D. Scheler on the Genesis and Future of Capitalism

A history of the «historical variability and differences in moral value-estimation among different peoples and races {volks- und rassenmäb ige Verschiedenheit } » (FEe 295; FE 300) in the spirit of Scheler's project does not pri-

marily investigate the different notions of, say, «love and justice» at different times in different peoples and races. Rather, the crucial dimension for Scheler' s project are changes taking place in peoples' and races' empirical acts of preferring in regard to the ranking of the values themselves. Thus, a history of ethics will investigate «the great typical forms of ethos itself i.e., the experiential structure of values and their immanent rules of preferring, which lie behind both the morality and the ethics of a people (primarily those of the large racial groups) . . . {it will investigate} the rules by which such values themselves were preferred or placed after» (FEe 302; FE 306). Such a history does not succumb to relativism. It is just the opposite. According to Scheler, the assumption of the realm of values existing independently of human beings combined with the assumption of individuals, peoples, and races of different values, who realize these values down here on earth, is the only theory that can avoid relativism. Scheler compares the moral history of the different peoples and races to a huge canvas. All other theories can see in it only a «palette daubed with paint.» His theory, however, enables one to look at it «from a correct distance and with proper understanding» such that one sees «the interconnection of sense of a grandiose painting, or at least of the fragments of one. And in this painting, one =will be able to see mankind, mixed as it is { so bunt gegliedert sie (= die Menschheit) ist}, beginning to take possession, through love, feeling, and action, of a realm of objective values and their objective order, a realm that is independent of mankind as well as of its own manifestations; and one will be able to see mankind draw this realm into its existence, as happened in the history of knowledge, e.g. the knowledge of the heavens» (FEe 297; FE 301). .^[31]

This history is the «inner history of the ethos itself i.e., the central history in all history» (FEe 305; FE 309), which is to say—as he develops in the book Formalism mainly with regard to liberalism, and as he develops with regard to Marxism, social democracy, and liberalism as well in his other writings—that, with respect to its causes, it cannot be explained by the means offered by liberalism, Enlightenment, or Marxism, but only in terms of peoples, races, and their different blood. According to Scheler, a history of «the central history in all history» has to take into account «five strata,» of which I mention only the first and the second:

First, there are variations in feeling (i.e., "cognizing") values themselves, as well as in the structure of preferring values and loving and hating . Let us take the liberty of calling these variations as a whole variations in the "ethos. "

Second, there are variations which occur in the sphere of judgment and the sphere of rules of the assessment of values and value-ranks given in these functions and acts. These are variations in "ethics" (in the broadest sense of the term). (FEe 299; FE 303)

(The variations in the first stratum make up «the great typical forms of ethos itself » mentioned in a passage quoted close to the beginning of this section;

they «lie behind both the morality and the ethics of the world of the peoples,» that is, they determine, most of the time unconsciously, the contents occurring in the strata 2 through 5, though it might happen that conscious assumptions on the level of stratum 2 are not in accordance with the preferences on the level of stratum I; a discrepancy between stratum I and stratum 2 that will become crucial in his theory of disavowing capitalism, or capitalistic mentality.) There is a hierarchy of values, which are preferred and ranked by human beings in their acts of realizing them down here on earth. Thus, according to an authoritarian and belligerent Christian, Platonist, and foe of modernity like Scheler, there are two basic possibilities with regard to changes in the ethos. A new ethos, or a new state of the same ethos, either provides an empirical image of the ranking in the realm of values itself that is more proper than the ethos it supersedes, or it provides a worse image. The first can happen either as an adjustment of existing preferences or as the discovery of values ranked higher than the ones preferred so far. A discovery of higher values «occurs in the movement of love ,» and «it is to the moral-religious genius that the realm of values opens up,» Jesus' Sermon on the Mount being the most grandiose example (FEe 305; FE 309). If the resulting image is worse than the former, the ethos is one of «deceptions , » «falsifications , » and «overthrows »:

There are also in history all those forms of value-deceptions {Täuschungen } and deceptions in preferring, as well as falsifications {Fälschungen } and overthrows {Umstürze } which are founded on such deceptions and which pertain to {durch sie begründeter Fälschungen und Umstürze von} earlier forms of ethical assessment and standards that had {already} conformed to the objective rank of values. I discovered one such deception in my study of ressentiment . (FEe 306; note that the German text is more clear and direct than the English translation might sound: value-deceptions in preferring cause acts in which we falsify—or even alter fraudulently—and overthrow earlier forms, etc.; FE 310)

Hitler's notion of history combines two motifs. On the one hand, there is Kampf as the basic phenomenon of life and as the way in which selection is at work. His notion of Kampf is the modem notion of progress cleansed of any implications connected with the modem notion of reason. On the other hand, there are the axioms concerning race. There is a pure race that is the highest race, the Aryan race. In addition, there are other races, less high or noble. At the bottom is the Jewish race. According to Aristotelianism and most medieval philosophers, under normal circumstances each cause produces something similar to itself, that is, no cause can produce something ontologically «higher» than itself. Similarly in Hitler, the pure race reproduces itself as a pure race. Each of the lower races, left to itself—just as every other cause—just reproduces itself. That is to say, it is incapable of producing by itself something higher than itself, or it is incapable of developing itself into

something higher. Thus, progress—or decadence—occurs through mixture, the mixture of races. The highest race loses its purity and its highest state by mixing, or being mixed, with lower races. The lower race gains a higher place, not by reproducing itself, but by mixing with a higher race. In this way, it «partakes in» the higher qualities contained in the higher race, and, at the same time, it drags down the higher race, as now the higher race contains in itself elements of the lower one. In this way, the hierarchy of beings and the axioms concerning causality in medieval thinking are made to serve a modem notion of progress gone astray, and the modern notion of progress deprived of reason is put in the service of medieval thinking; together this amounts to a materialistic Platonism with a perverted idea of the good. The Jews are demonized prime matter. They strive for participation, drag down what they participate in, and at the same time remain in all their activities unaffected by their participation. It is part of the perfidy of the Jews that they don't mix with other races. They don't allow their women to marry non-Jews. However, the male Jews spoil the blood of the other races. Thus, they themselves remain pure while they make impure and drag down the other races (MKe 386ff., 661f. and frequently; MK 425ff., 751f.). The pure is more efficient and «stronger» than the impure. Since only the lowest race has remained pure, it will gain dominion over the entire world. Fortunately, however, God and his hand, fate, interfere and call upon some chosen Daseine to reverse the process and to «halt the chariot of doom {Wagen des Verhängnisses} at the eleventh hour» (MKe 373; MK 409); or, as is said not only by soldiers of almost any sort of rescue mission, «den Karren aus dem Dreck ziehen» (to pull the cart out of the muck, to clear up the mess). Fortunately, God does so at a time when the rescue mission is still possible. Though impure, the Germans are still such that six years of gym will enable them to conquer Russia. Also, there are pure remnants of the pure race, and one can spot them and stop the Jews from spoiling the German blood. It is the combination of these two elements—a certain version of the modern notion of progress, stripped of reason by being reread in terms of the struggle of races, and the Aristotelian and medieval notion of causality reread in terms of the struggle of races—that turns both elements of the mixture—the notion of progress as well as Aristotelianism—into utter violence.

The same logic found in Hitler is also at work in Scheler's writings. There are the highest values, and they were once realized in the proper way, namely in early Christianity up to the Middle Ages. Individuals and peoples full of resentment—due to their race or, in consequence of mixtures, due to infection—act like the Jews. They partake in the higher values by undermining the order of values. In this way, they spoil the higher values and drag them into the muck and do not transform themselves at all through their activities since they use, or instrumentalize, everything as a means in the service of

their low values and do not enjoy the higher values in order to bilden, to educate and transform themselves. I have already pointed to what is perhaps the most obvious and most stunning manifestation of the medieval aspect of Scheler's thinking, namely, his version of Descartes's proof of God's existence^[32] Also, I have already shown how the theoretical framework in Scheler's major work, Formalism in Ethics , is tailored to and possibly—in its entirety—hardly allows for anything else but a thinking in terms of dragging-down, of mixture, and the reversal, the de-cision; a thinking of an objective order, which has been properly realized, but thereafter gets spoiled and overthrown by, as he puts it, «English cant,» and which has to be rerealized by expelling the «English cant» out of one's blood «like a foreign poison.» For Scheler, as for Hitler, war is «the constructive force» (PPS 77) of history. As in Hitler, this is due to the expulsion of reason from the notion of development and progress. A distinctive achievement of the modern age was a concept of progress according to which, in contrast to the Aristotelian and medieval notion of causality, the end does not preexist its own beginning. In cosmology as well as in history and morality, this allowed for the assumption, culminating in Freud's notion of sublimation, that an entity, or drive, of «low» value, sexuality or selfishness, can transform itself into a state of «higher» value. Scheler points to the modern notion of development only to dismiss it as utterly wrong (RE 114ff.; UW 99ff. and passim) and to reduce the activity of modernity to acts of overthrowing and deception. According to Scheler, resentment is the result of two opposing factors. On the one hand, there is the incapacity to realize the higher values and the impulse of revenge, hate, and envy toward those who have successfully preferred them. On the other, there is the experience of powerlessness, of the lack of power to immediately take revenge and do away with the «higher» values and their bearers. This tension results in a repreferring of the values. The virtues of premodernity, so resentment says, are bad, one' s own mediocre values are good. Resentment also results in a suppression of one's feelings of revenge, etc. Resentful persons prove their resentfulness precisely because in their understanding of themselves they harbor no resentment (RE 68—72; UW 59—63, and prior). This allows for the logic of suspicion and «revealing.» A person's own statement about the issue and reasons for a judgment do not matter. According to Scheler,

it goes without saying that genuine moral value judgments are never based on ressentiment . This {Nietzsche's} criticism only applies to false judgments founded on value delusions and the corresponding ways of living and acting. Nietzsche is wrong in thinking that genuine morality springs from ressentiment . It rests on an eternal hierarchy of values , and its rules of preference are fully as objective and clearly "evident " as mathematical truth. There does exist an ordre du coeur and a logique du coeur (in Pascal's words) which the moral genius gradually uncovers in history, and it is eternal—only its apprehension

and acquisition is «historical.» Ressentiment helps to subvert this eternal order in man's consciousness, to falsify its recognition, and to deflect its actualization. (RE 72f.; UW 63)

In his essay on resentment, Scheler kills three birds with one stone. He refutes Nietzsche's thesis on Christianity; he refutes Marx concerning the causes of capitalism, and in the process he prepares the ground for his thesis that private property is an important feature of an authentic community. Concerning his criticism of Nietzsche, I just mention in passing two things. Though Scheler cannot but acknowledge that already in Luke (RE 99; UW 84) and also in one sentence in St. Paul (RE 71; UW 61)—not to mention Tertullian (RE 67; UW 57)—resentment takes over, the original idea of Christian love has its roots in a completely different site. Scheler sees the original Christian idea of love as a gesture of self-expression, a spontaneous overflow, which is by no means directed toward the other as its end. This allows for the dismissal of those Christians who allied themselves with the social democrats (RE 83—113; UW 70—93). Modernity is nothing but deception and overthrow. By implication, what preceded the modem era was good. Scheler explains this by means of a simplistic and violent theory of epochs that serves as a means to, and is constituted by the same gesture as, his philosophy of values and modernity, namely, the gesture of producing unity and purity by expelling «the other.» Though, as he stresses, ethics in antiquity differed from Christian ethics, and though Aristotle got it wrong with regard to the value of persons (FEe 524; FE 514), Aristotle can serve as an authority if he fits Scheler' s reactionary bill. Everyone knows that Aristotle maintained that some human beings by their nature are slaves and others by their nature are free. Everyone also knows that, making his case, Aristotle argued against those who had denied the thesis (Politics 1:3, 1253 b 14ff.). Thus, when it comes to this issue Scheler adds the qualifier «true» («echte») to «antiquity.» It is not the case that in antiquity some maintained a and others maintained non-a. Rather, the «true antiquity» maintained a (RE 128; UW 108), and who maintained non-a was simply not part of «true antiquity.» Thereafter, he explicates Aristotle's opinion on slavery in order to then even forget his gesture of exclusion by saying:

For the ancients {Der antike Mensch} it is axiomatic that equal rights are in any case unjust. Only opportunism can bring them about, and they always conceal a "just" inequality of rightful claims by the different groups. It is true that Christianity destroys this point of view, but only by making an even greater qualitative distinction between men, which penetrates much more deeply into the ontological depths of the person. (RE 128; UW 108)

The idea of equality of human beings (equal reason, equal claims for salvation, equal abilities, equal innate ideas) «was added to Christian ideology at an early date, but has not grown from its living roots» (RE 129; UW 109). Indeed,

this idea and the idea of a «reasonable sphere» below the sphere of grace gained full victory in Thomas Aquinas. However, these conceptualizations «represent the first incursion of the young bourgeois ideals into the ideological system of the Christian Church» (RE 188 n. 28; UW 109 n. 1) .^[33] This is the same gesture of de-cision as found in Hitler and Heidegger. Instead of prudently balancing demands, promises, and possibilities that have been there from the beginning or have arisen in history, Scheler purifies the mixture by reestablishing the supposed pure entity and by «downgrading» the «value» of the others or completely abandoning them. There are several different phenomena in the modem age. However, those that don't fit into his picture are left out, and all the others are reduced to resentment. Aspirations, intrinsically boundless, and desire for progress («Grenzenlosigkeit des Strebens,» «"Fortschrittsstreben"») as a perversion of means and ends (RE 56; UW 48), «modern universal love of man » (RE 114; «moderne allgemeine Menschenliebe » UW 96), «value of things self-earned and self-acquired» (RE 138; «Der Wert des Selbsterarbeiteten und -erworbenen,» UW 115) as opposed to what one has by nature, race, and tradition, «subjectivization of values» (RE 144; «Die Subjektivierung der Werte,» UW 122) as the denial of the objective realm of values and their hierarchy, «elevation of the value of utility above the value of life» (RE 149; «Erhebung des Nützlichkeitswertes über den Lebenswert,» UW 126) and related phenomena—they all go back to resentment. Before the modern era, in the vertical hierarchy of offices, every individual—«from the king down to the hangman and the prostitute»—was aware that his or her office was fate, that is, assigned to him or her by God and nature, and that to meet the requirements of it was his or her duty. Each individual compared himself or herself only to individuals of the same rank, and each individual was «"noble" in the sense that he considers himself irreplaceable» in his or her office (RE 56; UW 48). In the modem era, all this was overthrown and replaced with limitless motions forward, in which mere means become ends, and in which objective ranking among values in themselves as well as among the empirical human beings is denied. Indeed, as Scheler summarizes right at the end,

the spirit of modern civilization does not constitute "progress" (as Spencer thought), but a decline {Niedergang } in the evolution of mankind. It represents the rule of the weak over the strong, of the intelligent over the noble, the rule of mere quantity over quality. It is a phenomenon of decadence, as is proved by the fact that everywhere it implies a weakening of man's central, guiding forces as against the anarchy of his automatic impulses. The mere means are developed and the goals are forgotten. And that precisely is decadence! (RE 174; UW 147)

Since it is not necessary for my purpose, and since he does not give masons but just appeals to intuitive evidence when it comes to his thesis that all this

goes back to resentment, I won't go into the details, but just present a passage close to the end in which Scheler summarizes several of his themes with the concepts of community and society. In modern times, «the principle of summation» is at work, according to which the whole is nothing but the sum of its parts and is subordinate to them. In the realm of values, the whole is prior to its parts and allots each of them its place:

Thus the principle of summation is in contradiction with the principle of {Christian, not socialist} solidarity. Both in idea and feeling, it entails a fundamentally different relation between the individual and the community {Gemeinschaft}. Under the sway of the principle of {Christian} solidarity, everyone knows and feels that the community as a whole is inherent in him—he feels that his blood is the blood which circulates in the community, that his values are part of the values which permeate the community. Here all values are based on solidarity of feeling and willing. The individual is the community's organ and at the same time its representative, its honor is his honor. This material inherence in the community is now replaced by the notion that the community is only the product of the interaction between the individuals. The communal values are supposedly created by adding up the values invested in the individuals. The individual values circulate merely through conscious communication and instruction, or by conscious recognition and "agreement." To put it more simply: The "community" {"Gemeinschaft"} and its structure is replaced by "society" {"Gesellschaft"}, in which men are arbitrarily and artificially united by promise and contract.

In fact, "society" is not the inclusive concept, designating all the "communities" which are united by blood, tradition, and history. On the contrary, it is only the remnant , the rubbish {Abfall, literally "fall-away-from"} left by the inner decomposition of communities. Whenever the unity of communal life can no longer prevail, whenever it becomes unable to assimilate the individuals and develop them into its living organs, we get a "society"—a unity based on mere contractual agreement. When the "contract" and its validity ceases to exist, the result is the completely unorganized "mass" {"Masse"}, unified by nothing more than momentary sensory stimuli and mutual contagion. Modern morality is essentially a "societal morality " {"Gesellschaftsmoral "}, and most of its theories are built on this basic notion. . .. negation of all primary "co-responsibility. " . . . The state, language, and custom are inventions. . . .

Here again, the feelings and ideas of those elements the old "community" had cast aside (its pariahs) have determined the general image of man and his associations. Even marriage and family . . . were artificially more and more degraded to a matter of civil contract.

Wherever a "community" existed, we find that the fundamental forms of communal life were endowed with a value far superior to all individual interests, to all subjective opinions and intentions. . .. Thus marriage . . . is a "sacrament." Wherever there is a real community, the forms of life have an intrinsic value on which individual interests, joys, and sufferings have no bearing. This

valuation disappears with the rise of "society"! . . . Instead of respecting them, one feels free to change them arbitrarily .

Another consequence of this basic attitude is the predominance of the principle of majority in politics and the state. In the communities, the will of the whole is manifested and revealed in the will of those who are the "noblest" by birth and tradition. Now, however, the will of the majority supposedly constitutes the will of the state.

All this shows the victory of ressentiment in morality. . . . . Such a postulate can only be established by those who feel that they are worthless and who want to pull the others down to their level. Even if a man is nothing at all, he is still "one"! (RE 165—168; UW 139—142)

Resentment is a psychological habit. From the thirteenth century on, it has been at work continuously and in silence in order to eruptively burst out in the French Revolution, «the greatest achievement of ressentiment in the modern era» (RE 196 n. 54; UW 145 n. 2). Due to their nature and social position, some groups, for instance women, are very prone to resentment (RE 60ff.; UW 51ff.), whereas «the soldier is least subject to ressentiment » (RE 65; UW 56). What was it that brought about resentment on a large scale such that resentment could topple the right order? It must have been a change of natures and cannot have been the usual suspect adduced by the Marxists; a change of natures that goes back to an infection. At the time, many German sociologists, philosophers, and intellectuals had already devoted a remarkable amount of intellectual energy to refuting Marx. In Der Bourgeois , Scheler sides with Sombart:

Sombart traces the "bourgeois spirit" ultimately to a bio-psychic type {biopsychischen Typus }, which can be explained only as a result of blood mixture {der nur auf Grund der Blutmischung verstanden werden kann}. It is precisely at this most dangerous place in his work—where it is most open for the attack of those who regard "true" and "demonstrable" as identical—that we must fundamentally agree with him. Those who—-being familiar with many basic types of humankind and having a firm and clear mental picture of them—have seen and felt the spiritual unity of this very type {i.e., the bourgeois type} in all of its manifestations will not let themselves be talked into buying the notion that this type is a product of the "milieu," of "education," of adaptation and habit. Still, even Sombart himself will admit that he hasn't given a strict "proof" of his thesis. (UW 356) .^[34]

Such is Scheler's theory on the genesis of capitalism. Capitalism has emerged because the Jews infected the body of the people and spoiled its blood. Scheler's theory of the genesis of capitalism is mirrored in his theory of the future of capitalism. Some readers might be wondering how Scheler can argue against liberals as well as leftists and at the same time demand that Europe «expel out of its blood like a foreign poison Anglo-American capitalism and the Calvinist-puritanistic obliteration of Christianity» (PPS 153). It has already

become clear, however, that the emphasis is on «blood,» «Anglo-American,» and the «Calvinistic-puritanistic obliteration of Christianity,» and not on «capitalism.» Scheler distinguishes between «'capitalist' spirit» and «industrialism» («Industrialismus»). The latter has nothing to do with the former, and it is only from the former and not the latter, that we have to liberate our minds, souls, and hearts (PPS 194f.). If Marx is wrong and Sombart right, «capitalism» is not a matter of the property structures in production, but a matter of spirit or ethos, as Scheler already said in Formalism in Ethics . The values and also their realization here on earth are largely independent of goods and also of relations between individuals mediated by the possession of goods. In fact, once the bourgeois spirit is expelled from our blood, private property of the means of production itself is beneficial to and necessary for the community. In the essay on resentment, Scheler criticizes Locke, Smith, and Ricardo. In their theories, private property becomes a matter of functional expediency. Scheler, however, maintains, again without giving any reason: «But just as all moral activity takes place within the framework of moral existence {Seins }, all labor on objects presupposes their ownership {Eigentum}» (RE 140; UW 118; quite obviously, he is so preoccupied with private property that he does not even notice that the sentence as it stands might equally well serve the workers as a slogan to expropriate the owners of private property). In the manuscript, "Christlicher Sozialismus als Antikapitalismus" (Christian Socialism as Anti-Capitalism), written in 1919 (PPS 697), Scheler maintains that, as a matter of principle, the Christian notion of property forbids socialization of the means of production. Only if certain ends cannot be achieved by private property is socialization allowed. Especially the private property of the middle class has to be preserved (PPS 663ff.). As to the problem of the replacement of the bourgeois ethos with a communitarian ethos, he maintains that private property of the means of production does not exclude social ethos and production for actual needs. Psychologically and sociologically, the entrepreneurial spirit of initiative and free responsibility is independent of egoism and selfishness. It can have other motives such as honor, respect in the community, and «enjoyment of being capable» («Könnensfreude») (PPS 672ff.). One might also assume that, once the Gesinnungen are cleansed of «English cant,» the institution of private property provides individuals with the necessary means to display the different rankings of their values. In this way, private property follows from the aristocratic principle, which he constantly stresses, and which liberalism, in his view, has perverted:

Even the last remnants of a social hierarchy—as a meaningful selection of the best and an image of the aristocracy that pervades all living nature—are cast overboard, and society is atomized in order to free the forces required for doing better business. The "estate" {"Stand"}—a concept in which noble blood and tradition determine the unity of the group—is replaced by the mere "class"

{"Klasse"}, a group unified by property, certain external customs ruled by fashion, and "culture." (RE 159; UW 135)

Still, one has to expel the bourgeois ethos. Scheler's model of the genesis of capitalism out of a mixture of blood and infection and the general framework of his theory of history also determine his thoughts on how to expel it. Though the pure has been overthrown, something of it has remained. For «the core of Christian theory and practice remained free from those phenomena. . . Christian philosophy as well remained basically free from the "dualism" of soul and body» (RE 135; UW 114). Also at the bottom of the hierarchy nothing essential has changed. In all its activities, resentment has not gebildet and transformed itself, and by definition it cannot do so. Rather, it has remained what it was from the beginning. Scheler acknowledges that things have become more complicated than at the time of the emergence of capitalism (RE 172; UW 145). He also insists that one has to distinguish between genetic causes and causes related to the maintenance of the already existing entity (UW 347). However, the former thought is not developed at all, and the latter is adduced only because it fits into Scheler's refutation of Marx. At the beginning of "Die Zukunft des Kapitalismus" (The future of capitalism), written in February 1914 (UW 385), Scheler quotes in Latin a further axiom of medieval thinking on causality that was used especially in the theory of creation and motion and was overthrown by modern physics. By doing so he indicates that, not only concerning the genesis but also the future of capitalism, he adheres to the same reductionism he has practiced with regard to the genesis of capitalism. It is not a matter of prudently working on individual aspects of capitalism in order to somehow overcome its shortcomings. Rather, one has to focus on the one and only cause. This approach allows him to exclude leftist, liberal, as well as conventional conservative politics, and to develop a right-wing position that, in its spirit, is more strongly antileftist and antiliberal than other parties on the Right. In fact, it provides the rationale for a militant anti-Semitism. Since the passage also shows a certain resolute antibourgeois tone typical of antibourgeois bourgeois intellectuals like Scheler (though other passages do so much better), I will quote the entire beginning of the essay:

Capitalism is, in the first place, not an economic system of distribution of property, but rather an entire system of life and culture . This system originated from the objectives and value-preferences of a certain biopsychic type of man , namely, the bourgeois, and it is sustained by the tradition of these preferences. If this assumption is right, which we share with Sombart, then we can—according to the axiom: cessante causa cessat effectus {If the cause disappears, the effect will also disappear}, and to the equally valid one that a change (decrease) of the effect can be expected only from a change (decrease) of the cause—hope for a decline of capitalism only if, and to the extent that, precisely this type of man loses his power, either because he carries the seeds of his extinction in his

own nature and its immanent developmental tendencies or because his ethos at least will lose its power to the ethos of a different type of man. (UW 382)

It is already this «result of the research into the causes of the genesis of capitalism» that excludes the expectation of capitalism's disappearance «from any change, of any kind, of the existing order of property, production, and distribution of the economic goods (as all the socialist parties demand and hope for)» (UW 382). Proletarians and their parties as well as liberals have been deprived of reason by Scheler. Therefore, they cannot bilden, educate, refine, themselves. Thus, they remain selfish. In consequence, the disappearance of capitalism is not to be expected «by a mere increase in number of the proletariat as an economic class and by a corresponding increase of its political power and rights» (UW 382f.).

For the same reason, not even a «lowering» of the capitalist ethos can be expected from social welfare run by the state (UW 383f.). If, by reduction, the proletarians as well as the liberal entrepreneurs are just selfish, one cannot hope for an overthrow of capitalism by allying oneself with them. All that is left is that one might hope for precapitalist residues among the bourgeoisie. Scheler has formulated the ontological presupposition of this in Formalism in Ethics :

Principles of value-judgment in an age, in the sense of a dominant or acknowledged "ethics, " {assumptions on the level of stratum 2} can rest on such deceptions {in stratum I}; and they can be overtaken {nachgeredet} and judged accordingly {nachgeurteilt} by those whose ethos {that is, stratum I } did not fall victim to such deceptions. (FEe 306; FE 310)

The conservatives are «the only groups whose bio-psychic type and historical traditional values can still be expected to put up a resolute fight against capitalism» (UW 385). However, they too have fallen prey to the capitalist ethos (UW 384f.) .^[35] At this point, Scheler steps out of the realm of ordinary conservatism, as it were, and opens up the space for an anti-Semitic politics of de-cision and expulsion. He develops the latter along two lines. First, Sombart is praised for having pointed to the «only possible final solution {die einzig mögliche endgültige Lösung} » of the question, namely, the «problem of population {Bevölkerungproblem }» (UW 387). However, in Scheler's view, Sombart didn't pose the problem correctly, for it is not just a matter of the quantity of the population, but rather its «qualitative» aspect (UW 387f.). The proletarians and conservatives don't present the active core of the bourgeois ethos, though they have been so thoroughly infected by it that their politics remain completely in its domain. At the core of the bourgeois ethos, in its active bearers, Scheler discovers its decline. For, it is

an inner law of the bourgeois type itself that, to the degree of their presence, precisely those properties that enable him to succeed as entrepreneur, trader,

etc., in the capitalist order, carry along as their consequence his diminished procreation and, by this, a diminution of the transmission of those characterological hereditary values that make up the aptitude for the capitalist spirit. . .. In consequence of precisely this attitude of calculating {Rechenhaftigkeit } follow at the same time economic prosperity and the diminished will for procreation, that is, the decrease of numbers of children of the calculating elements. According to what was said previously, beyond any doubt the aptitude to this attitude of calculating itself is a hereditary value and is bound to a vital type of lower value. (UW 388)

If, according to what was said previously, the «good old world» was free of capitalism, and if capitalism came about as the result of a mixture of blood, the German liberal entrepreneurs are not the ultimate cause. Rather, their hereditary values themselves are the result of the mixture of blood, which brought about capitalism, and which was initiated by someone else, who smuggled into them the bad genes. The ultimate cause are the Jews, and they should, and will, die out. One can hardly avoid getting the impression that this latter thought silently underlies Scheler's thinking, or that those interested in such a way of reasoning might assume it to be the underlying thought, when Scheler adds to the passage just mentioned: «There is an index, widely visible, of the slow dying out of the bourgeois type, namely, the fact of the dying out of the German Jew , as established recently by F. A. Teilhaber, in proportion to their gaining leading positions in capitalism and, at the same time, stepping out of the mysterious protective sphere of the Jewish tradition of family» (UW 389). As also in other passages, here the «type» is clearly grounded in what one calls «race,» and the view of the Jews is that they should die out. In the next sentence, Scheler adds that they will be the first to die out, and he reminds his readers of Zionism:

It is with regard to this Jewish type—today, with the inner right of the worthiness of being preserved of this great, gifted people the courageous and noble Zionism brusquely confronts it {= this Jewish type} with a different type and presses him deeply down into his honor and his conscience; often bloody and yet justly—that in time first and on a small scale the tragique destiny {das tragische Geschick } executes itself, which will execute itself with the bourgeois type in general; namely, that in the midst of the increasing gaining of capitalist power it {= the bourgeois type } will perish with all of its hereditary faculties, and it will fall prey to the increasing elimination {Ausschaltung} from history. (UW 389)

Certainly, by maintaining that war is «the constructive force» (PPS 77) of history, Scheler is virtually disempowering other elements in his theory, which might prevent those interested in such a way of thinking from speeding up «the increasing elimination» of the Jews «from history» by supporting Zionism or, if the Jews don't want to leave voluntarily, by throwing them out of

Germany. The second line, complementary to the first, relates to «one of the most important tendencies governing the entire world-historical development of this system of culture» (UW 385), and it pertains also to the political aspect of the bourgeois ethos, namely democracy—or, as he puts it, «"democratistic" value-preferences ("demokratistischen " Wertschätzungen )» (UW 385). According to him, democracy is no longer the preference of the majority. Rather, it has become the preference of the ruling minority. This follows from his theories in Formalism in Ethics and the essay on resentment. For, if democracy were still the preference of the majority, one could not speak of democracy as «a slave insurrection.» However, by Scheler's definition democracy is a slave insurrection. Thus, democracy must be the preference of a minority, which somehow for some time managed to give the semblance of representing the majority:

If these democratistic morals had remained the morals of the ruled "large number" and would not have become precisely the morals of the ruling "small number," one would never be entitled to talk of a slave insurrection in morals, that is, of an uprising of the inferior systems of value-preferences above the superior systems of value-preferences. For, always and ever it is the necessarily "small number" of the ruling individuals that determines which systems of value-preferences become the ruling ones. It is only the fact that the ethically and biologically inferior systems of value-preferences become the ones of the ruling minority that renders "revolution" something like a constant feature in the course of the modern development of states. (UW 387)

Only in a state of affairs where by means of democratism the vital type of inferior value has taken over, as in the modern era, does there exist a right of revolution (UW 387). Thus, one must not walk into the trap of taking the actors' words at face value. Rather, one has to hear that they are actually saying precisely the opposite of what they explicitly proclaim, and what they actually say is precisely what follows from Scheler's theoretical construction. Doing so, one hears that the cry for a revolution calls for precisely the opposite of what it explicitly demands. For, actually it calls for a cancellation of the democratic values: «The deepest soul of these movements is not the cry for "freedom and equality," which just lies on the surface; rather, it is the search for a minority which is worthy of ruling {over the members of the movements and the entire Gemeinschaft}» (UW 386).

The various voices are not taken with all their ambiguities and contradictions. Rather, they are reduced to the prejudice of the philosopher. In the movements outside of the economic realm, Scheler sees in the German youth, as well as in the French youth, the emergence of the new that is precisely the reemergence of the vital type that was toppled by the modern era: «In {these movements} a new type of man raises its head—still somewhat diffident—that type that has been suppressed by the epoch of capitalism» (UW 390).

Scheler points to the phenomena of the Youth movement: one turns away from the socioeconomic opposition between «"poor and rich"» and focuses on the questions of «vitality , and psychic and physical health of the Volk and the race» (UW 391). There is a «new love of nature and sport» and other phenomena (UW 391). In the first place, however, there is the concern about «questions regarding the choice of one's partner. . . . Historically, one of the roots of capitalism was the indiscriminate mixing of the noble vital type with the base type, whether for reasons of utility or for the sheer thrill of it» (UW 392). This is the second aspect of possible discrepancies between preferences in stratum I and preferences in stratum 2. According to Scheler, the young people have already realized that they did not mean equality, freedom, and the social question when they talked about democracy, and they have already replaced the old liberal or social democratic judgments in stratum 2 with the ones that conform to their antibourgeois preferences in stratum I and that present properly the reemergence of the old vital type, pushed aside by capitalism and now reemerging in stratum 1.

Scheler dwells on this theme for the rest of the essay (UW 390-395) and links it to «the best» in the countries in Asia. Despite all the noise about the universalization of capitalism, they know that in its center, in Western Europe, the bourgeois ethos «is already in the process of slowly dying out. . . . The time is not far off when {the story of progress in science} is believed only by Australian niggers» (UW 394f.). (Scheler claims of the Youth movement that those changes permeate «all classes with their new spirit» [UW 391]. Certainly it is more accurate to say that the Youth movement was mostly, if not exclusively, a bourgeois phenomenon. However, for the structure of his reasoning this doesn't matter.) Scheler maintains that «each ethical and political orientation concerning the ought, which might speed up the process of the disappearance of the capitalist ethos, can have its meaning only within the frame of this process {= the dying out of the Jews and the active bearers of the bourgeois ethos}, which is necessary , and which is not a matter of our conscious will» (UW 390).

Each political relation to the individuals who are supposed to be the promoters of the bourgeois ethos has to be based on the supposed biological fact that they will die out. The individuals are addressed not with regard to their logos, but with regard to their biology, which makes them die out, and they are not considered as individuals but only in reductive terms of biology and race. Only in some passages does Scheler distinguish linguistically between the ethos and the individuals as bearers of an ethos, though even here the distinction is more implicit (if present at all, for he talks not about the proletarians, but about the proletariat «qua "proletariat"» [UW 383]). However, when the «old world,» the world of capitalism, is toppled by the «new world,» which is the reemergence of the world capitalism had toppled, proletarians

qua proletarians, liberals qua liberals, and conservatives qua conservatives have to disappear anyway. If one considers the entire course of Scheler's essay, one sees immediately that it is the same as in section 74 of Heidegger's Being and Time . Ordinary Daseine live in the mode of the «they»; they live their lives as proletarians, liberals, or conservatives. In the stifling atmosphere of the late Kaiserreich and in the busy noise of the Weimar Republic something else announces itself, and something new arises. Still, ordinary Dasein covers this up and sticks to the «they»-like mode of life. However, a situation arises, for instance, with the beginning of World War I, that definitely calls for a decision. Some evade the call of fate and remain in their «they»-like modes. They become inauthentic. Others see through the work of covering up and obey the call. They become authentic. They realize that they are called upon to leave behind the «they»-like mode of parliamentarism and democracy. They are called into the Kampf, in which they recognize the real agent and the real foe. They realize that they are called upon to rerealize Gemeinschaft, that is, to erwidern its call for help, and they realize that they can do so only by expelling that which has pushed aside Gemeinschaft; that is, they are called upon to make a Widerruf of Gesellschaft.

I have already pointed out that for Scheler to expel capitalism does not mean to expel private property. Rather, if properly put in the service of the Gemeinschaft, private property of the means of production is a vital feature of it. As is already clear, for Scheler parliamentarism and democracy are not a feature of Gemeinschaft. Rather, they have to be expelled. Already in his book Formalism , Scheler indicated this in several passages, some of which I have already mentioned. After the passage on deceptions, falsifications, and overthrows as quoted above, Scheler gives an example of the ramifications of his theory:

Norms that come from vital values alone undoubtedly require in principle {prinzipiell, here a shorthand for «in accordance with the relations between values in the hierarchy of values as they exist independently of human beings»} an aristocratic structure of society, i.e., a structure in which noble blood {das edle Blur} and character-values of heredity belonging to such noble blood possess political prerogatives. But norms coming from values of utility dictate an equalization of biological value-differences among groups. Values of utility taken by themselves at least tend toward political democracy. (FEe 306f., FE 310f.)

Here too, Scheler gives no argument for his thesis. After the war, Scheler takes up this idea, for instance, in the essay "Christliche Demokratie" (Christian democracy) of 1919. I have already quoted a major passage that shows that the logic of de-cision is also at work in this essay. Modem democracy is

the result of the denial of the objective realm of values and, thus, has to be replaced with a revitalized Christian democracy. Christian democracy means that pace their differences in race, etc., human beings are equal before God, but only insofar as they are all children of the same father and thus brothers in the same family of God. This equality does not exclude inequalities in the realm of values and down here on earth. God has offered each human being grace—«though in accordance with the individuality of the soul a different measure of grace to each» (PPS 680f.). The ruler and the ruled have to conceive of their roles as a service to God (PPS 681). The paradigm of Christian democracy is the Catholic Church as the proper realization of the hierarchy of values. Power runs from above downward, not the other way around. It is democratic insofar as no one is excluded from being considered worthy of entering the ladder and moving upward (PPS 681ff.). Modern democracy has perverted the order of values. It regards freedom rather than the realization of the eternal order to be the end of history. It regards all forms in which human beings live together as produced by themselves and, thus, human beings can also dissolve them. This too runs counter to the eternal order. In modern democracy, the order of values is freedom, equality, and brotherliness. In Christian democracy, it is different. First comes truth, second goodness, and third brotherliness. Only then follow freedom and equality. Freedom goes before equality because of the notion of justice as already mentioned (PPS 683). This is in line with Scheler's interpretation of autonomy in Formalism in Ethics , one crucial aspect of which is the following:

But morally valuable obedience {Gehorsam} exists whenever, despite the lack of insight into the moral value of a commanded state of affairs which characterizes obedience as obedience, the insight into the moral goodness of willing and willing persons (or their "office") is evidentially given, the goodness becoming manifest in the making of the commandments or (in concreto ) in the ordering of the orders. In this case there is autonomous and immediate insight into the moral value of commanding, heteronomous and mediate insight into the value of the commanded value-complex, and at the same time complete autonomy of willing in rendering obedience. (FEe 500; FE 491)

The paradigm of this concept of autonomy is obedience to God (FEe 500; FE 491). Of the numerous passages in which Scheler praises the sense of sacrifice suppressed by Gesellschaft, I quote only one from the essay on resentment:

We do believe that life itself can be sacrificed for values higher than life, but this does not mean that all sacrifice runs counter to life and its advancement. . . . We have an urge to sacrifice before we ever know why, for what, and for whom! {Es drängt uns, zu opfern —ehe wir wissen, warum und wofür und für wen!} (RE 89; UW 75f.)^[36]

This was written shortly before World War I. Scheler had hoped that World War I was the rerealization of the Gemeinschaft, which had been toppled by modern society and parliamentarism. However, World War I turned out to be disillusioning.^[37] In addition, it was lost, and consequently a full-blown modern democratic constitution took over. In February of 1919, the National Assembly released a provisional constitution and elected as president the Social Democrat Friedrich Ebert. In July 1919, the Weimar Republic was inaugurated with a Social Democratic president and the Social Democrats as the strongest party. In the speech, "Christlicher Sozialismus als Antikapitalismus" (Christian socialism as anticapitalism) in April 1919 (PPS 697f.), Scheler summarizes his criticism of Marx and his own theory on capitalism and history (PPS 624f.) and elaborates on the issue in eight points. At the end of the third, he formulates the opposition between Hegel, Marx, and the social democrats on the one hand and himself on the other, again employing metaphors identical to those Hitler used: «Not progress, but development and falling-down-and-away-from and re-naissance» (PPS 628; «Nicht Fortschritt, sondern Entwicklung und Dekadenz und Wiedergeburt»). «Progress» was the catchword of liberals as well as—according to Scheler—of Hegel, Marx, and social democracy. The progressive development of Gesellschaft would realize freedom, for liberals within a liberal, for social democrats within a socialist, and for Marxists within a communist society. For Scheler, this project of liberals and leftists is a falling-down-and-away-from, a de-cadence, which must be countered by a renaissance of the proper order of the human heart, which has to overthrow the capitalism that has toppled it. The «lower» entities are devoid of reason, and too thoroughly infected by «English cant.» They themselves cannot achieve «higher» values. Thus, we are in need of, in Scheler's terms, a new «moral-religious genius.» It is a very moving as well as very frightening passage:

All history of religion and church has its main phases—its soul—in new religious men: Benedict, St. Bernard, St. Francis, Ignatius, Luther, Calvin, etc. History of religion is the soul of history. The soul of history of religion in turn is the history of the souls of the saints. . . . We can only wait and hope, prepare the way and believe that God is gracious and will one day send us such a soul. Again, here one can "do" {"machen"} nothing; very unpleasant for the new-German belief in deed and power, but unfortunately unchangeable. However, as a matter of fact, we see that at the beginning was not the deed, as Kantians and Fichtians believe, but rather the Logos and love; however, not the impersonal Logos, as Hegel believed, but rather the person capable of spirit and love, namely, the man, whom one believes—without reasons; believing first and foremost in his being and the specific nearness of this being to God; the man, who—as we Christians believe—would know to reproduce {reproduzieren} the Savior {Heiland} anew; however, not externally copying him, but rather from within; from the depths of his divine mind and character. We know one thing:

he would have to combine, like no other, and concentrate within himself the entire uncurable illness and sin of this time—just as, on the cross, the Savior "was completely sin." Thus, we definitely will not find him (1.) among the healthy ones, (2.) among politicians, (3.) among the correct bourgeois individuals. In all his utmost concentration of sin in his heart, he must, however, at the same time carry in his heart an equally strong will for salvation {zum Heile} and for recovery—not only for himself, but for all—in the extreme exertion of co-responsibility—such that he only just—I say only just—looked beyond sin; the one who would objectify sin as sin and, by this, would become its free lord and master. Everything else he might be is only his concern, not ours. How could we be in a position to prescribe how he is supposed to be? How could we do so as, indeed, we hope to experience from him what we have to be and do? For the time being, as we have not the slightest idea of such a thing, we Christians believe only one thing, namely, that he would be a Christ {ein Christ} according to the broad and noble definition our faith gives to this word. (PPS 645f.)