On the Eternal in Man(VonEwigen des

Menschens, 1921)

ByMax Scheler

Outline:

• His Life• Concept of Man• Religious Experience (Revelation)• Conclusion

Abbreviations:

• MP- Man’s Place (Philosophical Anthropology)• GW- GesammelteWerke(collections of the

manuscripts/works of Scheler)

-”On the Eternal in Man,1921”

Max Scheler

• Max Ferdinand Scheler (August 22, 1874 – May 19, 1928) was a German philosopher known for his work in phenomenology, ethics and philosophical anthropology.

• Max Scheler was born in Munich, Germany on August 22, 1874, to a Lutheran father and an Orthodox Jewish mother.

• As an adolescent, he turned to Catholicism, likely because of its conception of love, although he became

increasingly non-committal around 1921.

• After 1921 he disassociated himself in public from Catholicism and the Judeo-Christian God committing himself with philosophical anthropology.

• Scheler studied medicine in Munich and Berlin, both philosophy and sociology under Wilhelm Dilthey and Georg Simmel in 1895. He received his doctorate in 1897 and his associate professorship (habilitation thesis) in 1899 at the University of Jena, where his advisor was Rudolf Eucken, and where he became Privatdozent in 1901.

• Scheler has exercised a notable influence on Catholic circles to this day, including his student Stein and Pope John Paul II who wrote his Habilitation and many articles on Scheler's philosophy.

• Along with other Munich phenomenologists such as Reinach, Pfänder and Geiger, he co-founded in 1912 the famous Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenologische Forschung, with Husserl as main editor.

• Scheler also advocated an international university to be set up in Switzerland and was at that time supportive of programs such as 'continuing education' and of what he seems to have been the first to call a 'United States of Europe'.

• He deplored the gap existing in Germany between power and mind, a gap which he regarded as the very source of an impending dictatorship and the greatest obstacle to the establishment of German democracy.

• Five years after his death, the Nazi dictatorship (1933–1945) suppressed Scheler's work.

The Concept of Man

“If we ask an educated person in the western

world what he means by the word ‘man’?...” (MP, 5)

• His philosophical anthropology can be found in his work; Man’s Place ().

• It is an attempt to answer the question “What is man?” but he never finish it because of his sudden death in .

• He argued that man is distinct from all other creatures yet considered the essences of plants and animals (vitalness of it).

• Furthermore, Scheler defines man as a unique fusion of vital and spiritual being, both part of and yet distinct from mammal and vertebrates.

The Structure of man compared to animals and plants

Plants and animals

Man

Vital being

Vital Being

Spiritual Being

Vital Being

• It is the source of all energy.• It is a mere orientation or a striving

toward something or away from it.• It is present in all living organisms.

Spiritual Being

• Scheler argued that Spirit “is a genuinely new phenomena which cannot be derived from the natural evolution of life” (MP,36).

• It transcends psychophysical life (vital being).

• Scheler argued that spirit “is genuinely new phenomena which cannot be derived from the natural evolution of life” (MP, 36).

• Spirit transcends psychophysical life (vital being).

Four Essential Characteristics of the Spirit:

1. It opens to the world- can detached himself from his environment making it as the object of contemplation.

2. It is the door to self-consciousness.

3. It is a pure activity and not a substantial thing (concrete entity).

4. Through spirit and the repression of the vital drives, human being has access to the phenomenological intuition of essences.

More over…• Spirit is distinct and has its own nature to the

vital being of man.• The spirit of man is capable of objectifying his

drives and his environment but cannot objectify itself (spirit) because it is beyond spacio-temporal order yet the spirit of man is impotent and devoid of energy and depends on the vital being to acquire energy coined by Scheler as the process of sublimation- the energy of the lower sphere (vital) is made available to the higher sphere (spirit).

On Religious Experience

• For Scheler, the experience of the holy/divine is given through rational proof yet in distinct manner of revelation/experience (GW V, 150).

• All proofs assume the revelation and this come too late in the attempt to grasp how the holy/divine is experienced/revealed.

• A phenomenology of religious experience is a description of the essential characteristics and meaning of revelation.

What is revelation for Scheler?

• Scheler defines revelation as “the type of givenness wherein the divine/holy is given” (GW V, 249).

• Thus, givenness is a term used by Scheler and other phenomenologists to name that which is experience in a particular manner.

• To suggest that revelation is a peculiar mode of givenness means that the divine is given to the person in a unique manner wholly distinct from rational judgements.

Three Distinct Characteristics of the Religious Act (the act of revelation)

1. The intention of the religious act is ‘world transcending’.- it means that what is posited/suggested in act of revelation is always other than this world, a meaning transcending the finite.

2. Related to this intention is the object that fulfils it.- Only the divine/holy fulfils the intention of the religious act.

In addition, he is arguing that what is sought in religious experience is precisely that in principle could not be experience in this world:

Divine/Holy-initiates to be given and to be

experienced

In spite of man’s eagerness to experience the divine, he cannot because he is finite

yet he can transcend...

...because he is a spiritual being capable of transcending

ordinary experience to a religious experience.

Scheler argued further that we are seeking happiness that would never be possible on the earth and we are hoping in the religious act for that which is impossible and unimaginable (GW V,246)

3. The religious act is only fulfilled through a being taken in (aufnahme) by a being of a divine character that reveals itself and gives itself to the human being (GW V, 245)

• In addition, Scheler’s claim that for these to be a religious act, the divine must be given in experience.

• The givenness of the divine is the proof of the religious experience or revelation.

• For him, religious act is ultimately rooted in an investigation of the human being that is the fundamental and essential aspect of being human (GW V,226).

• Thus, human being executes the intention towards the absolute/divine and is always responding the givenness of it. Human being is a God-seeker (an intention of the absolute).

• Scheler claimed, “Every finite spirit believes in a God or in an idol (GW V,261) and an idol is a finite subject that is revered and as if it was a god (GW V, ibid.)

Conclusion:

As the student-researcher exposed the Philosophy of Religion and Man, the

researcher analyses the following base on his class lectures and research and try to find similarities and simple conclusions:

• Religious experience from the past lectures presents that it is found in being oriented toward the presence of the divine same for Scheler as he argued that man tends toward the absolute/divine as he is known to be a “God-seeker”.

• It(religious experience) does not represent within the broad human experience but in a specific mode of experience same with Scheler as he claimed that it is personal.

• Religious experience of man for both tends toward the divine as to be found exclusively in the rapport with the ‘transcendent’; e.i. with the beyond.

• The initiative of the divine is clearly seen and noticed. Thus it is first the initiative of the divine to reveal himself to us, human beings.

• Lastly, Man crosses from the finite world (transcending) of the superior power(divine).

Good Day!