C. Scheler's Formalism in Ethics

For liberals, World War I was the breakdown of everything they believed in and fought for.^[23] For Scheler, however, World War I is the proof that his ethical theories as already developed prior to World War I are true. In modernity, «English cant» has taken over. For Scheler, World War I proves that things cannot go on that way and that the «real» forces in history are the powers of Schicksal, Gemeinschaft, and love as they have reemerged in World War I. In the preface of Der Genius des Krieges , he points out that he often refers to his other writings to allow readers to inform themselves about the «basic notions and axioms» («Grundbegriffe und Grundsätze») he uses in Der Genius des Krieges (PPS 10). In 1915 Scheler published a collection of essays, Abhandlungen und Aufsätze , in the preface to which he emphasizes that all the essays were written prior to Word War I (UW 7) and comments as follows: «In what way the enormous event in the moral world occasioned by the war, which now overshadows and shapes the new thoughts of the time, seems to powerfully pull the European forms of Dasein precisely into the

direction of development that prior to the war these essays {in Abhandlungen und Aufsätze } have conveyed the author has recently shown in his book Der Genius des Krieges und der Deutsche Krieg » (UW 8).^[24] Similarly, in the preface to the first edition of The Formalism in Ethics , published in 1916, Scheler stresses that its first part was already published in 1913 and that the second part was already finished in manuscript form in the same year (FEe xvii; FE 9). Even in the preface to the second edition of The Formalism in Ethics , written in 1921, Scheler simply states without further comment: «Concrete application of my principles of general ethics to a number of specific problems and to questions concerning our own time will be found in my books Vom Umsturz der Werte (2d ed. of Abhandlungen und Aufsätze ) and Genius des Krieges , in my essay Ursachen des Deutschenhasses , and in my forthcoming book Schriften zur Soziologie und Weltanschauungslehre » (FEe xxii; FE 14).

Thus, Scheler maintains that what he wrote prior to World War I was proven true by the war. World War I and his argument in Der Genius des Krieges are the desired and logical consequences of his philosophy. In the preface to Der Genius des Krieges , Scheler makes use of Plato's simile of the cave:

While the first part {of Der Genius des Krieges , "The Genius of War," the part on war in general} proceeds in such a way that what appears is only the shadow of the war that surrounds us, the shadow the war projects by virtue of the light from the eternal world of ideas, onto the wall of Being; the second part {"The German War"} shows the very same ideas completely immersed into concrete life, into action {Tat} and dictates of the hour {Forderung der Stunde}. (PPS 9)

This is a convenient metaphor for the relationship of his prewar writings to Der Genius des Krieges . The prewar writings deduce the «necessity» of war and anticipate its occurrence, the first part of Der Genius des Krieges gives a fuller picture of the deduced idea of war, and the second part shows the realization of the idea. The metaphor is analogous to the sentences with «erwidert » and «Widerruf » (SZ 386; BT 438) in Heidegger's Being and Time . Prior to the war, liberals stare at their phantasms of liberal society on the walls of their caves. A shadow falls onto those walls and phantasms, but liberals are unable, or unwilling, to recognize what is heralded by this shadow and instead try to cover up the shadow by the work of ambiguity in order to keep those liberal phantasms alive. However, the authentic Daseine see through this work of ambiguity. They erwidern the call of the ideas, which announces itself in the shadow, and they widerrufen the phantasms of liberal society. They extinguish those phantasms and replace them with a proper realization of the ideas that have announced themselves in the shadow and that now take over the place formerly occupied by those liberal phantasms, or as

the war approached, by the twilight of those liberal phantasms and the shadow of war. The realization of these ideas is a rerealization. Actually, what is at stake, as Scheler puts it in the preface to the second edition of Abhandlungen und Aufsätze , is the «resurrection of the eternal order of the human heart, which has been toppled by the bourgeois-capitalist spirit {Wiederaufrichtung der durch den bürgerlich-kapitalistischen Geist umgestürzten ewigen Ordnung des Menschenherzens}» (UW 9).

For Scheler there is no question that modernity is a turning away, or falling away, from the realm of objective values, to which the communities and Christian philosophy in early Christianity as well as in the Middle Ages had been properly related. In the unfinished essay "Christliche Demokratie" (Christian democracy), written in 1919 (PPS 698), Scheler uses a gesture one could call the foundational gesture of metaphysics proper and which allows one to dismiss entire epochs with one fell swoop. Distinguishing between two kinds of «democratism of sentiment» («Gesinnungsdemokratismus»), which in itself has nothing to do with political freedom and equality (PPS 679), he writes:

The first {kind of Gesinnungsdemokratismus} is present in the combination of the Christian idea of love with the theory of objective ranks of values and—corresponding to this theory of objective ranks of values—with the theory of estates {Stand} and professions formulated by Christian philosophy and teaching ("ordo amoris"). The second {kind of} democratism of sentiment has been, in my mind, the root of all those humanitarian movements that pit the love of humankind and the love of God against each other and the love of humankind against that of the fatherland; this second kind of democratism of sentiment wants to promote the welfare of human beings by renouncing the acknowledgment of an objective world of values and truth {unter Verzicht auf die Anerkennung einer objektiven Güter- und Wahrheitswelt } that has to be recognized and actualized within the human realm, that is, {in contrast to early Christianity up to the Middle Ages, modernity maintains that} no longer is the salvation of a person to be placed above his or her spiritual education and morality, and no longer do these two values have to be ranked above health, strength, and welfare, or the vital values above utility and pleasure; rather, {in modernity} the material happiness of the greatest number (Bentham) replaces the objective world of values. (PPS 680)

As is known, in Formalism in Ethics Scheler presents a realm of values that exists independently of human beings. Unlike the Marburg Neo-Kantians, Scheler maintains that human beings don't produce the values but only partake in them; in other words, human beings are only the «bearers of values» (FEe 85; «Wertträger,» FE 103). Values do not exist in their realm in an undifferentiated conglomeration. Rather, they are placed in a clear hierarchic order: «In the totality of the realm of values there exists a singular order, an "order of ranks " {"Rangordnung "} that all values possess among themselves. It is because of this that a value is "higher " or "lower " than another one. This order lies in the

essence of values themselves, as does the difference between "positive" and "negative" values. It does not belong simply to "values known" by us» (FEe 86f.; FE 104). We actualize the differences with regard to the level of the values in a specific act; Scheler calls this «preferring » (FEe 87; «"Vorziehen ",» FE 105), and this must not be confused with «conating, choosing, and willing» (FE 87; «Streben, Wählen, Wollen,» FE 105). The fact that the «being higher» is given «in» our preferring must not lead us to infer that «being higher» means «to be preferred.» For «if the height of a value is given "in" preferring, this height is nevertheless a relation in the essence of the values concerned. Therefore, the "ordered ranks of values " {"Rangordnung der Werte "} are absolutely invariable , whereas the "rules of preferring" {"Vorzugsregeln"} are, in principle, variable throughout history (a variation which is still very different from the apprehension of new values)» (FEe 88; FE 105f.).

Different values are grouped according to what Scheler calls systems of «value-modalities» and their «a priori relations of rank» (FEe 104ff.; «apriorische Rangbeziehungen zwischen den Wertmodalitäten,» FE 122ff.) Scheler develops four such modalities. The lowest system are the values «ranging from the agreeable to the disagreeable » (FEe 105; «Angenehmen und Unangenehmen ,» FE 122). The second lowest are the values of «vital feeling » (FEe 106; FE 123). Above them are the «spiritual values » (FEe 107; FE 124), and at the top of the hierarchy are the values of the «holy» and «unholy»:

4. Values of the last modality are those of the holy and the unholy {des Heiligen und Unheiligen }. This modality differs sharply from the above modalities. It forms a unit of value-qualities not subject to further definition. . .. "Faith" and "lack of faith," "awe," "adoration," and analogous attitudes are specific reactions in this modality. However, the act through which we originally apprehend the value of the holy is an act of a specific kind of love . . .. The order is this: the modality of vital values is higher than that of the agreeable and the disagreeable; the modality of spiritual values is higher than that of vital values; the modality of the holy is higher than that of spiritual values. A more detailed attempt to found {nähere Begründung} these propositions cannot be undertaken at this point. (FEe 108-110; FE 125f.)

One can easily see what, according to Scheler, has happened in modernity. But first let me add further distinctions in Scheler's Formalism in Ethics , which are also important for his use of the terms Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft. After distinguishing between several kinds of values, he adduces the distinction between

g. Individual Values and Collective Values. . .. If one turns to values of oneself, such values may be individual values or collective values proper to one as a "member" {"Mitglied"} or "representative" of a "social rank," "profession," or "class"; or they may be values of one's own individuality. This holds also for values of the other. ^[74] . . . {In the case of the individual values} we have differences among

bearers of values that lie in the whole of an experienced "community ," {"Gemeinschaft "} by which we mean only a whole experienced by all its "members" {"Gliedern"}. Such a life-community is not a factually existing (more or less) artificial unit of mere elements which act among each other objectively and conceive their unit as a unit. We shall call this latter unit of human beings a society {"Gesellschaft "}. Now, all "collective values" are "values of society ." Their bearers form not experienced "wholes" but majorities of a conceptualized class. Life-communities {"Gemeinschaften"}, however, may also function as "individual " vis-à-vis "collectives," e.g. an individual marriage, a family, a community, a people {Volk}, etc., as opposed to the totality of marriages or families or communities of a country or the totality of peoples, etc. (FEe 102f.; «only» in «we mean only» has the force of «exclusively»; instead of «rife-community» and «rife-communities» read «community» and «communities»; FE 119f.)

The accompanying note 74 reads:

Thus love (in the Christian sense) is always individual love , both as self-love and love of the other , which is also called love of one's neighbor, but not as love for one who is a member of the class of workers, for example, or a "representative" of a collective group. The "social consciousness" of the working class {für den Arbeiterstand} has nothing to do with "love of one's neighbor." The latter pertains to the worker, but only as a human individual . (FEe 102, n. 74: FE 119f., n. 1)

As so often in Scheler, these sentences also lack a «more detailed attempt to found» them, which is to say there is no attempt to give them a foundation. In fact, in these passages Scheler has hardly given any reasons for any of his propositions, and in German the formulation, «A nähere Begründung of these propositions cannot be undertaken at this point» (FEe 110; FE 126), is most often used as a euphemism for cases in which the author hasn't made the slightest attempt to present arguments for his statements. As often in the literature on Gesellschaft and Gemeinschaft, such sentences represent the crossroads between the political Right and Left. For right-wingers, the realm of society is no longer an object of erotic and reasonable interests. Rather, «marriage, a family, a community, a people» have become the exclusive object of love, and society is experienced as a threat to family, community, and people. As will become even clearer in what follows, Scheler's statements amount to two theses. The first is that the material circumstances of the proletarians are not the top priority for those believing in authentic Christian love of one' s neighbor. The second thesis is that the individuals engaged in the parties of the working class—at the time mainly. social democrats who had fought for and won minimal social security, voting rights, and education for the workers-by no means transcend their selfish interests and move toward love for their neighbors or other higher values but are just as selfish and concerned about the lowest values as the liberal bourgeois subjects. Scheler's claims are

simply a more abstract formulation of a thesis he still maintained in his writings after the war, for instance, in the essay "Christlicher Sozialismus als Antikapitalismus" (Christian socialism as anticapitalism), written in 1919:

Thus, we have to state as a matter of principle {grundsätzlich}: In none of its variants does the Marxist socialism of the fourth estate represent a true opposition against capitalism, against capital and its root, namely, the capitalist spirit. Instead, it merely represents the material interests of its class within the capitalist society, the interests of the manual laborers, and these only insofar as those laborers are ensouled by the same capitalist spirit as the entrepreneurs and the bourgeois. (PPS 634f.)^[25]

At the end of the chapter on value-modalities, Scheler poses the question

how one can obtain from {the four kinds of value-modalities} . . . the pure types of communal forms of togetherness {die reinen Typen der Gemeinschaftsartenen }, such as the community of love {Liebesgemeinschaft} (plus its technical form, the church), the community of law {Rechtsgemeinschaft}, the community of culture {Kulturgemeinschaft}, and the life-community {Lebensgemeinschaft} (plus its technical form, the state), and the mere forms of so-called society {der sog. "Gesellschaft"}. (FEe 109f.; FE 126)^[26]

Scheler gives an answer in the chapter entitled "The Person in Ethical Contexts" (FEe 476ff.; FE 469ff). In it, Scheler distinguishes between four kinds of social units. The «lowest» one is the «mass » (FEe 526; FE 515 «"Masse "»). With regard to the other three units, he follows a scheme familiar in its general outlines since Hegel (who did not use it for rightist purposes). There are the small Gemeinschaften, in the first place, as in Hegel, families. Furthermore, there are, so to speak, large-scale Gemeinschaften, the state, people, nation, and the church, and there is Gesellschaft. The second social unit after the mass is the «life-community » («"Lebensgemeinschaft "») (FEe 526-528; FE 515-517). Following that is the Gesellschaft. Scheler defines it negatively as that unity in which, in contrast to «life-community ,» there is no primordial «"living-with-one-another"»:

3. The social unit of the society {Gesellschaft } is basically different from the essential unit of the life-community. First, the society, as opposed to the natural {natürlichen } unit of the life-community, is to be defined as an artificial {künstliche } unit of individuals having no original "living-with-one-another" {"Miteinandererleben"} in the sense described above. (FEe 528; FE 517)

Instead, in society each individual is the center of his or her experience, and the individual's relationships to others are contractual:

Rather, all relations among individuals are established by specific conscious acts that are experienced by each as coming from his individual ego, which is

experientially given first in this case , as directed to someone else as "another." . . . Moreover, common cognition, enjoyment, etc., presuppose some criteria of the true and the false, the beautiful and the ugly, which have been agreed upon beforehand. Every kind of willing together and doing together presupposes the actus of promising and the phenomenon [Sachgebilde ] of the contract that is constituted in mutual promising—the basic phenomenon of all private law. (FEe 528f.; FE 517f.)

Due to the nature of synthesis in society, trust, for instance, is not possible: «Just as boundless trust in one another is the basic attitude in the life-community, unfathomable and primary distrust of all in all is the basic attitude in society» (FEe 529; FE 518). Finally, at the top of the hierarchy is the «love-community,» which has been preferred for the first time in history in early Christianity:

4. From the essential types of social unity thus far mentioned, namely, mass, society, and life-community, we must distinguish the highest essential type of social unity, with whose characteristics we began this chapter: the unity of independent, spiritual, and individual single persons "in" an independent, spiritual, and individual collective person {Die Einheit selbständiger, geistiger, individueller Einzelpersonen "in" einer selbständigen, geistigen, individuellen Gesamtperson }. We assert that this unity, and it alone, is the nucleus and total novelty of the true and ancient Christian idea of community, and that this Christian idea represents, so to speak, the historical discovery of this unity. In quite a peculiar manner, this idea of community unites the being and indestructible self-value of the individual "soul" (conceived in terms of creation) and the person (contrary to the ancient theory of corporation and the Jewish idea of "people") by means of the idea of the salvational solidarity of all in the corpus christianum , which is founded on the Christian idea of love (and which is contrary to the mere ethos of "society," which denies moral solidarity). (FEe 533; FE 522)

As this passage already shows, the love-community—though not a result of the life-communities and society but having priority over them—preserves the main features of both life-community and society. In life-community, each individual has coresponsibility for the whole, and its self-responsibility is based on that coresponsibility because in this kind of community the individual is not yet valued in its own right (FEe 529f.; FE 518f.). In society, however, all responsibility is based on self-responsibility, and there is no longer any coresponsibility (FEe 526ff.; FE 515ff.). The love-community gathers together several collective persons (Gemeinschaften, so to speak, above society), and here we find both individual persons and responsibility for the whole:

If one takes a look at the relation of this idea of the highest form of social unity—as the idea of a solidary realm of love of individual, independent spir-

itual persons in a plurality of collective persons of the same character (this unity of collective persons among themselves, as well as the unity of the individual person and the collective person, is possible in God alone)—to the ideas of life-community and society , one can see that life-community and society as essential forms of social unity are subordinated to this highest essential social form, and that they are determined to serve it and to make it appear, but, to be sure, in different manners {ways}. Although the idea of the highest form of social unity is not a "synthesis" of life-community and society, essential characteristics of both are nevertheless co-given in it: the independent, individual person, as in society; and solidarity and real collective unity, as in community. (FEe 538f,; FE 527)

In the realm of values the lowest values, those of the agreeable and the useful, are relegated to the level of society. The values of the noble and vulgar, the spiritual values, etc., belong to the domain of various small-scale and large-scale communities, while the values of the holy and unholy have their place in the highest community, the love-community, which is, however, also concerned with all values, as the lower social units are subordinated to the highest unit and serve the latter (FEe 551ff, FE 539ff.).

Scheler writes: «As a whole, the essential social unit of society is not a special reality outside or above individuals. It is simply an indivisible {unsichtbares} fabric of relations that represent "conventions," ¹⁸¹ "usage," or "contracts," depending on whether they are more explicit or more tacit» (FEe 529; FE 518; read «invisible» instead of «indivisible»; the accompanying note 181 reads: «Hence conventions {Konvention} and mores {Sitte resp. Brauch}, like fashions {Mode} and costumes {Tracht}, must be sharply distinguished. Conventions and fashions belong entirely to society; mores and costumes, to the life-community.»). This is the crucial difference between society and the small-scale Gemeinschaften and the large-scale Gemeinschaften, as communities of both types do indeed have a reality above and beyond the individual (FEe 523, 527, 544; FE 513, 517, 532). This is another expression for the basic assumption that in society there is no solidarity' and no responsibility except for oneself (FEe 529; FE 518). At the same time, this statement supports the thesis that, empirically, there is no society without community whereas communities can exist without a society:

Yet there are interconnections of a quite determinate character between society and life-community {Gemeinschaft} (as essential structures of social unity). The basic nexus is this: there can be no society without life-community (though them can be life-community without society). All possible society is therefore founded through community. (FEe 531; instead of all three occurrences of «life-community» read «community»; FE 520)

Scheler illustrates his thesis by maintaining that the duty to keep a contract «does not have its source in another contract to keep contracts. It has its

source in the solidary obligation of the members of the community to realize the contents that ought to be for the members. A so-called contract without this foundation would be nothing but a fiction» (FEe 531; FE 520). The thesis that a society is impossible without being grounded in communities is not new. However, what is distinctive about the way rightist authors use this thesis is their distorted notion of society. In modern times at any rate, the concept of society has been closely connected to that of reason, Vernunft. The universality of reason as posited in Enlightenment thinking and in Kant allowed for the procedures and processes of Bildung, education, formation, of one's will and person so that one transcends the limits of the self and can see oneself from the viewpoint of others and see each other individual not only as a means but also as an end in himself or herself. Classical liberalism assumed that the pursuit of one's own self-interest would simultaneously promote the interests of the others and that this was the best way to promote the common good. After the waning of classical liberalism, the assumption of the universality of reason still served as the imperative to realize consciously what, as Adam Smith called it, the invisible hand by itself could not realize, that is, reason grounded classical liberalism as well as later liberalism and social democratic politics.

Like many others who would like to rerealize the «original spirit» of Christianity, Scheler downplays the role of reason. In fact, the concept of reason as developed by Kant is his main target from the outset. Unlike Kant, Scheler maintains that human reason is by no means synthetic and productive. Moreover, according to him, the other faculties and activities—to will, to love, to hate—do not become ethical only by virtue of being determined by reason (FEe 63ff.; FE 82ff.). Thus, in Scheler reason is no longer a faculty that determines others but only accompanies their activities. Certainly to regard reason as fruitful and indispensable in the realm of politics does not require subscribing to a strong concept of reason. Scheler, however, rejects both the «strong» as well as the «weak» concept of reason. As he points out regarding Kant, Hume, Spencer, and Comte, one misses the «peculiar nature of community as an essential kind of social unity,» if one refers to the idea of contract in order «to explain the origin . . . of all social structures of the spirit . . .; and in order to have a standard by which to assess the legal order and the degree of the development of any extant social structure» (FEe 539; FE 527). Or, some pages earlier: «We must reject the theory of a contract in any of its three possible forms: as a genetic theory, as a theory of origin, or as a theoretical standard (according to which only the type of order of a community is to be assessed against the idea of a contract)» (FEe 524; FE 513f.).

It is only this step of ruling out reason as a relevant faculty that allows Scheler to dismiss classical liberalism as well as social democracy and to maintain that both are identical to or further developments of what he calls

«English cant,» which in Scheler's view is nothing more than a theory of the selfish individual, regarding himself or herself as free of any responsibility for others and looking upon others as mere means to his own ends. With this step, Scheler participates in the process of—in Carl Schmitt's terms—intensifying a tension or an opposition by destroying any possibility of mediation between the opposites. Anticipating the scenario Schmitt develops in the last part of the Political Theology , Scheler writes on reason in the essay "Soziologische Neuorientierung und die Aufgabe der deutschen Katholiken nach dem Krieg" (Sociological reorientation and the task of the German Catholics after the war):

{Reason} only has the choice between a subordination to that meaning {Sinn} which the whole of religious revelation {religiöse Gesamtoffenbarung} gives to life and thus to reason itself—a subordination that is free and that results from reason's insight into its own dependency and limits—or an enslavement, slowly progressing and compulsory, to the life of the instincts and drives {Triebleben}, which darkens and sultries the light of reason more and more. (PPS 409)

As was already indicated, Scheler's overall project, which places him on the political Right, is the revitalization of the proper «order of the human heart,» that is, of the original Christian community by means of the destruction of «English cant,» that is, of society, which has taken over in modernity and which therefore has to be destroyed or to be expelled «from {Europe's} blood like a foreign poison» (PPS 153) to make room for the revitalization of the Christian community. This is the same gesture as in section 74 of Being and Time . Both «Schelerians» and Heideggerian authentic Daseine repeat something—original Christianity or Volksgemeinschaft—by redeeming it from its state of fallenness, of being impure or destroyed; that is, both perform an Erwiderung. Both Schelerians and Heideggerian authentic Daseine do so by canceling society, as society has toppled original Christianity or Gemeinschaft. In other words, both perform a Widerruf. This is a de-cision in Heidegger's sense. In order to separate the two opposites the mixture must be purified through a purification of both opposites. In order to be reduced to its supposed original and pure state the «good» opposite, Christianity, must be cleansed of any of its later developments. The «bad» opposite, society, is purged of any reason and is reduced to, as Scheler puts it, «English cant» (PPS 218ff. and often). These two purifications «expel» any possibility of mediation between the opposites, and they also expel any dialectical tension within one opposite—as, for example, the dialectical mediation between universality and individuality in classic liberalism—that makes possible a process of self-reflection resulting in such institutions as social welfare.^[27] The two reductions provide the ground for the cancellation of the «bad» opposite in

order to rerealize the «good» opposite as the last and crucial step in the decision. In Scheler this motif represents his general political agenda and also forms the heart of his book, Formalism in Ethics . Scheler quite literally reifies the thinking, prevalent at his time, in terms of the methodological device of ideal types, Idealtypen. He reifies the ideal types insofar as they become the ideal social units existing independently of human beings in the realm of values.^[28] The social units, then, are used in order to reduce each empirical phenomenon, such as a political movement, to just one principle. Liberalism and social democracy can have only one principle, just as Christianity can have only one principle, and this one principle has to be cleansed of any impurities it has acquired over the years. In these reductions, Scheler is partial. In his criticism of Nietzsche in Ressentiment , Scheler admits that in its history Christianity was often an expression of ressentiment (RE 67, 71, 99; UW 57, 61, 84). However, in the realm of values and also in the first instance when it was preferred in history, Christianity, though only for a short time, was the proper and unadulterated realization of the highest values. Thus, in Scheler Christianity is «upgraded.» Liberalism and social democracy, however, are «downgraded» even though from the outset active reason was part of them. This move is already a decision, and it alone allows for the final decision between Christianity on the one hand or liberalism and social democracy on the other, for the purification of Christianity from any liberal or social democratic elements, for the purification of liberalism and social democracy from any reason, and for the cancellation of society in order to revitalize Christianity. However, as Tillich emphasized in 1933, each individual as well as each political group lives—prior to the fact that each of them partakes in several social units and prior to the problems of compromises and alliances in everyday politics—in tension between several principles or demands. In other words, each principle is never simply one principle. As Hegel realized when he turned away from his aspirations to revitalize «the Greeks» or early Christianity and, finally, developed a «theological» as well as a «reasonable» justification of bourgeois society, it is theoretically wrong and morally unjust to reduce a phenomenon to one principle whose purity one has established by a decisive reduction. In this way, Tillich deploys principles in a way one could label post-metaphysical; in contrast, the authors on the Right reinvent a reductive metaphysics of a primordial state, a falling, and a return and apply it and all its reductions to the realm of human politics.

Scheler completely instrumentalizes reason. However, the Christian community preserves the «individual person, as in society» (FEe 539; FE 527). Thus, a liberal might assume that in Scheler's idea of a love-community there is nothing that speaks against liberal purposes. As long as the individual person is preserved in the love-community, any addition to Gesellschaft might sim-

ply be welcomed. Furthermore, historically freedom and equality of the individual has been an achievement of modem reason. However, it may not be necessary to ground these two values in reason. Given Scheler's sloppy standards of providing evidence and arguments for his statements and the. complete absence of any reasoning at crucial points, another philosopher might have assumed, just for the sake of the argument, a realm of values independent of human beings and might have easily found freedom and equality not only among those values but indeed at the pinnacle of the hierarchy of values. However, Scheler does not even see equality as one of the values. In Scheler, equality is not a value but a criterion that God and «we» use when «we» assess individuals and peoples or nations in their acts of preferring values. Scheler's notion of a person not only allows for but indeed explicitly demands that persons are unequal as far as the higher values are concerned. He begins with a more factual statement: «Every man is, as we saw, an individual and therefore a unique being, distinct from all others to the same degree that he is a pure person. And, similarly, his value is a unique value» (FEe 508; FE 499). According to Scheler, this holds true also for people: «This, of course, also pertains to both the individual person and the collective person, e.g., the Greek or Roman people» (FEe 508; FE 499). At the latest, postmodern sensibility would recommend resisting any effort of ranking individuals and people in their respective values. However, for the metaphysician and premodern Scheler the sheer fact of differences implies different ranks and inequality: «Hence all ultimate bearers of moral value, to the degree that they are conceived as pure persons, are different and unequal not only in their being but also in their value» (FEe 509; FE 499). This is simply true, independent of our capacities to recognize the persons and peoples in their different values: «It remains to be seen how and to what extent the extant differences and differences in value among persons can be shown as given or even be "established." If this were not possible, such differences would in any case be present before the idea of an all-loving and all-knowing God» (FEe 509; FE 500; note that Scheler means that it remains to be seen whether we individuals down here on earth can recognize the different values of different empirical persons and peoples). For it is a misunderstanding to assume that before God we are all equal: «Persons and their individual values must be considered different precisely "before God." We must not assume any so-called equality of souls before God, which some interpret to be the teaching of historical Christianity—though, we believe, without justification.¹⁴⁷ » (FEe 509; FE 500; the accompanying note 147 reads: «Such a doctrine could be explained as a distortion produced by Stoic philosophy,» ibid.).

This principle has important implications. The values the state is concerned with are higher than those of society. Thus, Scheler demands that the state must no longer remain liberal with respect to the economy. Rather, from the

a priori relationships between value-modalities it follows that the person as social person and as «subject of private law » as well as the person as «economic subject » must be «subordinated » to the person as citizen «because the state achieves the highest meaning of its existence in the rational regulation of the will to live and the reasonable distribution of the goods of life (of a community, of a people {einer Volksgemeinschaft})» (FEe 511; FE 501f.).

In this generality, social democrats would agree with Scheler. However, liberals and social democrats would not link this thesis to the assumed inequality and to the notion of Volksgemeinschaft. In particular, they would strongly disagree with Scheler's second formulation of this thought. He maintains that with regard to the lowest level the tasks and goods «ought to become more equal for men. They ought to become more equal, for precisely because of this , men's differences do not remain concealed and hidden with regard to absolute or less relative values of being and with regard to the higher goods and tasks connected with faculties of higher value» (FEe 510; FE 500)^[29] In the accompanying note, Scheler explains that he «cannot develop the many important applications of this principle to theories of society, politics, and law» (FEe 510, n. 148; FE 500, n. I).

However, already here it becomes clear that these applications are illiberal as well as anti—social democratic, that is, that they are rightist. Scheler states that philosophers during the Enlightenment said precisely the opposite. For,

men and their values are to be regarded all the more equal, the more their being approaches the absolute level of being (as "rational entity") and the more their values are compared to values of the highest rank (salvation and spiritual values); and they and their values should (or at least may) appear all the more unequal , too, the more their being approaches sensible states of the lived body and the more their values are compared to values of the lowest rank. (FEe 510; FE 501)

This assumption is the «exact opposite » of Scheler's, and it has its philosophical basis «in the premise of one so-called supra-individual transcendental reason» (FEe 510; FE 501). Liberal theory has assumed the equality of all human beings, and it has assumed that the participation of all human beings as equals in the political realm, as in parliamentary democracy, would provide them with the possibility to discuss freely and rationally all the political and social problems, including existing inequalities in the economic sphere. Scheler rejects the presupposition, namely, the unity of reason in all human beings, and he rejects political equality as well. At a later point, in a discussion of the task of the state with regard to culture, he writes that

the state will do a better job in its task, which belongs essentially to it, of realizing culture, the less it claims autonomous guidance and leadership in cultural

activities, the less it claims to inspire this activity, the less it follows a direct cultural policy (instead of a policy of power) toward other states, and the less it orders the relations of power among people living in its life-communities according to cultural points of view (propagation of education) rather than the point of view of justice. (FEe 553; in German «rather than the point of view of justice» is in parentheses; FE 541)

The occurrence of the word «justice» in parentheses is remarkable, for in Scheler's entire book of no less than 659 pages, the word itself hardly shows up more than a handful of times. It is an amazing phenomenon that in an extremely long and systematic book on ethics the author makes not the slightest effort to develop at least a basis for a theory of justice, not to mention a theory of justice itself. It is all the more amazing since, in this book as well as in his other writings, the author addresses social and political questions, and since, due to the full emergence of capitalism («the social question»), social and political problems have developed into a form previously unknown. The only theoretical statements on justice occur in passing during his discussion of reprisal and punishment, in which he argues mainly against Kant: «Therefore "reprisal" does not follow as a consequence from the demand that justice ought to be. Justice orders and governs only the impulse of reprisal by adding the idea of proportion, like for like, to the demand for reprisal (in some more determinate way)» (FEe 361; FE 361). Two pages later, he says that one «falls victim to another basic misconception of the essence of the idea of reprisal and the idea of punishment when one attempts to derive them from purely moral values and demands, especially the demand for "justice"» (FEe 363; FE 363). For «insofar as the pure essence of justice is understood, justice does not require the repayment of evil with evil. Only from that part of the essential core of justice according to which it is good and proper that under the same value conditions the same behavior of willing persons should occur does it follow that—if there is to be retaliation—this retaliation must be the same for deeds of equal value. However, the demand for "retaliation" as such does not follow from justice.» .^[30]

As to the old distinction between arithmetical justice and proportional justice, in the first of the three quotes Scheler seems to use the terms «justice» and «like» either as «proportional justice» or in such a way that they cover both arithmetical and proportional justice. In the third quote, he says that arithmetical justice is demanded by only one part of the essence of justice. This statement allows for and even requires a continuation such that in all the other parts of the essence of justice, proportional justice is required. Stated in this way, arithmetical justice has always been a special case of proportional justice. According to proportional justice, persons of different values (e.g., a slave and a freeman) are punished differently for equal wrongdoings, that is, in inverse proportion to their values, or political honors and rights are distributed in proportion to the different values of the individuals and groups (with the result

that, for instance, slaves don't have any political honors and rights). This entails that persons of equal values (e.g., two free citizens) are punished for equal wrongdoings equally, and that persons of equal value have equal political honors and rights. Scheler seems to assume proportional justice as the essence of justice. According to Scheler, arithmetical justice is appropriate with regard to the low values. Equality with regard to the low values even enhances the process of manifestation of inequality of different persons with regard to higher values. Political values are higher values. Liberalism has always stood staunchly behind the tenet that all persons are free and equal, that is to say, all persons have to be treated according to arithmetical justice. Scheler revokes this. In fact, in the note to the sentence on state and culture quoted above Scheler explains: « I.e., the state must give life-communities equal or unequal {political} rights {gleiche, resp. ungleiche politische Rechte} according to their degree of significance with respect to the whole of the state» (FEe 553, n. 222; FE 541, n. I). This sentence clearly presupposes proportional justice with regard to the political, as the phrase «equal or unequal {political} rights» can only mean «equal rights to groups of equal value, and unequal rights to groups of unequal value,» if this distribution is supposed to be just. Again, one might wonder why in a huge book on ethics at the beginning of the twentieth century an author refers to such an important issue only in a dismissive way. However, one might also say that Scheler need not expound further on this issue. Once one assumes that a realm of values exists independently of human beings, that there are a priori relations between the values such that there are higher and lower ranks of values, that the sphere of the political embraces relatively high values, that persons and peoples are not only different but of different value and are themselves ranked according to the rank of the values, that not only God, but humans too are in a position to recognize the different values of persons and peoples, and that in our social and political organizations we have to «mirror» the ranking of the different persons and peoples, then it follows that we have to abandon arithmetical justice in the realm of the political. Scheler makes all the above-mentioned assumptions. Thus, it is only logical that he abandons arithmetical justice in politics. Probably the above quoted note immediately refers to the topic, much debated at the time, of the rights of the churches in the educational system. However, the statement is a general statement. In 1919, that is, during and after the establishment of the Weimar Republic, Scheler fervently attacked parliamentary democracy, as I will show in the following section.