{"id":560,"date":"2014-06-12T11:38:54","date_gmt":"2014-06-12T15:38:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/impact\/?page_id=560"},"modified":"2019-03-07T13:55:22","modified_gmt":"2019-03-07T18:55:22","slug":"participation-and-co-performance-two-senses-in-the-works-of-max-scheler-1874-1928","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/impact\/previous-issues\/impact-vol-3-no-2-summer-2014\/participation-and-co-performance-two-senses-in-the-works-of-max-scheler-1874-1928\/","title":{"rendered":"Participation and Co-Performance, Two Senses in the Works of Max Scheler (1874-1928)"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

LAURENCE E. WINTERS, Ph.D.<\/b><\/h2>\n

Petrocelli College<\/p>\n

Fairleigh Dickinson University<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Max Scheler is one of a group of European philosophers and social theorists whose work directly or indirectly was lost to the English speaking world due to Nazi and Stalinist repression. Fortunately, in the case of Scheler, the German \u00e9migr\u00e9 intellectual and social philosopher who taught at The New School for Social Research, Alfred Schutz (1899-1959), brought his somewhat selective understanding of Scheler\u2019s work to the attention of a younger generation of sociologists and anthropologists. Schutz was able to see within Scheler\u2019s phenomenology of spiritual experience ideas that would be useful in his work in phenomenological social theory. In particular, the reflections on the roles of participation and consequent co-performance in social experience attracted Schutz\u2019s attention. Scheler\u2019s reflections on human sociability have, through Schutz\u2019s work, influenced generations of such diverse writers as David Graeber, Peter Berger, Henry Giroux, and Pierre Bourdieu. Micro-sociology and participant observation, as well as much qualitative social research, relies on categories operative in Scheler\u2019s writings. To cite just one example from many possible, David Graeber, in his Direct Action: An<\/b> Ethnography <\/b>(2009) relies heavily on Scheler\u2019s notions of participation and performance. In contrast to such writers as Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961), who situated the primary and immediate experiences of others in bodily presence, facial expression and gesture, Scheler found layers or orders of direct experience of the other. Ranking these \u2018layers\u2019 as ranging from the \u2018spiritual\u2019 or \u2018higher\u2019 intentional acts to the mundane acts of street level interaction, Scheler followed the classical tradition in a way that we will discuss below. Few if any contemporary social scientists would follow Scheler here. I will try to show how the notions of participation and co-performance are separable from Scheler\u2019s hierarchy, and how they have, in fact, been separated by those who have borrowed from him.<\/p>\n

As the Interdisciplinary Studies community works towards the articulation of a methodology, operative concepts, and rigorous theoretical foundations, I believe that it will be useful to explore the roots of the interdisciplinary approach in various 20th<\/sup> century Continental theoreticians such as Scheler, Bachelard, or T\u00f6nnes. In this essay, I will try to isolate what there is in Scheler\u2019s reflections on participation and co-performance that have proved fertile for social theory and research since the Second World War, from the metaphysical encumbrances that are perhaps best left to Scheler scholars. Phenomenological philosophers have turned away from the language of \u201cessential intuition of essences\u201d as a source of knowledge, but not from the idea of a \u201cdisinterested knowing\u201d as a way to access a pre-theoretical level of human experience.<\/p>\n

In the course of this essay these ideas will be further developed as we articulate the notions of participation and co-performance. We will also raise the idea of a non-quantifiable and, more importantly, a non-methodological means of knowledge of others in and through participation and co-performance. The question of whether or not this form of knowing, or if any intuitive and direct access to the thoughts and experiences of others can be legitimately part of social science, will not be addressed in what follows. All I can suggest here is that current research in neurophysiology, especially into the mirror neurons and their role in human empathetic connections, could well provide a verifiable foundation for the phenomenologists\u2019 reflections on the immediate experiences of intersubjectivity. For example, consult Michael Tomasllo Why We Cooperate<\/b> (2011). However, developing this idea here would take us way beyond the scope of this essay.<\/p>\n

At the core of Scheler\u2019s epistemology and his theory of intersubjectivity is the notion of participation. <\/i>It is understood as a spiritual\u2014read intentional\u2014act of a Person.<\/i><\/p>\n

It is used by Scheler in the characterization of the essential intuition of being<\/i>, and of the higher acts<\/i> of affect<\/i> and value<\/i> which are engaged in a unique manner in the non-objectifiable<\/i> being of persons and acts.<\/p>\n

In its metaphysical<\/i> aspect, the notion seems to be grounded in the classical tradition; it is, however, more directly derived from the concept of understanding found in the culture sciences (geisteswissenschaften) and especially in the work of Dilthey and Richert. I hope to explore these connections in a future article.<\/p>\n

While we could offer a full treatment of the concept of participation\u2019s genesis in the classical and neo-Thomist tradition, the work of the hermeneutic philosophers, or even in his contemporaries such as Martin Buber, we will focus instead on the duality at the heart of Scheler\u2019s work. Given these limits, I will trace the role that Scheler assigns to participation<\/i> in essential intuition<\/i> and in interpersonal knowledge. I will suggest that there are apparent inconsistencies between those two uses of the notion. At the very least, Scheler was using the important notion in two ways that differ significantly. It will be my contention that participation<\/i> is essentially linked to the socio-cultural object realm (Seinspharen), and that as such, the extension of the notion to other realms is misleading, obscuring the importance of the idea for later social theory.<\/p>\n

A more complete critique of Scheler along the lines followed in this essay is possible but beyond the scope of this project. Stegmuller, in his seminal Main Currents in<\/b> Contemporary German, British, and American Philosophy<\/b> (1970), cites Scheler\u2019s understanding of his project:<\/p>\n

The true process of philosophical knowledge is not carried out through conscious intellectual operations; rather the philosophical approach that obtains primal knowledge is the loving participation of a person\u2019s innermost core in the essential reality of things.1<\/sup><\/p>\n

In the most general and inclusive sense, Scheler understands participation<\/i> as a spiritual<\/i> (intentional) act of the intuition of an essence (Sosein) of a being. This act is an entering into an ontological relationship between two beings. All beings are held to have both a moment of existence or that-ness<\/i> (dasein), and a moment of essence of what-ness<\/i> (sosein). Participation<\/i> is, then, the act whereby the knower or, more properly, the spiritual essence<\/i> of the knower and the essence of the known, come to be co-ordinated (mimesis<\/i>). This characterization presupposes Scheler\u2019s belief, as presented in the essay Idealism and Realism<\/b>, that the essence of a being can be separated from its existence and become immanent to knowledge. <\/i>Scheler says:<\/p>\n

I mean by this that any being A knows a being B whenever A participates in the essence or nature of B, without B\u2019s suffering alteration in its nature or essence because of A\u2019s participation in it. We say further of B that when A participates in B and B belongs to the order of objectifiable being, B becomes an objective being.2<\/sup><\/p>\n

The relation itself is active, a becoming or movement, understood by Scheler as loving<\/i>, of the knower toward the known. Schultz:<\/p>\n

This relationship of being is neither spatial nor temporal nor yet causal. It is rather a relation between the whole and the part. The known becomes a part of the knower without being changed\u2026it is that by which the thusness (sosein<\/i>) of a being becomes an ens intentionale<\/i> in contradistinction to its mere thatness (dasein, ens reale<\/i>) which remains always outside of and beyond the essential relationship.3<\/sup><\/p>\n

This mode of knowledge is sharply distinguished, following Scheler\u2019s dualism of psyche\u2014spirit, from practical, life-relative or interested<\/i> knowing. The latter mode of interested knowing yields empirical knowledge of existents<\/i> and relations oriented toward the ends of adaptation, manipulation and control. This mode\u2014interested knowing\u2014in Scheler\u2019s theory places most of what we would commonly call knowledge in the natural standpoint into a class characterized in a way similar to the pragmatist theory of science and cognition.<\/p>\n

Facts, known through sensation and action, through the application of methodologies<\/i>, are contrasted with the knowledge of essences which is not dependent on induction or on goal-directed activity. This contrast will lead us to our goal of isolating the ideas of participation and co-performance. It is also here that we can see a hint of his dependence on the classical tradition or even a nod to the dualism of Martin Buber\u2019s I and Thou<\/b> (1923).<\/p>\n

For Scheler it is only our acts (intentional) that can be free\u2014that is ideally independent of their material and vital bases. Vital and mental (psychic, in the Aristotelian sense<\/i>) knowledge is knowledge of the environment and of the necessities of survival. This category of knowledge is further distinguished by Scheler through his characterization of psychic <\/b>actions and abilities as functions<\/i>. The sense of this is that the functions\u2014of seeing, say, or motility\u2014are conditioned directly to a greater or lesser degree by material and vital necessity (causal relations, organic imperatives). These relations and imperatives are the real correlates of this sort of knowing act.4<\/sup> For this reason the intentionality of interested knowing is limited, or unfree<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Free Acts<\/i> and their correlates, essences, although really<\/i> dependent on their bases for energy<\/i> and support<\/i>, are ideally<\/i> independent in the sense that they can direct the functions (through selection), deny them or transcend<\/i> them completely. It is interesting to note here that contemporary neuro-physiological research seems to confirm this directing or denial function.5<\/sup><\/p>\n

In Scheler\u2019s theory, acts come to their ideal independence through a denial or turning away from the functional unity of the subject and object on the vital and psychic levels. The needs of the organism, its immediate interests and engaged volitions, must be set aside (or must experience frustration) for the spiritual acts to become distinct, and for the possibility of the higher order union of essential intuition, or of participation<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Neither introjective nor projective, this disinterested stance (releasement) is similar to the standpoint of contemplative knowing of the classical tradition. Scheler grounds this idea of a disinterested stance in certain common intentional experiences. In sympathy, love, acts of value preference and essential intuition, Scheler discerns a mode of knowing that lets the known (object) and the knowing subject be<\/i>. In these experiences there is a movement toward a coordination in co-presence<\/i>. Scheler:<\/p>\n

In our account, love is always thus the primal act by which a being, without ceasing to be this one delimited being, abandons itself in order to share and participate in another being as an ens intentionale<\/i>. This participation is such that the two in no way become real parts of one another. What we call knowing, which is an ontological relation, always presupposes this primal act of abandoning the self and its conditions, its own contents of consciousness, of transcending them, in order to come to experiential contact with the world as far as possible. And what we call real<\/i> or actual presupposes that some subject wills the realization of something, while this act of willing presupposes an anticipatory loving that gives it direction and content. Thus love is always what awakens both knowledge and valuation.6<\/sup><\/p>\n

…a love\u2014determines movement of inmost personal self of a finite personal being toward participation . . . .7<\/sup><\/p>\n

For Scheler this special view point or gaze<\/i> of disinterested love is the primal source of phenomenological knowledge of essences, conceived of as independent of the knower and as possessing their own mode of being. These essences may be real or ideal. Knowledge of their ontological status, but not of their essential content, is the theme of metaphysics. This knowledge of essences is the object of Scheler\u2019s special brand of phenomenology. This content may be brought into participation with the person through their loving acts and thus known for what it necessarily<\/i> is.<\/p>\n

Scheler asserts that all classes of intentional acts have essential correlates, and that all essences correspond to possible intentional (spiritual) acts. Of course, this is the ideal situation and not necessarily experienced by any one individual. It does, however, serve to generate descriptions of layered<\/i> hierarchical structures of essential being which I mentioned above. However, even the use of \u2018spiritual\u2019 rather than \u2018intentional\u2019 sets his work apart from his contemporaries such as Edmund Husserl (1859-1938). If this is understood in the light of Scheler\u2019s psyche\u2014spirit dualism<\/i> in which spirit<\/i> exercises a selective and orienting control over the lower orders of intentional acts, then the extent of the concept of intuitive participation becomes clear. This is the key point I am trying to make in this essay.<\/p>\n

Without the theory of higher and lower classes of intentional acts mentioned above, Scheler\u2019s notion is quite similar to Husserl\u2019s understanding of the transcendental reduction which brings to givenness<\/i> the noemat<\/i>a (meaning structures) of the various intentional act\/objects of consciousness.<\/p>\n

Noemata, although different for differing acts and referents, have a single descriptive unity as intentionally constituted meanings<\/i> or significations for<\/i> the subject. For Scheler, essential intuition understood as participation in essences is a prior category to other forms of intuition. It is understood as in opposition to and not in coordination with lower<\/i> order<\/i> acts as it is in Husserlian phenomenology. As we have already seen, the lower order acts are mere functions<\/i>. Scheler\u2019s dualism of psyche\u2014spirit7 <\/sup>lends the essences a stronger sense of independence<\/i> and objectivity<\/i> than they have for Husserl, and tends to flatten the qualitative differences between the modes of intentionality and their objects.<\/i> Added to these strengthened notions of independence and objectivity, Scheler rejects the Husserlian doctrine of constitutionality. For these reasons, objects <\/i>in general carry a sense of being<\/i> that for Husserl is appropriate, if ever, to only certain object-fields.<\/i><\/p>\n

The extent to which the notion of essence as sosein<\/i> is similar to the notion of noematic structures in more traditional phenomenology cannot be adequately explored here; however, Scheler\u2019s movement of ontologizing<\/i> under the influence of the classical tradition could clearly become the focal point of an extended critique as I suggested above.<\/p>\n

Scheler distinguishes, in the context of spiritual acts<\/i> and their correlates, between being which is objectifiable<\/i> and being which is not. It is the essence of the being of the acts that they are\u2014they exist\u2014<\/i>only in their performance. Note this performative existence well. While other beings, as potential correlates of these acts at least subsist when not intended, acts cannot, as such, be made the objects of other acts. Scheler:<\/p>\n

Objectifiable being must be sharply distinguished from the non-objectifiable being of an act, that is from a kind of entity which possesses its mode of being only in performance, namely in the performance of the act. Being<\/i> in the widest sense of the word, belongs indeed to the being-of-the-act, to cogitare<\/i>, which in turn does not require another cogitare<\/i>.8<\/sup><\/p>\n

\u2026for its mode of being is only accessible by virtue of participation (or reproduction) in thought, volition or feeling, just as an act is . . . .9<\/sup><\/p>\n

And Alfred Schutz, who is responsible for first bringing Scheler to the English speaking world:<\/p>\n

\u2026an act can never be objectified. It is never given to our outer or inner experience and can only be experienced by performing it.10<\/sup><\/p>\n

Consistent with his fundamental dualism, Scheler distinguishes between Person<\/i> and ego-subject. The ego-subject is understood as the empirical and historical identity of the vital organism and its mental functions (Psyche). As it is conditioned and determined by its material base and its adaptive exigencies, the ego-subject is objectifiable and can be known essentially<\/i> in spiritual acts. In contrast, the person is an active-center<\/i> of the various spiritual acts, and it is no more than these acts and can be manifest and grasped only through them. As such, the person is, like its constitutive acts, non-objectifiable.<\/p>\n

Scheler:<\/p>\n

We can come to know them only by participating in, or by entering into their free acts, through a kind of understanding possible in an attitude of empathetic love, the very opposite of objectification\u2014in short, by identifying, as we say, with the will and the love of another person and thereby with himself.11<\/sup><\/p>\n

Schutz:<\/p>\n

Being merely the locus of acts the totality of which codetermines each single act, a person is accessible for another person by co-achieving these acts, by thinking with, by feeling with, willing with the other<\/i>.12<\/sup><\/p>\n

The person does not exist, except in the performance of its acts.13<\/sup><\/p>\n

Intuitive knowledge of persons and acts is, for Scheler, of a special kind. As it is impossible to objectify them by the application of any methodologies, the acts must be co-performed, pre-performed<\/i> or re-performed<\/i> to reach the quality of loving participation in the being of the other as person. This presents a unique problem for the contemporary social sciences since it directs us to a non-quantifiable form of knowledge which has been the subject of intense debates in the anthropological literature.<\/p>\n

Much of Scheler\u2019s The Nature of Sympathy (1970, originally in German, 1913)<\/b>, the most widely read of Scheler\u2019s works, is devoted to the clarification of the experiences of participation in which we know the other as person through his or her acts and our co-performance<\/i> of them.<\/p>\n

The body and the behavior of the other are, for the essentially social (other-directed) acts of love, sympathy and the like, expressive fields<\/i> for the manifestation of acts. Even artifacts and marks<\/i> serve for the intuitive (loving, sympathetic) glance as signifier for creative acts, and thus for other persons. In this way, a cultural product of an ancient or unfamiliar culture speaks to us still of the humanity of the individual who produced it, and of the culture within which it stood as meaningful. This direct perception of persons is not the analytic\u2014pragmatic\u2014sensation<\/i>, but a primary and holistic view of the spiritual person.14<\/sup><\/p>\n

Schutz:<\/p>\n

\u2026the inner perception of other people\u2019s experiences requires a certain set of conditions, among them that my own body undergoes certain influences emanating from the other\u2019s body.15<\/sup><\/p>\n

Scheler:<\/p>\n

The primary awareness, in ourselves, in animals and in primitives, invariably consists in patterns of wholeness. Sensory appearances are only given insofar as they function as the basis of these patterns, or can take on the further office of signifying or representing such wholes.16<\/sup><\/p>\n

Schutz:<\/p>\n

Insofar as man lives only in his bodily feelings, he does not find any approach to the life of the alter ego. Only if he elevates himself as a person above his pure vegetative life does he gain experience of the other. Other person\u2019s acts can therefore, be seized only by co-performing, pre-performing, or re-performing them.17<\/sup><\/p>\n

In his analysis of the acts that bring us knowledge of persons, Scheler suggests that they presuppose the otherness of the other. In these acts we do not project our needs and feelings onto the other, nor do we introject their\u2019s into ourselves. As well, we do not take the other as an object for control and manipulation.18<\/sup> To the contrary, these acts create a union in difference through co-performance<\/i> in affective and valuational modes. In short, the other is a primordially given in experience and not<\/b> an inference from other givens.<\/p>\n

This spiritual grasp of the other thus presupposes an individuation and emancipation from the vital lower levels<\/i> of felt unity<\/i>, here understood as a genetically prior state of indistinctness of act and content center (kern)\u2014a we<\/i> consciousness.<\/i><\/p>\n

Scheler:<\/p>\n

Inner perception first shows us only that aspect of experiences which corresponds to the traditional forms and modes of experiencing current in the family, in the people, and in the other forms of society of which we are members. Only an ongoing emancipation from the traditional forms of inner perception, from the historical system of categories within which inner perception takes place, enables us to grasp the psychic experiences of the individual.19<\/sup><\/p>\n

One\u2019s own experiences are at first completely veiled from inner perception by the alien experience which rest on shared action, vicarious sensation, and vicarious feeling, by experiences which are given to us, through an illusion, as our own<\/i>.20<\/sup><\/p>\n

This felt, vital unity is the natural state<\/i> of children and primitives (sic) according to Scheler. We return to it in experiences of passion in sexual love and in other moments of identification<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Ernst Ranly, whose book The Phenomenology of Community<\/b> (1966) so well conveys Scheler\u2019s significance for the social sciences, agrees with Scheler that:<\/p>\n

\u2026man is other oriented in his most original experiences, since man is social prior to being individual, the study of man necessarily and intrinsically includes the study of the social nature of man.21<\/sup><\/p>\n

Scheler distinguishes various levels of engagement with the other, each appropriate to the levels of being and value. On the level of body-sense<\/i>, Scheler denies the possibility of contact with the other. On the level of vital-feelings, the phenomenon of identification<\/i> is predominant. This is the source of group-consciousness<\/i> and is the means for the passage of tradition between generations. On the level of the practical<\/i>, the unity is inferential and institutional. The simple fact that my meaning can be followed by the reader here exemplifies this institutional unity.<\/p>\n

Each of these forms of sociability has its value and meaning; it is, however, essentially in the spiritual acts of love and sympathy that the value of the other as individual person is revealed. This is the consequence of the methodological inaccessibility of the essence of the person.22<\/sup> This inaccessibility also can present serious obstacles for the incorporation of Scheler\u2019s work into any possible social science<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Schultz:<\/p>\n

Only if he surmounts this and clears his mental life of sensory accompaniments does the mental life of the other become perceptible to him. And only then, by co-performing, pre-performing, or re-performing the other\u2019s act, does he participate as a person in the other person\u2019s spiritual life.23<\/sup><\/p>\n

In The Idols of Self-Knowledge<\/i>, Scheler argues that the original certainty of others derives from a prior, pre-reflective state of we-consciousness<\/i> that we all experience as children. Even in the most extreme case of isolation, where no other is ever directly experienced, the faculties of the person for sociability would be felt as significant in their unfulfillment, and this indicates to the individual his essentially social nature and at least the potential existence of others.24<\/sup><\/p>\n

Schultz:<\/p>\n

…it belongs essentially to the eidos <\/i>of a person to stand in community with other persons. The possible structural units of value and meaning of such a community are aprioristic, that is, independent of the empirical real connection which might prevail among particular persons and their contingent causes.25<\/sup><\/p>\n

It is not clear how the lack of ego distinction in infants concerning the origins of their feelings and thoughts, or the phenomenon of identification implies any sort of group<\/i> consciousness<\/i>, or an undifferentiated stream of experience<\/i>. It is equally difficult to grasp the fine distinctions which Scheler wishes to draw between the various levels of the given-ness of the other. Even if my experience has its origin in another consciousness, it is still felt as mine and not as someone else\u2019s nor as a directly lived we<\/i>. The subject-polarity of intentional experience clearly is grasped from a different level of reduction<\/i> than is the phenomenon of progressive, personal and socio-cultural individuation.26<\/sup><\/p>\n

Alfred Schutz, bracketing Scheler\u2019s dualism, suggests an alternative description for the apparently immediate experiences of the other, and for the priority of the experiences to the reflective awareness of self. In his view, the phenomenon is rooted in the temporally posterior nature of reflection. To reflectively focus on our present feelings and acts, Schutz argues, we must thematize them in second degree<\/i> acts. This implies that these feelings and acts are no longer in the living present<\/i>. With the other\u2019s acts, emotions and intentions, we may attend to them directly though acts of love, sympathy or attentive interest. In these acts we are able to experience them as given in the other\u2019s expressions and gestures immediately<\/i>. In Schutz\u2019s reformulation of Scheler\u2019s theory, the immediacy of the givenness of the other in the special acts gives rise to the sense of the experience of being at one with the other in co-performance. It is this quality of intersubjective experience that grounds the striking content of the experiences of sexual love, making music together, group dancing, playing sports, work toward a common goal, and other focal points of intersubjective reality. Barbara Ehrenreich explores such social experiences in Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy<\/b> (2007).<\/p>\n

Scheler further characterizes these experiences of the participation in the acts of the other person as dependent upon the engaged individual\u2019s self-revelation through their gestures and expressions, and upon the experiencing person maintaining a non-manipulative stance toward the other. Concealment and deception are always possible. In this feature, the essential knowledge of the other, its personhood and its acts are radically different than, though never fully separate from, knowledge of objectifiable being.<\/i><\/p>\n

The phenomenon of co-performance or participation is ubiquitous in culture. Ritual reenactments, group dancing and singing, and ceremonies are central to the cohesiveness of all cultures insofar as they hold mythic world-views.<\/p>\n

In one interpretation, the we<\/i> of Hegel\u2019s Phenomenology<\/b> carries this sense of participation and co-performance and for this reason is the principal focus of the identity thesis that grounds the notion of absolute knowledge<\/i>.27<\/sup><\/p>\n

Most recently the notion of participation has become central to the theories of ordinary language and to the communicative theory of society<\/i>.28<\/sup> Phenomenological Marxists have explored those realms of meaning where the sense of subjective constitution carries the further sense of intersubjective and progressive creation through historical labor and struggle.29<\/sup><\/p>\n

Briefly, such theories hold that the life-world and culture are constituted by and through dialogic, symbolic interaction in ordinary language. Persons are understood as potential participants<\/i> in the on-going maintenance and self-improvement of this world<\/i>.<\/p>\n

As the social world is expressively yet conventionally constituted through rules and norms, knowledge of it requires engagement in it\u2014participation in its essential structures of labor, life and language. The essential feature of a world so constituted is that it precludes understanding of its structures through simple observation, say from a hypothetical standpoint of divine positivism<\/i>. Rather, it requires both the linguistic competence<\/i> to engage in the constitutive language games, and a living presence in the on-going and progressive constitution.30<\/sup><\/p>\n

Expanded into a more adequate account, such an analysis would serve to clarify and situate Scheler\u2019s understanding of participation in intersubjective experience, but would not follow him in the extension of this notion of non-dialogic intentional realms of science and logic.<\/p>\n

Scheler:<\/p>\n

\u2026the natural world view is essentially the intuition of a human community<\/i> which we define as a group of men (sic) whose mutual understanding is built up independently of the observation of their physical bodies . . . .Instead, the natural world view is built up from the experience of the expressive unities in the manifestations of their lived bodies. This enables us to join in intending the state of affairs intended in these manifestations . . . .Any technical terminology and any conventional arrangement essentially presuppose this mutual understanding<\/i> and a communality of group existence in general. Natural language is the most important form of this natural expression and its words and syntax are the units in which the expression is articulated.31<\/sup><\/p>\n

Several problems remain outstanding. What is the sense of the notion of the non-objectifiability of acts and persons? If this is understood as indicating a radical separation in essential features between the socio-cultural life world (of dialogic constitution in history<\/i>), and the object realm of the strict sciences, then the theory seems to be at least consistent. However, if the notion is taken at face value, knowledge of, or reflection upon social meaning structures, including those of persons in intersubjective community, seem precluded.<\/p>\n

Our acquaintance with these essences is relegated to the affective and valuational modes of intuition. The status and even the very existence of phenomenology and any possible culture-science are therefore threatened by this notion since even reflective understanding seems to be precluded in the affective realm.32<\/sup><\/p>\n

Reflective thematizing and clarification of these realms of experience\u2014participation and co-performance as foundational of our fundamental cooperative intersubjectivity\u2014are among the most pressing issues in current research and, since Scheler wrote much on these issues, it is difficult to accept at face value his strong sense of the non-objectifiability claim.<\/p>\n

The problem seems to center on the claim of similarity between the various modes of essential insight. They are all understood as spiritual acts<\/i> and as having the realm of objective being of essences<\/i> as their correlates. They are, as well, distinguished from the more mundane mental functions as vital experiences.<\/p>\n

If we grant the notion of participation a role in the understanding of the socio-historical life world, of intersubjectivity and dialogically constituted meanings, is it necessary to extend the notion to the other non-dialogic<\/i> realms?<\/p>\n

Essential insight into logical objects for example, although they are ideally intersubjective, does not carry the sense of progressive constitution in history (consult the now famous Appendix, The Origin of Geometry<\/i><\/b>, to Husserl\u2019s The Crisis of European<\/b> Sciences<\/b>, 1936) as do such phenomena as national liberation from colonialist imperialism, the 99% demonstrations or the computer and communications revolutions of our time\u2014to choose extreme examples.<\/p>\n

Here I\u2019ve tried to argue that insights into value-essences or into perception would, as well, display such differences in both act-form and content. The attempt to characterize both as spiritual acts<\/i> or as loving participation in being<\/i> seems to be a pointless simplification.33<\/sup><\/p>\n

From this perspective, Scheler\u2019s position seems to adhere to an aspect of classical or even Scholastic ontology that does not seem justified in more than a few of the qualities of the differing realms of the given. I do believe, however, that we can return to Scheler\u2019s work for insight into the notion of performance that is so essential for contemporary social theory.34<\/sup> As well, I believe that the Interdisciplinary Studies community would find much of value in a reading of this fascinating theoretician.<\/p>\n

Bibliography<\/b><\/p>\n

Frings, Manfred. The Mind of Max Scheler<\/b>, Marquette Studies, 1997.<\/p>\n

Max Scheler<\/b>, A Concise Introduction to the World of a Great Thinker<\/b>, Marquette Studies, 1995.<\/p>\n

Ranly, Ernst W. Scheler\u2019s Phenomenology of Community<\/b>, Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague,\u00a01966.<\/p>\n

Scheler, Max. Selected Philosophical Essays<\/b>, Northwestern U. Press, Evanston, 1973.<\/p>\n

On the Eternal in Man<\/b>, Archon Books, Hamden, 1972.<\/p>\n

Man\u2019s Place in Nature<\/b>, Noonday Press, New York, 1962.<\/p>\n

The Nature of Sympathy<\/b>, Routledge, London, 1970.<\/p>\n

Towards a stratification of Emotional life<\/i> and An apriori hierarchy of value<\/i> \u2013modalities<\/i>, in Readings in Existential Phenomenology<\/b>, Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, 1967.<\/p>\n

And, for the most accessible collection of his writings:<\/p>\n

On Feeling, Knowing, and Valuing; Selected Writings<\/b>, University of Chicago, 1992.<\/p>\n

Schultz, Alfred. Collected Papers, Vol. I<\/b>, Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, 1971.<\/p>\n

Collected Papers, Vol. III<\/b>, Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, 1970.<\/p>\n

Stegmuller, W. Main Currents in Contemporary German, British, and American<\/b> Philosophy<\/b>, Northwestern U. Press, Evanston, 1970.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Notes<\/b><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. W. Stegmuller, Main Currents in Contemporary German, British, and American Philosophy<\/b>, Bloomington, p.101. Here I would include such writers as Nicolai Hartman, Roman Ingarden and Edith Stein among others.<\/li>\n
  2. M. Scheler, Idealism and Realism<\/i>, in Selected Philosophical Essays<\/b>, Evanston, pp.292-293.<\/li>\n
  3. A. Schutz, Collected Papers, Vol. III<\/b>, Max Scheler\u2019s Epistemology and Ethics<\/i>, The Hague, p.145.<\/li>\n
  4. This theme is common in The Nature of Sympathy<\/b>, and The Theory of the Three Facts<\/i>, in Selected Philosophical Essays<\/b>, for example.<\/li>\n
  5. Miller, Earl K; Cohen, Jonathan D. An integrative theory of prefrontal cortex function, <\/i>Annual Review of Neuroscience<\/b>,<\/b><\/b>24<\/b><\/b> (2001): 167-202.<\/li>\n
  6. M. Scheler, Ordo Amoris<\/i>, in Selected Philosophical Essays<\/b>, p.100.<\/li>\n
  7. M. Scheler, The Nature of Philosophy<\/i> in On the Eternal in Man<\/b>, p.74. Also see The Nature of Sympathy<\/b>, On Love<\/i>, Part II.<\/li>\n
  8. See for example, Man\u2019s Place in the Cosmos<\/b>.<\/li>\n
  9. M. Scheler, Idealism and Realism<\/i>, p.292.<\/li>\n
  10. M. Scheler, The Nature of Sympathy<\/b>, London, p.224.<\/li>\n
  11. A. Schutz, Collected Papers, Vol. I, <\/b>Max Scheler\u2019s Theory of Intersubjectivity and the general thesis of the alter ego<\/i>, p.153.<\/li>\n
  12. M. Scheler, Man\u2019s Place in Nature<\/b>, New York, p.48.<\/li>\n
  13. Schutz, Vol. I<\/b>, p.153.<\/li>\n
  14. Schutz, Vol. I<\/b>, p.155.<\/li>\n
  15. The Nature of Sympathy<\/b>, Sect. 1, Chap. II, p.10.<\/li>\n
  16. A. Schutz, Vol. I<\/b>, p.11.<\/li>\n
  17. Sympathy<\/b>, p.264.<\/li>\n
  18. A. Schutz, Vol. III<\/b>, p.140.<\/li>\n
  19. These are the key themes in The Nature of Sympathy<\/b>.<\/li>\n
  20. M. Scheler, The Idols of Self-Knowledge<\/i>, in Selected Philosophical Essays<\/b>, p.87.<\/li>\n
  21. Idols<\/i>, p.989.<\/li>\n
  22. E. Ranly, Scheler\u2019s Phenomenology of Community<\/b>, p.62.<\/li>\n
  23. Scheler suggests a further level of religious community. Issues of philosophy of religion are beyond the scope of this paper.<\/li>\n
  24. Schutz, Vol. III<\/b>, p.176.<\/li>\n
  25. See The Nature of Sympathy<\/b>.<\/li>\n
  26. Schutz, Vol. III<\/b>, p.177.<\/li>\n
  27. Again, the work of Dilthey would be instructive here.<\/li>\n
  28. A very contentious assertion.<\/li>\n
  29. See the work of the later Wittgenstein, Searle, Grice, and the work of Habermas, such as The Theory of Communicative Action<\/b> (1985).<\/li>\n
  30. Enzo Paci and Tran Duc Thao for example.<\/li>\n
  31. See work of the late Merleau-Ponty, the Sartre of the Critique of Dialectical Reason<\/b>, and Habermas.<\/li>\n
  32. Scheler, Phenomenology and the Theory of Cognition<\/i>, in Selected Philosophical Essays,<\/b> pp.168-169.<\/li>\n
  33. Scheler might argue, in response, that phenomenological science seeks knowledge of noemata<\/i> and not of noema<\/i>. Knowledge of the later is only within the competence of participatory co-performance. I doubt that this response would hold up under any serious Husserlian critique.<\/li>\n
  34. Eugene Kelly, a Scheler scholar and colleague, denies that it is as simple as I suggest. He points to the epistemology<\/i> present in Scheler\u2019s Formalism in Ethics and the Material Ethics of Value<\/b>. Our disagreement, however, is based on differing scholarly approaches. Gene wished to present Scheler as he in fact was, while this essay is an attempt to develop Scheler\u2019s thought as it has proved influential in contemporary social theory and as useful for Interdisciplinary research.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    LAURENCE E. WINTERS, Ph.D. Petrocelli College Fairleigh Dickinson University   Max Scheler is one of a group of European philosophers and social theorists whose work directly or indirectly was lost to the English speaking world due to Nazi and Stalinist repression. Fortunately, in the case of Scheler, the German \u00e9migr\u00e9 intellectual and social philosopher who […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7752,"featured_media":0,"parent":633,"menu_order":4,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/impact\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/560"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/impact\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/impact\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/impact\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7752"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/impact\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=560"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/impact\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/560\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1844,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/impact\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/560\/revisions\/1844"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/impact\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/impact\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}