On the Eternal in Man

Max Scheler

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351501842
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophie
• Subtopic: Histoire et théorie de la philosophie

Max Scheler (1874-1928) decisively influenced German philosophy in the period after the First World War, a time of upheaval and new beginnings. Without him, the problems of German philosophy today, and its attempts to solve them would be quite inconceivable. What was new in his philosophy was that he used phenomenology to investigate spiritual realities.

The subject of On the Eternal in Man is the divine and its reality, the originality and non-derivation of religious experience. Scheler shows the characteristic quality of that which is religious. It is a particular essence that cannot be reduced to anything else. It is a sphere that belongs essentially to humankind; without it we would not be human. If genuine fulfillment is denied it, substitutes come into being. This religious sphere is the most essential, decisive one. It determines man's basic attitude towards reality and in a sense the color, extent and position of all the other human domains in life. It forms the basis for various views about life and thought.

Scheler was emphatically an intuitive philosopher. In Scheler's work the break between being as the almighty but blind rage and value as the knowing but powerless spirit-has become complete, and makes of each human a split being. Personal experiences may be reflected here. The development of Scheler's work as a whole was highly dependent on his personal experiences. It is this that gives Scheler's work its liveliness and its validity.

The Reconstruction Of European Culture

1. The Political framework and Moral Conditions of Cultural Reconstruction in Europe¹

IN a recent work² I traced back to their various sources the waves of hatred by which the German people is besieged. At the conclusion of that work I described the moral attitude which it seemed fitting to adopt when faced by almost the entire world’s hatred. Moving on from those findings my present question is this: how can we build anew the moral and spiritual culture of Europe, which has been shaken in its deepest foundations and now—to change the image—flutters in the wind like a flag in tatters over fields of dead ? What spirit, what inner purpose must animate men to that end? What personal values, what incipient cultural trends are suited to that high purpose ; which are to be encouraged and which to be condemned and combated? What kind of education, instruction, formation must the rising generation receive to assist the possibility of such a renewal ? What substantially should be the content of our personal cultural ideal ; and, if we are to succeed in the seemingly hopeless, Herculean enterprise, what exemplars of human personality should we hope to see at the head—whether as statesmen, teachers, educationalists, officials, priests or citizens—of States, nations and all kinds of cultural institution ?

My theme is confined to the reconstruction of culture,¹ as distinct from political, judicial and economic forms.* But we may not forget that cultural reconstruction can only form a part of general reconstruction, nor that its scope will be determined by the provisions of political and even economic reorganization.

A truly objective mind, even if it owes allegiance to the outlawed Central Powers, cannot ignore that the parts of the world now hostile to us have been united in the three-year course of this war to an extent which a whole century of peace would scarcely have rendered possible, and this is true even in the cultural direction. Doubtless it is a terrible thought for us that the incentive to unification was in the first place a mere common hatred, a common struggling against the Germans, but there is no removing this great fact : this union, in any of its many forms, can and indeed will outlive its occasion, which is transitory though so bitter for us to contemplate. In that the quarters of the globe are not battling chaotically one against another but are united in directing their lances at our heart alone—at the heart of countries microscopic enough on earth—the problem of the evolving unity of world-culture, and in particular of the European mind, has been vastly simplified. Only one great step (the ‘only’ sets the scale of my observation) is necessary—the one great reconciliation with us Germans—and the world would be more united than it has ever been before. Whether this step is taken, and whether it succeeds, depends on our enemies as well as on ourselves. But for the present we can only take counsel of ourselves and urge courses on ourselves ; of ourselves therefore let us speak.

Those uniform manners and institutions, those spiritual currents which we call culture certainly do not follow unerringly the path of political forms and institutions. From these they frequently part company and go their separate way—often they take the opposite path, as happened when Rome, having conquered Greece politically, was Hellenized in the process. Be that as it may, in our present situation we are faced with the problem of the political framework, on which the cultural structure of Europe is also directly dependent. Though the bare framework in no way ensures any cultural rebirth, it is nevertheless a prerequisite and indispensable.

The political provisions of the peace-treaty which concludes this war will also decide the fate of Europe’s cultural reconstruction—decide, that is, whether Europe will henceforth be the geographical label for a lacerated body of jealous nationalities or a mighty spiritual unity which, having so long led the world, still has something important to give to it. As yet we can be sure of nothing with respect to the nature or content of the peace-settlement. Much is still shrouded in boundless fog. That we have made an armistice with Russia, that it is with her that we have first negotiated, wholly gratifies the wish and hope I expressed at the beginning of hostilities, and satisfies still more the group of requirements for cultural reconstruction which I mean to put before you today. First of all, however, I should like to express my feeling that the spirit of the Austrian Emperor’s note to the Pope, and of Count Czernin’s important expose in his Budapest speech, expresses with fair accuracy that basic attitude to political and constitutional problems which avoids precluding cultural unity and reconstruction from the outset but offers, given other favourable conditions, a framework in which they may be attempted. Allow me just a few more remarks in connection with this problem in the foreground of our inquiry ; in my opinion a certain form of political subdivision of Europe represents the minimum of requirements for cultural reconstruction.

I frankly confess that I am both more and less of a ‘pacifist’ than accords with the latest ‘official pacifism’ of the Central governments, even if you take into account the (quite rightly) very different shades of the word adopted in reference to Germany on the one hand or Austria on the other. I am less of one, because—even as a foreseeable historical goal— I think we hear too much of ‘world-disarmament’, and I think too many people are setting their hearts on it. I think it would be better to formulate our aims as ‘systematic bilateral disarmament within the spiritual zone of European civilization’—and disarmament of nations only in proportion to their proximity to that zone or their partaking of that spirit. I am, or believe myself to be, more of a ‘pacifist’ because I should like to see true pacifism, the only Christian variety, the pacifism of serious peaceful intent and conviction* still more sharply distinguished and set apart from the ad hoc pacifism of mere necessity, which combines with an understandable dread of intolerable costs for armaments after the War. That serious pacifism of peaceful intent is the only kind which I can regard as a contribution, within the scope of European life and spirit, to the atmosphere necessary for any cultural reconstruction. But let us abandon that slogan of Utopian pacifism, that this is a ‘war to end wars’, a phrase quite heedless of world-history and the range of its future possibilities. Do we know for certain what lies ahead in Japan’s expansionist drive against European cultural enclaves and the United States ? We do not. For Japan, among others, there does not exist that power-political impasse which Count Czernin has turned into a vivid plea for world-disarmament. Moreover, the internal stresses which form the unity of the European family of peoples and for that very reason demand here and now the true spirit of peaceful intent—forces within whose ambit alone any cultural collaboration may thrive—these do not exist for this east-Asiatic people so utterly unlike us in ethos, spirit, manners and customs.

But the more we practise discretion, refraining from talk of the ‘war to end wars’, the more boldly we should press within the European cultural zone for something quite different from a disarmament imposed by necessity, i.e. the positive Christian spirit of true and serious conciliation and the erection of legal structures in accordance with it. Never and nowhere do legal treaties establish a true community of their own accord ; at best they express it. If they are to be more than formulations rebus sic stantibus of reciprocal power-relationships, of economic advantages and disadvantages, treaties must be imbued with the warmth of peaceable spirit, good faith, understanding, the sense of justice and a feeling of spiritual kinship. And on yet a third point I should like to add a rider to Count Czernin’s speech. It is not enough to pose the demand for European disarmament in a hypothetic form, conditional on the changing war-situation; it must be presented in an absolute form. Already the war-situation has changed so completely with regard to Russia and Italy¹ that to suppose the Count’s sentiments valid only in the circumstances prevailing at the time of their utterance would be tantamount to destroying the very sense of his speech. The very sense of the plea for a truly lasting European peace-settlement—which I can claim to have seen from the beginning as the one thing which could make sense of the War²—will not tolerate dilution with hypotheses and reservations. I can call to mind no age in history which was more inclined to make an illusory virtue of necessity than these present war-years. Today there is for instance a pronounced socialism imposed on individuals and governments by necessity, and many are expecting it to work miracles when the War is over, expecting the emergence of a new era in mankind. The pacifism of necessity to which I have referred is a parallel phenomenon, and is no less distinct from the true spirit of peace than the socialism born of poverty or the socialism of equality by taxation is distinct from the true spirit of solidarity. Necessity can only occasion, it cannot create, though it may select ideas which are not only true for the moment but are also true and right in themselves. But here as always, in this question of disarmament, it is the spirit which forms the body and the legal organism. Just as a Galician Jew earning ten kronen a day may possess as strong a capitalist spirit as a Berlin banker in daily receipt of a thousand marks, so States with armies proportionally as small can be as unpacific as States with armies no matter how large, especially if all that limits the size of armies is the economic and financial restraint imposed by the necessity of the nation’s affairs. As I see it, there are three signs in reference to the peace-settlement whereby we may distinguish the European and Christian spirit of peace from the pacifism of necessity and expediency : 1. recognition that for every belligerent party the first peace-question is—or should be—the total re-ordering of Europe into a new political organism; recognition that the sectional political interests of the belligerents should only come under discussion once the framework of the new order has been decided and established; 2. abandonment of reliance on so-called ‘assurances’ and ‘solid guarantees’—a point on which unfortunately a gulf that cannot be concealed has opened between the Austrian and German governments—; 3. the belief that the new political order of European nations must itself be allowed to produce the positive peace, the character of the final settlement, i.e. the reverse of the notion that a new system of inter-European legal relations might proceed as afterthought and embellishment from a treaty concluded with an eye to redressing the so-called balance of power. Not international relations which legalize the upper hand of the sword, but only world-co-ordinations born of the strength and supremacy of the very ideas of law and justice hold out a promise of permanence—the stability alone conducive to that atmosphere in which a cultural reconstruction is possible.

If these basic principles were heeded and satisfied, there would be a further minimal condition for cultural reconstruction: the fulfilment of three requirements which I can here only indicate in brief. 1. The avoidance of a situation fomenting lasting passions of revenge in whole peoples (not merely in isolated interests within nations) ; this has particular reference to France and Russia, where we have the strongest temptations to make large-scale annexations. 2. Once for all we must reject a political method which of its nature was such that conflicts of interest in extra-European zones of colonization, selling-markets and colonial affairs not only exerted a back-pressure on internal European foreign policies and alliances (this can hardly be avoided) but even—quite probably— underlay and moulded them. Or, positively speaking, in extra-European affairs the States of Europe must learn to act in solidarity, i.e. in conformity with the principle of mutual responsibility and acting as one for the overriding common interest. So far as possible England should be a party to this—but at all events the continental States must join together in this way. 3. Finally there must follow—in general terms—a devolution of many tasks and responsibilities, which have hitherto fallen to the lot of the huge political power-giants confronting each other in this war, upon a multiplicity of bodies unattached to any State (some of them below the dignity of States, some above them in authority and others inter-State in function). At the same time there should take place everywhere a certain loosening of those abnormally centralized centres of power, culture and economic strength, a certain dismantling and decentralization in favour of their numerous subdivisions (nations, peoples, races, federated States, colonies), which must be such as to leave in essentials only technical or co-ordinative, hence innocuous, organizational tasks to the central authority. Thereby the power-romanticism of these centralisms would be dissipated and their claim to shape cultures permanently dismissed. What I have in mind may be summarized as the tendency to increasing federalism and the cultural self-government of each separate nationhood.

Unless these minimal requirements are satisfied I cannot seriously imagine any cultural reconstruction of Europe. In reference to the first condition the central question at present, the great, the decisive question, is that of Alsace-Lorraine; with it is linked the somewhat less urgent question of whether we should succumb to the temptation, fostered by English foreign policy, of making annexations in the East (thus mainly at Russia’s expense) as compensation for what we cannot obtain, or do not wish to seek, in the West. It is not my business, nor is it the right time, to make positive suggestions with regard to Alsace. I would only say one thing : in handling this problem all kinds of political mysticism must be avoided like the plague. By political mysticism I mean a conception which refuses to look at this corner of land (whether from the French or the German point of view) in the only permissible manner for the purpose of lasting peace. That is, firstly with an eye to the real values (economic, military, etc.), bestowed by its possession and secondly as a component in the complex of all questions of a territorial or ‘sphere of interest’ nature. Political mysticism prefers to cast a veil of mystery over this plot of land, to make it a fetish, an object of infatuation, a kind of banner for whose possession one must fight to the last breath of the last European—not for its real value as a piece of cloth but regarding it as a ‘symbol and escutcheon’ (to borrow Herr von Kühlmann’s picturesque expression), or as something torn from the context of all other possible objects of negotiation and isolated as if it were an absolute and no merely relative thing. Even before the War the whole of Europe was suffering from this political mysticism with reference to Alsace, and it is time it were banned as a method of approach. However little we may seriously entertain the total or even partial reversion of Alsace-Lorraine to France, this whole question is one which must form the object of negotiation—direct negotiation with France, not in the first place with England ; this for the simple reason that any negotiation with England would, just as England wishes, bind France more closely and irrevocably to her than is already the case. Negotiation and eventual agreement neither presuppose any cession of territory, nor do they imply in any way that our German sense of having won back Alsace-Lorraine legitimately in 1870 has weakened or faded. Negotiation could also lead to some kind of quid pro quo and other forms of settlement. If a nation noted for its morbid ambition has for forty years been obsessed with a plot of land it feels to have been snatched from it, it is difficult to imagine a psychological situation more favourable for the opposite party to strike a particularly good bargain, one wherein the wounded honour of one side is healed while the other side gains a very real improvement.

Both this dangerous mysticism over Alsace and the thirst for eastward annexations with which it is often associated form part of a policy, it seems to me, which fails to grasp that England—not from ill will but by virtue of its total historico-geographical position—must be the enemy of all continental solidarity in cultural and political fields—and will remain its enemy so long as some external force of circumstances does not compel her to conduct herself as a member, not (as heretofore) the master and judge, of Europe. The only kind of settlement which anyone may contemplate who does not want the perpetual starvation-peace of rearmament and the permanent exclusion of the Central Powers from sources of raw material— is a negotiated peace. If this is to come about we must reach some understanding with France even over Alsace, however difficult this may still appear. For the sake of the second requirement, that of European solidarity in extra-European affairs, this understanding must first be reached among the continental nations, bringing England into agreements only at a second stage and wherever possible. Again, to make forcible annexations in the East would foment a thirst for revenge which would nullify attempts at cultural reconstruction and bind Russia permanently to England.

Finally the third precondition of cultural reconstruction, the decentralization of the political power-giants, has now for the most part been satisfied in Russia, and is pressing to be satisfied with more and more success in the reborn Austria. It is also most likely that a similar devolution will ensue in the British Empire when the War is over—in the sense of an increase in self-government for Ireland and the colonies. If the result of this should be a slackening of the pressure from without upon Central Europe, in particular the German Reich, then it would be possible and desirable for the counterpressure to ease—that fearful (but hitherto necessary) reaction against encirclement which has produced the politico-military over-centralization of the German Empire under the hegemony of Prussia. Of course, given its overall economic and financial preponderance in Germany, Prussia can never become a simple member of the Reich while that Reich is thought, in the time-honoured way, to stand in the same relationship to a centralistic Austria as existed before the War. Prussia, however, could well become a genuine member of a Central-European whole which, as a whole, would be more united than before but which had decentralized its constitution in culture and internal politics. It could take its place therein without relinquishing its specific, valuable Prussian spirit to the extent that would be unquestionably necessary if it wished to remain the mere master of Germany. For in such a case it would have to become, inspirit and institutions, a pocket-edition of the Reich—the reverse, that is, of what Treitschke meant and advocated when he called the Reich an extended Prussia. But both are equally bad. A so-called ‘democratization’ of Prussia which mimicked the general conditions prevailing over the Reich would be no less deplorable than the generalization of Prussianism in accordance with Treitschke’s formula.

Today¹ we have yet another factor come to justify the idea of an at least continental solidarity of Europe as a fundamental article of policy for every European State, with the decisive rejection of the formula hitherto guiding all internal European politics : salus publica suprema lex. This factor is the radical shift in America’s position within the Entente since the onset of the German offensive in July 1918. We may express this change in the simplest way by saying that everywhere, obviously or dis-cernibly, the chief seat of the united will to wage war against the Central Powers, the principal source of belligerent energy, has passed from France, and even from England, to the United States. This has happened so markedly and with such rapidity that even England, let alone France, is reported to feel compelled by the American war-drive to carry on the conflict when special interests bid her end it and pave the way to peace-negotiations. The sense of this pressure is already very lively in France and England, and the latter’s fear of falling into a lasting dependence on the U.S.A. in the event of being ‘rescued’ by Americans is already strongly conflicting with the hope of seeing the Central Powers vanquished by impact of huge forces which are fresh and unused.

Until very recently the importance of American intervention in the quarrels of Europe was underrated in a manner one might almost term scandalous—by the leaders of the Entente as much as by those of the Central Powers. Within the German alliance American psychology continued to be profoundly misread—even after abandonment of the childish argument that America’s military preparations were principally aimed at Japan. The vested interests of American big business were still thought to motivate American war-spirit when it had long been known that the American masses were gripped with an ideological, political fervour that made it almost the badge of every upstanding citizen to further the ‘crusade’ against the German ‘enemy of mankind’. Beliefs and expectations, which the facts did not warrant, such as that America could not seriously mean to deploy its full power in the War, that submarine warfare would sink all or most of her expeditionary forces, that American armies in Europe could never be adequately victualled—not to mention such irresponsible talk as that the American declaration of war was ‘advantageous’ to us, since it absolved us in the peace-treaty from respecting America and implementing Wilson’s proposals for a league of nations—all these follies belittled the American danger in a manner which borders on wilful self-delusion. To put it no worse, there was mishandling, from the beginning of their arms-deliveries, of the moral offensive aimed at the psychology of Americans ; it might have proved very effective. For it was not in those deliveries as such that the immorality of the American action lay—to them they had a right in international law —but in the fact that large areas of American industry had been turned over to the production of munitions to an extent far beyond the principles of rational economy and the greatest profit—conduct which even within the United States themselves had been bitterly stigmatized as an infringement of neutrality and ‘immoral’.

But the Anglo-French Entente has been as incapable as the Central Powers of appraising the historical novelty of American armies appearing on European soil for the resolution of internal European conflicts ; they have been equally slow to grasp the consequences of this epoch-making phenomenon as an example and precedent. They failed to see that the principle of ‘America for the Americans’, which seeks to restrict European participation in the affairs of the American continent and used to reflect America’s basically defensive attitude to the dominance of Europe, now cries out to be answered by a much more firmly based slogan, one founded in the course of all history—that of ‘Europe for the Europeans’. They failed to foresee the degree of dependence on America which they would incur in all directions if it were really the United States which decided the outcome of this war—and could then with good reason claim the right of supreme arbiter in European affairs, not only in drafting the peace-treaty bu...