layer onto the immediately given content of external andinternal experience, in order to leave the core phenomenal content. Hewas not advocating scepticism of scientific or philosophical knowledge,but rather attempting to lay these to one side to analyse the most basicquestion of how we build our everyday world from phenomenalconsciousness, which all such knowledge presupposes. The epoche in turnmakes possible the phenomenological reduction to and exclusive focus ononly that content left unbracketed.5

Scheler himself credited Husserl with the invention of thephenomenological method that he used, but apart from that he almost neverreferred to Husserl in his work and certainly saw himself as anindependent thinker, rather than as a student of Husserl in the mannerMartin Heidegger or Edith Stein definitely were.6 Practically, hefollowed the outline of phenomenology described above. But he was notconcerned with the details of the phenomenological method in the wayHusserl was and almost never mentioned or defined either thephenomenological reduction, intentionality, essential intuition,horizonality or other key methodological concepts. The focus of hisphenomenology was also totally different. Whereas Husserl focussed on thephenomenological construction of theoretical cognition Scheler primarilyfocussed on human practical (moral and emotional) life.7 He was a realistphenomenologist who had no interest in Husserl's later theories oftranscendental phenomenological idealism and criticised Husserl forcontinuing the phenomenological reduction until only the TranscendentalEgo remained as real8.

The key phenomenological concept for Scheler's own phenomenology is thatof essential intuition. Like Husserl he argued that the phenomenologicalmethod revealed that we experience reality not as a confusion of sense-data that is stitched together by consciousness, as Empiricists and Kantbelieved in different ways, but as a plethora of material essences that

4Ibid, p685Zahavi, Dan. Husserl and Transcendental Intersubjectivity. Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2001, p11.6Scheler, Max. Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values. Translated by Manfred S. Frings. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973 [1913-1916], pxix.7 Ibid, pxiv.8 Ibid, p78.

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we directly access, and can clarify through the phenomenological method.9

In both theoretical and practical cognition we have direct intuitiveaccess to these essences and the prime phenomenological task is then toclosely, qualitatively analyse and describe them and their interrelationsand how these relations constitute the world we inhabit. Scheler arguedthat we have both intuitive access to the real world through ordinaryexperience, and intuitive access to essences through phenomenologicalexperience, and this doctrine is absolutely key to his ethicalepistemology.10 The core concept of Scheler's ethics is that of materialvalues: they are how good and evil manifest. They are how Scheler'sMaterial ethics transcends the limits placed by Kant's arguments of theCritique of Practical Reason (which Scheler considered the peak ofphilosophical ethics before his own work).11 And they are textbookexamples of phenomenologically intuited essences. Scheler argues that theunreflexive experience of these values (and other essences) is commoneven to children and animals but they and their interrelations onlybecome clear through phenomenological analysis.12

I argue that Phenomenology as pioneered by Husserl and practiced byScheler is uniquely suited to analysing the nature of ethical experienceand obligation. The phenomenological method is superior to both purelyempiricist and rationalist approaches to ethics because of the elementsof both that it combines. Empiricist approaches to Ethics will alwaysstruggle with the fact that ethical statements are widely taken to beuniversal, necessary, a priori statements based on 'empirical' evidencethat is nowhere near as universal or conclusive to justify suchstatements about the nature of value e.g. utilitarianism. Rationalistapproaches, such as Kantianism, will also struggle with the nature ofethical experience as I described in my naive sketch, an experience thatis not based originally on deduction from any logical principles, butrather on the nature and force of immediate experience, which only laterworks back to theory. Ethics is as fundamentally practical (in both theordinary and philosophical sense) as any philosophical subject can be,and I argue only enters consciousness in the experience of other personsand objects as valuable. Regardless of the questions about themetaphysical status of values or human free will, practically we areinescapably agents, and so ethical analysis has no choice but to precedeon that basis. If ethics is to be both a priori and universal but alsogrounded in the realisations of personal experience then neither of thesemethodological approaches will be suitable. Phenomenology, on the otherhand has a doctrine of the substantive a priori that neither ends up9 Ibid, p63.10 Ibid, p67.11 Ibid, Ch 1.12 Ibid, p105.

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often denying its existence, as much empiricism does, nor bases it in theindependent action of rational minds, but rather in the intrinsicrational ordering revealed in the detailed structure of phenomenalexperience of reality by phenomenological analysis.

I argue that ethical experience of value provides an even more naturalground for applying the phenomenological method than the constitution ofphysical experience. Without the ability to quantify our physicalexperience in terms of measurement in space and time we can only analyseour ethical intuition and experience through considering its structuralproperties, both in relation to our own immediate experience of theseessences, and the manner we constitute and schematise those essences intothe partially rationalistic concepts of the life-world, e.g. good, evil,courage, beauty. Phenomenological qualitative analysis is particularlydesigned for bringing essences to clarity and contrasting theirstructural features. As such it offers the most thorough source of datafrom which to build a fruitful analysis of this moral experience, in allits individual richness, which is otherwise not there in the absence ofordinary quantitative experience. Furthermore, to argue negatively,phenomenology of theoretical experience and judgements will alwaysstruggle to abstract to the phenomenologically relevant detail ofexperience from the overwhelming torrent of ordinary perceptualinformation. Practical phenomenology, although it has to deal with aweight of existing moral commitments that are often held with greatemotional commitment, does not have to abstract from the same quantity ofcontingent perceptual information that should make the phenomenologicaltask relatively easier and clearer in Ethics.

2. Essences & The A Priori The central epistemological commitment of Scheler's Ethics is to thephenomenological intuition of essences. This doctrine is connected to,but distinct from, Husserl's phenomenological theory of Universals and Ibelieve that both need to be considered together to get a clear idea ofthe epistemological commitments that Scheler's theory takes on. This isbecause although Scheler argues that not all essences are universals,many are, particularly various obvious essences relevant to Ethics, andHusserl himself devoted considerably more detail to describing thephenomenological method, in this regard, than Scheler himself.

Husserl's theory of Universals is opposed to both metaphysical andepistemological realism about Universals and Nominalism, whether in itsconceptualist or extreme forms. For Husserl, Universals are objective

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existent entities, but ones that have a purely Ideal existence.13 Hecontrasted this strongly with the epistemological realism of Locke. Lockeargued that Universals existed as general ideas that formed the realcontents of the mind.14 Husserl argued that even a real, existent,external object cannot be conceived as part of the act that thinks it. Onthe contrary, just as the real, external object is (as the languagesuggests) the meaning-object but not the content of specific thought, soin general thought the Universal is the object but not the content ofthat thought and so cannot be a real content of the mind. The Universal,the object of general thought, is the Ideal logical meaning-content, justas the real object is the meaning-content of certain particularthoughts.15

Both particular real objects (a table) and particular ideal objects (thenumber 2) and Universals based on either real or ideal objects areexistent in the ordinary sense that they are indispensible to thought ofthe phenomenal world, all can have true statements predicated upon themand all can be brought to givenness in intuition whether through ordinarysensory perception, categorial or essential intuition. Real particularsthemselves are entirely mysterious without Universals because Universalsand essences are key to both distinguishing and grouping togetherparticulars on the basis of 'alikeness' and to the use of basic logic(the idea of 'All X' or 'An X').16

Nominalist theories historically rejected universals as an exaggeratedresponse to Locke's internal realism of 'general ideas' in the mind, orearlier Platonic external realism of transcendent forms. However, theyfailed to realise that Universals are correctly the intended logicalmeaning of thought-acts not the acts themselves. Nominalist theoriesthemselves, like Lockean 'realism', fail to distinguish the intendingmental act from the intended Ideal logical-meaning and, correctly, seeingthis as a confused notion rejects the whole thing. This leaves them onlyable to interpret general thinking in terms of psychological-causalexplanations of how universals are recognised through abstraction fromindividual objects, but without any theory of the logical meaning objectof general thought.17

Husserl argues not only that Universals exist in a perfectly respectablesense, albeit Ideally, but they become the objects of knowledge as theintending mental acts towards them are fulfilled in intuition,

13Husserl, Edmund. Logical Investigations Volume 1. Translated by J.N.Findlay. Abingdon: Routledge, 2012 [1900-1901], Investigation 2, Ch 1, §214 Ibid, Inv. 2, Ch 2, §915 Ibid, Inv.2, Ch 3, §14(a)16 Ibid, Inv.2, Ch3, §16(c)17 Ibid, Inv.2, Ch 2, §7

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particularly categorial and essential intuition. By building on passivesensuous intuition with active acts of intention on Properties these canbe fulfilled both in particular objects: 'This Red', 'That Red', or asUniversals: 'Red'. While the awareness of the basic real particularremains an "overreaching act of identification [brings] all such singleacts of abstraction into one synthesis"18 and through this "objects ofSort A become present to us"19 in addition to the perception of theparticular that remains subsidiary. Universals or Ideas can be perceivedanalogically in an image drawn to aid understanding but if "theconsciousness of mere analogy"20 vanishes we have direct perception ofthe Universal.

In addition, Husserl described the further process of eidetic intuition.This is a process whereby a universal essence is progressively clarifiedthrough an imaginative 'free variation' of its features. The accidentalfeatures connected with an essence are steadily identified and strippedaway until a clear presentation of the essence is achieved in Intuition.This, itself, is reliant on a thorough application of thephenomenological reduction. Only when all sense of the property beinggiven as defined by time and space, or as metaphysically real or not realhas been removed can the property come to proper clarity in Intuitionseparate from the presentation of particular objects. This process isstill intuitive because it is based on the original sensuous intuition,merely clarified and cleansed of non-essential elements.21

These considerations apply to both the theoretical essences that Husserlwas mainly concerned with and the practical ethical essences that Scheleris concerned with "on the basis of a far-reaching analogy for values andwilling"22 with the theoretical. Epistemologically these essences are notencountered either as Universal or particular just as Husserl argued thata property such as 'Red' can be given either as 'This red' or 'Red' ingeneral. In both cases it is an essence once brought to givenness throughthe phenomenological process of clarification. This applies to allessences, both in universal and particular form, just as a colour can bebrought to givenness as a quale of that colour on a particular object.23

Like Husserl, Scheler argues that essences are directly intuited through"phenomenological experience"24 as a priori truth. All propositions and18 Ibid, Inv.6, Ch.6, §5219 Ibid, Inv.6, Ch.6, §5220 Ibid, Inv.6, Ch.6, §5221Husserl, Edmund. Ideas pertaining to a pure phenomenology and to a phenomenological philosophy Book 1. Edited by Fred Kersten. Translated by Fred Kersten. The Hague: Springer, 1982, §1822Scheler, Max. Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values. Translated by Manfred S.Frings. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973 [1913-1916], p60.23 Ibid, p12.24 Ibid, p51.

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truths must be connected to an intuition of "facts themselves"25. Aposteriori statements must be connected to ordinary perceptualexperience, a priori truths must be connected to essential facts given inphenomenological experience, that is the manner in which we accessessences and thus gain a priori knowledge. It is only phenomenologicallyclarified experience "that exhibits as a fact of intuitive content whatis already contained in natural [experience]"26 but is usually hidden,namely a priori intuition of the essences that fundamentally constituteour experienced world. This a priori content is not to be identifiedprimarily with those truths that do not depend on any particularempirical experiences, as in the Kantian definition, but rather "thoseideal units of meaning and those propositions that are self-given by wayof an immediate intuitive content"27.

Scheler claims that the meaning-content of essences that is immediatelygiven in this manner through phenomenological experience cannot be givenas a more or less accurate model or observation, rather it is eithergiven truthfully or not given. The a priori truth of essences isindependent of the quantity of observation or description and is notdependent on propositions but "belongs wholly to the 'given' and thesphere of facts"28. The a priori intuition is a form of non-inductive,experience that is distinguished from the a posteriori, inductiveexperience that is usually what is referred to by Empiricism. Indeed, "itis a criterion of the essentialness of a given content that it mustalready be intuited in an attempt to observe it"29 because it is thebasic stuff of cognition that is always present, but is merely hidden andconfused in non-phenomenological pre-reduction consciousness. Truephenomenological experience of essences alone yields facts directly andimmediately without any sign, symbol or picture. Also inphenomenological experience alone there is "no separation between what ismeant and what is given"30. These two points are connected. In ordinaryexperience everything is overlaid with posited symbolism and inference,whether conscious or subconscious and it is precisely this content thatseparates what is given from what is meant in that experience. Thephenomenological reduction by stripping away that content gives us accessagain to the essences that underlay that content.

What is important about these essences for Scheler is not any particularontological opinion about their role in fundamental reality, but theepistemological and phenomenological assertion that they are an25 Ibid, p50.26 Ibid, p47.27 Ibid, p48.28 Ibid, p49.29 Ibid, p50.30 Ibid, p51.

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unavoidable and indispensable part of our cognition of phenomenalreality. The doctrine of a priori truth that comes from this alsofundamentally differs from the conception, broadly held by both Britishempiricists and Kant, that a priori truth is an ordering inflicted by therational mind onto the chaos of sensation, by one method or another. Onthe contrary, for Scheler the 'chaos' of sense-data is a damaging mythand the a priori ordering of both the natural and moral world issomething given in the immediacy of Intuition as an "objectivestructure"31 and that properly requires examination and clarificationthrough the phenomenological method, not invention through some syntheticactivity of human reason. Scheler strongly criticises both empiricistsensualism and Kantian constructivist approaches to the a priori ingeneral and particularly in Ethics32.

These epistemological doctrines, when applied to the ethical realm, willbe the fundamental basis of his positive description of an ethics ofvalues, his defence of the objectivity and material nature of thatEthics, and his criticism of both empiricist and rationalistalternatives. All these doctrines will reappear later in our discussionof Scheler's theory and the further theory I develop from it and on thoseoccasions I will discuss more fully both the defence and justificationfor them and the difficulties with these ideas. For now I merely hope tohave made clear what ideas are being referred to in my followingexplanation of Scheler's Ethics.

3. Values Scheler's Ethics places morality squarely within a larger view of theethical experience of value. Where other ethical theories argue thatpractical reasons, or sentiments, or pleasure & pain, or prima facieduties are the fundamental building blocks of Ethics, for Scheler thiscentral role is taken by values. These values range across the wholerange of human practical experience and some of them are experienced evenby children and animals. Like the wider category of essences they areindispensable to practical cognition and form the basis of rationalunderstanding of ethics. These values are experienced as embodied inobjects but through phenomenological reflection can be brought togivenness separately from any object, and can then become the basis of ana priori theory of ethics.

When I consider a piece of food I look at it as a thing, I can thinkabout it theoretically as having a certain size and shape, of consistingof certain chemicals that I know my body can usefully digest to sustain31 Ibid, p66.32 Ibid, Ch 2, A ‘The A Priori and the Formal in General’.

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my body. Through remembering various feelings my brain represents it asbeing likely to be sweet or savoury, and through feelings of hungerpushes me to eat it. But those feelings of hunger do not push me to eatit on the basis of its size or shape or chemical composition, or even,fundamentally, on the basis of its sweet or savoury taste, but on thebasis of it being recognised as food. What is this recognition of food-ness? Scheler argues that it cannot be broken down in cognition into anytheoretical or even feeling statement but can only be accuratelydescribed as a recognition of the object bearing a certain valuableessence, in this case that of 'food' or ‘nourishment’.33 This designationcannot be nailed down to any particular physical facts about the objector even feeling facts but is clear none the less. One could even clearlyimagine a different animal for whom, due to differing body chemistry,entirely different objects are food, but that regardless this essence of'Food' remains the same and entirely recognisable.

These values, like that of Food, cannot be defined in terms of physicalproperties, but also that they cannot be defined in terms of feelingstates either. The feeling states of hunger or the experience of acertain taste cannot define 'Food' either rather these are the subjectivestates whose object is the essence Food. One can recognise food, and eat,without any sense of hunger, and without appreciating the sensuous tasteof the food. In the previous discussion of Husserl's theoreticaluniversals the object of universal thought was not that thought itselfbut the logical meaning-content, the Ideal of that Universal. So in thiscase the value is the object of the intentional feelings responses, theIdeal essence, but not the feelings states themselves. This is the basisfor Scheler's argument for the objectivity of ethics that will beexplained in detail later on.

Values cover the whole range of human practical experience. At the basiclevel there are 'agreeable' values, 'vital' values, 'mental/spiritual'values and 'holy' values.34 These different modalities are alwaysnaturally experienced through bearers, but can be brought to immediateand separate givenness through phenomenological reflection. They areattached to a whole range of different possible bearers, particularly themodality of the ‘agreeable’ to things, the ‘useful’ to events, the‘vital’ to living beings, and the ‘ethical’ or ‘moral’ to persons.35 Theyare not just attached to objects either, but also Acts andinterconnections.36 Examples of these basic categories would be theagreeable value of comfort, the vital value of health, the spiritual

33 Ibid, p19.34 Ibid, p105.35 Ibid, p86.36 Ibid, p67.

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value of beauty, and the holy value of faith. Scheler's vision of ourethical world is one richly drenched with different values that we areall used to dealing with and experiencing on a daily basis but which,like theoretical universals and essences, only reveal their particular,precise nature after a process of phenomenological clarification. Thevalues Scheler refers to are the practical essences like nourishment, orcourage, or beauty that we all commonly are aware of and interact with,and as such are commonly referred to in ethical theories before his own.What Scheler adds for the first time is the thorough phenomenologicalanalysis of these values that alone can accurately clarify their natureand relations.

Values can be identified as part of the wider family ofphenomenologically recognisable ideal essences. They are the affective,value related side of this family that relates to what is traditionallycalled practical reason. They can be contrasted with the theoreticalessences that Husserl was primarily interested in that are recognisedprimarily through sensory perception. Within the family of valueessences, these are further divided by Scheler into the broad modalitiespreviously mentioned: Agreeable, Vital, Mental, Holiness, and within eachof these modalities there are numerous distinguishable individual valuesthat cover every element of human practical reason.

This seeming embarrassment of riches when it comes to essences inScheler's ethics is actually, I argue, a great source of strength. Thispluralism makes it a more thorough and adaptable ethical theory,reflecting the richness of the human experience of value in its varyingforms. It also provides the next part of the argument for the objectivityof an Ethics based on values. The recognition of qualitative variationamong values themselves means it is possible to describe a rationalordering among values based on their structural features, as clarified inphenomenological analysis. This mirrors one of the key means by which werecognise external physical reality as objective despite the subjectivityof individual perceptive experience. That is the ability to makerational statements about physical reality that are independentlyassessable by other elements of physical reality, as well as on anintersubjective personal basis. We measure a length with a wooden ruleras 1m, walk out of the room, come back in and then measure the object ona totally separate basis with a tape measure and it is still 1m, itslength is objective. Statements about the qualitative relation ofvalues, what Scheler refers to as their a priori ordering, can play thesame role in demonstrating the 'objectivity' of values and hence theiruse as a foundation of an objective ethics.

Values are always given in ordinary experience through the objects, actsor persons that bear them, referred to quite naturally as their

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'bearers'. Scheler argues that we experience objects always as acombination of 'Good' and 'Thing' where the thing-ness of the object isits physical, theoretical profile and the Good-ness of the object is itspractical experience as instantiating a certain value, as valuable.37

Objects are naturally experienced as a unity of these two perspectivesand only through reflection is the value nature of objects and theirtheoretical nature distinguished. All objects are experienced as goods,as bearers of values, whether physical or mental Acts, Persons, Things,Conations or feelings. But values do not yet appear clearly in Goods. "AGood is related to value-qualities as a thing is to the qualities thatfulfil its properties."38 It is only phenomenological reflection on thevalue-qualities given in the value-complex of the Good that then allowthe Values themselves to be brought to immediate givenness, just as thesame process is possible with the theoretical essences of physicalthings. Values, once clarified, can then begin to be analysed andcompared in terms of structure and in terms of just how qualitativelyvaluable they actually are, which can then form the basis for an a priorior objective ethics in the manner I have just briefly described.

4. Value Perception Scheler argues that Values are accessible for persons through two mainaffective mechanisms. These provide direct, intuitive access to thecontent of values in a manner that combines what is usually consideredboth reason and sentiments. Values are not accessed as empirical, naturalfacts, or through an a priori rational intuition of uniquely ‘moral’properties. Rather they are accessed through intentional, affectiveintuition of the ‘Goods’ of phenomenal experience that is then clarifiedthrough phenomenological reflection to reveal the values hidden within.

The two affective mechanisms through which we access values are Conationand Intentional Feeling, and through both of these we are constantly incontact with material values that guide our practical cognition, ourwilling, our wishing, our choosing, and the manner in which we experiencereality.39 They differ somewhat in terms of their relation to thosevalues though, while neither intentional feeling nor conation areconstitutive or foundational of values. They are purely means throughwhich values and their respective heights are revealed to us inexperience. Scheler takes his inspiration for these ideas from Pascal'sstatement that "The Heart has its reasons of which Reason knowsnothing"40. He interprets this to mean that there is an a priori ordering37 Ibid, p22.38 Ibid, p20.39 Ibid, p33 & 256.40Pascal, Blaise. Pensees. New York: E.P.Dutton & Co, 1958, §274.

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in practical reason, based on feeling and striving, that is totallyseparate from the rational ordering of theoretical Reason. Schelercriticises traditional Ethics for believing either that morality must beeither rational and absolute, or emotional and empirical. He claims thisis a false dichotomy and instead phenomenology reveals, throughIntentional Feeling and Conation, an ethics that is "emotional andabsolute".41

Scheler describes values as "clearly feelable phenomena",42 but in aparticular and unique sense of 'feeling', that is in Intentional Feeling.Intentional feeling can best be understood by distinguishing it from non-intentional feeling-states. These feeling-states largely follow thetraditional empiricist or Kantian conception of feelings. Feeling-states,particularly sensory bodily feelings, are purely internal and have nodirection outside the self, nor do they represent themselves as such.These feeling-states are generally spatially extended over an area of thebody, like touch or taste or pain, and whether mental attention isdirected at the feeling itself or not, this generally does notfundamentally alter the state of the feeling, though it may lessen orincrease its vividness in consciousness. They are given and accepted assubjective and restricted to a single person and often highly transitory.They form a continuous manifold of sensations that cover a huge range oftypes. The lack of direction outside themselves is their definingcharacteristic. If I have a headache and concentrate on my pain, the onlything that is given is the pain itself, if that pain disappears, thenthat feeling-state is just gone.43

Intentional feelings are very different to this. They are feelings thatare intentionally directed, with values as their constant objects,whether values of the agreeable, vital, mental or holy. Inphenomenological reflection these feelings are identifiable asintrinsically related to objects that are not identical with the feelingitself, but which are the manner in which we perceive such values, in thesame manner in which through vision physical objects are represented asfundamentally separate from the act of seeing that sees them. An examplewould be the perception of beauty in a sunset or painting. Certainly theperception is carried and accompanied by unique feelings, but thesefeelings are not themselves beauty, rather they have as their object theValue, Beauty, born by the sunset or painting itself. Intentionalfeelings vary wildly depending on the value they are aimed at. They areleast intentional when aimed at agreeable values, such as those relating

41Scheler, Max. Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values. Translated by Manfred S.Frings. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973 [1913-1916], p254.42 Ibid, p16.43 Ibid, p256.

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to the body, of sensory pleasure or food. They are more intentional whendealing with vital values relating to the living being, such as health orcomfort, more again in mental or spiritual values and most in values ofholiness. In each of these levels the feeling is given more and more asrepresenting a value as its object that is independent of the feelingitself. Also, the revealing of that value becomes more and moreresponsive to, and capable of, being disrupted by the mental attentionbeing directed at the feeling of the value rather than the value itself.For these higher values any attempt to do this immediately detaches theperson from the value itself. If one attends to the feelings thatindicate the beauty of a sunset, one is dealing with a totally differentobject to that beauty itself, and hence one loses sight of it. Theperception is disrupted, whereas, as stated above, whether one attends ornot to a feeling-state it remains fundamentally as it is because itentirely refers to itself.44

Feeling-states and Intentional Feeling are two areas of affectiveexperience. These are highly variegated at both levels and both conceptsshould be distinguished from the common conception of emotions. InScheler's view emotions, as we usually refer to them, would be a limitedtype of intentional feelings, as they are usually externally directed andcontain an immediate implication of the value of the object. Commonemotions themselves would not exhaust the range of intentional feelingthough. Rather identifiable, distinct emotions would be one particularsubset of the wide range of intentional feeling, much of which will nothave a clear definition and common name. Another different form ofaffective experience would be the feelings that support empathy, sympathyand emotional identification and have as their objects not valuesdirectly, but rather the thought and feeling of other persons, livingbeings or communities, and through which we gain access to and knowledgeof other persons.

"Values are given first of all in feeling"45 and this is the primarymethod by which value perception occurs but not the only one. ThroughConation values themselves, or features of values such as theirparticular 'height', may be revealed, and any conative movement alwayshas values as its logical basis. Conation is a rarely used term for theaspect of the mind directed to change and action: impulse, drive, mentalstriving, volition and will in the broadest sense, whether conscious orunconscious. It is contrasted with the affective, feeling based facultyof the mind and theoretical reason. Will is the most commonly referred toform of conation in general usage, but Scheler regards Will as arelatively advanced and particular form of conation whereas the entire

44 Ibid, pp256-260.45 Ibid, p35..

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faculty is a much broader and more basic area of human function.46 Basicexamples of conations would be the subconscious impulses that drive us tochoose between certain objects, whether members of a group of people onentering a room, food choices on a menu, or the differing goals we mayseek to complete at the start of a day. The subconscious impulse thatdrags us towards something of beauty, or which drives us away from an actthat we know is wrong, reveals value even in the absence of clearfeeling, or clear understanding of why we are doing it.

Scheler argues that it is an essential connection that every valueaccessible through conation must be accessible through feeling but noconverse relationship holds: there are values accessible through feelingthat could never be the object of personal conation, for example "thesublimity of the nocturnal sky and the stars".47 Conation is still acommon and important means by which values are revealed and affect humanexperience. Neither intentional feeling nor conation are constitutive ofvalues, they are rather both methods by which the objective values may bebrought to subjective clarity e.g. the joy we feel when someone entersthe room who we weren't aware we cared for until that moment.48

Whereas 'Will' always has as its object some perceptual representation asits 'purpose', conation in general only has a 'Goal' that requires norepresentation but does essentially have some scale of a value as itsideal object. This value-Goal can be subconsciously given in the mostbasic conation, or given clearly in value terms but without any picture-content attached, or with a pictorially represented purpose as in casesof 'Will', but it always still has the fundamental value-goal foundingthis impulse. Scheler argues that an immediate connection to a value isnecessary for conation, but that picture-content is neither necessary norsufficient for conation. The fact that picture content is not requiredfor conation is demonstrated by the uncountable occasions when we feelconative impulses that do lack this content, and are driven towardssomething that can be clear in terms of its value while lacking all clearpictoral image. This can be either low-value conations such as theimpulse towards food, without any clear image of any particular food, orit can be a very high-value conation, such as the impulse towards unionwith God, and dwelling in Heaven that is overwhelming in value terms evenwhen no clear vision of God, or Heaven may be at all possible in thislife. The fact that even acts of Will must have value-content as theirfundamental driving force is shown by the fact that the driving impulsecan be just as strong in instances of conation that lack any pictoralcontent, or have only a confused picture-content while the value is

46 Ibid, p41.47 Ibid, p173.48 Ibid, p38.

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entirely clear. However, pictorial content on its own overwhelminglylacks any conative impulse except in those cases where a strongperception of value simultaneously occurs.49

5. Value Preferment One will note that up until now there has been no mention of Good & Evilor moral choice in Scheler's ethical theory. This is because Schelerargues that these concepts only make sense in reference to the ethicalrealm of existing individual values.50 Moral theories that leap directlyto the issue of personal moral choices without taking stock of the mannerin which cognition of value occurs will always give only a foreshortenedtheoretical description of Ethics. It is also most likely they will begiving an incorrect view of Ethics precisely because they fail to takeinto account the great detail of Value cognition that precedes moralchoice and hence misrepresent this basic ethical material. Theories ofmorality such as Kantianism that state that normative oughts, thecommanding or prohibiting of acts, are the entirety of Ethics will makethe further mistake of not just ignoring but actively denying theexistence of the majority of ethical cognition of values that involves nosense of an immediate normative command.

In all the cases we have discussed so far there has been a considerationof only one particular value as such there has been no possibility formoral choice. This occurs when multiple different values are given in asingle situation as providing alternatives for acts. To give an example:I was once walking home with my girlfriend at the time; on thisparticular day that involved pushing her in her wheelchair a mile uphillin the pouring rain. The rain had just come on suddenly and pushingsomeone in a wheelchair you have little ability to hurry, so we wereresigned to getting increasingly cold and wet for the next 20 minutes. Iwas about to cross the road when we were overtaken by a young Asian ladyI did not know walking under an umbrella. The young lady gave us oneglance, thrust the umbrella into my hand and marched off across the roadand through the rain before I could respond at all.

Anyone at all could recognise that experience, despite its relativetriviality in the grand scheme of things, as an act of profound goodness.Scheler argues that this immediate awareness cannot be reduced to anycalculus of expected outcomes of happiness or any other metric, nor anyinternal view of the mental process of the lady in who helped us, but isimmediately apparent on the apprehension of the choice that was madebetween values in that instant. Particularly, that in choosing to help49 Ibid, pp38-44.50 Ibid, p25.

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total strangers she prioritised the value of the comfort of other personsover the value of her own comfort, even though she had no bond offriendship or other link to us, and even though we could be thoughtresponsible for our own fate by failing to prepare for likely late autumnEnglish weather. By preferring our own comfort over her own her Act alsoinstantiated the values of kindness and generosity and Scheler wouldargue that it is in the immediate apprehension of these values ofpersonal acts as higher, qualitatively greater in value than the purelysensory, agreeable value of her own comfort, that the recognition of the'Goodness' of her action appears.51

Scheler argues that moral 'Good' and 'Evil' appear specifically and onlyin the preferment of higher values over lower ones and does not appearindependently at any point as a direct feature of objects, whetherthings, acts or persons. Objects are intuited as more or less positivelyor negatively valuable, but that does not constitute good or evil in thespecifically moral sense. As such 'Good' and 'Evil' are specificallyvalues of persons and not of any other objects because only persons arecapable of preferment among values. This does not mean that 'Good' or'Evil' can be defined in terms of persons. Like all values they are"clearly feelable" essences that can only be known through experience andany attempts to define them in terms of real physical characteristics aredoomed to failure. It merely means that persons and their acts alone areessentially the bearers of the values Good and Evil. Good and Evil arethe unique moral values revealed through value preferment, whereas allother values are non-moral ethical values revealed through a wide rangeof bearers.52 This does however leave us with two non-identical uses of‘Good’ in Scheler’s Ethics. There is ‘The Good’ that we can experience,which is broadly all possible or actual Goods, instantiating all positivevalues. There is also ‘Good’ that is a specific value revealed, as I’vejust described, in people preferring higher values over lower ones.

Preferment among values does not just happen in terms of active momentsof choice among acts, as in the example I described, but is a constantand largely unconscious process of value cognition that occurs in allrecognition of values. Whenever a value is intentionally recognisedthrough conation or feeling it is immediately either preferred to orplaced after other also known values in terms of 'height' or qualitativeintensity of value. This mental act does not occur directly throughfeeling or conation, it is distinct form of value cognition whereby "theheight of the value is 'given', by virtue of its essence, only in the actof preferring"53. But this does not constitute the absolute height of

51 Ibid, p27.52 Ibid, p28.53 Ibid, p87.

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the value because that exists objectively in the essence of the valuesthemselves.54 As such value preferment can go wrong, and indeedsystematic incorrect preferment, or value-deception as Scheler calls it,would be the core failing of moral cognition and the most fundamentaldriver of moral failure.55 The near automatic and invisible act ofcognition should be considered the default way in which value prefermentoccurs, separately to any external actions or choices. Despite this itcan also occur spontaneously when faced with a choice or conation thatitself brings to consciousness at that moment values that had neverbefore been perceived or ranked. Usually, though, preferment does notoccur in an act of choice, but rather previous acts of prefermentthemselves dictate the moral choices open to us that we can or will makewhen certain situations arise.

Preferment is importantly different to mental choice, in a similar way tothe previous distinction between 'Will' and the more fundamental andbroad Conation. Choice between things, persons or acts is always based onunderlying preferment among values, but Choice implies an act in conationor conscious thought based on perceptually represented objects. I chooseto see one movie over another, even if I cannot give distinct reasons formy decision. But that choice itself is only possible because I havealready made preferment among certain values, and in complicated goodsamong certain complexes of values, that immediately guides my choice.56

It is possible to talk of preferring among goods, such as "I prefer rosesto carnations" that refers to no act of choice, even an imagined one,though it does then act as the basis for any particular choice.Preferment is a near automatic act of value-cognition that is onlyrevealed through subconscious conative acts and entirely consciouslythrough choice.

Preferment among values does not necessarily require the presence of morethan one value either. In the cognition of a certain deed or value it maybe given as 'high' without the values that it is higher than beingclearly given in intuition. A value may also be given as though therecould be certain values that were higher than it, even if those valuesare not clear. Also, the act of preferment is not purely dependent on thegiving of values in feeling or conation; rather the preferring itselfshapes and is shaped by those values that are accessible to the person infeeling through the mechanism just described. In the process of54 I am aware that the concept of value height itself may be considered contentious by some. There is insufficient space to consider this problem here but I dedicate my 5th chapter to considering the complexities raised by Scheler’srelatively simple outline of his connected ideas of Value Height and Value Preference. 55 E.g. Ibid, p37.56 Ibid, p26, p41.

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preferring or placing after the person intuits the 'space' occupied byother values in the ranking of values and from that opens thepossibilities of these values being directly identified and clarified infeeling.57

Values are originally revealed and clarified through conation andintentional feeling. They are 'ranked' through the emotional act ofpreferment that also provides space for the identification of new valueswithin the areas already disclosed by feeling. Beyond any of theseelements are the acts of Love and Hate. Scheler does not consider Loveand Hate just to be emotions, or modes of valuation or the perception ofvalues. Rather Love and Hate are the "highest level of our intentionalemotive life"58. Love is the most intentional, object directed ofemotional states, the most distant from the self-referential andcontained nature of feeling-states. Love of any person is a movementtowards the highest possible value in that person that is indifferent towhether they are values they already instantiate. Love as such has theunique role of revealing radically new areas of value previously un-encountered. Acts of preferment allow discovery of neighbouring valuesby containing references to the spaces in the value structure they mayoccupy. But only Love acts "as a pioneer and guide"59 going entirelyahead of feeling and preferment in flashes of creative insight to revealwhole new territories of values as yet unimagined, and thus opens upthese new realms to be thoroughly 'mapped' in functions of feeling andconation and acts of preferment. Conation and intentional feeling,Preferment, and Love all then have vital roles in "circumscribing" ourwider ethical awareness, and hence both our specific moral choices andthe whole universe of such choices that are a practical possibility forus.

Hate, on the other hand, has an analogous but opposite role and effect.In hate values are actively closed off and withdrawn from all possibilityof perception or cognition. The world of values the person canexperience is thus more deeply and widely impoverished the deeper thehate is and the farther it stretches. In doing so it also hides its ownaction because often the person does not realise how impoverished theyare. They lose all sight of those values even to the point of becomingtotally unaware of what they no longer have access to.

Scheler sharply distinguishes the wider layers of moral intuition andmoral cognition from the more specific areas of moral comportment andEthics as a field of study. All persons must have moral intuition andcognition for moral knowledge, but only ethicists require Ethics "by57 Ibid, p89.58 Ibid, p260.59 Ibid, p261.

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which, obviously, no human being becomes 'good'"60. Scheler richlydistinguishes differing areas of ethical experience without which heargues we can end up with only a confused view of moral knowledge andpractice. On the side of values he further distinguishes various levelsat which we must both distinguish and consider the inter-relation betweenour awareness of values and our actual moral actions: in terms of'Ethos', 'Ethics', 'Morals', 'Practical Morality' & 'Mores andCustoms'.61 I argue again that this richness of description is a greatstrength of Scheler's Ethics because it gives the breadth and flexibilityto both include the insights of other theories within it and to surpassthem in terms of the range of ethical experience it clarifies.

Value preferment is the core concept of moral ordering in Scheler'sethics. I have presented it in simple terms here for reasons of brevitybut the questions it raises are central to a proper assessment ofScheler's Ethics. Value preferment can occur between values of different(Useful, Vital, Spiritual, Holy) but also occurs between all valueswithin modalities. In concrete situations choice will often not be basedon simple, single value preferments but between complexes of valuesinstantiated in Goods. There is also a second axis of importance of valuein addition to the modalities among pure values. Among bearers Schelerargues for a clear hierarchy of values of Persons as the highest values,over the values of Acts, over values of Things.62This then raisesquestions as to how this interacts with the modalities of valuespreviously identified. A further issue appears when dealing with'quantities'. Value preferment is a profoundly qualitative theory ofethical decision making, but how does this cope with quantitative ethicalquestions, such as whether one should save one life or five lives?Complex moral dilemmas could involve all of these issues in one singlepiece of decision making. These questions are so important that Idedicate the 5th chapter of this thesis to beginning to provide answersto some of them.

6. Oughts Scheler argues that value preferment is the fundamental basis on whichmoral and ethical choice occurs. But this fact only becomes apparent inphenomenological reflection on these issues. This is because most peopledo not consciously experience or think of moral and ethical issues interms of pure values or even value complexes, which are the objectsbetween which preferment occurs. Rather they think in terms of the Goods

60 Ibid, p69.61 Ibid, pp299-300.62 Ibid, p100.

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and objects of the ordinary world of experience and in ethics often interms of propositions relating to these objects, whether throughcommands, norms, laws or other formulations of statements about what oneought or ought not to do.

These moral 'oughts' or ‘ought nots’ are not merely equivalent to valuestatements for Scheler. Unlike in theories based on moral propositionslike Kantianism or Ross’ intuitionism, it is value cognition that foundsthe ethical and moral ought, and only in a restricted range of cases.There are numerous acts of value perception and cognition that cannot berendered into a moral ought as usually considered.63 For example, whenone states that a person is good or a landscape beautiful that is anethical statement but is does not imply any duty or particular thing thatI ought to do. He also argues that Value cognition is essentiallyindependent of these normative 'oughts' because pure value cognitionitself is indifferent to the question of whether the values intuited andcognised are done so through currently existing bearers or not.64 Valuesperceived and cognised through fictional examples are as clear as thoseintuited through real, immediately present bearers, but they cannotproduce any immediate moral obligation.

There is however a sense in which value cognition is intrinsicallyconnected to 'Oughts' but this is different to the sense of the moralnormative ought of duty: the ought that says ‘I ought to do this’. Hedistinguishes between this normative ought and the ‘ideal ought’. Thenormative ought states that 'I ought to do this' whereas the 'idealought' states that 'this ought to be'. In this second sense all valuesessentially found an ought of this type based on the following simpleaxioms: positive values ought to be, negative values ought not to be.65

The Ideal Ought differs from cognition of pure values because it isintrinsically concerned with the existence or non-existence of values. Itentails that those values ought to be instantiated in Goods but does notnecessarily turn into the normative ought of an immediate moral command.For example, if a friend asks me to drive them to hospital because theyhave injured themselves I ought to do so. This is an immediate normativeought. When I consider the image of the New Heaven & New Earth inRevelations when God "will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will beno more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of thingshas passed away"66: this too is given as something that ought to be butnot that I ought to do now. Indeed, such an interpretation is meaninglessbecause, in the Christian view, it is impossible for any human being by

63 Ibid, p185.64 Ibid, p206.65 Ibid, p206.66 Revelations 21:4, NIV.

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their own power alone to create this vision: it is only possible for God.Ideal Oughts also exist in relation to the past, the present and thefuture, as well as to categories, like that of Revelations, that may bethought to exist outside time entirely.67 I can say that the Atlanticslave trade should not have existed but obviously this cannot generateany moral obligation upon me, though it may parallel moral obligationsrelating to present day situations of equivalent values.

Ideal Oughts can be further distinguished from normative oughts becausemultiple ideal oughts can be simultaneously true, though only onenormative ought can. This is because they are based on value preferments,particularly the cognition of some currently absent Good (a valuecomplex) as higher than that currently existing. This difference inheight is what generates the 'Ideal Ought'. But multiple different valuescan be higher in different degrees than those currently instantiated.Each of these can generate a legitimate ideal ought compared to thepresent situation. I can say "extreme poverty ought to be eliminated" andI can say "moderate poverty ought to be eliminated" without any issuebecause they are not exclusive goals, one is just a higher goal than theother. But in normative terms I am instantiated in particularcircumstances with particular resources and hence must face one singlenormative ought relating to this situation i.e. what specific thing Iought to do to progress towards these goals.

Kant famously argued that "You can, for you ought!", that we cannot saywe ought to do something unless we can do it. Scheler argues that this iscorrect only in relation to normative oughts. There is an entirelylegitimate sense, the ideal ought, in which we can use Ought regardlessof our personal ability to act because all Ought is justified originallyby value cognition.68 Normative oughts, on the other hand, relate to theaction possibly taken by individual persons in relation to real goods inthe present rather than general statements about Goods based on valuepreference. This depends not only on the external situation itself, buton the state of the Will, feeling, conation and value cognition of theindividual person involved for whom the Normative Ought may be occur.Different persons may have different skills and capabilities andawareness of the values involved and so face different normativeoughts.69 This is not to say that normative oughts and ideal oughts areunrelated. They are intensely related. All normative oughts originatefrom ideal oughts, which themselves are based in value cognition. Allnormative oughts are based on ideal oughts incarnated into specific

67Scheler, Max. Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values. Translated by Manfred S.Frings. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973 [1913-1916], p207.68 Ibid, p236.69 Ibid, pp213-214.

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circumstances. Also, all normative oughts are equivalent to a preciseclass of ideal oughts, "every duty is also an ideal ought-to-be of an actof the will".70 But normative oughts are unique in that they are givenonly to an individual in their specific circumstances and vary accordingto that difference, whereas ideal oughts hold generally because they aredefined primarily by a priori value insight.

Despite the fact that every value can found an ideal ought Scheler arguedagainst any idea that the 'Ought' in either of its forms can be the equalor original basis of ethics: “The ought can never itself determine whatpositive values are”.71Phenomenologically we experience perception andcognition of values and from these derive Ideal and then normativeoughts. This can be seen in situations like the apprehension of beauty,or of the innate value of persons. These perceptions can be turned intoan ideal ought with regard to them but this potential derives from theoriginal perception. In an experience of a work of Art we immediatelysense the beauty of the object and from this derive the proposition thatit ought to exist. We do not immediately sense that the object ought toexist and from this derive it must be beautiful. Hegel argued that anyphilosophy that based ethics in oughts meant that any good onceaccomplished becomes ethically indifferent because it can no longer be anought.72 But we have clear experiences of the ethical good of oursuccesses after they have been achieved. God created the world "and sawthat it was good",73 and this statement is not mysterious to us in anyway. We have all had similar experience at various times that require nojustification in reference to some related ought.

There is an intermediate layer of ethical statements that occupy a middleground between the normative and ideal oughts in Scheler's theory. Thisis the layer of norms, commands, maxims, laws and other guiding socialethical principles. These general ethical propositions are also the maincontent of certain ethical theories, such as the self-evident duties thatunderlie analytic intuitionist theories such as W.D.Ross74 or theCategorical Imperatives produced by a theory such as Kant's75. Theseprinciples are not exactly ideal oughts because they do not relatedirectly to values and statements about what should be regardless ofpresent existence. Nor are they normative oughts because they are notindividual instances of duty. They are rather general principles thatoperate as social normative oughts in order to require particular ethical70 Ibid, p203.71 Ibid, p209.72 Ibid, p210.73 Genesis 1:4, NIV.74W.D.Ross. 1930. The Good and the Right. Oxford: Clarendon Press.75Kant, Immanuel. 1997 [1788]. Critique of Practical Reason. Translated by Mary Gregor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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behaviour. As such they are useful in as far as they reflect accurateperception and cognition of values, but they are secondary to the directperception and cognition of values and there is always the possibilitythat they will be overturned by greater insight into values. This isbecause they are both too specific, not being clearly related to valueinsights as ideal oughts are, and not specific enough, in not relating tothe specific Goods and circumstances that normative oughts relate to.They occupy a vague middle ground between these two determiners of moraloughts.

Not only can existing norms be replaced by norms derived from moreprofound value insight but they can be circumvented entirely in ordinaryethical conduct. Scheler argues that commands, for example, only haveforce in order to counter some contrary conation within us. We only needto be told not to steal if we have an urge to take that which is not oursin the first place. If we have a value insight and conation in the samedirection as that insight that convicts us to the extent we don’t havethe contrary urge, we have no need of the command. Contrary to what Kantargued our inclination can follow the insight of value perception, ofwhich conations themselves are one form, and in this case obliviates allneed for norms or commands or normative oughts in general.76 All suchnorms, commandments or maxims are thus profoundly secondary in terms ofethical knowledge and action to personal and social value awareness, associally useful and heuristically valuable as they may be as guideseither to specific actions or to developing personal virtue.

As we move from value cognition to ideal oughts to normative oughts wemove into more concrete and familiar territory. Why then have such acomplicated system, why not eliminate one or more of these categories?The answer is that they are both usefully, practically distinct andtheoretically, phenomenologically distinct. For example, each refers tovery different objects: value cognition to pure values, Ideal Oughts tocomplexes of Goods, and normative oughts to individual acts. They allowus to conceptualise the different stages of ethical experience andreasoning separately and thus construct a more complete ethical theorywithout losing the detail of each section as required. Collapsing theseand other important distinctions can only lead to paradox as crucialdistinctions are blurred. Particularly, numerous alternative ethicaltheories conflate the distinction between ideal and normative oughtsentirely. Theories such as Kantianism or classical utilitarianism canonly cope with one kind of moral statement that are then deemed to bebinding on all individuals as they are; but this simplistic approach(among other issues) produces the well known problems with both theories.

76Scheler, Max. Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values. Translated by Manfred S.Frings. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973 [1913-1916], p213-214.

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For example, classical Utilitarianism moves from the principle ofutility, that happiness is the only good, which must be a value-statementif it is to be taken as a priori valid; to the principle that everyonealways ought to act to promote happiness, which is the connected idealought; and then conflates this utterly with the normative demand that inall a person's actions he ought to act to promote happiness withoutfurther distinction. The failure to distinguish these layers and theirdistinct features leaves the theory open to the problems for which it iswell known, but which also appear in a similar manner in all othertheories that fail to distinguish these phenomenologically separatelayers to our ethical thinking.

7. Persons In this last section of my overview of Max Scheler's ethical philosophy Ilook at his doctrines of the Person. Scheler placed great importance onthe idea of 'Persons', what defines a 'Person' and the unique role ofindividual persons within Ethics. His main work 'Formalism in Ethics andMaterial Ethics of Values' is subtitled 'A New Attempt towards theFoundation of an Ethical Personalism' and a large section of the book isgiven over entirely to a phenomenological analysis of what defines'personhood' compared to other common or philosophical definitions.77

Scheler's ethics is objective but still contains a unique and active rolefor individual persons in a number of important ways.

Scheler argues that someone cannot be defined as a 'person' either bypossessing a soul, or an Ego, or a rational mind, or by belonging to thehuman species. Rather the personhood of someone is based on them beingthe subject, the author, of intentional acts that are understandable aschosen by that person.78 Not all humans are necessarily persons, and notall persons are necessarily human. The acts of non-persons are causallyexplainable but not understandable as acts informed by both theoreticaland practical cognition: insight and judgement e.g. a ‘person’ actsbecause they have weighed up the options and made a choice, the ‘lunatic’or an animal acts because his madness or his instincts mechanicallycompel him. Scheler chooses this definition to emphasise that person-hood, as opposed to the ‘self’ or the soul is based on being a creativeand responsible moral agent, and it is that connects to the highestvalues. The 'personhood' of someone is sharply distinguished from theirsoul or ego or lived body because all those elements of an individual canbe thematised as objects but their nature as a person can never be fullyknown as an object. The person is the "concrete unity of all possible

77 Ibid, pp370-476.78 Ibid, p476.

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acts",79 "the immediately co-experienced unity of experiencing";80 thesubject understood as responsible for those acts and hence can never bean object in the sense of being a thing because he "exists solely in thepursuance of his acts".81 Whereas all objects, and especially all things,can in principle be fully known even if not in practice, the person has"a sphere of absolute personal privacy, which can never be given tous".82 This does not mean the intuition of the person is given as(negatively) lacking some element, rather it means that the person isgiven positively as having a part of itself that is fundamentally andabsolutely inaccessible to any outside intentional act, as fortressedfrom any possible epistemic invasion.

The individual person can be considered from two perspectives based onthe manner in which he is known. Those elements of a person that aredefined and co-experienced through his relationships with other personsare his 'social person'. This includes all elements defined by hisculture, his profession, his nationality, religion, class, every means bywhich he is known or defined by public features. But he also has an'intimate person'. This is his "peculiar self-being" (and self value)"which towers above this whole and in which he knows himself alone":83

the unique perspective we all have on ourselves. Within this level thereis also a distinction to be made. Each individual person has anabsolutely intimate core that is knowable only to himself in solitude buthe also has relatively intimate levels. These levels can become revealedonly through love. The social means of relationship reveal the other bysome, in principle, public features in terms of attributes and qualities.In love the person is revealed unitarily as a person by “joining in theperformance of his acts” of love; "we must love what he loves and love itwith him".84 Only thus do we penetrate to part of the intimatepersonality of the person. This understanding transcends our purelyobjective knowledge of the person because it is driven by directintuition of them as person, not as object. For example, the only one whounderstands the person Jesus is his disciple. However many facts someoneknows about the ‘historical’ Jesus one who does not enter into his actsof love cannot know him as a person and the same applies to all persons.But yet through Love the person is clearly and intimately revealed (asfar as ultimately possible) despite any or all differences of culture,79 Ibid, p29.80 Ibid, p371.81 Ibid, p29.82Scheler, Max. 1923. The Nature of Sympathy. Translated by Peter Heath. New York: Archon Books, p10.83Scheler, Max. Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values. Translated by Manfred S.Frings. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973 [1913-1916], p561.84Scheler, Max. 1923. The Nature of Sympathy. Translated by Peter Heath. New York: Archon Books, p168.

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place or time.85 But there is still a limit as to how far this perceptioncan penetrate. There is always still an absolutely intimate core to aperson that is positively beyond all knowing except to them. Eachindividual stands together with other persons both publicly as a socialperson and privately with some others as a relatively intimate person,but is known and valued (or dis-valued) in absolute solitude beyond thatin a manner they can never entirely share.

The person cannot be understood as a thing, but it is also not knownpurely empirically or a posteriori at all. Scheler argues that essencetranscend the concepts of universals or particulars and founds both ofthese types of entities. It is only when the essence is referred as theessence of something that it becomes definitely either particular oruniversal. There are in fact unique essences of individuals that defineeach person uniquely as themselves, and a unique value-essence of eachindividual person. This is a value-essence "whose objective essence andvalue-content contain a reference to an individual person"86 and definesthe Good that he is and the Good that he is capable of fulfilling. Theideal-ought that is based in that insight of the Good of that person isthus only precisely for that person and is experienced as their "calling"or vocation. Like all values the complete possible fullness of this valueessence is revealed only through "the full understanding of the personbased on love".87 This love can either be self-love or the love ofanother person who sees in me, and thus reveals to me, a potential valuethat I could not see in myself. Thus there is a unique place within themoral universe, a unique 'call' of "actions, deeds, and works" for eachindividual person based on their unique value essence.88

This value essence is the good-in-itself-for-me in broad ethical termsand we can either fulfil this essence by carrying out the oughts derivedfrom it or not. But our current moral status: whether we are a good orevil person, is not defined by this. This too is experienced as anessence of a person: their 'moral tenor'. The moral tenor can be thoughtof as our basic moral disposition but it is not an average of our actsbut rather an essence of our person that can be given in intuition. Thedifference is that our moral tenor is given as enduring and constantdespite any individual act or intention we have in a particular instance.We may know someone to be a good person and thus seek the reason for anapparently evil act they commit. Scheler distinguishes the moral tenor inparticular from 'character', which he takes to be an empirically

85 Ibid, p167.86Scheler, Max. Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values. Translated by Manfred S.Frings. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973 [1913-1916],p490.87 Ibid, p491.88 Ibid, p490.

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developed picture of a person, rather than an intuitively given essenceof their nature. Moral Tenor is revealed to us by a person's moralactions, feelings, gestures or other features but it can be revealedentirely through one single instance that shows them as either good orbad. The moral tenor is not fixed permanently, it can change over timethrough a process of profound moral conversion or development, but it isnot transitory and does not change necessarily through any one act.89

The moral tenor is important because it is the level, tied to us aspersons, between our ordering of value preferment and our intentions andactions. It is defined by our value insight and preferment and then inturn constrains what intentions, purposes and deeds are possible for oneto experience: it delineates a "material a priori field for the formationof [our] possible intentions"90 limited by the value insight thatunderlies the moral tenor. But it is not just a shorthand for our valueinsight, it is an essence given directly in intuition as fundamentallypart of someone when considered as a person. It has its own values aswell, and these moral values permeate our intentions up until they areinstantiated in their own fulfilled act-values, and hence the moral tenoris visible in our intuition of those intentions, feelings, gestures, etc.

For Scheler the person is the centre of all the most ethical values andacts. As discussed previously Good and Evil are values that can only beproperly attached to the being of persons, because they alone can preferamong values. Persons alone have the higher capacity to reveal infinitefurther realms of value through Love, the highest, most intentionalethical act. The highest levels of value modality are also connectedessentially to persons. Scheler states that Holiness is always "directedtowards persons [...] no matter what content [...] of personhood isimplied". Holiness is "by essential necessity, a 'value of theperson'".91 By this he means that unlike lower values holiness alwaysrefers back to some person, however obliquely. A holy book such as theQur'an or Guru Granth Sahib is only Holy in as far as it refers back toGod, the Person of Persons. Scheler also connects the next level ofvalues, that of the mental or the spirit, with self and mind. Whereas the‘agreeable’ applies only to things, the ‘useful’ to events, and the‘vital’ to living beings, these higher moral values also attach solely topersons as their bearers.92 This is in addition to the individualpersonal value essence that is unique to each individual discussed justbefore.

89 Ibid, pp111-11890 Ibid, p11591 Ibid, p109.92 Ibid, p86.

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Persons are not just important in general because the highest values areessentially attached to persons but each person is important because ofthe role they may have in revealing values. Each individual person has aunique value-essence and a unique complex of oughts or 'call' related toit, not only across their whole life but in each particular moment andopportunity. Each person has historically unique nuances of values givenfor them in each particular time and place that pass away in thathistorical-moral moment if not grasped, ‘preferred’ and acted upon.93

This drives Scheler's value-personalism, the doctrine that the value ofany society is defined by the extent to which it offers space forindividuals to realise their highest possible values, and which isopposed to value-collectivism, where the value of the individual ismeasured by their contribution to a community, however defined. Nogeneral community or group can possibly replace the unique role ofindividual persons in realising values.94

This point can be further illuminated through two examples. Not only canunique individual values be given to one person at a particularhistorical moment, but universal values can also be given first to oneperson at a historical moment. Through particular acts of love a certainspecial person can perceive values hitherto unglimpsed in value insightby any person and thus enlarge the moral horizon of all humanity.95 On amore mundane level, Scheler opposed the idea of eugenics, the applicationof science to breed a 'better' human, that was popular in his timebecause he argued no scientific process or method of determination couldpossibly replace the role of sexual love as the highest insight intovital values in the selection of partners.96 To think otherwise was toignore the essential nature of values and of persons in preference for anentirely value-less empirical process. Again, the role of individualvalue-insight is fundamental.

What follows from the unique value-nature of individuals is the existenceof unique ideal and normative oughts for individual persons. Kant wasentirely wrong not only to argue that universality must be the fundamentalfeature of morality, but also to argue that it must be a fundamentalfeature of morality. There are unique moral oughts that apply only tosingle individuals that are still objective because they are still basedin insight of objective value essences.97 There are two senses in whichoughts may differ between persons that must be distinguished. Firstly,persons may be capable of experiencing different oughts because they

93 Ibid, p493.94 Ibid, p504.95 Ibid, p27296 Ibid, pp115-116.97 Ibid, p193

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currently have different levels of value insight, and hence canexperience different ideal and normative oughts. Secondly, even assumingfull value insight different persons should experience difference oughtsbased on the unique and hence differing nature of their personal valueessence.

While all the highest values a person can realise are values of theperson, and particularly those revealed in his own value essence, thisdoes not mean that the person's own value should be his intentionalobject, in fact, precisely the opposite. It is in being directed beyondhimself at others, and those goods and values external to himself, that aperson enhances the values that define him. The person-ness of someonecannot be understood as an object because it only exists in his creativeownership of his actions. This means attempts by the person to take ashis object his own sense that he is good or evil must fail, Schelerargues, and lead only to misplaced personal pride or selfishness, whichhe labels as Pharisaism.98 One of the reasons for this is that thosevalues that are deepest are least open to immediate influence. Thisbecomes harder as one moves from low levels of values of the useful andagreeable, where values such as Food are simple and concrete, to thevital, and then to the spiritual where it is extremely difficult, to theHoly where it is entirely impossible. And values of persons, as thehighest values, share in this difficulty.99

Individual moral action and cognition must be considered separately inorder to understand how individual freedom interacts with our relation toobjective values. Kant only recognised one type of autonomy orheteronomy, that of the Will. Scheler argues that the difference betweenmoral cognition and moral comportment allows the distinction to be madebetween autonomy of cognition and autonomy of the Will. Heteronomy in thefirst case corresponds to action without moral insight, mere blind whim;in the second case it corresponds to our acting according to someoneelse's will. It is the autonomy of insight that is morally relevant notthat of the Will. We can act of our own free choice but without valueinsight but that is just capricious whim. We can act according to thewill of another person, but if we do that because we intuitivelyrecognise the ethical value and authority of the source of that commandthen we act with autonomous cognition, and rightly, though withheteronomy of Will.100 However, if one does follow some command orsuggestion of a good deed without any insight what is lost is the moralrelevance to that person. The act itself is still good or evil but itsnature cannot be attributed to that person as autonomous. What this means

98 Ibid, p27.99 Ibid, p507.100 Ibid, p494.

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is that in a moral community of agents guilt and merit cannot be entirelyindividualised but are shared, to a degree, by all. As I influence andam influenced by the community around me I am actively co-responsible forall the acts that occur within it. The community as a whole has acollective guilt or merit that cannot be reduced to the sum of that ofits individual members. We have real moral solidarity with those aroundus that we must always take into account in addition to our uniqueethical call.101

The individuality of the ethical call places an especial importance onindividual ethical insight as the source of moral knowledge and action.It follows that Ethics as a philosophical discipline can never give acomplete guide to action. Individual wisdom and moral insight in valueswill always trump systematic & structural description in the relevantplaces. "Ethics can never replace individual conscience, nor shouldit."102 Ethics rather has a separate descriptive task of understandingvalues and their essential interrelations, their rankings and the generalconclusions that come from this, while always being aware of the limitsof that theorising.

8. Summary That brings this overview of Max Scheler's ethical philosophy to an end.Before I move on I am going to briefly summarise what I see to be themain points of his philosophy. Then in the next chapter, I will begin tolook in detail at Scheler’s ethical epistemology with reference toarguments current in discussion of analytical intuitionism. In the twochapters after that, on the other hand, I look at some of the mainnormative issues raised in Scheler’s theory of values and ethical choice,particularly in chapter six his idea of ‘Persons’. For brevity's sake Ihave restricted myself in this chapter to what I believe are thefundamental features of Scheler's Ethics, ignoring particularly hisextensive non-ethical analysis of the phenomenological concept of thePerson in the Formalismus.

The most well known and important part of Scheler's philosophy is itsfocus on values: for Scheler material values essences are the basic factsof all our practical reason in the same way that physical facts are thebasis of all our theoretical reason. Values inform all our ethical andspecifically moral thinking. They are not in any way mysterious entities.For Scheler they are fundamental part of all practical reason, even thatof animals, and he considers them to be a near constant part of all ourexperiences and accessed in ways that are intensely familiar: through101 Ibid, p497.102 Ibid, p494.

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object directed feeling and conation. It is only the attempt to clarifythem phenomenologically as pure values, abstracted from the Goods inwhich they are instantiated through the phenomenological method, thatthey become something that may seem unfamiliar to people. But Scheler'stheory places moral and ethical thinking fluidly within the entirety ofhuman practical experience and motivation. Scheler is aware that histheory is radical but he argues that actually ethical thinking has alwaystaken place in terms of values. This fact has just never before beenpresented clearly due to, what he calls, historical philosophicalprejudice against the idea of an emotional a priori, and the lack of thephenomenological method, the vital means to clear away the fog ofconfusion that has surrounded Ethics.

Scheler's philosophy is generous in the detail and richness with which itpaints human ethical life, particularly in the sheer quantity of essencesand essential relations it describes. This stands in stark contrast withmany historical ethical philosophies that have attempted to reduceethical life to as few principles or mechanisms as possible. For Schelerthese efforts substantially miss the point. Human ethical life is richlycomplex and interconnected and so attempts to render it in any one simpleterm will inevitably be not just simple but simplistic. Scheler believesthat all such over-simplified theories will inevitably end in paradoxesthey cannot explain when they come up against actual human ethicalexperience. There is always the risk that any complex ethical theory willmerely end up losing clarity and philosophical rigour through itscomplexity. But Scheler's philosophy is not just arbitrarily complicatedbut intensely detailed in each of its analyses, a mark of hisphenomenological background, and this helps maintain the rigour of histheory at both the broad level and that of individual features.

Scheler supports this richness of description with his focus on theimportance of direct ethical insight. He argues that a priori ethicalintuition is as significant a part of human experience as theoreticalperception. Ethical knowledge is not based in judgement or acts of theWill but in direct ethical perception and cognition that exists prior toany ethical action, to the extent of shaping our possible experience ofobligation. This opens the possibility of accurate ethical knowledgebeing a part of everyday ethical life while separating this individualnormative ethical knowledge qualitatively from that which forms thecontent of philosophical Ethics and from that of social moral norms andrules. It allows him to explain a wide range of value statements withinthe same ethical framework, while separating out their distinct featuresin detailed phenomenological analysis: such as that between ideal andnormative oughts, between the personal value essence and the moral tenor,among many other examples.

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This focus on insight leads to Scheler's emphasis on the individuality ofethical obligation and the central role of persons in Ethics. ForScheler this is both itself a matter of direct ethical intuition and anatural corollary of the richness and complexity that he finds in theentirety of human ethical experience. Just as different elements ofethical cognition and motivation bear qualitative differences, so dodifferent levels of pure values, and so do different individual ethicalcalls. The qualitative uniqueness of the ethical call goes hand-in-handwith the uniqueness and importance of persons within his ethicalframework. The highest levels of values are accessible only to individualpersons and because insight is a function of individual persons theyalways have the potential to override the ethical knowledge of theirsociety with deeper ethical knowledge.

Finally, Scheler combines a belief in the diversity and individuality ofethics with a constant commitment to the objectivity of individualethical insight and philosophical ethical knowledge. He argues that"material a priorism" can give both the rigorous knowledge offered byrationalist ethical philosophies and the connection to the complicatednature of emotional life offered by empiricist or sentimentalisttheories. His unique ethical epistemology combines the objectivity ofvalues but the relative subjectivity or Goods and norms. The verypluralism and diversity of his analyses would seem to suggest asubjective ethics but the detail he displays counters thisinterpretation, as he attempts to ground that pluralism in the objectivephenomenology of actual ethical experience. The epistemological claimthat underlies this objectivity is that Scheler alone has isolated thetrue ethical facts of experience in material values essences that alonecan ground a truly accurately, objective and complete theory of humanethical experience in all its rich complexity.

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