MAX SCHELERS VALUE ETHICS

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MAX SCHELERS VALUE ETHICS
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LIFE

• Born 22 August 1874 in Munich, Germany of Jewish
  mother and Lutheran father.
• 1889 lured to Catholicism alienation from
  family.

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LIFE

• 1893 graduate from gymnasium, beginning of
  relationship with Amelie von Dewitz, studies at
  University of Munich (psychology and medicine)

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LIFE

• 1894 studies at U..of Berlin, influences from
  Dilthey and Simmel.
• 1895 studies at U. of Jena
• 1897 Ph.D. with Rudolf Eucken as advisor.

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LIFE

• 1899 baptism in Catholic Church in Munich.
  Marriage with Amelie von Dewitz in Berlin.
• 1900 starts as privatdozent in Jena.
  MeetsEdmund Husserl in Halle.
• 1906 moves to teach at U. of Munich. Contact
  with Dietrich von Hildrebrand other
  phenomenologists.

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LIFE

• 1908 meeting with Maerit Furtwangler
• 1910 scandal-trial in Munich and suspension of
  license to teach. Starts private lectures with
  in Gottingen, with help of von Hildebrand.
• 1912 divorce from Amelie. Marriage to Maerit
  Furtwangler .

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Life

• 1914 start of world war, volunteers but
  rejected, writes on behalf of Germany. Deepening
  of religious life.
• 1916 Maerit becomes a Catholic, retreat in
  Benedictine Abbey, returns to Church.
• 1918 end of war. Appointment at U. of Cologne.

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LIFE

• 1919 meeting with Maria Scheu.
• 1923 Maerit leaves Cologne. Divorce.
• 1924 civil marriage with Maria Scheu.
• 1928 appointment at U. of Frankfurt. Sudden
  death of heart attack on May 19.

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THREE PERIODS

• 1. Idealist period under R. Eucken corresponding
  to affair with Amelie.
• 2. Phenomenological Circle, corresponding to
  marriage with Maerit.
• 3. Sociology of Knowledge, coinciding with
  marriage to Maria.

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SCHELERS PERSONALITY

• Schelers weakness erotism. Whenever he had to
  choose between a higher value and the sexual
  attraction of a woman, with pangs of conscience
  but unable to do underwise, he chose lower value.
• Yet his life is a negative example of what he
  taught values are objective, and when a person
  fails to respond to call of value, it is not the
  value that is destroyed but the person.

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PHENOMENOLOGY

• Phenomenologys aim to get to things themselves,
  to arrive immediately at the self-giventhat
  which is given immediately without interference
  of symbols of whatever kind.
• Scheler calls this the a priori or what is
  already there.

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PHENOMENOLOGY

• First step in method is Epoche.
• Epoche is suspending natural attitude,
  preconceptions, prejudices.
• For Scheler, not only an intellectual exercise
  but also bracketing of the heart. (Chuang Tzes
  Fasting of the Heart)

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PHENOMENOLOGY

• Next comes reductions.
• Schelers forte is the eidetic reduction.
• Eidetic reduction is reducing the experience to
  its eidos, its essence, by varying conditions of
  the object until an invariant is reached.
• Eidos is the a priori, unchangeable essence,
  independent of sensory functions, symbols,
  contingent factors of experience.

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PHENOMENOLOGY

• Four kinds of fact or truth
• 1. Common-sense
• 2. Scientific
• 3. Phenomenological differs from 1 2 in that
  they are a priori, no intermediary.
• A priori for Scheler not limited to the
  intellect. Ordre du coeur, logique du coeur.
• 4. Metaphysical knowledge for the sake of
  salvation.

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PHILOSOPHICAL ANTHROPOLOGY

• A philosophy of moral value must find its
  foundation on a philosophy of the human person,
  because the moral act is the personal act of the
  whole person.
• Scheler avoids 2 extremes the human being as
  simply the highest form of animal, and the human
  being as totally different from other forms of
  life.

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PHILOSOPHICAL ANTHROPOLOGY

• The human being has both psyche, whose seat is
  ego, and spirit, whose seat is person.
• As ego, human being has
• 1. Emotional impulses of plants
• 2. Instinctive behavior of lower animals
• 3. Associative conditioned reflexes of higher
  animals
• 4. Practical intelligence of higher animals.

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PHILOSOPHICAL ANTHROPOLOGY

• The human being is primarily spirit.
• As spirit, humans can stand against drive of
  evolution he is self-thinking freedom, free to
  determine himself.
• Person is the center of activity correlated with
  spirit .

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PHILOSOPHICAL ANTHROPOLOGY

• Three features of human being as person
• 1. Self-consciousness which gives rise to world
  (vs. environment)
• 2. Ability to distinguish thusness from
  thisness of things, to objectify.
• Ens amans, ability to love.

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PHILOSOPHICAL ANTHROPOLOGY

• Love is the fundamental spiritual act.
• Love and hatred are primarily movements,
  movements of the heart towards values.
• Love is the movement from lower to higher values
  enhances values. Hatred moves to lower values, a
  disorder of the heart for our heart is primarily
  ordered to love.
• As movements, love and hatred different from like
  and dislike.

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PHENOMENOLOGY OF FEELINGS

• Epoche bracket prejudice against feelings as
  chaotic, fleeting, unrealiable.
• Emotional aspects of consciousness, like feeling,
  preferring, loving and hating, are a priori,
  immediate relations among objects called values.
• Feelings cannot be controlled or managed
  arbitrarily they can be controlled or managed
  only indirectly, by controlling their causes and
  effects (expression, action).

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PHENOMENOLOGY OF FEELINGS

• Order and stratification of emotional life
• 1. Sensible feelings or feelings of sensation
• 2. Feelings of the lived body or feeling states,
  and feelings of life as functions.
• 3. Psychic feelings
• 4. Spiritual feelings (feelings of the
  personality)

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PHENOMENOLOGY OF FEELINGS

• Only spiritual feelings are in essence
  intentional, meaning directed to an object, a
  value.
• Psychic feelings, feeling-states and sensible
  feelings may or may not be directed to a value.

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PHENOMENOLOGY OF FEELINGS

• In any striving or willing, the following
  components are to be found
• 1. Feeling directed towards a value
• 2. Feeling state from which striving and willing
  issue forth
• 3. Feeling which accompanies execution of
  willing and striving.

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PHILOSOPHY OF VALUE

• Values are a particular class of ideal objects
• Objects of our feelings. Mind is blind to values
  just as eyes are blind to sounds and ears deaf to
  colors.
• Qualities, different from goods or carriers of
  value.
• In essence, objective, eternal and immutable.

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PHILOSOPHY OF VALUE

• Independent of subject, though related to it, and
  of social, historical, contingent factors of
  situation. These can be carriers of values.
• Independent of subjective emotional states.
• Independent of our striving, though they form the
  basis of our ends or striving.

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PHILOSOPHY OF VALUE

• Values are given to us immediately in acts of
  preferring, the most fundamental of which is love
  and hatred.
• Preferring, not the same as choosing. Object of
  choosing is a good, already implying a value
  comprehension.
• Love is an immediate attitude towards objects of
  value which encompasses always a whole complex
  grades of value.
• Love not a state of feeling.

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HIERACHY OF VALUES

• Hierarchy of values invariable, a priori,
  although rules for preferring one value to
  another varies throughout history.
• Rank of values not mediated by intellect but
  known intuitively by logique du coeur.
• Two groups positive and negative. Existence of
  positive value is positive value. Non-existence
  of positive value is negative value. Existence of
  negative value is negative value, Non-existence
  of negative value is positive value.

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HIERARCHY OF VALUES

• 
  holy/unholy
• Spiritual I
• I
• Vital I
• I
• Sensory I
  
• 
  

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HIEARCHY OF VALUES

• 1. Sensory Values the pleasant and its negative,
  the unpleasant.
• Objects of sensory feelings, and corresponding
  subjective states are delight and pain.
• We always prefer the pleasant, although carriers
  vary
• Also technical values, values of civilization and
  luxury values.

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HIEARCHY OF VALUES

• 2. Vital Values the noble and the vulgar.
• Values connected with general well-being.
• Corresponding feeling-states are health,
  sickness, aging, exhaustion, vitality, etc.
• Feeling-toned responses being pleased, anger,
  courage, anxiety, etc.

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HIERARCHY OF VALUES

• 3. Spiritual Values justice/injustice truth, of
  which scientific and culture values are
  derivative aesthetic values of beautiful and
  ugly.
• Feeling-states joy, sorrow
• Feeling responses delight, dislike, approval,
  disapproval, reverence, contempt, retaliation,
  sympathy.

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HIEARCHY OF VALUES

• 4. Values of the Holy and Unholy.
• Appear on objects given as absolute objects.
• Derivative values sacraments, forms of worship.
• Feeling-states of bliss, despair
• Feeling-responses belief, unbelief, awe,
  worship, etc.

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HIEARCHY OF VALUES

• Characteristics of higher values
• 1. Ability to endure
• 2. Indivisibility
• 3. Generates other values
• 4. Gives deeper satisfaction
• 5. Independence of experiencing organism.

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MORAL VALUES

• Positive Good. Negative Evil.
• Good and evil ride on the back of the deed
• Not in front, which can be the end or the result.
  Not in the end for this would bring us in
  circles. Not in the result for we would have to
  wait for the result to happen before a deed can
  be good or evil.

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MORAL VALUES

• Good is the realization of a higher value in
  place of a lower value or of a positive value in
  place of a negative value.
• Evil is the realization of a lower value in place
  of a higher value or of a negative value in place
  of a positive value.

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MORAL VALUES

• Moral values of good and evil are personal not
  only in the superficial sense of coming from the
  person who acts but in deeper sense of
  contributing to formation of our person.
• Since higher values of holy and spiritual pertain
  to person, and lower values of vital and sensory
  pertain to ego, moral values of good and evil
  form our personhood.
• Doing good makes us more of a person while doing
  evil makes us less of a person.

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CRITIQUE

• Nicolai Hartmann Values must also be considered
  in their weight, not only in height. The lower
  values are heavier because they are more basic.
• Necessary to realize first lower values before
  higher ones.
• Similar to Abraham Maslows hierarchy of needs.

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CRITIQUE

• But values are different from needs.
• Needs grounded on values.
• Heavy weight of lower values only points to
  gravity of transgression against them (social
  injustice).
• Moral life demands we respond to call of higher
  values. When we fail to respond, not the value
  that is destroyed but ourselves.

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CRITIQUE

• Hans Reiner adds 9 principles in preferring
  values
• 1. Temporal need
• 2. Greater number of values to be realized.
• 3. Greater chance of success.
• 4. Greater or more urgent need.

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• 5. Negative demand that an existing but
  endangered value will remain instead of answering
  a new value.
• 6. Lack of persons to realize a value.
• 7. Special talent, skill, possessions to realize
  a value.
• 8. More capable of realizing a value than another
• 9. Principle of daimonion.

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The End