LIFETIME

MAX SCHELER'S PHILOSOPHY OF TIME

 PHAENOMENOLOGICA
SERIES FOUNDED BY H.L. VAN BREDA AND PUBLISHED
UNDER THE AUSPICES OF THE HUSSERL-ARCHIVES

169

MANFRED S. FRINGS

LIFETIME

MAX SCHELER'S PHILOSOPHY OF TIME

A First Inquiry and Presentation

Editorial Board:
Director: R. Bernet (Husserl-Archief, Leuven) Secretary: J. Taminiaux (Centre
d'etudes phenomenologiques, Louvain-la-Neuve) Members: S. IJsseling (Husserl-
Archief, Leuven), H. Leonardy (Centre d'etudes phenomenologiques, Louvain-la-
Neuve), U. Melle (Husserl-Archief, Leuven), B. Stevens (Centre d'etudes pheno-
menologiques, Louvain-la-Neuve)
Advisory Board:
R. Bernasconi (Memphis State University), D. Carr (Emory University, Atlanta),
E.S. Casey (State University of New York at Stony Brook), R. Cobb-Stevens
(Boston College), J.F. Courtine (Archives-Husser!, Paris), F. Dastur (Universite de
Nice), K. Dusing (Husserl-Archiv, Koln), J. Hart (Indiana University, Bloomington),
K. Held (Bergische Universitat Wuppertal), K.E. Kaehler (Husserl-Archiv, Koln),
D. Lohmar (Husserl-Archiv, Koln), W.R. McKenna (Miami University, Oxford,
USA), J.N. Mohanty (Temple University, Philadelphia), E.W. Orth (Universitlit Trier),
P. Ricreur (Paris), K. Schuhmannt (University of Utrecht), C. Sini (Universita degli
Studi di Milano), R. Sokolowski (Catholic University of America, Washington D.C.),
B. Waldenfels (Ruhr-Universitlit, Bochum)
 LIFETIME
MAX SCHELER'S PHILOSOPHY OF TIME
A First Inquiry and Presentation

by
MANFRED S. FRINGS

SPRINGER-SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, B.V.

A c.I.P. Catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN 978-90-481-6301-4 ISBN 978-94-017-0127-3 (eBook)

DOI 10.1007/978-94-017-0127-3

Printed on acid-free paper

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2003 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 2003
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2003
No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, Of transmitted
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 v

THIS TEXT IS DEDICATED TO

THE INTERNATIONAL MAX SCHELER SOCIETY

Vl

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

I am grateful to Eugene Kelly, Professor at the New York Institute of

Technology, Old Westbury, N.Y., for his assistance and insightful
suggestions while reading the first draft of the text. I am indebted
to the high measure of his expertise in Max Scheler research from
which I benefited in finalizing the manuscript.
 Table of Contents

EXPOSITION OF THE TEXT ..................................................... xiii

CHAPTER I

TIME STRUCTURES AMONG VALVES

A. DESCRIPTION OF RANKS AND TYPES OF VALUES

AND TIME

1. Values Felt in the Lived Body or the Sensible Values ........ 1

2. Pragmatic Values ................................................................. 4
3. Life-Values .......................................................................... 9
4. Values ofthe Mind ............................................................ 12
5. The Value ofthe Holy ........................................................ 13

B. PHENOMENOLOGY OF VALUES AND OF THEIR TIME

1. Introductory Note on Value-Phenomenology .................... 15

2. Feeling ............................................................................... 20
3. Preferring ........................................................................... 22
4. Love and Time ................................................................... 24
5. Phenomenology of Good and Evil in Relation to Time ..... 27

C. SOCIOLOGY OF VALUES AND TIME

Introductory Note on Social Forms ....................................... 32

1. The Mass ............................................................................ 34
2. Utility Cooperatives ........................................................... 36
3. The Life-Community ........................................................ .42
a. Survey of Principles Underlying the Life-Community ..42
b. Contemporary Attitude Toward Life Values ................. 50
Vlll LIFETIME

4. Society ............................................................................... 57
a. The Argument against Society as a Social Form of
Mental Values ................................................................ 59
b. The Argument for Society as a Social Form of
Mental Values ................................................................ 59
5. The Encompassing Person ................................................. 61

D. ONTOLOGY OF VALUES AND TIME

1. The Concept of Ontology .................................................. 65

2. The Ontological Place of the Being of Values .................. 67
3. The Ontological Status ofthe Functionalization of
Values in Reality and the Primacy of Their Givenness ..... 72

E. SYNOPSIS OF TIME STRUCTURES AMONG VALUES ........ 74

CHAPTER II

LIFE AND TIME

A. REALITY AND THE DIRECTION TOWARD YET

UNKNOWN FUTURE EVENTS

1. The Constitution of Reality ............................................... 79

a. Reality Seen Phenomenologically ................................. 79
b. Reality Seen Metaphysically ......................................... 82
2. The Function of Time in Realizing Factors ....................... 85
3. The Constitution of "First" and "Afterward" in Drives ... 95
 TABLE OF CONTENTS lX

B. THE CONSTITUTION OF TIME IN LIFE ................................. 97

GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF IMPULSION AND

ABSOLUTE TIME .................................................................................. 97
1. Impulsion ........................................................................... 97
2. Absolute Time .................................................................. 100

SPECIFIC CHARACTERISTICS OF IMPULSION AND

ABSOLUTE TIME ............................................................................... 102
3. The Coincidence of Meaning and Phase .......................... 102
4. Becoming and Un-Becoming. Time in the Process of
Aging and Time Shifts in Consciousness ....................... .1 03
5. Absolute Time in Transitions .......................................... 108

THE CONSTITUTION OF TEMPORALIZATION ........................ 114

6. The Phenomenon of Fluctuation in Absolute Time ......... 114

7. The Four Dimensions of Impulsion and Theoretical
Physics ............................................................................. 11 7
8. Irreversible Successiveness .............................................. 122
9. Temporalization through Modification ............................ 126
a. Modification as Variation of Acts ofthe Person ......... 127
b. Modification as Constituted in Impulsion .................. 127
c. Modification and the Field Theory of Theoretical
Physics ........................................................................ 128

C. THE CONSTITUTION OF OBJECTIVE TIME ........................ 132

1. The Void .......................................................................... 132
2. Distance ........................................................................... 139
X LIFETIME

CHAPTER III

AT THE CROSSROADS OF THE

PRESENT AND THE FUTURE

A. THE DIAMETRICAL DIRECTIONS OF DRIVES AND MIND

1. The Growth of Mind and the Devolution of Drive

Directions ......................................................................... 145
2. The Three Eras of History and the Transition from
Absolute to Objective Time ............................................. 149
a. The Shifts of Sociological Transitions ........................ 153
b. The Shifts from the Predominance of Absolute Time
to the Predominance of Objective Time ...................... 153
3. Types ofPredictions and Their Classification ................. 157

B. CAPITALISM: THREE THESES CONCERNING ITS

META-ECONOMIC ORIGIN

1. Max Weber ...................................................................... 167

2. Werner Sombart ............................................................... 168
3. Max Scheler ..................................................................... 171
a. Despair ........................................................................ 171
b. Angst. .......................................................................... 174
c. Scheler and Kant.. ....................................................... 177
d. The Paradox of Capitalism and Socialism.
The Belief in Idols ...................................................... 181
4. Objective Time in Capitalism. A Cultural
Observation ...................................................................... l86
 TABLE OF CONTENTS Xl

C. ABSOLUTE AND OBJECTIVE TIME IN TWO PRESENT

ISSUES OF CONCERN

1. WORLD POPULATION .................................................................. 191

a. Exposition of the Issue ................................................. 191
b. Population in Capitalist Countries ............................... 193

2. POLITICS AND MORALS ................................................................... .

a. Exposition of the Issue ................................................ .204
b. Politics and Morals: Four Types of Their Relations .... 206
c. The Mutual Exclusion of Politics and Morality in
Light of the Person ...................................................... .212
d. The Mutual Exclusion of Politics and Morality in
Light of Values ............................................................ 215
e. The Mutual Exclusion of Politics and Morality in
Light of Human Destiny ............................................. .215

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES

1. The German Collected Works

(Gesammelte Werke) ....................................................... .221
2. Current English Translations .......................................... .222
3. Secondary International Literature .................................. 226

INDEX

1. Index of Subject Matter .................................................. .237

2. Index of Names ................................................................ 240
 EXPOSITION OF THE TEXT

It is no understatement to maintain that Max Scheler's philosophy of

time has hitherto been hardly recognized as a significant element of
his thought. Surely, one of the reasons why the subject has not been
explored as much as it could have been is that Scheler himself did not
use the term "philosophy of time" in his writings. What he said on the
subject has come down to us in numerous references which appear
in different contexts, such as ethical, sociological, anthropological,
and metaphysical ones, and which, in addition, are scattered
throughout the fifteen volumes of the Collected Works ( Gesammelte
Werke). No systematic treatment of the phenomenon of time had been
offered by Scheler.
Rather than introducing the following text on the subject by
comparing it to that of others who systematically wrote on it, it might
be more beneficial to expose the present text within some pivotal
contexts of the development of the history of the philosophy of time
itself, although a comprehensive history of the philosophy of time is
still to be written. Let us take a brief look for our purposes, then, into
said pivots that directly or indirectly have a relationship to Scheler's
thought.
In pre-Socratic thought, there appear only two ideas of time
but they are as contrary to one another as one can think. They are: (1)
Heraclitus' thought of an ever changing flux without origin and end
of all entities in the world, and (2) Parmenides' thought that the
essence of all beings stands still in that the running off of time and
changes are explained to be illusions.
Plato referred to time specifically only in some passages of his
dialogue, Parmenides. He is also said to have invented a first
clocking device, a water clock. A most definitive coverage of the
nature of time we find in Greek philosophy is, of course, in Aristotle's
works. He was the first to connect time with measurement: time is
the measure of motion. In early Medieval philosophy, St.Augustine's
ideas about time are also more explicitly articulated in saying that we
are near the essence of time whenever we are not thinking about time;
that is, when we are not aware of it before we make deliberate and
XIV LIFETIME

objective use of time with measuring devices such as calendars or the

movement of stars. St. Thomas' understanding of time is oriented
around Aristotle, but it is also seen within the context of Christian
faith. On the one hand, time is finite. It stretches between creation and
the final judgment; on the other hand, time is eternal in heaven.
During the Renaissance, Giordano Bruno anticipated Scheler
in terms of an organismic conceptualization of the universe, and he
anticipated also Einstein somewhat with regard to the "relativity" that
holds among monads, implying that the universe has no center.
Given such a slow albeit hopeful development of unveiling the
nature of time, it was at the beginning of modem philosophy that
philosophical studies about time lost their attraction. The Cartesian
principle, for instance, that all entities are either extended or thinking
entities, saying that the principles of thinking and extension ("res
cogitantes" and "res extensae") are mutually exclusive, leaves out
even a suggestion of a "res temporalis" that could either permeate
thinking or permeate both thinking and extension simultaneously. In a
Parmenidesian sense, Descartes' cogito ergo sum appears to be a
standing now. It has no attribute of being in the past or in the future.
That this cogito could be in a temporal flux appears to have been of
little concern.
It was not until Kant, however, that the philosophy of time
proper became a central issue. Time was shown to be a form of inner
perception, in contrast to Newton's conception of objective time
considered to be an infinite container, wherein entities exist. In the
nineteenth century, the issue of time appears to move again into the
background, except that time was either positively or negatively
assessed by what Kant had already established earlier. Keeping in
mind that time had been seen also in psychological, biological, and
other aspects, a philosophy of time was, however, very much of an
ingredient in Hegel's historical passage back and forth of "thesis,"
"antithesis," and "synthesis."
A marked exception, however, to such more or less general
references to the nature of time during the nineteenth century is
Nietzsche's concept of "Eternal Recurrence." Heidegger elucidated
Eternal Recurrence in the tradition of the history of metaphysics,
namely existence or "that" something is and, respectively, Heidegger
elucidated Nietzsche's "Will to Power" as essence, or as "what" is, or
whatness.
 EXPOSITION XV

Still, in the history of various conceptualizations of time,

Nietzsche's Zarathustra and Twilight of the Idols are uniquely
historical-cultural visions of time. This is because in Nietzsche, time
is anchored in his principle according to which truth is error. There
being no truth at all, everything is in this view perspectival, oblique,
slanted, and relative. Human reason is situated just in a narrow
"comer" (die Ecke) of the universe as its habitat. It is from this
perspectival comer that an arrogant reason seeks to prove truths,
evidence, principles, and tries to establish absolutes like God, but
which are nothing but ephemeral interpretations dreamed up behind
rational blinders. The error of truth is historically reflected by the
shadows that truth-believers as Plato, Christians, Kant, Positivists,
and others have cast over humanity. But the arrogance of believing in
absolute truth will come to an end in time when the Zarathustrian
"Noon" of Eternal Recurrence, - the "moment of the briefest shadow"
and the "end of the longest error" - will occur; that is, when, for a
brief moment, the rays of the sun are vertical to the rim of the wheel
of Eternal Recurrence, and when Zarathustra sees the world com-
pletely bare of the shadows of oblique absolutes as truth and God.
But at the end of this moment, the wheel begins to tilt again and the
shadows of the tragedy in the eternally rotating existence grow again,
taking with them the errors of the absolutes. Nietzsche's concept of
Eternal Recurrence is cyclic. It resembles the cycles often found in
mythology of various experiences of time among tribes, ancient
religions and cultures. By contrast, the present-day experience of time
is linear, flowing irretrievably from the past over a present into a
future, never to return to a beginning point.
In the twentieth century, it was both Husserl and Heidegger
who incorporated at least a number of principles of their philosophy
of time in their works. Although Max Scheler did not do so in his own
works as explicitly - perhaps because of his early death -, the present
inquiry will show that ( 1) a philosophy time runs through his entire
work also, and (2) that it goes well beyond Husserl's and Heidegger's
analyses of time.
In general, the differences between Husserl and Heidegger, on
the one hand, and Scheler, on the other, appear to be the following.
Husserl's analyses of time are, of course, a strictly phenomenological
explication of "time-consciousness." His distinctions made between
retention and protention, on the one hand, and objective recollection
and objective expectation, on the other, are cornerstones of time-
XVI LIFETIME

consciousness within which the ego keeps on moving or "now-ing"

(das Jetzten). Except for this egological element in the constitution of
time, we find Husserl's concepts of protention and retention already
treated in Max Scheler's 1913-16 Formalism in Ethics and Non-
Formal Ethics of Values, although explained here in a quite different
terminology. Scheler had already drawn a sharp distinction between
the "immediate remembrance" (i.e., retention) and an "immediate
anticipation" (i.e., protention), on the one hand, and between the
"objective recollection" and an "objective expectation," on the other.
Heidegger's ontological analysis of temporality presented in Being
and Time (1927) is well known, but we will refer to it in our study
when necessary.
A number of fundamental differences in the philosophy of
time of Husserl, Heidegger, and Scheler are differences of principle.
Whereas Husserl' s phenomenology of time led Heidegger to an
ontological analysis of it in Being and Time, Scheler's philosophy of
time happens to be considerably wider in scope than that of Husserl
and Heidegger. For it extends way beyond the temporality of just the
human being. Scheler's constitution of time spans atomic time, time
of the individual and general life, sociology, the human being as such,
cosmic time and a simultaneously temporal process of the becoming
of (1) the human being, (2) of the world, and (3) of an unfinished
"Deity-in-becoming." In short, Scheler's philosophy of time pertains
to man's situatedness in the cosmos reaching from the world of atoms
to the Divine. In its cosmic respect, his philosophy of time is
sometimes reminiscent of, but also different from Nietzsche's views.
Scheler's philosophy of time is not only phenomenological and
ontological as was the case with Husserl and Heidegger. It is a grand
attempt to trace time in its micro- and macrocosmic constitution, and
in which humanity, as a process of temporalization itself, lives its
existence. Since Scheler considered time, as compared with space,
primordial, because time has a "higher dignity" than space (XI 160;
XII 215; I 295), we decided to examine in what follows the con-
stitution of time alone. The constitution of space, which often runs
parallel to that of time in Scheler, will be referred to when clarif-
ication obliges us to do so. Yet, a presentation of Scheler's
philosophy space still needs to be written, and I hope, the present
study will provide encouragement for a related presentation of Max
Scheler's philosophy of space. But Scheler's sprinkled insights, to be
found in this text, into the unfolding, self-becoming, anthropological,
 EXPOSITION XVll

meta-physical, and scientific aspects of time, will in our presentation

of them reveal that time is likely to be the most mysterious
phenomenon accessible in phenomenological intuition and a
metaphysical, cosmic vision.
According to the evolution of Scheler's thought, we found it
appropriate to first remind ourselves of the role that time plays in his
Formalism in Ethics. Although time is not specifically articulated in
this grand oeuvre, we will find some solid footing in it for the inquiry
and presentation of his philosophy of time about which, let us stress,
we have almost nothing but various textual bits in his posthumous
manuscripts and in said scattered references in the Collected Works.
It goes without saying that a study made into a specific area as
the philosophy of time in Scheler is at the expense of a simultaneous
coverage of the nature of the human being which occupied Scheler
until the end of his life. He told us that an understanding of who we,
as humans, are, is at the core of all of his philosophical questioning.
He discarded collectively all the traditional definitions of man, such
as "the rational being," the "created being," or as an "outcome" of
Darwin's evolution theory, or as a "tool man," and other definitions,
saying that all of them fall short of what it means to be human.
Scheler's philosophy of time does, however, at least delineate
two contrasting terms of the essence of the human being; i.e., terms
which appear to be grounded in two equally contrasting terms of
human temporality: objective time and absolute time.
As to objective time, ever so much at the center of the
experience of time of the modem human being, it contributed to the
understanding of the universe as a huge and measurable mechanism, a
machinery of billions of moving and expanding galaxies with other
systems in them, as that of our own solar system with its petite planet
earth. In our time the universe is the object of continued technological
exploration which has been equally enormous and successful. As
compared to the vastness of the mechanical universe, a human being
appears to be no more than just a "thinking dot" (III 139 I R 135),
comparable, if you will, to the above Nietzschean "Ecke."
As to absolute time, however, in which the human being has a
part, we will see that being human is no such a thinking dot. Rather,
being human turns out in Scheler to be a "direction" that absolute
time itself takes (XI 220), and that the entire cosmos, too, is taking
toward an increasing "mutual penetration" (Durchdringung) of both
individual and universal life and of individual and universal spirit.
XVlll LIFETIME

Throughout this text, references to relevant German passages

and to English translations appear, as the above two examples have
already indicated, on the lines of the text, and separate from footnotes.
The volumes of the German Collected Works are indicated in Roman
numbers, starting with Volume I up to Volume XV. For example,
quotes may appear as "II 347," meaning Volume II of the Collected
German Edition, and the page 347 therein. Relevant and current trans-
lations into English, when available, are referred to by the letters that
stand for the abbreviations of the English translations as listed at the
end of the book. For instance, F 345-6 stands for Formalism in
Ethics, pages 345-6.
I am much indebted to Drs. lain and Kirsten Thomson for their
caring assistance in technical matters. Last, not least, I deeply thank
my wife Karin for her support and patience.

September 2001 Manfred S. Frings

Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA
 CHAPTER I
TIME STRUCTURES AMONG VALUES

A. DESCRIPTION OF RANKS AND TYPES OF

VALUES AND TIME

1. Values Felt in the Lived Body or the Sensible Values

As the title of Scheler's early major work, Formalism in Ethics and

Non-Formal Ethics of Values. A New Attempt Toward the Foundation
of an Ethical Personalism indicates, there are two parts to the 659
pages of the German original. Part I deals with the nature of values.
Part II deals with the nature of the Person. Accordingly, we now set
forth to make a general description of five major types of values with
special attention to the relation they have to time. The types of values
concerned are what Scheler called "non-moral values" in distinction
from the "moral values" of good and evil. These will also be des-
cribed in their relationship to time.
The non-moral values are divided into five ranks. These ranks
have different heights, and in this sense they are referred to here as
the vertical value ranks. All values within each of the five ranks have
two characteristics: They are either positive or negative values. This
distinction pertains to the horizontal character each rank has.
The vertical character of the ranks of values implies that these
ranks have an ascending order or, depending on where one begins to
describe them, a descending order. We choose the ascending order in
our description, thus beginning with the lowest rank of values.
The lowest rank among values contains those values that are
felt in animal organisms and in the lived body of the human being.
These values span feelings of physical comfort and discomfort in
whatever parts of the body and in whatever gradations of the intensity
felt. Comfort and discomfort are referred to by Scheler as values of
"agreeableness" or "disagreeableness" (angenehm and unangenehm).
Although these values are shared among all animals, they are felt
differently in each species and also differently among individual
animals of one and the same species. What is comfortable to the
2 LIFETIME

animals of one species may be uncomfortable or even harmful to

other species.
The human organism is called by Scheler "Der Leib" or the
lived body. 1 The capacity to feel or have the "feelability" of sensible
values does not originate, of course, in external inanimate objects that
are felt. Rather, their feelability is given only in an organism. It is
important to note that it is impossible to communicate these values of
physical comfort and discomfort to another person's lived body. This
can easily be seen when we suffer, say, from a tooth-ache. This pain
is not co-feelable by another person. It cannot be shared. One cannot
share another person's feelings of physical strength and fatigue either.
No matter whether these sensible values of the lived body are positive
or negative, they are not communicable. There are three points to be
made here:
a) We stated that sensible values are felt in the lived body.
For example, when we say that the seat we occupy in a plane is
uncomfortable, this means that the seat is "felt" to be uncomfortable
by our lived body. The inanimate seat itself has no sensibility of its
own. Besides, someone else might feel just comfortable in the same
seat during another flight. Hence, what we mean by saying that the
seat is uncomfortable is that my lived body "uncomfortables" or
"comfortables," as it were, that seat. Using these uncommon words in
the description at hand indicates that there is also an element of time
involved in the lived body, and not in the seat. It also follows that a
judgment made on the values concerned can be misleading. To say
"I" feel comfortable in the seat replaces the appropriate noun "lived
body" with the inappropriate pronoun "1." Strictly speaking "I" do not
feel in the case but the lived body's sensation does.
b) That two persons may experience this seat as comfortable,
or as uncomfortable, shows that already the experience of sensible
values can differ from person to person. We can realize, for instance,
that different persons agree or disagree on the taste of a particular

1 The distinction made in Formalism between a lived body (Leib) and an object bo-

dy (Korper) (II 461 IF 466) was elaborated on later by Merleau-Ponty who was at
least aware of Scheler's Formalism. Whether M. Merleau-Ponty borrowed the dis-
tinction from Scheler, we do not know. Concerning a more recent, detailed compa-
rison between the two thinkers, see: Christian Bermes: "Geist und Leib.
Phiinomenologie der Person bei Scheler und Merleau-Ponty." In: Person und Wert.
Schelers "Formalismus" - Perspektiven und Wirkungen. Christian Bermes,
Wolfhart Henckmann, Heinz Leonardy (Eds.), Mlinchen: Verlag Karl Alber, 2000
(p.l39-l6l ).
 VALUES AND TIME 3

kind of food. No matter what such individual cases tell us, Scheler
pointedly stated that animals and human life are ultimately "fated" by
experiences of sensible comfort or discomfort.
c) There is also already in this lowest rank of values a char-
acter that suffuses all other value ranks. It is impossible that an organ-
ism or the lived body itself could prefer discomfort over the positive
value of comfort. An organism does not prefer pain and aching over
having no pain and aching. The lived body's factual preferring the
physical well-being of its local organs over local pain in the lived
body is no result, however, of the person's will this to be the case.
Rather, the preference lies in the feelings themselves that, hori-
zontally, bespeak this preference in this value rank. Said sensible
value preference is prior to acts of the will and of judgments and, as
we shall see, it is also valid in the nature of the vertical structure of
value ranks. Also the heights and levels of the value ranks are
independent of judgment and willing. Furthermore, the verticality of
the rungs of the ladder of value ranks, as it were, will show us also
that each rung has its own temporality.
This does not mean that willing and making judgments play
no role at all in this matter. Indeed, lower values let themselves be
handled willfully much more than the values of all the higher ranks.
Higher values are immune, so to speak, to be handled willfully. One
can will to have one's tooth-ache cured, but one cannot will to treat
the value of holiness in such a fashion. In addition, the lower values
are manageable by all kinds of devices, for instance, by those used in
medical treatment and cosmetic techniques. The manageability of
sensible feelings and values betrays yet another character: Sensible
values are divisible values because they are felt in specific extended
areas in and on the lived body. Their manageability, divisibility, and
the role of the will, are variable factors. These characters diminish to
a point zero during the series of steps we now take by ascending
toward the higher value ranks. And while we take these steps, we will
also see that there is an increasing temporality up to the higher and
highest value ranks.
Concerning the factor of time in the lowest rank of sensible
values, the following holds: Objective measurable time is manifested
in the human body when the body is taken as an object. Birthdays are
a case in point.
On the other hand, our bodies are also experienced as lived
bodies characterized by a constant duration of the feeling of life in
4 LIFETIME

them. Hence, the lived body is also imbued with the feelings of life-
values that we will discuss below. The lived body and the constant
feeling of it spans the uninterrupted time between one's birth and
death upon which we, more often than not, can take a look at, and
make observations of them as objects. The nature of this "lived" time
will be explored in Chapter II.
Let us add a cultural point to the experience of sensible values
of the pleasant and unpleasant in our own times. The consideration
pertains to Scheler's claim that modem human beings are losing the
sense of shame. He calls this "the decline of the feeling of shame in
modem times" (X 131 I PV 69). There is no question that the modem
cultivation of the object body as in sports activities, in cosmetics, etc,
takes the body as an objectified thing. Modem society's tendency to
objectively cultivate sensible feelings of comfort and good-looking
body expressions among others contribute to a reduction of possible
shame experiences of the self-value of the individual person. The
decrease of shame is a result of a myriad of productions of things and
gadgets designed to attain whatever physical satisfaction in the object
body. Among them are chemical and technical devices for arousing
the sexual drive, or temporary comfort attained by excessive drinking,
eating, and smoking. These and other factors in society bring with
them a general "degeneration" of the self-value of the individual
person in the presence of overwhelming needs of the object body that
are in conflict with the personal self-value of relevant individuals.
The disharmony between these two poles becomes numbed, and with
it, the value of the self, which would make it impossible to be
ashamed of unorthodox bodily practices. Said degeneration consists
in an increasing loss of the experience of the personal self-value in
favor of increasing attention to bodily needs and interests.

2. Pragmatic Values

Pragmatic values, for which Scheler also uses the term "values of
usefulness," are those values whose intrinsic meaning is to be useful,
or not useful (nutzlich, nutzlos), for something. In the main, these
values occur with the use of things and tools.
Already the ancient Greeks called things "pragmata" from
which such words as "pragmatic" and "practice" are derived. Still, the
meaning of usefulness can also play a role in a mentality, among
 VALUES AND TIME 5

ideas, and in a system of value-preferences called an "ethos" as that

of modem capitalism. As is the case with the sensible values, the
second higher value rank contains values which we also share with
animals, for instance, when animals look for useful materials to build
a nest, or when higher apes use a stick to recover bits of food that are
otherwise out of the reach of their limbs.
Pragmatic values play a rapidly increasing role in today's
technology ranging from atomic physics to astrophysics where they
can unleash future technological progress and also harm.
It is typical for the role that pragmatic values play in life that
whatever turns out to be not useful is discarded which, in tum, opens
new avenues for the creation of new useful things and devices not
seen in earlier times in their pragmatic value. Moreover, the values of
usefulness play a fundamental role in economics, in profit-making, in
manufacture, in business planning, in inventions, and in many of our
daily activities, all of which are beset with this value-rank. 2
The essence of usefulness, ever so important in our age of
technology, is discussed in the 1915/16 manuscript, "Vital Values."
Scheler withdraws the notion contained in Formalism that the value
of usefulness has its foundation in sensible values and is not, for this
reason, an independent value rank as the other ranks are. In said
manuscript, he also argues that the value of usefulness cannot appear
in its essence when it is connected with a purpose. True, a knife can
be useful for cutting bread; it can be a means for a purpose, say, to
kill someone by "using" the knife. Rather, the essence of the
usefulness of things is "Werkzeuglichkeit," i.e., it is to be seen in their

2 There are several observations to be made concerning some inconsistencies in

Scheler's writings, when he refers to this value rank in Formalism. In Formalism
he lists only four value ranks, not mentioning the value rank of usefulness which he
considered in Formalism to be a rank subordinated to the four other ranks. This is
inconsistent because to each value rank there belongs a particular model person of
which he mentions five types (II 570 IF 585; X 262; PV 133). This does not seem
to have caught his attention even when he prepared his own last 1926 edition of
Formalism. Although in his essay on "Ressentiment" (III 53-147 I R 23-172) he
states that the pragmatic value rank has its foundation in the rank of comfort and
discomfort, in a recently published 1915116 manuscript (XV 191-220), entitled,
"Vital Values" (Die vita/en Werte), it is stated that pragmatic values do represent a
value rank of their own. We decide here to let five, not four, value-ranks be
representative of five model persons, each of which typical of a relevant value rank.
The five model persons will be referred to later in the context of time.
6 LIFETIME

"toolness." The toolness of things is given beforehand in the mental

grasp ofthe unity of the goal aimed at while we make use of things.
The toolness of a thing can be grasped even when we see a
thing that is not ordinarily used as a tool. If one does not have a tool
to work with on a specific thing, one resorts to a substitute. Yet, such
substitute does reveal toolness. One may use a stone as a substitute
for a hammer, or a cut-off trunk as a table or as a place to sit on. Such
substitutes are alternate stopgaps, if you will, for ordinary tools. This
shows that it is only after an initial grasp of the tool-use or the tool-
ness of a thing that it can now point to endless possible purposes for
us (XV 210-211 ). But it is also possible that the initial grasp of the
usefulness of a thing does not generate a vision of possible purposes
of it. Archeological excavations show that things must have been
useful for ancient generations while we are at a loss today to know
some of the specific purposes for which they were used. It is on this
level of the phenomenon of toolness when no purpose for what a
thing had been used is known to us that the value of the usefulness of
the object had already been intuited, i.e., without a knowledge of the
purposes that a thing of millions of years ago did have.
Part of the essence of the usefulness of a tool appears to be
twofold: (1) This essence does not consist in an impression we have
of the possible means and purposes a thing may or must have had;
rather, this essence lies in the direction toward the unity of a goal or
of an idea aimed at, and in which goal the usefulness is said to have
its roots. (2) As the example of a stone as a substitute for a hammer
showed, the essence of usefulness is to be seen in the exchangeability
of any thing that can serve as a tool. And it is not only that material
things such as a stone can be used when we do not have a hammer; it
is even the case that values of usefulness appear among such values as
economic values which can be far removed from direct material
bases. The values of usefulness are exchangeable in stock market
trading or in mergers. In the latter case the value of usefulness
appears in sheer mathematical profit-making and in the plans to
succeed in the pursuit of financial advantages.
A further comment is necessary here with regard to the prag-
matic value rank as compared to what Heidegger says in paragraphs
#15 to 18 in his 1927 Being and Time.
Goals aimed at in using tools can be many. Indeed, as we will
see later, goals of usefulness can occur in any of the five value ranks.
Heidegger discusses the nature of things and tools such as hammers,
 VALUES AND TIME 7

paper, tables, lamps, doors, in their mode of their "at-handedness"or

Zuhandenheit. But Heidegger does not look at such things in their
pragmatic value of usefulness, although he does use a German word
that is equivalent to usefulness, "die Dienlichkeit" of things, i.e., their
"serviceability" which also implies the value of usefulness. And Hei-
degger even asks, "What does value mean ontologically," 3 but he
does not answer the question. He explains in # 21 what the "adhering"
(haflen) of values to things is supposed to mean, and what he holds is
that values are (Aristotelian) "attributes" simply adhering in or to a
substance. But this definition does not at all pertain to the essence of a
value as the phenomenologist Scheler describes it, and we will see in
our Schelerian analyses below of the "Ontology of Values" that
respective passages in Being and Time concerning values are far from
being compatible with Heidegger's all too short treatment of values.
We wish to emphasize that Scheler's earlier examination of
what Heidegger later on referred to as "at-handedness"of things was
way ahead ofHeidegger's analyses of it in Being and Time, although
it is now commonly attributed to Heidegger' s authorship. Instead of
"at-handedness," Scheler used the term "milieu-things" in Formalism,
and later on he used the word "usabilities" that things have (die
Brauchbarkeiten) in the same sense as at-handedness. We will find
also some clues for the fact that there is a relationship that values
have with the use of things throughout not mentioned by Heidegger.
Having presented some essentials of the two lowest value
ranks, the sensible and pragmatic values, we wish to make a further
observation of the ranks that are of a greater cultural relevance. This
pertains to a prognostication, which Scheler makes in regard to the
disappearing in society not only of shame but also of joy as a truly
experienced joy (die Freude).
There is especially in the West a preoccupation with the two
lowest ranks of values, which preoccupation appears to be now also
growing in the East. In Formalism, Scheler stated that the increasing
tendency in our time of using drugs - at Scheler's time more often
called "narcotics" - for artificially enhancing comfort- and pleasure
feelings unmistakably betrays a pervasive unhappiness in society (II
347 I F 345-6). The purpose of using drugs is to temporarily numb

3I have tried to explain the value of at-handedness in Heidegger and Scheler in:
Person und Dasein. Zur Frage der Ontologie des Wertseins. Den Haag: Martinus
Nijhoff(Phaenomenologica 32), 1969, # 9 and# 10.
8 LIFETIME

deep feelings of disappointment, illusion, resentment, alienation, or of

despair. Along the same lines, Scheler points to the dangers of en-
couraging and magnifying the will to promote sensible pleasures.
This, too, is a sign of a deeply seated unhappiness in society.
The same point is made at the end of a paper of Scheler's (VI
73-6) in which he deals specifically with the pervasive unhappiness
among the German population. The paper has the appropriate title,
"The Betrayal of Joy" (Vom Verrat der Freude). This particular topic
will resurface in Chapter III that deals with the phenomenon of
capitalism. Scheler discusses said betrayal of joy with regard to the
psychological and social conditions pervasive in the modem cities.
Joy and enjoyment are intensely but often subconsciously sought
after; people seek frantically after pleasurable and useful things. In
contrast to society, however, enjoyment comes about differently in
pre-societal life-communities. In such communities, joy is not pur-
posely sought after, and it takes only a minimum of pleasurable
things, such as a simple and well-meant gift to generate genuine joy.
Joy wells up in a poor child getting just one toy, whereas when a child
keeps getting scores of toys every so often this does not increase the
joy in the child. The greater the quantity of pleasurable things, the
less the quality of enjoyment. Society's endless production of things
of sensible values serves no purpose for personal joys. Much of the
endless production in society of sensible and divisible value-things is
a market-oriented production. Scheler can say therefore (III 131 I R
126):

The abundance of agreeable stimuli here literally

deadens the function of enjoyment and its cultivation.
The surroundings of individuals become ever more
glaring, merry, noisy, and stimulating - but people's
minds become increasingly joyless. Extremely merry
things, viewed by extremely sad people who do not
know what to do with them: that is the "meaning" of
our metropolitan "culture" of entertainment.

All things that are sought for their potentially sensible and
sensuous enjoyment are looked for in objective time. In this search,
time is not filled with personal enjoyment but with a lack of it. For,
the very antagonist of enjoyment is the will to "strive" for enjoy-
ment. Enjoyment and happiness set in only when we do not seek the
 VALUES AND TIME 9

pleasurability in things. It is not by "hunting" after happiness and

enjoyment that a more lasting happiness will come up in us, but only
when we spontaneously prefer higher to lower values. Willing happi-
ness and enjoyment paralyze the feeling of personal happiness and of
enjoyment. The more humans strive for such objects unsuccessfully,
the more they are dissatisfied. The "hunting for pleasures" is the very
consequence of the absence of the positive qualities of joy, and it is a
sign of a slowly degenerating life (XV 208-1 0).
The relevance that pragmatic values have to time follows from
the above. Firstly, the usefulness of things and of states of affairs has
time limits. Secondly, the temporary usefulness of objects occurs in
objective, measurable time. In daily practice, useful objects acquire
usefulness, and then lose their usefulness depending on the conditions
of their use in time.
The time factor inherent in pragmatic values is similar to that
of sensible values. Both types of values occur in objective time and
both are, for this reason, divisible values.

3. Life-Values

The values of life suffuse the whole of live nature and all individual
organisms. This rank spans the values of "noble" and of "common"
(edel, gemein). 4
Life-values do not occur in the locally sensible areas of the
body as was the case with the first rank of sensible values. Hence,
life-values are not localizable but are clearly feelable in the whole of
the lived body as, for instance, health, fatigue, illness, exhaustion,
decline of the body's energy, aging and oncoming death, of growing
pains, and of youth. Again, we share these values also with animals.
In addition, we do not experience life-values only in ourselves, but
also experience them in the perception of other live objects. The
positive life-values of nobleness and of nobility may address us in
looking at an old, majestic and fully grown oak tree, in looking at a
well grown horse, in seeing an eagle in flight; nobleness may be

4 The German word "gemein" is translated here as "common," rather than as the
more usual translations of it as "ignoble" or "bad," which I have also used in the
past. The word "common," however, also shares with the German "gemein" the
sense of "commonplace" or sometimes the sense of "inferior" implicit in Scheler's
intention when using the term.
10 LIFETIME

experienced in the imperial posture of a lion, or in the setting of the

sun behind the mountains or behind the horizon of the ocean. Indeed,
since times of yore, a vessel, or even a steamer today carrying people
across oceans has something of nobleness about it while it braves
waves and currents.
The time within life-values exceeds that of the former ranks. It
is constantly inherent in one's feeling of life, in organisms, as well as
in general life, be it on earth, or on even other planets, says Scheler.
The cultivation of life-values is quite relevant to the present-
day preoccupation with the environment. Violations of environmental
values, such as the pollution of air and water, must, on the basis of
Scheler's intuition of the order of the ranks of values, be considered
as an intrusion of mostly pragmatic values into the rank of life-
values. The order of value ranks commands that agriculture, plant and
animal life, forests, and our planet itself, have to be preserved against
the "devastating tendencies of industrialism," he says in 1912 (Ill
146 I R 174). On the other hand, the pragmatic values ought to be
realized also but only when they benefit life in general, and the life of
human beings in particular. Or: "everything that can be mechanized
ought to be mechanized" (II 496 IF 506). Nevertheless, the feeling of
life-values remains above feelings of the values of what can be useful.
We implied earlier that life-values either belong to humans
alone or, with the extension of animals and the plant world, they also
belong to the rest of nature. For every planet, including the earth, is
an organism (XIII 127). Societal human beings, in contrast to life-
communal human beings, apprehend planets mostly as mechanical
entities. But even electrons, as we will see, have their "vital history."
And while plants have a most immediate bond with the earth, animals
do not have such close a bond with it.
Furthermore, the life-value of nobleness lies in all active, not
reactive, action and comportment as in universal self-growth, in the
ability to develop, and in the "conquering of the scope of one's life"
(Lebensspielraum) in contrast to an only adjusting or reacting life.
Nobleness is an all-unfolding phenomenon (eine Entfaltung) among
humans and in nature as a whole, but this unfolding of the life-values
is to be sharply distinguished from preserving them (X 399).
An interesting remark of Scheler's should be made here with
regard to the enhancement of the nobleness of life in regard to one
type of the human sexual acts. There are four types of sexual
intercourse to be distinguished.
 VALUES AND TIME 11

First, there is a rare form of intercourse that occurs when the

partners are wholly united during a simultaneous climax with the
feeling of mutual emotional identification and pure love of the other.
This kind of love pertains not only to the persons involved, but also to
their opposite gender (Geschlechtsliebe). After an act of pure love,
there is supposed to occur a mixture of the partners' blood in the
offspring, which leads to an enhancement of the relevant race the
partners happen to belong to. This "small aristocracy" leads to higher
types of humans whoever they may be. The nobleness of the offspring
is sharply different from the rest of that of the more common people.
By analogy, breeding animals appears to have the same result, i.e., it
can raise the level of the life-values of the nobleness of a species.
Even without humans involved, there also occur processes of animal
mating that are beneficial to the enhancement of a species concerned.
But such an occasional purebred quality in the offspring is rare.
In contrast to the above first type of the purely love-directed
intercourse among humans, a sharp distinction must be made with
regard to the three other types of intercourse: (2) that of using a
partner as an object during intercourse, (3) the intercourse as a willful
and purposeful act toward the procreation of offspring, and (4) the
only pleasure-seeking intercourse (VII 36 IN 25). What is the relation
to time in the above distinctions between the types of intercourse?
There are two categories of temporality involved. During the
exploitative, purposeful, and the pleasure-seeking type of intercourse,
there are willful intentions present in these three types. Therefore, the
partner is easily experienced as an object of self-gratification; and
hence, these types of intercourse are related to experiences of the
partner in objective time. This is not the case during the rare and only
love-directed intercourse. The partners have no intentions to seek
pleasure from each other, to use each other, or to have offspring, but
they approach each other while feeling from the very beginning the
pure love of the other. They "fall" in love, without intentions of self-
presentation to their partner. Their feeling is fully shared and
mutually pure, and it is both a pre-rational and pre-volitional love. It
is an experience of love that comes up by itself, an experience of the
self-becoming of love. This kind of a rare and absolute love is, as it
were, one example of various experiences of time whose intricate
details will occupy us up to the end of our analyses. In contrast to
objective time, this experience pertains to what Scheler calls
"absolute time."
12 LIFETIME

Last, but not least, Scheler takes issue with race-orientated

politicians in his essay on Shame and Modesty, and on which subject
he had begun to work before 1913. He charged them not only with
downgrading the love-directed sexual act, which is the only one that
can lead to an ennoblement of a race, but also and especially with
their racist "selective politics" (X 129 I PV 66-7). 5 This turned out to
be a historical irony, because the entire essay was published in 1933,
i.e., five years after Scheler's death when Hitler assumed power in
Germany. What Scheler termed racist "selective politics" began to be
on the increase for twelve years until it peaked in the greatest tragedy
of human race, the holocaust.

4. Values of the Mind

In general, both the values ofthe mind (geistige Werte) and the values
of the holy are fundamentally different from the preceding three value
ranks. They are not relative to life and constitute entirely new ranks.
These values bear upon the human person only.
The temporal character of the values of the mind is to be seen
in their capacity to last for generations and ages, while the goods they
pertain to, such as cultures, can change or even disappear. Scheler's
occasional references to time in Formalism are phenomenological
ones. Among them are the references to what he called the absolute
character of time. We wish to keep in mind here that the mental
values are "able-to-exist-through-time," no matter how long their
bearers may live. Hence all values that are not relative to life are
values of duration, or enduring values. This duration has no relation
to the succession of points or of events in objective time, and is a
qualitative and absolute phenomenon of time. The duration is "filled"
with the contents of the mental or sacred values. It is precisely such
contents that determine the "higher" and "lower" ranks among values
as they are described in the section on "Formalism and Apriorism" in
Formalism.
There are three kinds of mental values to be distinguished:

5 During my thirty years of reading Scheler's manuscripts, I never came across any
racial or ethnic bias. Faschism and Marxism known already at his time for said
selective politics, were publicly denounced by Scheler in a speech delivered in
Berlin early 1927 (XII 95 I ID [1976] 164).
 VALUES AND TIME 13

a) aesthetic values of beauty

b) juridical values of right and wrong.
c) the values of the cognition of truth.

These values are given in feelings of the person or "personal

feelings" which may be briefly illustrated.
First, a feeling that something is false or wrong is not a feeling
of a sensation of bodily discomfort. Scheler refers to this "false" as
given in "mental feeling." This "false" can also be given as a rational
insight, of course, again in contrast to a sensible feeling. But a mental
feeling is at hand, however, when one has a feeling that injustice has
been done to one. A feeling of injustice is a uniquely human feeling.
Injustice is "felt" in the sphere of the person, and not as a sensation in
our body. If a person has been dealt injustice in court, the person feels
personally, but not bodily, "hurt." This feeling of injustice may last
the duration of his or her entire life. Or, a feeling that something is
aesthetically ugly and repulsive is also different from a discomforting
body-feeling, of being deformed, or handicapped.
These two examples may be enough for our purposes to see
that personal feelings are not relative to the lived body and must, for
this reason, be substantially different from all body-feelings. Let us
add that animals, of course, do not have personal feelings of injustice,
aesthetic ugliness, or cognitions of falsity, or of the positive opposite
values. Yet, their instincts and drives do give them a "sense" of self-
preservation and protection from the dangers that they share with us,
even though this sense in drives and instincts is situated in their
bodies. We will take up the issue of feelings in the section on the
phenomenology of values below.

5. The Value ofthe Holy

In Formalism the value of the holy is not assigned a specific temporal

character, because in most religions it is associated with eternity right
from the beginning.
Scheler discusses this value mostly within the context of the
sphere in consciousness, called the sphere of the absolute, and within
which this value occurs. The absolute can appear in consciousness in
many forms: in the beliefs in gods, in mother earth, in fetishes, holy
cows, or birds, etc. Hence, there are many different religious beliefs
14 LIFETIME

depending on what appears as absolute and how it does. Scheler

emphasizes that the absolute sphere in consciousness itself, and the
five ranks of values themselves, will not change, no matter how far
humans will "travel into space" (X 348 I PE 100).
It is important for us to recall that to each value rank there
belongs a specific model person of ideal exemplarity. The merely
ideal examplary persons listed below, and their relevant historically
existing model persons on earth, are the main vehicles in education:
It is a factual model person alone that can positively form the human
being, especially the young.
The ideal examplary persons relevant to the ascending order
of value-ranks are:

1. Sensible Values: The master in the art of living

2. Pragmatic values: The leading mind of civilization

3. Life Values: The hero

4. Values of the Mind: The genius

5. Value of the Holy: The holy man or original saint.

The ideal exemplarity of persons is given in our consciousness only.

It is in the duration of their ideal exemplarity that the various model
persons existing in objective time receive their "outlines." There are
various types of outlines of the existing model persons. A genius, for
instance, can be an artist, a legislator, a holy man, or a woman. A holy
human being (der religiOse Genius) can have been an existing model
in various religions: Mohammed, Buddha, Jesus, and in Catholic
Christianity there are also women saints, including even the "mother"
of God.
As described in Formalism, we leave the issues of the roles of
model persons, especially in parental and school education, aside and
concentrate on our pursuit of the philosophy of time.
 VALVES AND TIME 15

B. PHENOMENOLOGY OF VALUES AND OF THEIR TIME

1. Introductory Note on Value-Phenomenology

Scheler's Formalism provides a clarification of the role that acts of

feeling values play in moral conduct. Accordingly, we will now ask
the phenomenological question of how values are given to us in
various kinds of feeling, and in which modes of temporality the
feelings occur. The above descriptions of values in relation to time
do not warrant the conclusion that, in practice, conceptual knowledge
of values can prompt more positive awareness of moral conduct. One
can also ignore values. In order to fully understand the point of how
values are given, we proceed by first recalling some essentials of the
discipline of phenomenology itself. 6 After this necessary digression,
we shall address the question of feeling values and temporality.
Phenomenology represents an organization of knowledge
( Wissenschaft) that concerns the principles and structures that go on
in any wakeful and even dreaming mode of our consciousness. In
principle, those activities can be classified into two groups. (1) The
phenomenology of the acts inherent in, or of, consciousness, and (2)
the phenomenology of meanings and contents tethered to the acts of
consciousness. Both occur in processes of "run-offs" during the self-
generating "flux" of consciousness. This already implies a simple but
frequently misunderstood issue. Consciousness is not a container "in"
which acts and meanings occur. Rather, consciousness "is" flux or a
run-off itself whereby the word "is" does not mean that there is a
thing here that "is;" rather it means that the run-off of meanings and
acts is in a state of"is-ing," so to speak. It would be more appropriate
to use this artificial progressive form of "is," rather than saying that a
consciousness "is." Having said this, there are the two characters of
consciousness referred to and to be explained in brief.

ad.l. Phenomenology of Acts of Consciousness

6 During the past century, literature on phenomenology has enormously increased,

and we do best here to just refer to some essentials pertinent to our subject. For
further information on phenomenology, see Phaenomenologica as listed at the end
pages of this book; further, see Encyclopedia of Phenomenology. Lester Embree
(Ed., plus others). Dordrecht I Boston I London: Kluwer Academic Publishers,
1997; and Analecta Husserliana, The Yearbook of Phenomenological Research.
Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka (Ed.). Dordrecht I Boston I London: Kluwer Academic
Publishers, and the new Studia Phaenomenologica, Bucharest, Rumania.
16 LIFETIME

Consciousness exists in processes of acting out particular acts

as those of thinking, willing, feeling, remembering, dreaming, guess-
ing, doubting, expecting, understanding (while at this moment reading
this text). And there are many possible combinations of acts such as
"doubting" something during the act of "expecting" something.
Linguistically, acts of consciousness pertain only to verbs and
gerunds. Nouns, because they mostly refer to things, do not signify a
process as such, and are, for this reason, adversarial to and obstruct
phenomenological explanations of the very flux of consciousness.

ad 2. Phenomenology of Meaning-Contents of Consciousness

Phenomenologists refer to what is given in acts as "contents"

that are also part of the whole flux; or, they are coming up and going
away. For instance, an act of seeing something refers to contents of
colors, whereas an act of hearing refers to contents of sounds and
noises. That is, a specific act of consciousness is inherently glued to
particular contents. Since both acts and contents are inseparable, no
content is without an act that "intends" or has a direction to a content,
and no act is without intending a content. Phenomenologists also refer
to a particular content given in its respective act as an "intentional
referent." That is to say, an act aims at and has a direction toward a
content; "intentional" does not mean "willed" or "done on purpose."
Its usage in phenomenology is that of its Latin source, "intendere"
meaning "to aim," "take a course toward," or "tum toward." The term
intentional, therefore, refers to all of the processes of the acts of
consciousness and to the directions that the acts take toward contents
which are, as was said earlier, not "in" a consciousness, but "of' a
consciousness. Consciousness is always "of' something that is given
to it. The contents are not gained, produced, or innate; rather they
constitute themselves in being tied to particular acts. Every act,
therefore, is "of' a content whatever this content may be. Every
content is intended by an act.
We can now say something more particular with regard to
specific acts intending specific contents: Thinking intends concepts,
willing intends projects, wishing intends unrealized, unrealizable, or
realizable contents, day-dreaming intends blurred, vague, or ineffable
contents. Since acts are not separable from intentional referents, we
may now see their mutuality clearer in that seeing is as interwoven
with colors and vice versa as hearing is interwoven with sounds, and
 VALUES AND TIME 17

vice versa. No colors without an act of seeing, no sound without an

act of hearing. But also: consciousness does not allow that sounds
could ever be seen, just as it does not allow colors to be heard.
Notwithstanding, phenomenologists do make the distinction
between acts and contents in practice, and this results in sometimes
arduous discussions. What is more, one tends to avoid the term
"consciousness" when it is necessary to facilitate the understanding of
the term. On occasion, one prefers to use the somewhat awkward term
"consciousness-of'(something). And this is because there is just no
consciousness without intentional referents "of' which consciousness
is, except, perhaps, in psychiatric and other pertinent cases. Perhaps
there is also no consciousness, as we just explained it, in a comatose
patient. Consciousness may not be "of' something here unless this
"of' relates to a completely indistinct referent. Scheler refers us to a
dreamless sleep as an indication that there may be no consciousness at
all in this case (II 424 I F 428). Such and other instances put aside, for
phenomenologists the term "intentionality" and "consciousness-of"
are most often synonymous. They describe sufficiently the nature of
the temporality of every consciousness.
Scheler uses the term "consciousness" sometimes to stress that
the acts of feeling and, ultimately, acts of love are at the basis of the
order of the foundation of all acts, but not in terms of a sequence in
time. In this sense, consciousness has special kinds of acts, the acts of
feeling and of loving, which also have a distinct content tethered to
them: values.
By focusing on what consciousness is "of," phenomenologists
can also set aside or cancel or "bracket" every conceivable condition
and presupposition that meanings in consciousness may be mixed
with. "Bracketing" is an operation similar to the mathematical pro-
cedure of bracketing or canceling factors that are not anymore of
significance during further mathematical operations for the reduction
and solution of equations down to their final X.
Ultimately, we wish to draw some traces around the meaning
of the frequently used term, "phenomenon." We say "trace around" a
phenomenon because a given phenomenon itself is not definable. Its
meaning is, of course, different from the daily usage of the word
"phenomenon" that refers to on object as, "snow is a phenomenon of
winter." In phenomenology, however, the expression "phenomenon"
is equivalent to an "essence" (das Wesen).
18 LIFETIME

In contrast to other phenomenologists of his time, like

Husser!, it is a favorite and for us always a welcome habit of
Scheler's to use illustrations for what cannot be defined in order to
show what pheno-mena, i.e., essences of what is given in
consciousness, are. At this juncture we, too, avail ourselves of an
illustration by using a case of deception as an example of an essential
referent in consciousness.
Let us assume we happen to look at a bouquet of flowers. And
let us also assume that, for a brief moment, we want to enjoy its scent,
- but only to find out that the flowers looked at are artificial ones. In
such a case, we first experience the flowers to be alive and take their
scent for granted. This being assumed and taken for granted, the
"aliveness" (das Lebendigsein) of the flowers was, nevertheless, an
unmediated content, i.e., it was an "intuited content" in the initial
sight of them. In this unmediated and, therefore, a priori experience
of "aliveness" or being alive that was initially intended in our per-
ceiving consciousness, precisely lies its self-givenness, i.e., the
showing of itself, of the phenomenon "aliveness" or being-alive.
The illustration of the flowers shows two things: There is first
an unmediated, intuited phenomenon of "aliveness" of a bouquet of
flowers during the deception of there being artificial flowers, but not
experienced as such. Second, one then experiences the un-deceiving
(Ent-Tiiuschung) of the deception now, and as such, experienced. But
during both phases of the experiences concerned, "aliveness," remains
unaffected or: the phenomenon of aliveness is a priori, including in
that deception. This is directly relevant to all acts of observation. For,
one can observe, describe, or define only individual things such as the
bouquet, but one can never do this with an essence like aliveness. For
asking someone insouciantly the question what "aliveness" is, he or
she can only shrug their shoulders and say, I don't know. Scheler can
therefore state (X 395-6 I PE 157-8):

For in order to direct our observation upon an object

and its nature, we must already presuppose the
intuition of the pre-given phenomenon exemplified in
some object. We cannot observe "that something is
color," "that something is spatial," "that something is
alive;" we can only observe that this colored surface
is triangular or that this body is oval-shaped, or that
 VALUES AND TIME 19

this living organism has four legs. [Tr. ts slightly

changed.]

We are now in the position to turn to some essentials of the

givenness of values in the acts of feeling them.
An advertisement recently depicted a human being as having,
instead of a head, a computer placed between his shoulders. This
image is not as new as one tends to think it is. In the eighteenth
century, the physician-philosopher La Mettrie ( 1709-17 51) published
a book, entitled, L 'homme machine (Man a Machine, London: 1748),
a book linked to Descartes' idea that the human organism is nothing
but a complicated mechanism. Said advertisement likens the human
brain to computer chips and wirings, and is perhaps trying to convince
us: "computer knows best." Indeed, beings presumed living in remote
galaxies sometimes appear as robotic mechanisms in movies.
Such amusing, shock-value pursuing tendencies in present-day
commercial advertisement are equivalent to Scheler's discussion of an
imaginary mind that is limited to perception and thinking only. Such a
mind, says Scheler, would be absolutely "blind' to values (II 87 IF
69), because it would have no feelings. An individual without feeling
would not have access to phenomena as joy, sorrow, beauty; it would
have no intonation in speaking, no motives, no love, no hate. The
above being with a computer for a head would, of course, have no
access to feelings either whereas anything rational and logical would
remain available to it. Similar creatures without feelings had not long
ago been looked for in, a now perhaps obsolescent, science of artifi-
cial intelligence.
One must ask: Are computer chips and wirings comparable to
the physiological functions of the human brain? Is there only brain,
and no mind? And if there were only the brains as an object of
medical treatment and surgery, how could even the most delicate
brain texture imaginable give birth to such data as "nothing," "zero,"
"infinity," "transfinite numbers," "spirit," not to speak of "being" or
"aliveness"? Concerning computer power, Scheler would likely refer
us to the power of self-emerging feelings and emotions. However, a
computer is a device of reaction only. It can react only to whatever
has been put into it by a person outside it, i.e., by an extrinsic cause.
The mind or consciousness, however, are self-acting flux.
20 LIFETIME

2. Feeling

It follows from what has been explained that a feeling is an act which
is correlated to a particular intentional referent called a value, as the
thinking acts are correlated to concepts, and volitional acts to pro-
jects.
Scheler appears to be the only phenomenologist of his time to
emphasize that acts of feeling precede all other acts, including acts of
an intellectual comprehension of "what" something is; and feelings
even precede sense perceptions in terms of what literally translates in
English as "value-ception" (Wertnehmung), and we are, indeed, told:
"Value-ception always precedes perception" (VIII 109-1 0 I PR 116).
From this follows that value-ception precedes also "die Vorstellung,"
i.e., representation (II 209 I F 201 ). Indeed, feelings and their value-
referents are part of the bottom of consciousness.
Again, looking at the works of the twentieth century thinkers
mentioned earlier, Scheler is furthermore distinguished from them by
making only a few references to the philosophy of Descartes ( 1596-
1650). Instead, he considered Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) of more
importance, at least in his non-formal ethics. He rejected Descartes'
dictum, cogito ergo sum as an ultimate and undeniable truth, because
it has a foundation in the first principle of metaphysics, namely, that
"there is something rather than nothing."
Why is the mathematician-philosopher Pascal so important for
an ethics of a priori contents of values and their ranks? It is because
Pascal saw that the reason's ordering, logic, and mathematics is
substantially different from the ordre, logique, or mathematique du
coeur (362 I PE 117). For instance, in the logic of reason n + n = 2n.
But in the logic of the heart this does not hold, because two values of
two positive moral deeds do not double the value of the person by a
multiplication by two of these values. After having done two good
deeds, the value of the person remains the same value of that person. 7
Hence, one good deed plus another does not add up or increase
goodness. I mentioned elsewhere that the syntax of the logic of the
heart appears to be analogous to G. Cantor's (1845-1918) transfinite
numbers among which traditional addition, multiplication, etc. do not

7 Fr.v.Brentano argues that values are subject to addition and substraction (II I 04 I
F87). Alois Roth, Edmund Husserls ethische Untersuchungen. Den Haag: 1960
(Phaenomenologica, 7).
 VALUES AND TIME 21

hold. If one adds the infinite series of all odd numbers, (1), 3, 5, 7,
9 ... n to the infinite series of all odd numbers plus all even numbers
( 1), 2, 3, 4, 5 ... n, the infinity of just all odd numbers remains the
same as the infinity of the odd plus the even numbers. Or, n + n = n.
The reason for this is that each number of one series can be paired off
with each number of the other series.
Pascal expressed the incongruence between the logic of reason
and that of the heart by his famous saying, "the heart has reasons of
its own" (le coeur a ses raisons). It is this point of the distinction to
be made between reason and the heart that Scheler explicitly "takes
up" with regard to value-ethics (II 261/ F 255).
Since Scheler's acceptance of Pascal's standpoint has been
sufficiently treated in secondary literature, we have decided here to
formulate the result of Scheler's extension of it in terms of his own
phenomenological explication.
There is an order of foundation in the emotive spheres of our
lives: (1) All feelings have a foundation in the acts of "preferring"
(vorziehen) or in the acts of placing higher values under lower ones
(nachsetzen); and (2) acts of preferring and placing-under have their
foundation in love and hate. Within this order of foundation some
principles should be mentioned for the purposes in our context.
To feel (juhlen) is an act to be distinguished from "a" feeling
(das Gefiihl). A feeling is expressed in terms of a noun or a gerund. It
stands for a state of feeling, a "feeling-state." Thus, a person may be
in a continuous feeling-state of suffering from something. But he or
she can feel suffering in different ways, e.g., as tolerating it, enduring
it, resigning to it, willfully resisting it, accepting it, or enjoying it as
in pathological cases. In each of these, the acts of feeling the feeling-
state of suffering vary, depending on the type of act through which
the feeling-state is felt. This shows that there are genuine emotive
intentionalities of "to feel" a particular feeling-state. The latter is a
content, in this case the content of "suffering;" the former can have
various forms of intending the content with an act. Variations of acts
directed to contents are common in consciousness. Let it be added
that Husserl refers to the act-side of consciousness with the Greek
word "noesis," and hence speaks of "noetic" variations that a content
can undergo; and he called a content of consciousness a "noema," and
speaks also of "noematic" variations in consciousness. The
relevance, however, of the mutual act-content relation in pre-rational
22 LIFETIME

emotive life has, in general, been underestimated until the appearance

of Scheler's phenomenology of values in Formalism.

3. Preferring

The correlation of acts of feelings and contents of values is significant

in that this correlation precedes all cognition. Yet, it also appears that
the second aspect of our emotive life, preferring and placing values
behind or below the values at hand, is even more indicative of the
distinction to be made between the logic of reason and that of the
heart.
First, "preferring" is not the same as choosing, although one
uses the word "preferring" in everyday life in the sense of choosing
something. The pristine meaning that preferring has in Formalism,
however, is what is meant by "leaning toward" something, even prior
to willing and feeling something in particular. While we first feel the
value of a thing and then realize its value rationally, in leaning toward
something we do not really feel the value yet we are leaning toward.
Rather, preferring a value over another value "comes to us" first, so to
speak. Whereas our emotive consciousness "grasps" a thing-value by
means of the value-ception of a thing, the preferring a value to a
lower value "draws" us initially toward the preferred value. In being
so drawn, there is intuitive evidence of the height of both the value
and its rank without a judgment and without a thing or a collective
good (Giiter). 8 The leaning toward values and "preferring" them is
therefore a leaning on the level of values alone. Scheler refers to this
also as "pure feeling" that is not yet a leaning toward collective goods
and things. The point is of significance because he who leans toward
values of the mental value rank will end up with interests in collective
goods that are very different from those of someone who does not
lean toward mental values. The initial intuition in "leaning toward"

8 In German the use of the words "good" or "goods" is more common than it is in
English. Collective goods are mostly cultural goods, such as education,
government, art, laws, or all of them taken together as a unit. The opposite of
"goods" are "ills" that are sometimes related to nature, as earthquakes, hurricanes,
drought, floods, but also desease, suffering, and there are many other human
afflictions and misfortunes that belong to ills.
 VALUES AND TIME 23

gives us, in emotive consciousness, the precise height of a value rank.

The rank is given in this leaning without any reflection, for which
reason the value and its rank are a priori (II 105 I 87).
Of course, leaning toward something may also directly
involve a thing or a person. Thus, a child may spontaneously drop his
or her toys, and lean and be drawn toward his or her mother, then
walk over to the mother to hug her, and be hugged by the mother. The
leaning is here toward the mother, or better, toward the love of the
mother and toward a mutual joy and happiness shared in the
irreplaceable mo-ment of love between mother and child. Examples
of this kind are not difficult to find. Humans begin to lean toward the
opposite sex al-ready early in their lives without having yet a distinct
image or a conception of a different gender as such. Or, one may lean
early to- ward taking up a trade despite being compelled to learn
something else in school; later in life, we may lean toward classical
rather than contemporary art; we may lean toward the study of
numbers rather than learning a foreign language; we may lean toward
a political party, this or that religion, this or that civilization. We can
lean towards countless collective goods and states of affairs. We can
also ignore them in favor of enjoying the present and let the world go
by: "seize the day," "have a good day," carpe diem. Leanings or
inclin-ations indicate at times individual talents we are born with, but
that are unnoticed by others. This does not mean, however, that the
inner, pre-volitional drift of leanings is always a good leaning.
Leanings can also be deceiving (II 105 I F 87). In education, for
example, leanings toward sports may result in the suppression of
serious learning as a much more promising means to a productive life
after school.
All leanings, and their opposite rejections of higher values
refer to the distinction made earlier between the horizontality and
verticality of values. In each case, our preferences toward something
hits a value in its rank. It is only when both value and rank are given
"in" and during the leaning-toward that these values can subsequently
be felt (II 107 I F 89).
At this juncture, we have gained ground for a preliminary
understanding of an observation of Scheler's with regard to the nature
of time. The footing runs as follows: Throughout the past, present,
and the future, in any individual and in any group, the order of the
five ranks of values remains invariable. The structure of leanings
towards values, however, is variable throughout an individual's and
24 LIFETIME

group's past, present and future. The changing structure of leanings

amounts to a change in the particular systems of value-preferences
among peoples. They are an "ethos." Such changes are analogous to
changes in our personal leanings. The changes vary with the periods
of aging; when we are young we may lean more to adventurism and
its respective life-values; when we grow older we may become more
settled and lean more toward mental or religious values.
At this same juncture we also want to bring values and their
possible relations thus far discussed into an order but simplify the
order in the following manner:

1. The relation of values and things: value-ception

2. The relation among only values: leanings

Concerning the role of time in these relations we can make

two points: (1) Leaning toward values, and value-ception, occur in the
order of foundation of acts, prior to volitional acts, rational acts, and
acts of reflection, (2) Therefore, both the leaning-towards and value-
ception do not occur in objective, measurable time and must belong to
a mode of time other than objective time. As was said earlier, this
mode will be investigated as "absolute time" in Chapter II.

4. Love and Time

A reference to love must be made here because Scheler's Formalism

rests on the phenomenon of love (ordo amoris). Love is not only at
the core of his value-ethics but is - in contrast to the philosophy of
other twentieth century thinkers - a cornerstone of Scheler's entire
thought. Over against definitions and interpretations of the nature of
the human being made since Greek thought until today, Scheler
shows that (X 356 I PE 11 0):

Man, before he is an ens cogitans or an ens volens, is

an ens amans. 9

9"Mensch," used by Scheler in the German quote, is equivalent to English "human

being." "Man" in the quote has nothing to do with gender, which in German would
be "der Mann," in contrast to "die Frau." German der Mensch can also apply to
 VALUES AND TIME 25

"The human being, before being one of thinking and willing,

is a being of love." That is to say, not only leaning-toward and value-
ception, but also both thinking and willing, are preceded in human
beings by love. This proposition is at the core of his ethics, of his
philosophy of religion and philosophical anthropology. Contrary to
the loose or predominantly sensual meanings assigned to the word
love in our time, love is much more: Love is the foundation of all acts
of consciousness. For, love is as unambiguous as it is spontaneous (X
118, VII 147 I PV 56, N 142). And - contrary to the Epicurean
connotation that love has today -, love is not just a feeling but it is the
essence of being human, Loving someone does not change at all
during feelings of grief, pain, or disappointment; nor does. one's hate
of someone change when he or she tries to make us temporarily feel
good or gets us into a good mood or even makes us joyful. Love and
hate are unaffected by any feeling we may have while we love or hate
someone. As Scheler states, love is not a feeling "of' someone or of
something; rather, we love someone or something. Love sits well
underneath the Husserlian consciousness-"of' something. For this
reason, love is not an act either, precisely because it is not "of"
something, but it is immediate. This is why we cannot give a reason
why love of someone or of something begins to stir in us. As the
English expression aptly puts it, one "falls" in love. Love is a
movement that enters into the very core of another person's being and
value. The unique value experienced while being in love with another
person as the beloved is love's essence.
One can compare this ascending direction of love to visual
perception. Just as human visual perception moves by itself toward
light and to what is lit up rather than toward darkness, so also love
moves to ever higher values of the person we love. Love sets up in us
a paradigm of the value of the beloved. Love is therefore a disclosing
movement. The power of love "discloses" (II 267 I F 261) the ideality
of the value of the beloved which no other person can share. As is
sometimes said by a third person who knows two persons in love, "I
do not understand what he or she (the lover) finds with this person"
(the beloved). Love opens up for the lover access to the beloved's

"humankind." This has been confused sometimes in feminist translations of the

German word.
26 LIFETIME

irreplaceable value. The height of the value of the beloved keeps

streaming forth, as it were, toward the lover who awaits a loving
response, unless this streaming forth is even simultaneous as in love
at first sight. Love does not persist only during and after whatever
feelings of hurt, disappointment, or even after the death of the be-
loved; it persists even in unrequited love and can continue throughout
an individual's entire life-time in the background of all the lover's
acts and actions. In unrequited love, love continues to permeate the
growing hopelessness and tragic of the person whose love has no
response from the beloved.
The above points gave us a hint that love has specific relations
to time. First, the essence of love is not related to the measurable
sequence of objective time. As Scheler states, one cannot say, "I love
you now, but will not tomorrow." One cannot say either that one will
love someone for two weeks. Rather, genuine love has no link to
dateable time. Love is, or it is not. Once it is, its relation to time is
beyond, or prior to, objective, measurable time. Again, this time will
be our focal point later on.
Love does not apply only to persons who have fallen in love.
Love separates into various kinds: parental love, love of country, love
of humanity, love of one's native homeland (Heimatliebe), love of
music, love of literature, of God, are kinds of love. It also has various
modes, as sympathy, fondness, liking, good will, grace, amiability,
devotion, and loyalty (VII 114 IN 171-2).
Let another point be added about the kinds of love. In recalling
Japanese ways of selecting mates, Scheler held that there are inherited
patterns of inter-human attractions and aversions. They are akin to
inborn aversions as those against darkness and certain odors, or
against certain animals, and there are also racial animosities and
affinities. In the animal world, we find numerous patterns of inborn
aversions and attractions. For instance, a hen's fear of the outlines of
a hawk, a hull's reaction to the movements of a cape, a eat's liking the
scent of catnip (nepeta cataria) or of a drop of valerian. Of more sig-
nificance appear to be inherited directions of attraction and aversion
in the selections of a mates. A certain "type" of the opposite gender
may subconsciously run through generations of a family and a tribe,
i.e., as it does in life-communities. There is a selective range among
human beings within which they seek and compare types of the
opposite gender, a comparison that begins at the age of four or five
years of age. A girl's affection for a certain type may be guided by
 VALUES AND TIME 27

her father's person-type, a boy's affection by the type of the person of

his mother. The mutual affection between parents, or also a lack
thereof, may also play a subconscious role in selections of mates.
There is not enough material collected from researches in this area,
says Scheler, but he insists that among humans there are what he calls
"schemata of erotic fate" which may run through generations. Such
schemata belong to erotic or to vital love (X 374-76 I PE 132-35). The
phenomenon of erotic fate, too, is far beyond objective time and plays
a perhaps more important role in our lives that one would assume it
does.

5. Phenomenology of Good and Evil in Relation to Time

We will take two directions in the following to show the relationship

of the moral values of good and evil with regard to their mode and
experience of time.

( 1) We wish to recall some theories on evil. The concepts of

good and evil have only a modest record of analysis in contemporary
philosophy. Despite our brief coverage here, these theories will
enable us to see the remarkable breakthrough in the
phenomenological app-roach of Scheler's toward revealing the nature
of good and evil.
(2) We wish to add to this observation a linguistic comment
on the usage of the words of good and evil.

ad 1. Past theories on evil appear to fall into groups:

(a) that neither evil nor good exist,

(b) that evil and good exist only among human beings,
(c) that evil expresses itself in personifications
(d) that evil expresses itself in symbolisms, or
(e) that the existence of evil has an ontological status.

(a) When one speaks of good and evil as not existing, one
immediately recalls Nietzsche's confidence in the impending Over-
Man who is "beyond" good and evil. In the future, all absolutes of the
28 LIFETIME

past, including truth, will collapse. All absolutes of the past, including
good and evil, were nothing but perspectival and erroneous interpre-
tations of what is. The Over-Humanity will smash all absolutes and
will live "beyond good and evil" and beyond truth, God, and Satan.
(b) Over against Nietzsche's image, we find theories holding
that evil does exist, at least in human beings. In the Old Testament
evil has entered in the world by way of disobedience. Furthermore,
Dante's Inferno; Milton's Paradise Lost, Shakespeare's Macbeth,
Goethe's Faust, and in Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter, evil exists as a
human category, and the possibility to do evil is inherent in the
human soul. Perhaps Dostoevski was most articulate in describing
evil as embedded in the humans soul when we read in his Diary of a
Writer (1876-1880):

It is clear that evil is buried more deeply in humanity

than the cure-all socialists think, that evil cannot be
avoided in any organization of society, that man's
soul will remain the same, that it is from man's soul
alone where abnormality and sin arise, and that,
finally, the laws that govern man's spirit are sti 11 so
unknown, so uncertain and so mysterious, that there
are not and cannot be any physicians or even judges
to give a definitive cure or decision; but there is only
He Who says, "Vengeance is mine, I will repay."

In the recent past, good and evil have much been watered
down by substituting them with the legal concepts of what is "right"
or "wrong." In this more pragmatic and societal treatment of evil, it is
presupposed that the law is the foundation of ethics, or that ethics is at
least in part dependent on the law. Such a judgmental treatment,
especially of an evil as founded on what is wrong leads to a softening
of our experience of evil. A case in point may be the assessment of
some evil as banal, as "banality of evil," an expression used in the
subtitle of Hannah Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963). The
confusion between evil and wrong, good and right, might also be the
result of the "despair" of modem humans, that we will analyze later,
in that the dwindling of faith in God makes them incapable to
confront evil.
(c) Evil is expressed in human or semi-human personifications
and various forms of embodiment. Examples include those of Satan as
 VALUES AND TIME 29

a humanized animal with a club foot, or the leper whose skin was
believed to be expressive of evil located in his body as an embodied
evil, he was buried alive or an outcast till death.
(d) In Ricoeur's Symbolism of Evil, symbolic surfaces of evil
are guilt, sin, wandering, decline, fall, blindness, and a servile will.
Animals symbolizing evil have long been seen in the dragon, a shiny
green snake, the unicorn, the pig's snout, or in a whale (Melville).
(e) It was probably Nicolai A. Berdyaev (1874-1941) whose
ontological vision of evil, developed on the background of the philo-
sophy of F.W.J. Schelling and J. Boehme's idea of the "un-ground,"
is the most challenging of all: Evil, Berdyaev endeavors to show,
stems from freedom. That is, it stems from the "freedom to do evil."
As uncreated and indeterminate non-being, freedom is also a
condition for God's creation. God presupposes the tragedy of the
freedom in the creation of evil, and in man's freedom to do evil. 10

ad 2. Let us now refer to the German usage of the terms good

and evil (gut und bose) over against goods and ills. The latter were
mentioned above in section 3, "Preferring." Concerning the German
usage of the terms, Scheler specifically quotes from Kant's Critique
ofPractical Reason, Pt. 1, Bk.1, chap. 2 (II 46 IF 24): Kant writes:

The German language is fortunate to have

expressions which do not permit us to overlook this
difference. It possesses two very different concepts
and equally different expressions for what the Latin
language names with the single word bonum. For the
word bonum the German language uses both [das
Gute] and well-being [das Wohl or "weal"]; for
malum it uses both evil [das Bose] and ills [das Uebel
= "woes"].

Concerning the Latin bonum and malum, let it be added, that

also in modem Romance languages as French, the classical Latin one-
word rendition of bonum and malum is retained. I wish to stress

10 Scheler met Berdyaev in Berlin while he was preparing a lecture on Suffering.

which was to be delivered at the Russian Academy there. See John R. Staude, Max
Scheler 1874-1928. An Intellectual Portrait. New York: The Free Press. 1967,
p.l41. See also M. Davy, Nicholas Berdyeav. Man of the Eighth Day. London:
Geoffrey Blies, 1967, p.20.
30 LIFETIME

Kant's point because shortcomings do occur in translations of these

termsY
As was said earlier, one of the peculiarities of Scheler's value-
ethics is that good and evil do not appear among the values and their
ranks discussed. Good and evil are purely moral values and, therefore,
have a special status in the phenomenology of values.
There continues to be a common belief that good and evil are
always to be referred to in terms of action and deeds that realize them.
It is, of course, possible that actions and deeds realize a good or an
evil. For example, we can do good by willing to help the indigent and
the distressed; and we can do good also by offering contributions to
an organization that uses them for helping people in need. In such
and other cases, however, one must be careful to also look at the
motivations behind the intention to realize the moral "good." For one
thing, one might be motivated to make an appearance of being good
before others; one might also want to get a good feeling for oneself
when one is willing to make a contribution to something good. But
the motivations for realizing an evil are somewhat different, because
the ground (der Grund) of evil is to be seen in volitions and strivings
toward sensible feelings to begin with which is the result of a
negative feeling of life (XV 208).
But there are also two reasons for hesitating to praise or even
to distrust the human will to do something good. One reason is to be
seen in the distinction Scheler makes between the "ego" and the "per-
son." In contrast to Scheler's contemporaries, he shows (1) that the
human ego is only an "object" of a person's introspection of self and,
therefore, "I" (i.e., my ego) cannot do good nor can it commit an evil,
and (2) good - in contrast to evil - must not be linked up with an act
and an intentional referent of consciousness-of, let alone with an
intentional referent of an act of willing. Concerning the latter, Scheler
expresses strong doubts about this already at the beginning of his
Formalism (II 49 IF 28). His point is that an original good is prior to
and independent of an ego: Only the whole person, not an ego, can
be, or do good and evil.
What, then, are good and evil with regard to time?

11 For instance, The Lord's prayer, "Our Father Who art in Heaven ... " ends in
English with " ... but deliver us from evil [vom Bosen] whereas in German it ends
with "vom Uebel" [from ills], a difference in the two languages that is likely the
result of the only Latin word "malum" meaning both.
 VALUES AND TIME 31

Let us first say what good and evil are not. While the moral
good is not originally correlated to acts of consciousness, evil can be
correlated to an act of willing. Good and evil by themselves are no
feelings, nor are they objects of perception. But the question is not
what good and evil are, but how they are and come into existence. It is
in this regard that Scheler's proposition is related to time in what we
referred to as a unique phenomenological breakthrough in pinpointing
the essence of good and evil.
Let us focus on the value of a moral good. The answer to the
question of how it comes into existence lies in the leaning toward the
non-moral values and their ranks. Whenever a human being leans
toward a higher value rank and whenever he or she realizes a higher
value in that rank, the act of realizing the higher non-moral value
makes the moral good come forth "on the back" of this realizing act.
Or, it rides, so to speak, on the back of the act of realizing a positive
non-moral value. In theory, many acts can realize values higher than
those given to us at any moment. Also an act of willing can and does
do this. In sharp contrast, however, to such cases, the moral value
"good" is not intended in the realizations of the higher non-moral
value. What is intended is the higher non-moral value and its rank (II
48 IF 27):

The value "good" appears by our realizing a higher

positive value (given in preferring). This value app-
ears on the act of willing. It is for this reason that it
can never be the content of an act of willing.

"Good," therefore, is riding on the back of a realizing act. If,

for instance, a person who realizes the mental value of justice by
placing pleasure values below justice, a "good" appears on the act of
realizing justice. Scheler's concept of "on the back" of an act of a
realization of a value demonstrates a unique phenomenlogical
perspicacity of his. One may describe this state of affairs by saying
that the moral value of good "escorts" acts of realizing positive non-
moral values. As being unintended and unintentional, yet concurrent
with positive non-moral value-realizations, the moral good is said to
emerge by itself during the realization of a non-moral value in the
order of the value ranks; or, to use Husserlian terminology, the value
of the moral good constitutes itself in terms of a "passive synthesis"
32 LIFETIME

and without a corroboration of any act of willing a moral good. 12

Therefore, a moral good is not at all a static object. The moral good
temporalizes itself during a person's act of realizing whatever non-
moral values. This self-temporalization of moral goodness is an emi-
nent phenomenon of moral existence.
We are again reminded of the role that time plays implicitly in
Formalism. A distinction has to be made between objective time and
the time that is not objective; that is, time that phenomenologically
constitutes itself. The intending of a non-moral value allows a non-
moral value as the beauty of an object to be in objective time. But an
act cannot not intend the particular content of the moral goodness
while it is self-emerging in riding on the act of a realization. There is
just one explanation for this: The emergence itself of moral goodness
cannot be in measurable, objective time.

C. SOCIOLOGY OF VALUES AND TIME

Introductory Note on Social Forms

Scheler was one among a few European philosophers of the past

century who devoted a great deal of research and concentration on
latent and consequential interconnections existing between ethics and
sociology. Concerning this, we read the following about social forms
that people can live in (II 515 IF 525):

One must fully develop a theory of all possible

essential social units to be applied to the under-
standing of factual social units (marriage, family,
people, nation, etc.). This is the basic problem of phi-
losophical sociology and the presupposition of any
social ethics.

12For variant views of the above see Philip Blosser, "Six Questions Concerning
Scheler's Ethics." The Journal of Value Inquiry, 33: 211-225, 1999.
 VALUES AND TIME 33

There are four social forms of human togetherness that

Scheler deals with in Formalism: the mass; the life-community;
society; and the encompassing person. These correspond to four
different types of feelings: the sensible, the vital, the mental feelings,
and feelings of the value of holiness. But as we already indicated in
the section on "Pragmatic Values," there is no mention of a social
unit assigned to the rank of the values of usefulness, and we had noted
this to be an inconsistency in Formalism, where only four social
forms were listed (II 509-58 I 519-561). We are left on our own to
glean from the texts what the nature of a social form of the value of
usefulness is and what the nature of this social form's predominant
feelings would have to be like. To find this out is, clearly, pertinent to
today's preoccupation with usefulness in technology and in other
walks of life; it is also pertinent to tracing possible ideas that Scheler
would or could have articulated on this issue of usefulness today.
The meaning and application of the value of what is useful or
not is permeating so much today's society that ignoring its possible
matching social form, and inherent types of feelings that belong to it,
would blind us to the immense role that the value of usefulness plays
in modem society.
A determination of the relation between the value rank of
usefulness and its correlated social form of society is important also
because moral behavior is commonly seen in light of a social form
that moral behavior occurs with. For example, what the individuals
absorbed in a "mass" do is linked up with the social form of a mass as
such. One can find moral behavior and social forms also tethered to
politics, economics, the churches, sports, and education. One tends to
expect from representatives of such groups and of social estates as
well as of other social groups, that the forms of moral behavior fit, as
it were, the nature of a social form concerned. If moral behavior is out
of line with them, one tends to distrust not only this or that person's
behavior, but even the social form itself and its various subdivisions.
This is the reason why the populace more often than not lacks trust in
government, in law practices, and in businesses. The distrust is not
only relevant to people living in these groups, but it is also to the
social form and groups they belong to, and the latter can provide
mitigating circumstances for negative kinds of behavior.
There are four principles that govern the research concerning
the relations between moral behavior of individuals and a social form:
34 LIFETIME

1) A determination of the social types of living together with

others in each social form.
2) The value rank within which humans live with one another
that allows them to follow respective norms that fit this rank.
3) All social forms must, says Scheler, be regarded as co-
original in man's constitution. No social form exists in isolation, nor
does any one of them appear earlier or later than another social form.
During the time a particular social form is dominant, the rest of them
remain somewhat inactive, but still co-exist with the dominant social
form.
4) All social units, to certain degrees, overlap at certain times
and by way of certain geographic and historical conditions. One or the
other social form predominates but only during particular conditions
that obtain in a historical period, and which conditions are relative to
the nature of the experience of the social form concerned. Hence, the
sequence of the social forms that follows does not imply a measurable
sequence in objective, historical time.

1. The Mass

The lowest social form humans can enter is that of the mass. Its main
inter-subjective experience lies in "psychic contagion."
During its short duration, the formation of a mass occurs
during protests, during the excesses of enthusiasm as in sports, during
rock concerts, during massive riots, revolts, or demonstrations. People
are glued together, as it were, in psychic contagion and begin, in
extreme cases, to temporarily lose their individuality in it. A human
mass of people resembles that of a herd of animals, as wild horses
and bulls running around aimlessly, say, when they are imbued with
fear, or like flocks of birds that all of a sudden take off and fly away
without obvious reason, but with psychic infection that suffuses them
while following their alpha bird(s).
What is most particular in the psychic contagion occurring
among humans is said temporary loss of personal identity which is
absorbed by the contagion. In extremely wild and ferocious cases,
individuals can even be trampled to death without rhyme or reason,
without sympathy or care. While people are running wildly and aim-
lessly, a fellow feeling for others disappears among them for the time
the accumulation of the mass lasts. For, the psychic contagion disint-
 VALUES AND TIME 35

egrates as quickly as it carne up. A few more up-to-date examples

other than those found in The Nature of Sympathy (VII I N) may
suffice to reveal to us part of this phenomenon which presently occurs
more often in the world-wide growth of population.
The taped laughter used in commercials, for instance, infects
their viewers who smile along, although what the laughter is about
would, in realty, hardly or not at all be even worth a chuckle. The
yawning of one person infects others to yawn also. Psychic contagion
permeates people sharing a "happy hour" infecting also those right
away that come and join in later on; psychic contagion suffuses all
people attending a funeral, even those that are just passing by and do
not even know who is being mourned. The same holds for types of
entertainment and activities as Mardi Gras, opera, rock concerts,
parades, organized election gatherings; psychic contagion strongly
suffuses much the traders taken by a suddenly bullish stock market,
leading to more than normal bidding and selling, as one can see the
day following when the contagion has died down. It does not matter
how much people are related to what is going on among psychically
infected people, a saddening, pleasant, exciting, or whatever type of
contagion sweeps them away for a while, but soon it will also wither
away from them.
Concerning the relation a mass experience has to values, a
mass has a striking resemblance to the short physical feeling-states
and sensations discussed earlier. Just as one's own sensation, such as
local pain in our body, is not transmittable to another's body, so also
an isolated individual is cut off from a mass experience. But mass
experiences can also be intentionally set in motion just as one can
willingly set in motion sensible stimuli. The former is the case, for
example, when a dictator's loud intonations of speech, and gestures,
agitate and unite people, although they may not grasp what he is
really saying.
From the above, there follow a few principles that pervade a
mass. First, in pure mass experiences there is hardly any particular act
of individual will. Secondly, there is no co-responsibility and self-
responsibility among people absorbed in the mass. Thirdly, there is
hardly a mutual "understanding" among the mass participants. Indeed,
the very low level of understanding resembles that of an infant. For
the mass is an "adult child" (III 359). Fourthly, during the time of the
psychic contagion, the mass moves and propels itself forward without
its individuals understanding the specific direction of its movements,
36 LIFETIME

their goals, and knowing of each other. To each other, they remain
anonymous. Fifthly, the psychic contagion, nevertheless, glues them
together no matter how alien they were to each other before and
during the contagion. Finally, during periods of growing populations,
one can expect formations of masses and psychic contagion to be on
the increase. Since a mass is only short-lived, its relation to time is, in
the eyes of its outside beholders, measurable and objective time.

2. Utility Cooperatives

The second social form corresponds to the values of usefulness and is

offered here as a possible extension to be made in Formalism.
We choose the title "utility cooperatives" for this social form.
The inter-subjective experience in utility cooperatives is impersonal
and is interrupted after working hours. The experience of time is
therefore a measurable experience as was similarly the case in the
social form of the mass experience. All the work done by craftsmen,
secretaries, administrators, and the like, is "clockable." Work begun
and finished is clocked ("nine-to-fivers"). But this is an outside view
of the social form of the utility cooperative and that of a mass. Inside
the experience of individuals, there is also time filled with contents of
these social forms. When the workers leave for home, they experience
contents of time with their families that are not clocked. As to the
individuals involved in a mass, the experience of time is even more
filled, i.e., with the content that moves a mass forward (contents of
goals of protest, revolt, etc.). In both cases, the experience of time is
filled time and not divisible as is the case from looking at them from
the outside.
It is likely that in his analyses in Being and Time of the "at-
handiness" of tools (Zuhandenheit) and utensils or whatever "stuff'
(das Zeug) around us, Heidegger was not aware that the use of tools
played right into the second rank of values of "usefulness" as it is
described in Formalism. 13 Nor does Heidegger appear to have been

13 Scheler's term "usefulness" stands for German "der Nutzen." As mentioned

earlier, Heidegger uses the term "die Dien/ichkeit" for this, but which word means
the same as "der Nutzen. " It lies outside our subject here to take a detailed look
into Scheler's constant interest in "work" that begins with his essay "Arbeit und
Ethik" (1899) up to "Erkenntnis und Arbeit" (1926) and his projection of a major
 VALUES AND TIME 37

aware of the uninterrupted increase of the utilization of entities and

technological paraphernalia in society and the role this increase plays
right into the seemingly unstoppable global spread of capitalism of
which Scheler was ever so much aware as we will discuss in detail at
the end of this text. Of course, within the task Heidegger set for
himself, i.e., the thinking of the question of being, neither the ranks of
values nor capitalism are within the compass of this task. Yet, as had
also been said earlier, it appears that paragraphs 15 to 18 in Being and
Time happen to have many points in common with the analyses of
"milieu-things" treated in Formalism. In addition, these paragraphs
also share many characters with the natilrliche Weltanschauung, i.e.,
Scheler's "natural view of the world" that match the Heideggerian
Alltiiglichkeit or "everydayness."
It is in the existential mode of everydayness and the natural
view of the world that the mode of the at-handedness of utensils and
tools is situated. Other congruent concepts found in Being and Time
and Formalism can be found in Scheler's 1927 marginalia that appear
on the pages of said paragraphs, and others, of Being and Time. 14
Despite the coincidence of concepts, there is one fundamental
difference between Heidegger and Scheler that has, for aught I know,
not been articulated enough.
In his Philosophical Anthropology (XII), in his Later Writings
(IX), and in the investigation of "Cognition and Work" (Erkenntnis
und Arbeit) (VIII), Scheler insists that human existence possesses an
"ontological relation" (Seinsverhiiltnis). This ontological relation is
"knowledge" (das Wissen).
There are three types of knowledge, and none of them may be
cultivated at the expense of the others. The three types of knowledge
are: "knowledge of control" over nature (science), "knowledge of
essence" of entities (metaphysics), and the "knowledge of salvation"
(religion). According to this threefold division of man's ontological

volume, "Philosophy of Work" over which he died. Concerning the concept of

"work" see D. Verducci's publications in the selected Bibliography.
14 The two hundred or so marginal comments Scheler's made in his 1927 copy of
Being and Time that Heidegger had sent him to read, are listed in Max Scheler,
Spate Schriften, Vol. 9, edited by M. Frings (IX 305-340). Pagination and line
numbers in vol. 9 are those of the 1967 ninth edition of Sein und Zeit; i.e., before a
new pagination of Being and Time appeared in the Gesamtausgabe, Vol. 2 of 1977.
But the old pagination appears in the margins of the new 1977 edition provided by
its editor. F.-W. von Herrmann.
38 LIFETIME

knowledge-relation, Scheler advanced cntlques of philosophical

systems and of individual philosophers whenever they represented a
lopsided concentration on one of these types of knowledge over the
other two. His critique of pragmatism, for instance, rests on the
exclusive stress in pragmatism on the data that the natural sciences
are concerned with. William James, whom Scheler called a genius,
was apparently somewhat of an exception to this particular critique.
It is on the background of the threefold division of knowledge
that we can sense also Scheler's critique of Heidegger. A comment on
this should be added here for the significance that Scheler put on the
ontological relation of knowledge.
The explications of human beingness (Dasein) in Being and
Time lacks, for instance, any reference made to the scientific and
religious types of knowledge, even less moral dimensions in the
world of Dasein, who is neither good nor evil. Indeed, the everyday
Dasein also lacks knowledge of essence. This lack, at least of an
articulation of it, occurs in the intricate analyses of the horizontality
of Dasein 's quotidian work-world. Dasein 's "being-in-the-world" is
reduced to the "care" (Sorge) of things qua entities that are lying
horizontally around Dasein. The everyday preoccupation with work
and with tools that are at Dasein 's beck and call, the preoccupation
with hammers, nails, plains, shoes, clocks, in short, with the work-
world of workers that also includes the handling of sail- and
rowboats and working the fields, is so central in Dasein 's existence
that they even "release" Dasein 's co-existence with others, the
Mitdasein. A sailboat anchored at the shores of a lake "points," says
Heidegger, to another Dasein. Everything else, for instance, moral
existence, is inconsequential in Dasein's everyday work-world. 15

15 A few quotes from Scheler's critique of Being and Time may suffice to catch

their gist: "A philosophy of everydayness must be countered with a philosophy of

Sundays." And: "In this philosophy the world has no sense by itself, no self-value,
and it is without any independent reality with regard to man ... " "If Dasein 's
constitution is Angst and care as Heidegger maintains ... , and if all types of Being
are relative to Dasein - relative to this tiny load of Angst and care - it is inevitable
for one to maintain: Da-sein and world should better not be (IX 282-3). "The world
resembles here a moral-religious prep-school of Calvinism ... that has no essential
relevance - except that it is, strictly speaking, nothing ... " "Ultimately, I am afraid
that Heidegger's philosophy- as far as we know it today- is basically a theolo-gical
opinion on faith which is in concert with the theology of K. Bart and F. Gogarten,
i.e., a kind of neo-Calvinism" (IX 394-5). - Scheler was familiar with Max
Weber's theory, which was the well-known attempt to show that Calvinist and
 VALUES AND TIME 39

One can understand Scheler's thorny dispute with Being and

Time when he himself placed moral existence at the very center of the
person and the axiology at the center within his metaphysics (XI 54-
71 ). More precisely, he placed the axiology of value ethics into the
disciplines that he called the "meta-sciences" which connect the
metaphysical ground of being with the individual sciences. It is
characteristic for the questions posed on the intermediate level of the
meta-sciences, i.e. their level between metaphysics and the individual
sciences, that certain questions cannot be answered or solved in any
of the individual sciences, but need for this end the level of the meta-
sciences. For example, the meta-question of "What is a number?"
cannot be answered in mathematics. The same holds for the meta-
questions in physics ("what is space"?), in biology ("what is life"?),
and even in disciplines such as axiology ("what is the height of a
value?"). Such questions lead straight into the meta-level of each
science concerned.
We have made the above comments in order to show that a
value of "usefulness" takes on a lower meaning when compared to the
next higher ranks of life-values, mental and sacred value ranks. Why

Protestant-Puritan ethics turned man's occupations into the vocation of work that
would reveal one's positive predestination, and which was, in tum, responsible for
the ensuing "spirit" of capitalism.
The foregoing quotes from Scheler's Heidegger critique must be seen also
in light of Scheler's 1926 treatise "Cognition and Work" (Erkenntnis und Arbeit)
(VIII 191-382). On the first pages of the treatise, we read that a "pathos ofworR' is
spreading over the world, which pathos began when Europe distanced itself from
the Christian tradition and from the Antiquity. This pathos of work, says Scheler,
was pointedly articulated in the Comunist Manifesto (1848) proclaiming work to be
the sole creator of education and of culture (Bildung). And Scheler goes on to say
that Pragmatism is an excellent example of man's present self-understanding based
on the phenomenon of work. This self-understanding posed the alternative of
whether man is a rational being or a tool-man (homo faber).
I undertook to focus on the German work-mania of the twenties when Hei-
degger wrote Being and Time, in part 3 of my paper, "Is there Room for Evil in
Heidegger's Thought or Not" (Philosophy Today, Spring, 1988). It is quite obvious
that during the thirties and fourties of the past century, this work-mania played right
into the hands of Hitler's various schemes of firing up psychic contagion among the
masses, captivating them by such slogans as "Arbeit macht frei," (also used by
Stalin) and "Arbeit und Brot" when unemployment in Germany was reaching its
peak.
40 LIFETIME

a value is lower or higher can, strictly speaking, only be answered in

the meta-science of "meta-ethics" that connects values of things with
the essence of values per se.
There is no reference to the heights and levels of values in
Being and Time. Indeed, the value of life does not appear at all, nor
can it be seen whether or not this value is higher than the usefulness
of tools. Heidegger's Dasein amounts to a horizontal ontology of
Dasein 's existence preoccupied with handling utilities. But the value
of usefulness is only on the second rung of the vertical hierarchy of
values listed in Formalism that range, as we saw, from sensible
values up to the mental and sacred values.
These observations of the horizontality and verticality of the
human being were necessary in order for us to see what a one-sided
immersion into the values ofutility can imply. Let us once more take
a look at the social form of utility values and at what the predominant
feelings among humans are who live, most of their lives, in this social
form.
We chose the term "utility cooperatives" for this social form
of togetherness pertaining to a particular type of individuals because
the individuals perform technical tasks for the sake of the production
of many kinds of useful things.
Units of utility cooperatives consist of craftsmen, engineers,
technologists, economists, unions, trade groups, guilds, plus
whatever subdivisions of them. These groups are, of course,
distinguished from so-called intellectuals, because by comparison to
the former, intel-lectuals use tools only to limited degrees. Their tools
are mostly just pencils, paper, books, dictionaries, computers. Their
social form can be a "school," a "society," or an "association."
The utility cooperatives are quite different in that a specific
feeling suffuses their membership. The feeling is directed to definable
goals: (1) to the satisfaction of work done, and (2) to being rewarded
for that work. When I use a hammer to drive an anchor into the wall
to hang up a picture, one feels satisfied after the picture is hanging
from the wall and the handwork is finished. But this satisfaction is not
because one has saved money by hanging up the picture oneself. It is
because one feels a personal satisfaction in looking at the work
completed. The feeling of being satisfied after the technical task done
is, originally, not one of saving money. The satisfaction stems, and is
inherent in, the work that has been done. The technical satisfaction
sets already in while I am working with a hammer, anchors, screws,
 VALUES AND TIME 41

and the picture. It is a personal feeling of satisfaction that comes from

making use of things. In Heideggerian terms, the feeling of satis-
faction would emerge during the "at-handedness"of things put to use.
There is no successful use of tools without a feeling of satisfaction.
Still, using tools does not exclude the possibility that one can also do
technical work just for money and perhaps even without feelings of
satisfaction in the work done.
There are three kinds of feelings of satisfaction that result
from work done with tools. (1) The feeling of satisfaction can pertain
to oneself only, and (2) this feeling can pertain to others who are
expecting the work done to be satisfactory. (3) While these two types
of satisfaction are easy to understand, the third kind of satisfying feel-
ings pertains to others one does not know. This feeling is more
complex. It occurs, for example, when a mechanic is working on an
unfinished automobile moving on the production line. Workers do
their work for buyers unknown to them. In this case, work and tools
used benefit anonymous people. Hence, the mechanic contributes to a
"public" good of general comfort. And this would substantiate
Heidegger's argument that work and tools release and point to the
existence of others, i.e., the anonymous Mitdaseins but who do not
have a "personal" existence. However to maintain this, would be in
stark contrast to Scheler's view. First, the world with others is one
with other persons and their individual self-value, be they anonymous
or not, because the world with others, not with things at-hand, is the
first existential category of human beings (VIII 57 I PR.71). Neither
work nor tools are this.
There is to be made another observation of the role that values
of utilities and tools play in human life.
True, values of usefulness represent the second lowest rank on
the scale of values. Yet, the applications of tools and their values goes
far beyond the second rank they belong to. Useful tools, and their "at
handedness" for that matter, and their values, are applicable also to
the pleasure values, values of life, mental, and even sacred values.
Let just some examples suffice for an account of the wide-
spread use of tools. To realize pleasure values, one needs at times
tools for getting pleasures out of playing games or doing sports. We
need transportation to get pleasures out of a vacation. To realize life-
values, we need tools for the up-keep of gardens and parks. We need
tools in medicine for saving patients' lives. To realize mental values
we need pens, computers, stationary, musical instruments, canvas. To
42 LIFETIME

realize sacred values, a church has to be built with many a

craftsmen's tools. There is equipment used on altars such as a chalice.
Thus, the value of usefulness appears to occur in all ranks of values,
no matter to which degree they may be involved. Indeed, without the
value of tools one cannot imagine what our world would look like.
The tools which are found by archeologists are hundreds of thousands
of years old and appear to have been an essential part in past human
existence. Animals, too, use tools for ends to be accomplished. A
chimpanzee uses a stick to draw a banana into its cage, as we noted
earlier.
The second rank of utility - significant among individuals of
modem society - will occupy us in even more detail, because this rank
has more historical and contemporary practical ramifications than we
may first think it has.
We tum now to the next higher form of togetherness, and its
very relation to time.

3. The Life-Community

a. Survey of Principles Underlying the Life Community

Just as the sociological counterpart of sensible values was seen in a

"mass," and the sociological counterpart of the value of usefulness in
"utility cooperatives," so also the social form of the life values have
their own social form, the "life-community." It must be emphasized
that, among all social forms, it is the life-community and its subdivi-
sions that is the principal bearer of the natural world-view (X 451-2 I
PE 169).
There are two relations the life-community has to time.
1. Just as the rank of life-values has a central position among
the five value-ranks in that there are two lower ranks below them and
two higher ranks above them, so also the life-community has a central
position among the five social forms. There are two lower social
forms, namely, the mass and the utility cooperatives, and there are
two higher social forms, namely, the society and the encompassing
person. This observation bears on the nature of time experienced in a
life-community: Time is "filled" time or it is "empty" time (X 452 I
PE 225).
 VALUES AND TIME 43

2. The inter-subjective time experience among the members

of the life-community consists in the duration of the solidarity that
holds its members together. The uninterrupted experience of duration,
missing in both mass and utility cooperatives, extends both into future
generations of the not yet born and to the ancestry of life-community.
The dictum of a life-community, "one for all and all for one" reflects
this duration of time manifest in the solidarity among its members.
There are two distinct features that life-values reveal in regard
to the life-communities.
First, the life values are clearly of a vertical nature. In contrast
to what is noble, the value "common" refers to what is plain, average,
or ordinary. What is noble is of a distinguished value and represents a
high status within the life-community. Nobleness or nobility refers to
the wellborn and high-born. Nobleness stands out everywhere in
plain life-communal situations. The distinct value level of nobleness
shows itself also in all nature: among plants and animals. Whenever
nobleness occurs in the perception of them, it is indicative of higher
than common physical strength, power of survival, longevity, health,
and of a healthy capacity of surviving the elements; and nobleness
can be indicative of pure bloodedness in both animal breeds and
humans. Nobleness testifies also to majesty and royalty, despite the
fact that the latter qualitites are regarded today as somewhat out-of-
date. Yet, the idea of nobility keeps lingering on.
Secondly, life values fall into two classes: those that belong
to all nature and those that belong exclusively to humans. Heroism,
for instance, does not exist in nature. Only humans can be heroic and
demonstrate heroism.
What, in particular, is the life-community as a social form of
togetherness?
There are subdivisions that life-communities have, such as a
"tribe" especially when a tribe lives in an isolated area, there is a
"clan," and there is a "home community" in the sense of an elderly,
close-knit neighborhood, and there is the mostly rural "family" and
ordinary "people" in a non-political sense of the term. In contrast to
the aforementioned mass, which shows very little or no understanding
of its members with each other, and in contrast to the individuals of a
utility cooperative, where there are mostly feelings of satisfaction of
work done during and after work-hours, in the life-community there
is, sociologically, for the first time an uninterrupted spontaneous and
natural understanding among its members. "Naturaf' means that the
44 LIFETIME

members share in fellow-feelings for and with each other that hold
them together in a lasting, solidary unit. For this reason, we say there
are "members" (die Mitglieder) living in a life-community, rather
than separated "individuals." As such, the members constitute more
of an organismic role they have in their community in which they
share in an uninterrupted, inter-subjective stream of experience with
the other members. This close-knit and mutual experience has, in
contrast to the individuals living in a society, laws of its own (II 515-
16 IF 526-7). For instance, there is a pecking order among elders and
other members that make them unequal. This order is not chosen, but
an order into which members are born and which they freely accept.
We should now furnish some examples concerning the genesis
of various streams of experience of time that humans have with one
another. In doing so, we take yet another look at the mass and the
utility cooperative to distinguish them from the life-community.
(1) As Scheler showed in The Nature of Sympathy, Part 3,
during infancy there is a neutral, inter-subjective stream of experience
in which experience the "mine" and "thine," the "I" and "thou," are
not yet distinguished. The infant has no experience yet of another as
a "different" thou (Latin, infans: not speaking).
This stream of co-experience resembles that of the social form
of a mass where, as we said, the "I" is not distinguished from another
"thou" either. Just as in the case of the infant, the indistinction
between I and thou is not produced by the infant who is not yet
endowed with a will either, so also the absence between "I" and the
"thou" in a mass is not produced, precisely because the individual
will-power is suspended by the force of the psychic contagion.
(2) In utility cooperatives, people are given to each other
through work and tasks. Exceptions granted, they cooperate under the
auspices of work and tasks that are to be accomplished. Whereas in a
mass experience there is temporarily no inter-personal experience at
all, individuals of utility cooperatives do share a low level of inter-
personal experience, yet this experience with others does not reach
intimate spheres of the persons involved as it does, on the other hand,
in the existential level of solidarity among the members of a life-
community. Nor does the inter-personal experience of utility coop-
eratives reach into the core of persons as it can and does in religious
communal experiences. The individuals who temporarily live in the
cooperatives are not united in solidarity as all the members of life-
communities are, unless a kind of solidarity among them is politically
 VALUES AND TIME 45

constructed by guilds or unions. Individuals of utility cooperatives,

we said, always interrupt their co-experiences with others when they
leave the workplace until their co-experience resumes and they return
to work. This interrupted experience of social time is typical not only
for workers, but it is also characteristic for all technical types of work
done by employees and office-workers.
(3) By contrast, the stream of experience that the members of
a life-community share in, is an uninterrupted one. This continuous
stream, within which both the I and thou are bonded, unites them in
terms of a natural understanding. Natural understanding is distinct
from both inter-subjective anonymity that is characteristic of psychic
contagion, and it is distinct from the intermittent relations among
individuals of utility cooperatives. Precisely because there is little or
no deliberate and premeditated understanding among the members of
the life-community, there is, in contrast to the social form of society,
the experience of immediate understanding among the members that
holds tribes, clans, and families together. The members are given to
one another as fellow-members "within" the duration of the whole of
the tribe, clan, and family. The very immediacy of a direct relation is
analogous to relations that organs have with one another, as it were,
in the whole of an organism (VI 335). Furthermore, members of life-
communities share in a common denominator that runs and lasts
through all of their mutual experiences: Instead of individual and
independent thinking, there is mostly a thinking "with" others. That
is, there is a co-thinking, and co-loving, co-hearing, co-seeing, co-
hearing, co-living with one another that allows only small amounts of
logical and sequential reasoning. Therefore, there is no need for any
"criteria" of truth. Instead, there is a natural grasp of happenings in
nature and in the environment, there is a natural grasp of weather
conditions by observing the behavior ofhorses or insects. No need for
weather satellites, etc.
Furthermore, and contrary to individuals living in a society,
the life-communal members are born into a communal structure with
types of daily work naturally allocated to each member. In the more
rural and conservative tribes, for instance, fathers keep up the fields
and go hunting, mothers take care of food and children. The elders of
tribes oversee all the work done and to be done by tribal members.
This fits in with the basic mutual trust that the members share with
each other within the community, as opposed to individuals living in a
society which, stresses Scheler, is imbued with an overall mutual
46 LIFETIME

distrust. In the life-communities, trust is a phenomenon of duration

holding among its members, whereas the distrust in society is one of
critical reflection on other persons, of sizing them up, and on what is
going on. A distrust, that is, that can even be shown to be unjustified
or justified. But what is in reflection being distrusted must also be an
object in objective time.
It follows that life-communities require neither contracts nor
promises among its members to live by. Rather, they live together
organismically and experience each other by their bonds of blood,
kinship, ancestry, and shared expectations of the future. Nor do life-
communities have a need for rational proofs for the existence of their
gods, or God. They accept their own gods without hesitations, or the
God brought to them by alien missionaries, although they tend, as was
the case during and after the Christianization of Maya Indians and
other Indian tribes, to fuse the new God with their traditional ones,
and with old traditional beliefs in their ancient gods. Religious values
in a life-community, especially among tribes, are worlds apart from
theology, from rational and critical knowledge of God.
Moreover, their care for the whole of the community makes
the low levels of their members' individual will and their self-
responsibility dependent on this whole. This dependence is a sub-
conscious one, and not willed by contracts made in objective time.
The co-responsibility for the whole and in the whole, and not self-
responsibility, characterizes the morality of the life-community and
its subdivisions. Having only low levels of an individual will and self-
responsibility, the members are not yet "of age" (X 265 I PV 138). A
life-community is not dependent on a "will" to survive. It survives its
members naturally as a tree survives its growing and dying leaves (VI
335).
A sometimes unheeded component of the life-community is
the experience of time among its members besides that of duration.
As was indicated earlier, life-communities experience time mostly in
this mode of time that binds the whole of the community together,
rather than being tied to objective and measurable clock-time while
keeping appointments and observing contracts or engagements and
occupational obligations. But it is because of the experience of time
as duration in the life-community and of life-values that the members
have also a "lived" association with their ancestry and their future
generations. Lived duration is filled with contents of the past and of
the future, because the duration comprises past traditions and future
 VALUES AND TIME 47

expectations. The strong ties with tradition, and the continued absence
of something overwhelmingly new, makes the community, especially
in remote rural areas, look like having an unchanging, enduring and
conservative mind-set. The future is here replete with anticipations
linked to cyclic events of recurrences of feasts, of births, or of deaths.
In a life-community, anticipations are experienced in the lived present
tethered to past traditions. The future has no semblance to a box, as it
were, "into" which humans would make plans that are organized by
dates and periods of time, as is the case in society.
Concerning the philosophy of time in general, it is noteworthy
that both tradition and anticipation have a peculiar direction of the
time experienced in life-communities. The experience of the future is
not only linked to both an ancestral past and to the care, protection,
and preservation of future generations. Time-consciousness of the
future is not experienced in an open time-window through which the
members look into the future; rather, in their time-consciousness, the
future runs backward onto their lived present that itself is tethered to
the past, which simultaneously runs forward from behind into the
selfsame lived present. Past and future meet in an inverted duration of
the present. And so meet the contents and values. The contents keep
filling out all of the lived present from both directions. 16 Especially
time experiences among tribes are hardly successive or progressive.
The experience of time is inverted.
Let the graphic below illustrate the life-communal experience
of time as described here:

Past ~ Present +-- Future

This graphic is to illustrate that the experience of time is an

inverted experience of time. Whoever has partaken in the life of
tribes, say of American Indians, knows how much time "stands still"

16 Life-communal time can be much more complex than we describe it here. See
Alfonso Ortiz, The Tewa World. Space, Time, Being & Becoming in a Pueblo
Society, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1969. See also M. S. Frings,
"Time Structure in Social Communality." In Philosophy and Science in Phenome-
nological Perspective. Kah Kyung Cho, (Ed.), The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1984,
pp. 85-93; and the same author's "Zur Soziologie der Zeiterfahrung bei Max
Scheler. Mit einem Ruckblick auf Heraklit," Philosophisches Jahrbuch der Gorres-
Gesellschaft, 1984, pp. 118-130.
48 LIFETIME

in the duration of their present, and will also know that history is their
"tradition," and that the future is not a frame of time into which
members plan, make projections and intend to improve things and
states of affairs. The inverted time flows from the past to the present
and from the future back onto the same present where the flows of
time appear to come also to a standstill. This present reminds one
immediately of Parmenides, who lived in a Sicilian community, and
for whom there was "presence" only, saying that both past and future
are sensory illusions and deceptions of so-called changing things in a
changing time. The present as duration also reminds one of the Hopi
language that is devoid of past and future tenses.
The inverted flow of time is diametrically opposite to the
experience of time in society for which the experience of time is one
of successive time-points measurable with clocks and linked with
objective events. In society, the past resembles an irretrievable box
that contains countless events kept in recollection and studied in
general history. Both the past and the future are experienced "from"
the present, not "in" the present. This direction of societal time is one-
dimensional which is illustrated by the direction of the arrows in this
graphic:

Past ---7 Present ---7 Future

Equally significant as the experience of inverted time in the

social form of life-communities is what Scheler everywhere in his
writings referred to as "the natural view of the world" or the "natural
world-view" (X 463-74; XIV 293 I PE 202187). A life-community is
not only its sociological subject (X 404 I PE 168), but it is also the
foundation of society as well: No society can exist without the life-
community (II 320 I F 531 ), but a life-community without a society is
quite thinkable.
The concept of the natural world-view is, overall, the same as
what Husser! called the life-world (die Lebenswelt) and what Hei-
degger called everydayness (Alltaglichkeit). Indirectly, both Husser!
and Heidegger are indebted to Scheler somewhat, because Scheler
was apparently the first philosopher to explain the natural world-view
in its distinction from the scientific world-view and from world-views
of a "formulated" ideology, as he called it.
 VALUES AND TIME 49

There is, however, one point that sets Scheler even more off
from Husserl and Heidegger. It pertains to an argument that appears
to have been unnoticed in Husserl and Heidegger research.
There is a sociological factor that always plays a role in the
natural world-view. With Husserl, the life-world is unchanging and
reflected in a constant mode of consciousness; this constancy pertains
also to Heidegger's everydayness of Dasein. In this, Husserl and Hei-
degger presuppose that there is at all times one and the same structure
in the life-world and in everydayness. Scheler lets us know, however,
that such an unchangeable natural world-view requires the difficult
task of "peeling off' all the different traditions in it while keeping the
natural life-world constant (VI 15). He rejects explicitly the notion
that a constant world-view could at all times and for all people be
valid (VIII 61 ). In other words, Scheler does not allow the dynamics
of history and culture, even less the changing forms of ethos and
moralities be stripped from the natural world-view. Therefore, the
natural world-view must be relative to certain phenomena.
We made reference earlier to the "thou-1 relation," as the fun-
damental existential category of human thinking (VIII 57 I PR 71 ).
This makes the natural world-view sociologically relegated to variant
smaller and larger groups constituted by the thou-1 relation. Since
groups vary in kind, the natural world-view must be "relative" to each
of them. There can only be "relative" natural world-views. Or, natural
world-views are relative to sociologically different kinds of groups
and their times. The ever changing sociological factors are, from a
Schelerian view-point, missing in both Husserl and Heidegger. A
uniform natural view of the world appears to be, for this reason, an
abstraction, because phenomenological reduction has gone too far.
Scheler defines the relative natural world-view as follows.
Everything in it is taken for granted or "given without question" (VIII
61 I PR 74). This "given without question," i.e., without any need of
objective inquiry, is, however, different among the sociologically
different groups. For instance, high and low tides are experienced
"without question" by groups that live near an ocean; but this does
not necessarily hold for groups that live far away from an ocean, or
for groups that never saw one. Sunrise and sunset happen "without
question," but not so in every group. For both sunrise and sunset can
be experienced as a religious happening, as it was with ancient Maya
Indians for whom each dawn was, "without question" a dawn of a
new god and each sunset its disappearing. Such and other experiences
50 LIFETIME

of a relative natural world-view is in no need of a scientific

explanation for those who live in it. Neither the effects of the moon's
magnetism on tides, nor the law of the earth rotating around the sun
are given in the natural world-view. The experience of tides and of
the rising sun, are different, no matter how slightly, for different
groups. From this it follows that what is given "without question" is
not the same in the experiences among different groups.
To explain this point more precisely, we need to take a look at
the question of what the term "group" means in our context. A
"group" pertains (1) to races in the genealogical, not political sense of
the word (VI 338); (2) a "group" may pertain to units living in
different cultures. This point prompts us to furnish yet another
example to understand Scheler's argument that what is given "without
question" in the natural world-view must be relative to a group's own
natural world-view.
The natural view of the world of Asian Indians contains their
unquestionable belief in the afterlife of the soul. The natural world-
view relative to Western groups, however, does not accord with this
"without question" status implicit in this belief (VI 16). Too, demons
and spirits are "present without question" among primitives; not so in
the natural world-views of Western groups. For the ancient Greeks,
Zeus was present "without question" in lightning, but not possibly so
among Scandinavian groups who knew of no Zeus.
These examples point to a significant role that religious com-
ponents have in the relative natural world-views. They are not at all
congruent with one another, yet they are contained in natural world-
views. One must wonder why the religious components, which are
undoubtedly part of natural views of the world, play little or no part
in Husserl's life-world and Heidegger's everydayness. Has the pheno-
menological reduction gone again beyond what it can or should do?

b. Contemporary Attitude Toward Life Values

Since the cultivation of life-values play an overwhelming role in our

time, a comment should be made concerning the understanding, and
the handling them in the light of Scheler's explanations of them.
There is no doubt that the role of life-values in today's society
has generated ubiquitous, confrontational discussions, partly due to
the politicization of these values, and partly due to their sometimes
 VALUES AND TIME 51

being falsely felt as higher values than mental or even the religious
values. Present-day concerns about the environment, about clean
water and air, about the preservation of forests and atomic waste
management, about smoking, diet, and - we emphasize - about badly
needed international animal rights and firm legal action to protect
them-, the concerns about longevity, and more, are symptomatic for
an environment-conscious society as the one we live in. And equally
important are the concerns about life-values pertinent to health, about
cancer and the spreading of the HIV virus and other spreading fatal
diseases. A colossal medical industry based on modem technological
progress conjoined with admirable skills of physicians, are rapidly
producing new remedies for preserving and enhancing just about any
life-value ofthe human body.
In our context we wish to concern ourselves with one type of
life-values whose excessive cultivation, however, is quite obvious:
athletics and sports.
In the above analyses of utility and vital values the reader will
have noticed a difference between the lowest ranks of sensible and
utility values. Utility values can, as we saw, penetrate into all other
value ranks whereas sensible values do not. Life values, however,
also penetrate into other value ranks. For example, the preservation of
life-values may be of assistance to the production of useful things;
life-values may penetrate into mental values of art, justice, and the
cognition of truth; and they can even penetrate the value rank of the
holy. 17 The point of the spread of life-values throughout all value
ranks may also pertain to an exaggeration of their importance. This
appears to be the case when they are more than necessary practiced in
physical sports.
Often unnoticed excesses of the practice of athletics is so
rampant, however, that it has begun to affect the age-old tradition to
cultivate the mind, and not the body, first. Excessive sports activities

17 Briefly, the values of life are, for instance, represented in paintings, they can be
set to music (Beethoven's Eroica and Pastoral), and they play foremost roles in
literature, in dramas, and novels. Concerning the mental value of justice, life values
are a central issue in ongoing debates on capital punishment; the mental value of
cognition allows an exploration of the distinction to be made between live and
inanimate objects; and sacred values can pertain to gods of health, of the unborn
(Artemis) in mythology; they pertain to Zeus turning into an animal, or to using the
life-values of blood and bread in the Eucharist, water in baptism.
52 LIFETIME

has lead for some time now to a growing anti-intellectualism, already

Scheler deplored. Not infrequently, the higher-ups in sports even tell
us even that a healthy body brings with it a healthy mind. Let us quote
Scheler regarding the present-day excessive promotion and
cultivation of athletics and its physical life-values (XIV 419):

Today, one can find hardly any ubiquitous pheno-

menon that hovers above all nations, and which is so
much in need of both an exhaustive sociological and
psychological inquiry, than the phenomenon of sports
with its unlimited increase in scope and appreciation.
Yet, there are only a few contributions made toward a
detailed interpretation of this gigantic phenomenon.
Almost everything we have on the matter stems from
sports instructors who are, of course, only interested
in the technicalities of physical activities. However,
concerning the novel over-emphasis on sports that
affects especially our present youth, I tend to regard
this over-emphasis to be a most significant fact. ..
which signals a fundamental change in the attitude of
future generations: a deviation from the asceticism
that goes with the cultivation of spiritual ideals that
has steadily been on the increase in the West ever
since the beginning of the Christian calendar. This
one-sided, ascetic-spiritual ethos characteristic of the
past took on various forms, as the monastic and the
Protestant asceticism, or even that of non-religious
asceticism of extremist capitalism whose sole focus is
directed to just work and achievement. This same
ascetic ethos happened simultaneously with the
irreconcilable biological overloads of the human
brain, but at the cost and neglect of a cultivation of
the lived body ... Sports has now begun to deflect, to
unheard-of degrees, the appreciation of art, of
philosophy, of science, of drama, and of higher
education (Bildung), etc. As compared to the past,
sports is a bold and explosive movement of reaction.
As it is the case with all phenomena of reaction,
sports, too, tends to mold (zu zimmern) a type of the
 VALUES AND TIME 53

human being that is as distinct from the ordinary

image we have of the human being possessing vital
and mental harmony, as was the type of the over-
intellectual humans of the past.

The 1927 quote is a typical case of how an otherwise low-

profile passage found in the works of thinkers, can conceal an entire
set of principles underneath a respective philosophy, in this case of
Scheler's metaphysics and philosophical anthropology.
As to Scheler's metaphysics, the passage pertains directly to
the functional relationship between the two major principles of his
metaphysics we will discuss later: i.e., the cosmic principle of "im-
pulsion" (der Drang) which is the unity of vital energy and drives that
propels all development and growth of life forward, and the principle
of a becoming "spirit" (der Geist). The passage relates to the indivi-
dual manifestation in the human being of cosmic impulsion, and of
spirit in terms of their actual forms: the embodiment of cosmic impul-
sion in plants, animals, and humans, on the one hand, and the cosmic
spirit's manifestation as mind-in-person, on the other. 18
During his later years, Scheler envisioned a world-era of
adjustment" (das We/falter des Ausgleichs) of the ample differences
among cultures and practices among humans. This era began during
the first global contact that humans happened to experience during
World War I. "Man in the Era of Adjustment" is the title of the essay
relevant to our present-day history and humankind of the future (IX
145-70 I P 94-126). The era of adjustment has already, and will have,
two processes going on in it. A historical process of a slow and
gradual adjustment and confluence of opposite historical forces of the
past and the present, as well as a cosmic process of a growing inter-
penetration of cosmic impulsion with spirit, not only in the Deity-in-
becoming (die werdende Gottheit) but also in their realization in a
more insightful human being.

18 In the following we make a distinction between "spirit" and "mind" for both of
which Scheler uses Geist. We will use mind when it refers to humans. The human
mind exists only in the form of "person" (II 389 I F 389 [sic]). We will refer to
"spirit" as that metaphysical principle which is the opposite of "impulsion," and
which spirit is said to be "impotent" or powerless without being tethered to impul-
sion, drives, and the sociologically realizing factors. (Scheler also uses "spirit" for
the sum total of human acts of consciousness, but this does not concern us here).
54 LIFETIME

What is already moving toward this adjustment is indicated in

the above quote concerning sports: There is a process, on the one
hand, of a gradually historical balancing out of the human mind and
mental values, which in the past were vastly over-cultivated and, on
the other hand, there is a process of the cultivation of the body with
its physical divisible values, neglected in the past. Present-day sports
is an explosive, excessive reaction to the incessant, lopsided
imbalance of mind over body in the past. But the adjustment between
mind and body will reduce a negative reaction to both, and their
balancing out and adjustment will some time occur, even if only in
the distant future. 19

19 Concerning the World-Era of Adjustment, it would be incorrect to link the pro-

cess of a gradual balancing out of mind and body with the ancient dictum some-
times falsely quoted by instructors and leaders of sports as mens sana in corpore
sana, as if a healthy mind would automatically entail a healthy body, and vice
versa. For, Juvenal's (c.60-140) satyre X 356 says something very different in that
the quote should start with: "Orandum est" "We must pray" to the gods that they
give us both a healthy mind and a healthy body. Juvenal does not say that humans
themselves can bring about a balance between mind and body.
We could find neither Greek nor Roman references to athletics saying that
athletes were instructed that a healthy mind was consequential to training the body,
and vice versa. In Greece, athletic activities are recorded since about 900 BC.
Sociologically, they were activities pursued by the upper classes, who could afford
to suspend their work to enjoy sports rather than practice sports for competition. It
was only during the later democratization of the Greek people that sports was
practiced also by the common man, and it also included what we today refer to as
professional sports. Among other disciplines, athletics was attached to the five field
and track disciplines of the pentathlon. Wrestling and boxing were practiced
without rules and with extreme brutalities as twisting and dislocating joints,
coercion, kicking and choking, reminding one of its leftovers today in the wrestling
that fakes such brutalities.
One could, on the basis of Scheler's premise of a "reaction" to a lopsided
cultivation of athletics argue that Greek philosophy, especially that of Plato's
devaluation of the body, was itself a reaction against Greek sports at the time.
Whatever emphasis on sports existed during the Antiquity, it came to an abrupt end
with Christianity that objected not only to the cultivation of the body but also to the
nudity of athletes that began in the eighth century when Orsippos lost his cover and,
stripped to the buff, kept running right to the finish line.
Let it be added that, sociologically, sports was also in modem times first
practiced by the upper classes, esp. those of the English who cold afford to play
tennis, go hunting, do equestrian sports, etc. The etymology of the word "sports" as
derived from middle-Latin disportus, "diversion" reflects this sociological aspect
conveniently. While other modem sports disciplines as motor car racing are also
representative of upper classes, modem soccer, on the other hand, is not. Soccer is
 VALUES AND TIME 55

Yet, what does it mean that bold reactions of athletic activity

against an excessive cultivation of the mind tends to "mold" a type of
human being? The following answer to the question might be an
indicator of what we can expect from the generations to come.
A harmonious balance of body and mind appears, of course,
not only for Scheler to be a sound educational project, especially with
regard to the education of children and teenagers, for whom Scheler
always maintained very special concerns. But what would happen
when, during the very long process toward adjustment, including that
of body and mind, all of a sudden an unbalanced tilt toward either of
them would occur and this time resulting in excesses of athletic culti-
vation of the body that would replace the past excessive cultivation of
the mind with a type of human being "molded" by excessive training
and cultivation of the body? Would there occur a high-priced decrease
of intellectual activity and cultivation of mental and religious values?
Yes.
Such a lopsidedness of excessive emphasis on the body has
already begun. The excessive emphasis is manifest, as Scheler puts it,
in today's prevalent state of mind of "an infantile obsession with
being first" (XIV 420). 20
Excessive athletics, suggests Scheler, now leads to a type of
human being whose hollow soul is coupled with feelings of mental
inferiority. Excessiveness in athletics is no expression of a blooming
life; rather, it turns modern humans toward "narcotizing" and drug-
like over-compensation of their hollow and weary souls.
The imbalance of body and mind is knotted in two fascinating
features of Scheler's philosophical anthropology: the "sublimation"
and the "retro-sublimation" (IX 45 I M 56; IX 155-159 I P 106-112).
Sublimation is a lopsided diversion (Verdrangung) of vital energy in

said to have started in Elizabethan times when children kicked skulls down the
streets before something like a soccer ball was invented.
20 It is unfortunate that among the sixteen industrialized nations this obsession is so
rampant in American schools. Not infrequently it begins with excessive drilling of
children in little leagues, mostly unheard of abroad. In our schools, the desire for
athletic competition and of winning seems, by comparison, to be at the expense not
only of the three R's, but also of learning critical thinking, geography, history,
classical literature that, in contrast to sports and computer studies, provides students
with a moral compass, with a foreign language and, not least, with mathematics.
Excesses in sports competition may well be one reason why our high school grad-
uates, exceptions granted, rank in terms of knowledge, especially of the humanities,
last among high school graduates of the rest of industrialized nations.
56 LIFETIME

the human organism into the cortex of the brain. Its reversal, "retro-
sublimation," is an equally lopsided diversion of vital energy from the
cortex into the organism.
In this connection the term "vital energy" that we used several
times earlier must now be clarified. Vital energy is in all living
beings. It must be distinguished from physical energy and its forms of
heat, electrical, and kinetic motion energy, etc. Whereas the forms of
physical energy are measurable in time, vital energy is not. For this
reason, vital energy cannot be an object of the natural sciences. Vital
energy is that force behind the growth and development of an organ-
ism that feeds and sets into motion such growth and development
from the embryo on to all movements of organs and of the lived body
as a whole. It occurs in molecules, plants, animals, and in humans. It
also feeds all non-voluntary organic movements as heart beats and
those of the bowel track. Furthermore, it is distinguished from phy-
sical energy in that it reaches exhaustion in individual organisms by
itself. An organism ages and dies quickly, but not so the physical
energy of inanimate entities which keeps changing into the energy of
heat (second thermodynamic law). Inanimate matter does not "die."
Thus, the vital energy is also a driving force behind an organism's
five stages of its life: birth, growth, prime of life, decline, and death.
In addition, vital energy is not only working in individual organisms,
but it is also a quality of universal life or life in general, possibly to be
found also on other planets. Whether or not the vital energy in this
universe is "all-life," as Scheler called it, and will also reach universal
death and extinction, is a question Scheler discussed in his project of
showing that God, too, must have vital energy. He is no pure mind
and, as such, has to be the "Deity-in-becoming."
Scheler pinpoints the Western anti-intellectual attitude to the
lopsided distribution of vital energy that in other places he identifies
also with the Nietzschean "dionysian" man (IX 155 I P 107):

This process of retro-sublimation first manifests itself

only in a diminished appreciation of the spirit [=
mind] and intellectuality, of cultural works and its
specific social agents. Today, all the modem mass
movements we find in both Europe and in America
are strangely united in their conscious anti-rational,
anti-intellectual attitude which frequently makes even
a show of despising spirit and all spiritual values.
 VALUES AND TIME 57

Sublimation, i.e., the psychic sublimation of human drives and

the diversion of life-energy from the organism to the cortex, is the
basic direction of the vital energy. Human sublimation is ultimate (die
letzte) as a result of the sublimation happening in the entire universe
which is a cosmic process going on from the lower forces of electrons
toward laws of gestalts, to vital energy, and to organic entities (IX 52-
53 I M 66-68).
Having discussed some sociological principles of the life-
community, its experience of time, and the concepts of sublimation
and retro-sublimation in the context of historical adjustment, we now
tum to the social form of mental values, which is "society."

4. Society

In practice, the sociological counterpart of mental values, society, is

the bearer of all value ranks (II 546 I F 559). But within this
complex relation that society has to value ranks and their social units,
it is the lower utility and sensible values that are the "stars of society"
(X 266 I PV 138). All previously discussed inter-subjective
experiences occur in society also; but the key experience in society
consists in man-made contractual relations as set up in legal systems,
constitutions, politics, business, et alia, between its individuals.
Society is not really "lived" but it is an "artifact" in which one lives.
Strangely enough, society has no reality of its own as life-
communities do (VI 336; II 518, 551 IF 529, 564). The reason for
this lies in the just mentioned "artifact" of society construed by man-
made contracts or, society "consists" in such contractual relations (F
546-7 I F 559). These contractual relations, however, exist only at
present moments in time and they exist only for individuals that are
living at that time. At every second society dies with contracts that
turned into obsolescence and extinction, and at every moment society
is born again with new contracts and new contractual relations
(VI 336).
In contrast to the members living in a life-community, societal
individuals neither live together for the sake of the whole they live in,
nor does a society survive its individuals as the life-community
survives its members. The life-communal "tree" as surviving its dying
and growing members is an analogy that does not hold for the
58 LIFETIME

individuals of society. Rather, the people in society do not only live in

an inter-subjective distance from each another, but also experience
each other, and mostly so, in terms of current artificial relations. The
relationship among individuals of a neighborhood is not, as is the case
in a life-community, an immediate relationship of fellow feeling and
of a genuine co-experience; rather, the relationship is a mediate one,
based on contracts, laws, ownership, on property, legal dependencies
and possessions upon which the neighborhood relations grow or not
("plastic" neighborhoods).
With regard to the character of time, society's existence that is
based on contractual relations made between the individuals that live
together at the same period of time, society is not only "non-spatial"
(II 546-7 I F 559-60. VI 336), but it has no duration either, because
every second society comes into existence and disappears again, as
we already pointed out.
The individuals living in a society are alien "others" removed
from one another. Therefore, its individuals live in a state of constant
distrust (II 518 I F 529 I VI 336). This is in stark contrast to the mem-
bers of the life-community who live in mutual trust. Since distrust is
based on trust, and sequence on duration, the life-communities of
families, clans, home-communities, and tribes, are the conditio sine
qua non for the sequential existence from moment to moment of
society (II 520 IF 531), or:

There can be no society without a life-community

(though there can be a life-community without soc-
iety).

In our pursuit to outline a sociology of values and the value

ranks in Formalism with reference to the experience of time, the
description of the first three value-ranks may have suggested that
society is the sociological counterpart of the fourth value rank of
mental values. But this does not follow.

a. The Argument Against Society as a Social Form of Mental Values

First of all, society is mostly engaged with the two lowest ranks of
values: sensible values and utility values (II 519 I F 529). But saying
that the values of the two lowest ranks characterize society as a whole
 VALUES AND TIME 59

is incongruent with the nature of a society. Whereas the values of the

two lowest ranks are both spatial and divisible values; and whereas
sensible values spread over parts of a lived human or animal body and
which values are localizable values; and whereas the same state of
affairs holds with the utility values, society was nevertheless referred
to as non-spatial. How can a non-spatial society be the place where
spatial values of the two lowest ranks occur?
The same question can be posed with regard to duration.
Mental values have more duration than lower values. Indeed the more
values have duration, the higher these values are (II 107 IF 90). Yet,
society was said to have no duration either. How can a society having
no duration be the place where higher values of duration occur?
Scheler's ethics of values is no ethics representative of the
contemporary epoch alone. It possesses a time stretch that reaches
beyond the present, far into the past and distant future. This is
because it is precisely the five value ranks themselves that are the
fixed "polar star" that hovers above the ever changing humanity and
its always changing types of ethos (X 269 I PV 142). The ranks of
values are no axiological set that is characteristic of just Scheler's
own times. In terms of its historical latitude, value ethics is
comparable, but only that, to Kant's "starry heavens" above me, and
the "moral law" within me. Facing the above questions, we must go
one step further in order to see that underneath them are principles
that make Scheler's value ethics capable of generating ever new
applications in every new historical epoch.

b. The Argument for Society as a Social Form of Mental Values

The historical existence of all social forms of togetherness must not

be seen in terms of development and sequence. They did not develop
in a sequential order. They are co-original.
The social forms have always existed simultaneously and side-
by-side, but in the sense that during particular historical periods one
social form is or was preponderant over the others, i.e., no social form
exists separate from the others. Indeed, they have historically existed
in terms of "mixtures." Also, there are, in practical life, no clear and
sharp distinctions to be made among them (II 529 I F 541 ). The
dynamics of preponderances among mixtures of them during different
historical epochs fits well within Scheler's contention that the sphere
60 LIFETIME

of the person, too, manifests itself in different executions of different

acts during its existence. It was stated that the sphere of the person
can temporarily be swept away by the psychic contagion in a mass.
Again, the individuals working in utility cooperatives have only
impersonal and temporally limited experience with each other. They
are not bound by an original solidarity. We mentioned further that
members of life-communities are not yet persons "of age" because
they live mostly under the sway of the well-being of the whole of
their community, there being little room for an individual free will
within this whole. It is society, however, that is the social form of a
mature person and Scheler explicitly states (X 266 I PV 138):

The form of togetherness called society takes its

origins during the collapse and the leveling-out of
life-communities ... But it is in this very collapse, this
dying and death, that the mature human is being born
- a free man, self-willed and self-reliant individual
moving about as he likes - an individual making
exchanges, drawing up contracts, forming a society
with others by way of deliberate purposes but
without a push from any unified will of life and love,
and enjoying himself in forms of international
customs.

With this argument, we may have found the right path toward
a solution of the problem mentioned. Our question was how a non-
spatial and non-durational society could be the place for spatial or
divisible values of the lower ranks to occur. Nevertheless, this lack of
society's spatiality and duration makes it also able to be the bearer of
the indivisible mental values. The bearer of mental and sacred values
is, however, the person. And as an embodied person, the person is
both the bearer of the lower value ranks and of mental and religious
values, because the latter are given only in "personal form" (X 302 I
PV 179). It is, therefore, the constitution of the embodied person that
allows society to be the bearer of both the lower divisible values and
of the higher indivisible values and their relevant ranks.
Let an inventory be made of the differences between the inter-
human experience in the life-community, on the one hand, and the
inter-human experiences in a society, on the other.
 VALUES AND TIME 61

The differences of both their modes of temporality are in our

context most important. They appear under the numbers 7 and 8 in the
inventory:

Life-Community Society

1. Natural Thinking 1. Conceptual thinking

2. Immediate co-living
3. Members not yet "of age"
4. Trust. Solidarity
5. No criteria for truth
6. Life values
7. Duration
8. Small amount of objective time
2. Contractual relations
3. Persons of age
4. Distrust
5. Criteria for truth
6. Divisible, indivisible
values
7. No duration
8. Mostly objective time

5. The Encompassing Person

The highest form of all social units is the "encompassing person" (die
Gesamtperson). As a collective person, the term is applicable to reli-
gions, cultures, and nations.
As is known, during the first period of his thought, Scheler
was a convert to Catholicism, and for this reason he assumed there to
be only one encompassing person, Christianity, or "the Church." He
thought at the time that there could only be one encompassing person,
because there could be only one God. He abandoned this idea later on
and he added two more encompassing persons, namely, cultures and
nations.
We try to explain first what an encompassing person is. As is
the case with most concepts of general nature, there are obstacles to
describe them as objects to be understood clearly. One tends to think
that the general nature of ordinary beings and entities has a reality of
its own apart from the individual things or entities it pertains to. This
line of thinking comes to us, of course, from Plato. The argument that,
on the one hand, individual horses are different from each other but
that the general idea of what all horses have in common, namely, their
being horses or their "horseness," on the other hand, suggests that the
"idea" of horseness (and other ideas of classes of entities) has the
highest kind of reality, because all individual horses share what they
have in common with this idea. No individual horse can be a horse
62 LIFETIME

unless it participates along with all other horses in their universal

idea, i.e., in the "looks" (Heidegger) they all have in common.
This Platonic participation (metexis) in the idea of a class of
entities has, however, only one direction: It goes, in this case, from all
individually different horses up to the general idea of horseness which
is not an individual and perceivable horse. The reality of this idea
must be a transcendent reality, precisely because its reality is neither
an entity nor a perceivable horse. By comparison to a general "idea,"
all the individually perceivable horses, which are subject to birth and
death, must have less reality. This lesser reality has its origin in the
differences holding among all horses. Each horse will always lack
some of the qualities which other horses have. Black horses are not
white horses, and small horses are not big horses. Each horse lacks
universal perfection and its reality must be below the highest reality
of the general idea of all of them, i.e., below what all of their common
looks as horses is, which comprises all the differences among them.
In our context, we recalled only briefly this Platonic argument,
because it must not be applied to the idea of the encompassing person
in the sense that it were "above" what it comprises, namely, religions,
cultures, and nations.
First, the encompassing person is not a transcendent reality (II
512 IF 523). True, the encompassing person contains all social forms.
It contains also the societies and life-communities of cultures and
religions. But the reason why the encompassing person allows no
comparison with the Platonic idea is a phenomenological one. The
encompassing person of religion, for instance, is both "in" the indi-
vidual consciousness of the individual person and, in tum, the
individual consciousness of a person is "in" the encompassing person.
If you will, a Platonic metexis would have to have two and not one
direction: A metexis would have be amutual one between individual
persons and the encompassing person they belong to. Apart from
Plato's metexis, this mutuality may be illustrated further by the moral
concept of responsibility. The life-community is responsible to all its
members, and all its individual members are responsible for their
communal whole. In any encompassing person there is not only co-
responsibility for the encompassing person, but there is also the self-
responsibility of the individual person, and there is self-responsibility
in the encompassing person as well (II 522 I F 533-4). One can say,
for example, that a nation as a whole is morally responsible for its
 VALUES AND TIME 63

acts just as its individual subjects can be said to be responsible for it,
the nation.
Furthermore, an encompassing person is a collective unit of
individual persons comprising persons, not only of the present, but
also of the past and the future generations. Therefore, the time of an
encompassing person encompasses past, present, and future.
The encompassing person has, in addition, two other features.
An encompassing person is both a universal phenomenon that is
omnipresent throughout its past, present, and future generations, and
it is an individual phenomenon because it sets itself off from other
encompassing persons, say, from another religion or a nation. But the
meaning of an encompassing person pertains equally to different reli-
gions as Buddhism, Christianity, or Islam. And so it is with cultural
encompassing persons as the Western, Eastern, or American Indian
cultures, and this plurality among them holds for different nations as
well.
From the above it would follow that an encompassing person
is characterized either by faith (religion), by a world-view (of a
culture) or by nations that belong to a culture or a religion. Nations as
encompassing persons are, for instance, China, France, Russia,
Spain, the United States. They encompass their own past, present, and
future generations. Their cultural annexes belong to them also, say,
Quebec with regard to France. Annexes are part of the cultural
encompassing person but, as such, the political characteristics of
nations and annexes are not included in the encompassing person,
because politics is an instrument of the state which Scheler at times
regarded to be an encompassing person, but at other times did not.
Encompassing persons can also overlap. There are elements of
Christianity in Islam, and elements which cultures of the West and
East share; there are traces of American Indian mythology among
Christian American Indians. Nations can also overlap with different
cultural and religious encompassing persons. One can see that an
encompassing person has no defined political borders, which
indicates already that its form of time is not measurable objective
time.
There are some opposing components in an encompassing per-
son. The existence of an encompassing person is dependent on
individuals living it. But an encompassing person is not dependent on
this or that member that happens to live in it; nor is it dependent on
individuals who belong to two encompassing persons, for example,
64 LIFETIME

when they share the encompassing person of their religion but also
recognize the value of their nation. In such cases moral conflicts are
prone to happen. Christianity in France at Napoleon's time, the
Orthodoxy during Communist domination, Jewish religion in Nazi-
Germany, are just a few cases of such moral conflict. All individual
persons concerned have to face so-called either-or situations that they
must at times make hard decisions on. The individuals are subjected
to the laws of a state and to laws of their religion. For instance, in
Nazi-Germany, Jewish converts to Catholicism, as Edith Stein, were
considered to be Jews, not Catholics. But it can also be the case that
these individuals are constantly waiting for what will happen to them
as Palestinians do living today in Israel.
The twofold character of the dependence and independence of
encompassing persons makes it possible that it is experienced "in"
every individual's consciousness, and it makes also possible that each
individual person experiences the encompassing person in his or her
own individual way. This is the reason why no person can have a
complete experience of his or her encompassing person. Hence, there
are always open ends in experiencing one's encompassing person.
These open ends go "beyond" the individuals' limited experiences of
an encompassing person. And this is also why it survives its members
in the temporal form of historical duration in a way that leaves room
for ever more different experiences that individuals can and will have
of it.
The order of sequence of encompassing persons, a religion, a
culture, and a nation, possesses four elements:
(1) Their order corresponds to the order of values of the per-
son. The value of holiness has a sociological counterpart in a religion,
which is highest encompassing person. The mental values have as
their sociological counterpart the encompassing person of a culture;
and the values of life have as their sociological counterpart the nation
as their encompassing person.
(2) There is also a descending order among the encompassing
persons. a) Religions as such are "supra-national and supra-cultural."
b) The encompassing person of a religion encompasses both a culture
and a nation; and yet, religions are also "within" cultural and the
national encompassing persons. Moreover, the nation must be seen as
above the state. Although the state is, by and large, characterized by
divisible, controllable, and quantifiable values of the lower ranks, the
national encompassing person is, nevertheless, also immanent in a
 VALUES AND TIME 65

state's value systems also, because its existence is dependent on the

individuals of the state. The latter experience both the encompassing
person of their nation and culture in the background of their
experience of the state. A culture, however, is not dependent on the
existence of a state, but only dependent on a nation.
(3) The order of encompassing persons, religious, cultural, and
national, implies that they are also intercontained (II 531-2 I F 543).
A religious encompassing person encompasses cultures, and cultures
encompass nations. In addition, every one of the three encompassing
persons also comprise the life-communities and societies, no matter
what differences there are between these social forms (society itself is
not an encompassing person, because it has no duration).
(4) Concerning time, each encompassing person has its own
larger or shorter duration which corresponds to its value ranks. The
duration of the encompassing person of religion lasts longest (value of
holiness). It changes very slowly in history. The duration of the
encompassing person of a culture changes already more frequently
(shorter duration of mental values), and the duration of a national
encompassing person is even shorter than a cultural one (less duration
of life values than mental values).

D. ONTOLOGY OF VALUES AND TIME

1. The Concept of Ontology

During the past century, the word "ontology" had been used in
various meanings by authors of the phenomenological movement and
by scholars of different or independent orientations. For this reason,
we want to clarify first in which meaning the word is used in what
follows. 21
The Greek meaning of the word "onta" refers us to existing
entities. But the word can also be used in the sense of the essential
nature of Being itself, i.e., when it is associated with "to on," Being.
In the latter meaning, the word ontology is not much different from
the word "metaphysics," i.e., the study of what is the "essence" of

21 Almost diametrically opposed, for instance, is the use of the word "ontology" in
Heidegger and N. Hartmann. See Heidegger's pungent critique ofN. Hartmann in
Sein und Zeit, GA, Volume 2, p. 276. Heidegger's implicit critique there of Max
Scheler is, to say the least, misinformed (VIII 203).
66 LIFETIME

existing things (ta physica). The use of the word ontology can also be
referred to the question of the "meaning" of being. In this sense of on-
tology, Heidegger's question of the meaning of Being can also be a
metaphysical question. He would, of course, disagree with this be-
cause all traditional metaphysics failed, according to Heidegger, to
tackle the question of the meaning of Being in the first place. But this
can also show that the terms "ontology" and "metaphysics" can be,
and obviously are, debatable in each and every case when the terms
are used, and a clarification of their meanings used in any text should
be incumbent upon the authors dealing with them.
One could go on here and describe in detail the meanings of
"ontology" and of "metaphysics," including their overlapping. To
determine the various meanings of "ontology" as they have been used
in more recent times may be a beneficial undertaking, especially for
students of philosophy; but we must in our context restrict ourselves
to Scheler's philosophy of time and to the meaning of the word
"ontology" as it will be used.
The word "ontology" in our sense then pertains to the study of
the order of entities in contrast to what lies, or can lie, behind them;
that is, in contrast to the essence of what is, Being, das Sein, as the
gerunds of "to be" and of "sein," i.e., as verbs functioning as nouns.
Hence, our use of the word ontology pertains only to entities and their
order. We will not claim that we are anywhere near a general order of
entities comparable to, for example, a "chain of being;" nor will we
claim that we are explaining a general order of the foundation of what
is, as was done by N. Hartmann in his New Ways of Ontology (Neue
Wege der Ontologie).
Having this in mind, the present section, entitled, Ontology of
Values, indicates that we will confine ourselves to the ontology of
those entities called values. In this regard, we will concentrate on the
order of values alone. This order has already surfaced a number of
times in our preliminary inquiries of Scheler's philosophy of time, for
instance. when we discussed the "order" of the ranks of values.
 VALUES AND TIME 67

2. The Ontological Place of the Being of Values

A few points more need clarification. Scheler's notion of mind (Geist)

includes all data of acts of feelings and love, i.e., not only to acts of
thinking, and of perception. He refers to these feelings and to love
figuratively and in terms of a more general image as the "heart" of the
human being. The heart is the capacity of love and to feel the order of
values and to feel stirrings in one's conscience, but it is also the
capacity for aesthetic and religious values and feelings (XI 62).
In Greek, medieval, modem, and contemporary philosophy,
the traditional difference between the concepts of existence (Dasein)
of entities and their whatness (Sosein) fails to mention, says Scheler,
that their givenness to us is in terms of values or value-being (das
Wertsein). But (XI 60):

As an ultimate form of being, value-being is as fundamental as

existence and whatness.

Scheler challenges, therefore, the traditional structure made in

metaphysics:
Being
~~
Existence Essence

He replaces it with a graphic that illustrates the equivalent

status of existence, essence, and of value being (XI 60):

Being

~
Existence
~-------------.
Whatness Value-being

In the past, the value-being has either been understood to be

secondary to existence and whatness, or the being of values has not
been mentioned at all. In addition, existence for which Scheler prefers
to use the word "reality," has one unambiguous meaning for him. As
we shall see, reality or existence is given to us only through the
resistance of entities, states of affairs, of our internal life, and of the
68 LIFETIME

whole world, against our innermost life-center. It is only when reality

is being experienced in its resistance against us that reality becomes
accessible to thinking. Therefore, reality is trans-intelligible: It is not
given to us first through the mind, through knowledge, through
perception, nor is reality given to us through consciousness. Not
seeing this specific understanding of reality, which is not only
Scheler's, but has a history of its own (IX 209 I PE 318), was one of
the reasons for the mistake having been made in the past of an
equivalent relationship between essence, and existence only.
Granted it is correct and justified that reality is resistance, i.e.,
that both words mean the same, one must make a distinction between
two aspects of the ontological place of values within the threefold
ontological framework of existence, essence, and values.
I. In the reality experienced by us, values are always borne by
substrates of whatever material or non-material entities. They need
entities, substrates, an object, or a state of affairs, on and with which
the values occur. But this is a bit more complicated than it may sound.
Scheler's argument that colors are analogous to values (II 35 I F 12)
shows a) that colors also need objects for them to appear and to be
seen on, and b) that one object may have this or that color or any
number of them; and c) the argument shows that just as there is no
color and light in a vacuum having no object in it and against which a
color would become real, so also there is no value unless there is a
substrate, be it material or not. Without a substrate, then, there can be
no value, or (I 98):

Concerning the question, "What is a value?" we give

the following answer: Insofar as the word "is" ex-
presses existence in the question (and "is" does not
express a mere copula), a value is not at all. The con-
cept of value allows as little of a definition as the
concept of Being does.

This implies five key elements in the ontology of values.

First, no spatial thing or state of affairs can claim that it alone
has a particular value, just as is the case with colors. For entities that
bear values (or colors) are indifferent to the value (or the color) they
have. Values and things are independent of each other, as are colors
and things. The value of beauty may appear on a painting, during a
sonata, a poem, the sunset, or in a landscape. A quantifiable value of
 VALUES AND TIME 69

$10.00 can be of a vase, of a plant, or a donation. In this example, the

entities, indeed, demonstrate independence of the value of $10.00.
But the independence of quantifiable values pertains not only to
currency values of today, such as they occur in stock markets or in
economies at large. Economics rests, ontologically, on the
independence that ex-ists between values and entities. Values traded
in a stock market are free to fluctuate in any bear- and bull market.
All the international markets demonstrate this ontological status of the
independence of values and entities. The independence between them
is a mutual one: Values are as independent of objects, as objects are
independent of values.
Second, the argumentation of the mutual independences must,
however, be distinguished from the way values are experienced and
felt. While according to the above analogy, colors are given in acts of
visual perception, all values are given to us in acts of feeling. Hence,
the analogy between colors and values does not hold with regard to
different acts of consciousness, for example, with regard to those of
seeing and feeling. In consciousness, seeing is correlated to colors,
and not to sounds. Sounds are correlated to hearing, and not to seeing.
And values are not correlated to either of these acts, but are conjoined
with acts of feeling them.
This incongruence among acts of consciousness can be more
complex than it looks. For instance, the point of the mutual inde-
pendences of values and entities from each other is easy to see by
comparison to the relations between only values.
The complexity of this case may be seen when we consider the
case of persons who are in love with each other independently of
thing-values. In the case of "love at first sight," for example, there is
not first the love of the lover and then a person beloved. Rather, at the
split moment of first seeing each other it is both the lover's love and
the value of the beloved that are experienced in mutuality without
antecedent calculation and a will to fall in love at the very same mo-
ment. One cannot "will" to be loved by someone in the first place, nor
can one will one's own love of another. Love is spontaneous. It
happens, or it doesn't. Humans do not only "fall" in love; humans are
also "fallen" into it, or genuine love "befalls" them. It is precisely in
love that the aforementioned equivalence of whatness, existence, and
of the being of values, manifests itself. Love amounts to an immediate
grasp of another person's whatness in its value and of the value of the
existence of the beloved and the lover. In the moment of love at first
70 LIFETIME

sight, the ontologically equivalent triad of existence, whatness, and

value-being is given at once and together, and this also holds during
the attraction of a particular entity that addresses us as beautiful, or at
least as interesting.
The very phenomenological primacy, however, of love and of
value-ception (Wertnehmung) which Scheler always refers us to,
must, in the examples given, be seen in the suffusing of both whatness
and existence in the spontaneity of falling in love. Moreover, since
genuine love happens involuntarily and without premeditation, the
essence of it must also be independent of time and location. Love is
independent of whenever and wherever it befalls. It is in this very
independence of time and space, or in the independence of the pure
attraction by an entity and its value, that love "discloses" not only the
maximum of the value of a person or of an entity, but love also
"discloses" the entire world for humans. This latter point is in stark
contrast to Heidegger's "disclosure" of the world through "care" (IX
294). Phenomenologically, the act of love is the foundation of all
other acts in consciousness, precisely because of its disclosing nature.
Or, love is the disclosing act (II 266-7 IF 260-1 ).
Third. Love is immediately followed by "taking interest" (das
Interessenehmen). Taking interest in something is experienced on two
levels. We can take an "arbitrary" interest in everyday objects, say, in
sports; and we can take interest prior to such arbitrary interests. The
latter is the case when interest-taking originates not in perception but
when it is invoked in drives. When the drive of nutrition, for instance,
prompts us to take interest in food, it diverts the attention away from
things that are not food. That is, this taking interest is prior to making
an arbitrary decision to eat or not eat and what to eat.
Both the arbitrary and drive-conditioned taking-interest reveal
two different relations to time. Arbitrary interest is linked to objects
in objective time, because we make a judgment or a decision of taking
an interest in something at a particular time. But interests conditioned
by drives are not tied to objective time. This is because a drive runs
off prior to stimulating the arbitrary interests. The nutritive drive, as
other drives, emerges and wells up by itself before it reaches a
threshold of the consciousness, of making choices and decisions.
Moreover, even underneath arbitrary and drive-conditioned interest-
taking there is still the lower level of a pre-conscious "pull" (der Zug)
or attracting power. Both kinds of interest-taking are guided by a pre-
conscious pull.
 VALUES AND TIME 71

Fourth. Love at the base of, and accompanied by, the interest-
taking, determines three factors in practical life:
a) It accounts for the drive-conditioned selections made of
objects of perception.
b) It sets directions toward what we take interest in, including
the directions of perception and representations.
c) All increases and concentrations of acts and their objects
that occur in representations, intuitions, perceptions are preceded by
increases of respective interest-taking and, ultimately, increases of
love, or hate. These three points imply much more than has been said
about them here (VI 96 I L 163):

... namely, that the content, structure, and the inter-

connection of the elements of our image of the world
are determined already in the process of becoming
every possible world-view by the formation and
direction of acts of taking interest and love. All the
deepening and widening of our world-view is con-
nected to a preceding deepening and widening of our
spheres of interest and love [trans!. slightly changed.]

Fifth. The ontological structure of values that consists in the

independence of entities and values, and that consists in the selection
and direction that love and interests take and that, not least, consists
also in the concentration on specific objects as the result of increases
of this interest-taking, allows us to catch a first glimpse of the nature
of the mode of time called the future.
Since the period of the Renaissance, mankind has increased its
attention to a mechanical view of the world, because of a widening
increase of interest in measurable and observable objects. One can
expect that the process of this attraction will continue for the time
being. That is, we can expect an increase of interest in smaller and
smaller entities, on the one hand, and, on the other, an increase of
interest in larger and larger entities of the bounded infinity of the
universe (Einstein). On the other hand, this concentration is likely to
entail a decreasing interest in the non-measurable entities and values,
including moral values, as they are symptomatic for the humanities as
in literature, cultures, and religions. This does not look like a modem
signpost that would point to human happiness occurring in the future,
emerging in tandem with an increasing interest in non-quantifiable
72 LIFETIME

values. Rather, the rising attention paid to both quantification and

calculation of measurable entities in our own times, and probably in
the future, corroborates, as we shall see, Scheler's intricate analyses
of the three historical directions that human drives have already been
taking and are taking since the earliest eras of known history.

3. The Ontological Status of the Functionalization of Values in

Reality and the Primacy of Their Givenness

The above section leads us to ask the question whether values, as such
and by themselves without reality as we quoted Scheler as saying, can
at all become real. Or, how can something that by itself does not exist
come into existence? Scheler's answer to the question refers to a key
feature contained in his metaphysics, sociology, and philosophical
anthropology: the process of "functionalization." What is the process
of functionalization?
The process of functionalization turns something not existing
into existence by way of a mediator. In other words, functionalization
is at hand whenever and wherever something not existing requires
something else for it to become existing. This process is a "process-
in-becoming" and, therefore, it is a process in time. Colors as such,
we said, do not exist. Colors must have material surfaces for them to
show up. A color exists when it "functionalizes" with something else
that allows it to become real. The principle of functionalization had
already been referred to in both Formalism and in On the Eternal in
Man (II 155-6 IF 141-2; V 198-200 IE 201-2). Values, too, have to
enter mediated functions with something else in order to become real.
Functionalization, however, does not only pertain to values
and colors. It equally pertains to anything that does not exist, but that
can exist when the need of something else is fulfilled to make it real.
In this meaning of it, functionalization reveals itself as an ontological
structure of time between non-existence and existence. In saying that
functionalization is a time-process going from non-existence to a
forthcoming existence, one must clarify what the non-existence of
entities means. The old saying that nothing comes from nothing con-
tradicts functionalization, which, indeed, implies that something can
come from nothing. The nothingness referred to in such propositions
must first be clarified. Not only with regard to the functionalization, a
 VALUES AND TIME 73

clarification reveals that there are, ironically indeed, even three kinds
of nothingness X 204):
The first concept of nothingness is "absolute nothingness" in
the sense that there has never been, is, or will be, anything; no world,
no God, no atom, no creation, no evolution, etc. But the concept of
absolute nothingness is impossible, because in thinking about it, it is
already something in the thought of it. For this and other reasons,
already Parmenides saw that this is the case and concluded that there
is no nothingness but only "is."
The second meaning of nothing pertains to logical negations.
These two meanings of nothingness must sharply be dis-
tinguished from what Scheler calls, "relative" nothingness.
It is this third denotation of nothingness that pertains to func-
tionalization. An example provided by Scheler may show us that our
lives are imbued with relative nothingness. When we say, "there is
nothing on the table," this nothing is "relative" to what can be on the
table, as china and silverware. This "relative" amounts to a discord
between what is not on the table, and what could, should, can or will
be on a table.
With regardto functionalization, then, the meaning of the non-
existence of entities is relative nothingness; or in classical terms,
nothing has the "potency" to tum real, but in our case only in terms of
the process of functionalization "with" something that brings a reality
about or "actualizes" the potency.
We can now cast some light on what we heard from Scheler's
Dissertation, stating that values, as such, "are not." The quote implied
that values, by themselves, are not in terms of relative nothingness,
but that they can become real during the process of functionalization,
namely, on the basis of something that does already exist.
A further clarification of functionalization provides us with an
answer to the question: "What is functionalization with regard to the
primacy of the givenness of values?" There are two answers:
a) The question is pertinent to the moral values of good and
evil because whatever we ought to do is preceded by the experience
of the value of that which ought to be done (II 214 I F 206).
b) The question is pertinent to the act of preferring higher
values over lower ones.
ad a) Functionalization denotes that something not having
reality needs something else for it to become real. The moral values
74 LIFETIME

of good and evil as such do not exist unless there is something

through which good or evil become real.
Moral values occur only with human beings as their bearers.
This must be true because the person is not an object in objective time
(II 103 I F 86). The ontological status of the person is being-in-time.
The person's form of existence is the process of self-creating, of self-
realization, including the moral self-realization (IX 303; X 282 I PV
157). The person is, phenomenologically, pure being-in-act of self-
realization. Good and evil are realized in this process also. Good and
evil are what we had described them to be: they are values which are
in the mode of temporality. They are not static objects in objective
time because they constitute themselves during realizations of non-
moral values of the five ranks and, as such, original good and evil
cannot willfully be pursued, as we said earlier.
ad b) When a higher value is preferred over a lower one, the
lower value is not given as present "in" the preferring of the higher
value (II 106 I F 88). Hence, the lower value is relative nothing and,
as such, relative to the higher value being preferred.

E. SYNOPSIS OF TIME STRUCTURES AMONG VALUES

We ask: what has transpired for us from the inquiries into relations
existing between values and time?
A line is to be drawn between two modes of time that surfaced
in the above discussion: duration and succession. Duration is a quality
of time in which time is filled with contents and meanings, and it is
the form of time in which the whole of a process is given in its
duration. Duration can also be between an objective beginning and an
objective end of a process.
Duration is the foundation of a succession (X 486 I PE 266).
Succession is the quantifiable mode of time as used in measurements
of time (clocks). It pertains, therefore, to measurable, successive
points like seconds marked on the dial of a clock. The hands of a
clock move to indicate "clock-time." When we ask the question "what
time is it," we ask for a particular time in the succession of time
points progressing to the oncoming points in time. The mode of the
duration, however, does not allow of measurable points succeeding
one another. Therefore, we can describe duration, at this juncture, as a
continuous present of changing or unchanging contents.
 VALUES AND TIME 75

Some major relationships transpired also between time and the

contents or the meanings of values, i.e., their "noemata."
(1) Duration is a criterion of higher values. The higher they
are, the more duration they have (II 107 I F 90). Lower values have
less or no duration because they occur in localizable and measurable
and successive points and are experienced in this mode. However, the
lower values of the rank of comfort and discomfort do show some
duration restricted to physical changes in the lived body and in which
they are also experienced. Pain has duration throughout the changes
of its intensity and migrations towards different parts of a lived body.
Usefulness also has some restricted duration when it is tied up with
different things while being used. Yet, duration among lower values is
more transient and short-lived than that of the mental and sacred
value ranks. Indeed, the duration of higher value-ranks survives
generations.
Somewhat different is the relation between the third rank of
life-values and time. On the whole, they have more duration than the
sensible and utility values, but they are less enduring than the mental
and sacred values. The duration of life values coincides with the span
of the life of an individual organism and its process of aging down to
its end, death. However, the duration of the sociological bearer of life
values, the life-community, spans generations of life-communities.
(2) On the noetic side of values, i.e., concerning acts and the
acting out of values, the following relationships between values and
time transpired :
The phenomenon of preferring or "leaning toward" something,
showed us that temporalization occurs prior to objective decision-
making and choice. This was because in making a choice, the choice
must have already gone through a pre-conscious temporality of an
antecedent-leaning-toward from which the choice could be made.
Much as the duration of acts of preferring is transient because this act
occurs again and again in our lives, the pre-conscious leaning-toward
shows no experience of successive, measurable moments.
Good and evil share a quality of time that arises during the act
of the realization of a higher value or of a lower value of the non-
moral scale of value ranks, and of relevant values that belong to such
a rank. Good and evil emerge "on the back" of the functionalization
of non-moral value-realizations and as preceded by acts of preferring.
Good and evil escort, we said, any act of realizing non-moral values.
In traditional terms of phenomenology, a moral good constitutes and
76 LIFETIME

temporalizes itself by way of a passive synthesis. Essentially, a moral

good cannot be in objective time because "good" is no thing. Even if
a good is done with positive intentions and with a good will (Kant),
such a good remains only secondary to the passive constitution in its
temporalization.
With this result based on Formalism, Scheler's value-ethics
appears to be the first ethics that disclaims moral goodness to be an
"object" to be willed, i.e., to be pursued in objective time. Despite
positive intentions implicit in willing a good, to will it has, therefore,
a secondary status, because willing a good is in objective time.
(3) There transpired a relationship also between sociological
aspects of the ranks of values and the experience of time.
The time experience of the five value ranks in their ascending
order revealed itself to be parallel to the time experience of the five
sociological forms of human togetherness (the mass, the utility coop-
erative, the life-community, the society, and the encompassing per-
son). The highest social form of the encompassing person revealed
itself as having the most lasting quality of duration, and was shown to
be the opposite to the short-lived time experience of a mass.
The above synthesis allows us to bring into an order the
relationship holding between the five social forms of togetherness, the
five value ranks, and time:

Mass Sensible values Limited Time

Utility Cooperatives Utility values Interrupted Time

Life-Community Life Values Duration

Society All Value

Ranks Obj. Time, Duration

Encompassing Person Sacred Values Longest Duration

Moreover, in the five social forms, time is experienced as

"inter-subjective:"
In a mass, the inter-subjective experience was shown to be
approximately zero and absorbed in psychic contagion.
 VALUES AND TIME 77

In a utility cooperative, the inter-subjective time experienced

among the fellow workers is interrupted time.
In the life-community, duration revealed itself as being shared
among its members, and we learned that the life-community is the
"subject" of the natural view of the world, and that the continuous ex-
perience among its members is an uninterrupted one. 22 What was
shown to be peculiar to the inter-subjective experience of time in the
life-community was the inversion of the flow of time, moving from
the past to the present, and from the future backward onto the same
present. The present was seen as the meeting point of the past and the
future.
In contrast to all the social forms mentioned, society is a man-
made artifact of contractual relations made between individuals and
for individuals. Contracts and laws are continuously changed and
amended by ever new contracts and laws drawn up. This happens at
"every second." Society thus creates itself continuously anew by
changing contractual relations whatever they are about. And in this
dynamic contractual sense, time in society is experienced in terms of
ever new successive happenings, and in terms equally of ever past
successive events abandoned. Its continuous synthetic self-creating is
one reason why society can mix with the structures of all other social
forms. The fabric of its contractual relations, laws, and conventions, is
not territorially bound, but it sprawls and stretches out internationally
as, analogously, its cities keep on sprawling everywhere. Because of
its artificial structure, individuals in society are most articulately
related to the experience of objective clock-time.
Although throughout Formalism we found various qualities of
time, one cannot at this juncture of the inquiry assume that all of them
rest on an underlying ontological or phenomenological temporality.
We shall see in Chapter II, however, that it was, indeed, necessary to
have pointed to the relations between value ranks, social forms, and
time, because at least a number of them will be shown to rest on the
phenomenon of what Scheler calls "absolute time," the core of his
philosophy of time and which has an ontological undertone.
There are two concepts in Formalism that foreshadowed the
quintessential role they have in Scheler's philosophy of time as pre-

22 In "Idealism-Realism" this is later referred to as the "we-time" which is a form of

"absolute time" discussed below.
78 LIFETIME

sented here: Duration foreshadows "absolute time," and the resistance

foreshadows the meaning of "reality" and its temporalization.
A third concept relates to the whole of Formalism and was
formulated by Scheler in a 1925 separate note. The note is one of
Scheler's very own evaluation of the whole of his work and relations
to time. It refers to a link that connects Formalism with theoretical
physics, and the latter is, as we shall see, part of his philosophy of
time. To conclude the synopsis of time and values, let us have Scheler
speak for himself (VIII 427):

Just as Einstein had to put the absolute objects of na-

ture behind the changes of magnitudes and of meas-
ures of bodies in accord with their gestalts, extension
and time, which are objects of theoretical physics, so
also we put behind all changing historical perspec-
tives the order of values and truth.
 CHAPTER II
LIFE AND TIME

A. REALITY AND THE DIRECTION TOWARD YET

UNKNOWN FUTURE EVENTS

1. The Constitution of Reality

Our pursuit in the following is to get into focus the direction that time
has toward the future as seen from the present. The undertaking is
complex.
We are first taking up a specific thread which runs through all
of Scheler's later writings. His well-substantiated conviction that
reality as such comes to us through resistance will in what follows be
highlighted as a starting point. 23 The concept of reality as resistance
has, we pointed out, a history of its own (IX 209 I PE 318-9), but a
focus on resistance in its relation to time deserves a coverage also of
its own. We will, therefore, address the subject of what is, or what can
be given, as reality qua resistance in regard to the phenomenon of
time. Resistance is the essence of how reality is given to humans.
We divide the presentation into a phenomenological and a
metaphysical part.

a. Reality Seen Phenomenologically

Scheler discussed the givenness of reality in more detail than in any

other work of his in the partly posthumous five-part essay,
Jdealismus-Realismus (IX 185-340 I PE 288-356) that also includes
the hitherto not translated parts into English of this essay (IX 245-
340). Keeping in mind the progression of what we discussed thus far,
it behooves us to now re-adjust our focus by highlighting what
Scheler did not spell out or perhaps better, that he could not spell out

23 Central to his treatment of"resistance"(der Widerstand) is part III of the 1927/28

treatise "Idealismus-Realisimus" (IX 208-241 I PE 317-356).
80 LIFETIME

shortly before his demise in 1928. It is the issue of the temporality

that occurs in the givenness of reality.
Let first a misunderstanding of the concept of reality qua
resistance be avoided. The misunderstanding consists in the
presupposition that resistance pertains to experiences of sensibility,
sensation, and of external perception. In contrast to Martin
Heidegger's comments to this effect on resistance in Being and Time,
Scheler opened up the experience of re-sistance in an essential
phenomenon of all life, the process of aging (IX 213 I PE 322-3), and
he explained resistance qua reality further in his 1926 treatise
Erkenntnis und Arbeit to which Heidegger made merely a brief
footnote in Being and Time (GA 2, 278).
In contrast to Heidegger's perception of it, resistance occur in
every sphere of consciousness (IX 215 I PE 326).
In the order of the foundation of the thirteen spheres of
consciousness, the main spheres are: (1) The sphere of the absolute.
(2) The sphere of the thou-! relation, in which the "thou" is pre-given
to the "I." (3) The sphere of the external world, which is pre-given to
(4) the sphere of the internal world. (5) The sphere of aliveness,
which is pre-given to (6) The sphere of inorganic matter. 24 In order
to get the nature of resistance qua reality in a total phenomenological
view, one would have to check what the role of resistance is in each
of these spheres or "regions" of our consciousness. Since these
regions are explained as not to be reducible to each other, a
conclusion would have to be made according to which in each of
them the role of resistance is different. 25
In this context, we must briefly ask, what is a sphere of
consciousness? One cannot define a sphere and what one can also

24 The rest of the spheres of consciousness in the order of foundation are: 7) The
sphere of the external world of other persons; 8) The sphere of what "I" can know
of the external world; 9) The sphere of the outer world of my own particular world
shared with others; I 0) The sphere of the interior world of my own particular world
shared with others, including past and future; II) The sphere of my own inner
world; 12) The sphere of our lived body as a field of expression, and 13) that ofthe
corporeity of the object-body. For this foundation, see also: M. Frings The Mind ol
Max Scheler. The First Comprehensive Guide Based on the Complete Works.
Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1997, 2nd ed., 2001, p.l26-7.
25 Heidegger apparently did not know the role of resistance that
Scheler had
assigned to the processes of aging and to consciousness. Relevant marginals Scheler
entered in his copy of Being and Time, listed in Spate Schrifien (IX 305-340), are
self-explanatory.
 THE CONSTITUTION OF TIME 81

refer to as a region of human consciousness, because a definition of it

would require an act of bending back of con-sciousness onto itself.
An act that "bends back" is appro-priately called an act of "re-
flection." As only one particular type of acts, this act modifies the
appearance of noemata, including the noema under discussion,
namely, any of the spheres of consciousness. If one could completely
reduce or bracket this modification one would have to presuppose that
stepping "outside" consciousness, if you will, could be an alternative
for getting a "bird's eye view" of consciousness. This, however,
would amount to an operation beyond today's scope of
phenomenology.
Instead, we choose to furnish a practical example of a
particular sphere of consciousness which would illustrate for us what
is meant by a sphere of consciousness. To this effect, we take the
practical example of the sphere of the "thou-I relation" that Scheler
himself provided (II 511 IF 521. VII 228-9 IN 234-5. V 372 IE 373).
Taking an imaginary Robinson Crusoe to be in com-plete
isolation since his birth, and taking him as never having seen anybody
else, Robinson would still have a communal experience of others
coming from an uninterrupted absence of fellow humans that could
have "filled" in reality the sphere of consciousness of the 1-thou
relation. It is in this lack of an immediate experience with others that
the thou-1 sphere is experienced in terms of Robinson's loneliness
which resists, or "withstands," to what could be there, i.e., another
human being besides him. For his consciousness "of' solitude is an
intentional referent of all others but never seen in practice. There are
just no other people to "fill out" this sphere with practical experiences
of others. But the sphere itself remains an enduring constituent of his
consciousness within which the noematic meaning of "being-with-
others" is experienced. The illustration implies the apriority of a
sphere of consciousness, i.e., a sphere itself that is not dependent on
practical experience, be it of entities or of other people.
To check each and every region in regard to the factor of
resistance would require a lengthy study. Scheler referred just to the
more familiar six spheres mentioned above, but did suggest that a
special investigation on the matter, would have to be made (IX 194 I
PE 300).
82 LIFETIME

b. Reality Seen Metaphysically

Given the complexity of the constitution of reality said to be

given in the sphere mentioned, Scheler, perhaps inadvertently, helped
us a great deal when he extended the concept of resistance qua reality
as a resistance of totality, i.e., as resistance of the world, the "world-
resistance," i.e., "als Weltwiderstand" (V 217-18 IE 223). That is, all
spheres of consciousness are implicit in the resistance of the "world,"
no matter what the different functions are of resistance in any of the
individual spheres. In speaking of the phenomenon of world-
resistance, Scheler begins to leave phenomenology in favor of a
metaphysical treatment and vision of resistance in the structure of
being.
Both phenomenologically and metaphysically, then, reality as
resistance is primary to our knowledge and cog-nition of the world
we live in. Resistance is even "prior" to consciousness and its spheres
as we will see.
The primacy of resistance is reminiscent of the Hei-deggerian
"being-in-the-world" that also precedes our con-sciousness of
"world." Neither Scheler nor Heidegger shared Husserl's
argumentation that transcendental consciousness represents an
ultimate phenomenological datum. However, as far as Scheler is
concerned, and in distinction from both Husserl and Heidegger,
consciousness is the result (Folge) of the suffering of the resistance of
the world (das Erleidens des Widerstandes der Welt) (IX 43, 208, 214
I M 531 PE 317, 324. VIII 370). In other words, where there is no
resistance of the world, neither world nor entities can be given as
experienced. Resistance, then, is also crucial to the issues of Scheler's
philosophy of reality.
One could have expected Scheler to make a reference to
Heraclitus when he explicated resistance qua reality. His argument
that reality can only be given in resistance appears to coincide with
those of the pre-Socratic. For Heraclitus, an entity cannot have a
meaning, nor can it have existence and be given unless the entity is in
strife with its opposite. Strife implies discord and resistance.
Heraclitus lets us know that there is no life without its opposite of
death, no death without life; no old without young, no young without
old; no sleep without wakefulness, no wakefulness without sleep; no
up without down, etc. He made all cosmic strife (polemos, eris)
between opposites the essence of being, or in Scheler's terms the
 THE CONSTITUTION OF TIME 83

essence of being amounts to discord (Inkonkordanz) (IX 279).

Discord is the essence that lies between at least two opposite terms
that are in resisting opposition with each other. Or, one term without
its opposite cannot exercise its capacity to resist and, therefore,
cannot be real.
The metaphysical aspect of reality is explained by Scheler in
various ways. A most plausible one is his model of an imaginary
world that is completely bare of resistance, a world, that is, which has
no strife and discord in it. Scheler's illustration of it is made in
critical remarks of Heidegger's conceptualization in Being and Time
of "care" and "Angst." The critique itself is of no concern for us here
(IX 278-9. See also VII 90 I N 80). Scheler's illustration of this
imaginary world is the "Land of Plenty" (das Schlaraffenland) which
is an idea familiar to German children. Briefly, it is a fool's paradise,
a land of milk and honey (IX 278-9. VII 90 I N 80). Scheler,
however, "formalizes" this Land to the extent that the people living
there do not only get food and libations of their choice simultaneously
with the inception of their desires for them (P. Brueghel's "The Land
of Cocaine), but he lets them have anything imaginable as soon as
their wishes, thinking, willing, and desires are asking for what they
want to have. Their fulfillment also includes anything they do not
wish and desire, as illness; and whatever they do not wish vanishes as
in a flash from their Land of Plenty.
It goes without saying that in such a world where every wish,
will, desire, etc., for something is instantaneous and coincidental with
a complete fulfillment. But there can be no experience of resistance
between these acts and their noematic objects, even less can there be
experiences of time because anything is automatically fulfilled at
once.
There is a consequence in regard to a component of time that
must be in resistance qua reality. Let us call "A" a desire. In the Land
of Plenty "A" is simultaneous with its ful-fillment. Therefore, there is
no room for an alternative or an opposite, i.e., for a "non-A." When a
desire and its object are both identical "in"A, there cannot be any
temporal flux going to or from a second term, the non-A, because
there is no second term. The Land of Plenty is, therefore, devoid of
both resistance and a time-flux. The Land of Plenty is without
present, past, and a future; indeed, it is without givenness of anything
as that what it, precisely, is, because there is no resistance in the
84 LIFETIME

Land. 26 A time-flux, must, however, be gomg on m any process

realizing something that is desired.
The metaphysical illustration tells us that resistance qua
reality must involve a flow of time, because resistance cannot be
without a non-A and a non-A cannot be without resistance.
A noteworthy point follows from this argumentation.
Conceiving reality qua resistance, reality can neither be seen in
Kantian reason which, categorically, "posits" reality, nor can reality
be seen in the absolute consciousness of Husserl; nor can reality as
resistance be seen in Heidegger's "world." There cannot be any
reality either in the Koran's Paradise, nor in a phenomenologically
reduced world; nor in Buddha's world (IX 279); and let us add also
that there cannot be any social resistance in a completely egalitarian
society which would be devoid of classes, conflict, strife, and
differences.
To account for the reality, there must be a Heraclitian
discordance among entities of a world, i.e., resistance is the condition
for them to be real "onta" and, a fortiori, as a con-dition for the time-
flux that makes the world possible as a "historical" world. On a large
scale, the givenness of reality qua resistance shows time in the
metaphysical discordance between man, entities, and the world; or as
Scheler preferred to say, between man. world, and the Deity-in-
becoming
In the conceptualization of time with special reference to
resistance qua reality, time does not only keep running off in a time-
consciousness, but time must also span the above discordance in the
entire ontological structure of what is, i.e., it must span the atomic
world and the universe. These topics will be taken up.
2. The Function of Time in Realizing Factors

26 We make mention here of Fichte' s argument that the law of identity A = A is not
primarily constituted by logical reasoning as is sometimes assumed, but that it is
constituted in the selfsameness of the ego that sets itself off from its built-in alter-
ego. The ego curbs itself from what it is not: from its alter-ego. The alter-ego, i.e.,
the ego's own negation, is con-stituted in the ego's curbing. Were this not the case,
there could not be an ego because the human ego must have inclusive and
simultaneous alterity against which it sets itself off. Hence, the ego must contain
resistance against its own alter-ego by way of its curbing itself from otherness for it
to be the Fichtian "moral agent." This state of affairs may have been a reason why
Scheler mentions Fichte, among others, with regard to the role of "resistance" in
the history of philosophy (IX 210 I PE 319).
 THE CONSTITUTION OF TIME 85

Having caught a glimpse of time in reality qua resistance, we now

draw out the phenomenon of temporality as it is con-joined with
"realizing factors" (Realfaktoren) that account for the realization or
non-realization, of ideas, concepts, plans, intentions, and other
activities of the mind.
Realizing factors are essential to any realization of ideas and
knowledge. They are mostly discussed in Problems of a Sociology of
Knowledge (Probleme einer Soziologie des Wissens). In our context,
we will pinpoint the particular role time plays during realizations of
ideas. Put another way: We will begin to focus on the constitution of
time in regard to realizing factors which are at least in part beyond
mental controls.
The steps we take in the direction to the temporality of
realizing factors are crucial ones: The steps are to narrow down the
experienceable distance between a present moment and its direction
to the immediate or distant future. Problems of a Sociology of
Knowledge and Erkenntnis und Arbeit (Cognition and Work) lead, as
mentioned earlier, into both Max Scheler's posthumous Metaphysics
(XI) which contains, among others, a number of manuscripts about
time, and they lead into his posthumous Philosophical Anthropology
(XII) which deals with aspects of the place of human existence in the
cosmos and with evolution as he understood it. All of this, and more,
bears on his philosophy of time.
We will make use of the components from these and other
works to get a first grip on his philosophy of time, i.e., temporality
understood as an ingredient in realizing factors. We presuppose
familiarity with the general content of his sociological work. 27
It is important to bear in mind that there are three major
themes contained in the sociology of knowledge. (1) There are three
kinds of knowledge: knowledge of salvation (religion), knowledge of
essences (metaphysics), and the knowledge that brings about
technical achievement (science). All knowledge functions along the
latitude of sociological factors. (2) Sociological factors are conjoined
with specific human drives. (3) Drives and mind are in conjunction
with each other or: every act is spiritual and yet a drive-related act
(VIII 18 I PR 34).

27 Problems of a Sociology of Knowledge. Tr. by Manfred S. Frings. Edi-ted, and

with an Introduction by Kenneth W. Stikkers. International Li-brary of Sociology.
Routledge & Kegan Paul: London, Boston, and Henley, 1980.
86 LIFETIME

The relations between mind and drives bear on three human

forms of social togetherness discussed in Chapter I: ( 1) There can be
no life-community without the drive of propagation. (2) There can be
no society with its features of competition, work, and technical
knowledge, without the drive for power. (3) There can be no future
era of adjustment among cultures and peoples without the drive of
nutrition as the adjusting element in such an era, as will later be
shown. 28
In order to disclose the nature of time flowing among realizing
factors, we briefly articulate what realizing factors are.
All realizing factors are the sociological, economic,
geographic, geo-political, and other conditions that the mind needs in
order for its ideas and concepts to be realized in practice by means of
such realizing factors. But concepts and ideas pertain to mental
activities such as planning, projects, assumptions, calculations,
forecasting, but also hoping for something, and expecting something,
belong to such "ideal factors." The need ground for realization. And
these realizing factors providing this ground are rooted in drives
which, in tum, - let this be already noted - have their own roots in the
center of the vital energy of all living beings and which is termed
"impulsion" (Drang).

28 Concerning our explication below of realizing factors, I wish to recall with the
reader two more points concerning what had earlier been said about good and evil:
(1) Good and evil are in function with acts that realize values or, without the act of
realizing non-moral values, it was said, there are neither good nor evil. They
emerge "on the back" of these acts, Scheler told us. They escort the acts of non-
moral value-realizations in respective actions and deeds. This is in particular the
case when we recall the first two types of actions (Handlungen) out of the seven
that Scheler distinguishes (II 137 IF 121). (2) Good and evil are not objects, but
they were shown to be phenomena of self-temporalization. For good and evil occur
during the realizations of the non-moral values of the five ranks. In regard to the
requirement of a "realization" of non-moral values for good or evil to occur,
Formalism happens to foreshadow already the later sociology of knowledge in that
"realizing factors" are necessary for ideal factors of knowledge to occur. An
additional comment to this should be made. Mathematical functions are
distinguished by dependent and independent variables. In a mathematical format,
good and evil would appear as dependent variabls whereas acts and actions would
function as independent variables that are not "constant" independent variables,
because of the possibility of a free will in realizing or not realizing acts and actions.
 THE CONSTITUTION OF TIME 87

The opposite of the realizing factors are called "ideal factors."

In general, ideal factors are ideas and contents to be found among all
disciplines of knowledge and which are also representative of the
higher value ranks, the values of the mind and of the holy. Scheler
mentions the disciplines of art, philosophy, law, and religion as the
main areas of ideal factors. They form a latitude or an "elbowroom"
(Spielraum) of mind in general. In practice, then, any individual idea
that a person has of something is also dependent for its realization on
realizing factors. While the idea of a square circle, for example, has
no realizing factor, the idea of circle does.
To be added to this state of affairs are concepts of pure
mathematics and of pure science as well as of applied mathematics
(technology). A number of ideal factors cannot become a reality when
they pertain to purely logical or mathematical structures. For instance,
1 + 1 = 1 is true within a particular infinity of transfinite numbers
(Cantor) we referred to earlier, but the equation does not work in
practice, because it has no realizing factor in the everyday practice
and the world we live in. Without respective realizing conditions, and
without fitting in with them, at least in part, ideal factors remain
powerless in reality. As we are informed (VIII 22 I PR 38. Transl.
slightly changed):

Rafael needs a brush - his ideas and his artistic

visions do not create it; he needed politically and
socially powerful patrons to employ him to exalt their
ideals: otherwise, he cannot act out his genius. Luther
needed the interests of dukes, cities, territorial lords
leaning toward particularism, and a nsmg
bourgeoisie ...

Scheler's contention that mind itself is powerless to put

something into reality without underlying realizing fac-tors
corroborates his principle that mind can only determine what
something is. Mind cannot bring about the reality or the existence of
this "what," the noema, that it "intenionizes" and refers to. All reality
is constituted in the vital capacity of resisting and, as we will see, this
capacity lies is at the center of individual life, impulsion.
In the section on the sociology of values, we intro-duced the
concept of impulsion by furnishing two general characteristics of it:
Impulsion forms the unity of vital energy and of all drives. Impulsion
88 LIFETIME

manifests itself individually and cosmically. In preparation for what

follows, we can add other characteristics of impulsion and that will
occupy us later: As individual impulsion is the center of the capacity
of resis-tance in a living being, it must also be the foundation of the
factors that realize individual ideas. Impulsion accounts for self-
motion, self-activity, self-growth, and feeds the vital energy into the
unity of drives, but as still un-differentiated in impulsion before the
drives begin to separate. Impulsion (der Damp[) fans, as it were, its
vital energy through an individual organism and, in human beings, up
to highest levels of the mind (IX 13 I M 9 [Dampf tr.as "power"]).
Metaphysically and universally, then, impulsion fans vital energy also
into life as a whole. In its metaphysical sense, impulsion is, next to
spirit, the second principle in the becoming of the Deity. The original
capacity of resistance has the name "impulsion," because it exists in
the dynamics of continued impulses in itself. Without impulsion's
vital energy, any organic unit collapses and dies. From this follows
that without vital energy also all realizing factors active in human
history would fall apart; they would lose their reality. These and other
characteristics of impulsion will be taken up in the significant
relevance they have to temporalization.
What has just been said about realizing factors and their
causations is exemplified when we are told (IV 627):

History comes about by two quintessential sources.

[... ] One is spirit and will, and the other consists of
realizing conditions for the former so that they can
become effective. As we showed earlier, the order of
the effective-ness of both spirit and the realizing
factors and their reciprocal effectiveness occurs in
terms of an exacting order of laws. Spirit determines
content; it determines what the structures of a culture
are and what they are not. Yet, spirit is first of all only
potentially present among human beings and groups,
and it is effective only within a certain "lati-tude"
within which are the arts, philosophy, the sciences,
systems of laws, a state's gov-ernment, and economic
systems. Whatever becomes real or as real within this
latitude, spirit is not dependent on laws inherent in
spirit itself as Hegel believed (dialectics). Whatever,
and apart from man's free will, enters reality, is
 THE CONSTITUTION OF TIME 89

subject to a ruling guide of causations that do not

belong to spirit's latitude ofvolition.
Some of the most important causa-tions are
the bonds of blood and propagation, the compelling
distribution of land on earth and of living spaces of
human beings (i.e., geographic factors) that allow
choices; inter-national power relations exercising
pressures on all economic development and the
internal power relations among groups in the national
sector; and furthermore, the political power relations;
and lastly the indigenous causa-tions of economics
[die wirtscha.ftliche Ei-genkausalitiit].

The make-up of these realizing factors is such that, in the

descending order they are listed here, the preceding factor exercises
pressure on the subsequent one, making it in each case dependent on
the preceding one.
There are three interesting points in the quote taken from
Scheler's 1919 treatise, "Christian Socialism as Anti-Capitalism"
(Christlicher Sozialismus als Antikapitalismus). First, there is the
distinction made between spirit as that principle which determines
contents, on the one hand, and, on the other, there is the principle of
realizing factors which is outside the scope of spirit's possibilities.
Second, spirit is present only "potentially" when it has no factors
realizing its ideas. Third, the causations of real factors, the bonds of
blood, of power-seeking and of economy, form a descending order.
This early quote demands that careful distinctions be made between
the relationship of spirit and realizing factors, and the descending
sequence mentioned. This sequence is essential for understanding
Scheler's general projection of the future and its historical direction.
We are now able to take a significant step toward this end by
narrowing down the pro-cesses of temporalization in the sociological
context of ideal and real factors.
Temporalization functions between ideal factors and realizing
factors. This temporalization is uncovered in the focus on what
Scheler called the "newly emerging" realizing factors as they emerge
as new forms of production and economic expansion, as racial
relations and tensions, and as new international allocations of political
power. These are more typical now than they were during the twenties
of the past century, when Scheler already referred to them.
90 LIFETIME

Concerning these newly emerging realizing factors, Scheler notes

(VIII 21 I PR 37-8):

The latitude for their objective and real "becoming

possible" is, as to their existence and nature,
determined not by ideal factors at all, but only by the
particular make-up of real factors that were
previously given.

The words italicized here by Scheler deserve special attention

because the character of time implicit in the word "previously" is
articulated as intrinsically belonging to the realizing factors. In saying
that newly emerging realizing factors are determined by those already
previously given, it is acknowledged that new emerging factors link
up with those that just passed without the mind having had a part in
their joining up with each other.
The newly emerging real factors pertain to Scheler's
definition of a "historical fact" as distinct from a scientific as well as
a phenomenological fact. A historical fact is an "unfinished' fact
(XIII 150 I PR 151. V 34 I E 41 ). That is, a historical moment is
always open-ended with regard to newly emerging real factors linking
up with those just past. It is open to the future in that one cannot tell
what will ensue in the near future from its open-endedness; one
cannot retrieve either the essence of a historical fact that just passed
either, because this essence, too, will be open-ended both in itself and
in interpretations of it made later.
Most important in the quote is the acknowledgment that the
directions and courses that realizing factors take are outside the
mind's controls. The reason for this is that newly emerging factors,
although emerging from those just passed, are always already ahead
of the mind's endeavors to catch up with them in an immediate
comprehension. (This "ahead" reminds one of Zeno' s Achilles
paradox. Achilles [qua the mind] in trying to catch up with the
tortoise [qua a realizing factor] that had a head-start at the beginning
of their race, will not succeed in overtaking the tortoise).
The real factors' "being-ahead" belongs to the very essence of
the experience of time in all life which is the experience of the future
(IX 228 I PE 341):
 THE CONSTITUTION OF TIME 91

Future is the possibility ofspontaneous self-becoming

through spontaneous self-modi-fication. Temporality
is "in the first place" an order in the dependence of
projects on one another, it is not an order of the
cognizable course of objective and factual events.

In a 1927 manuscript that has the title of "Context"

(Zusammenhang), Scheler points to said lagging of mind ever more
articulately (XI 230):

The relative indigence and limits of human reason are

not at all to be seen in its ability to grasp an eternal
world of ideas only in terms of historically successive
forms; rather, the opposite is the case: reason is
unable to run after the continuous renewal of the
world of essences in absolute time and it remains far
behind this world, because it keeps being glued to
"ideas" of yesteryear.

It is a common experience that realizing factors are ahead of

us when the mind tries to grasp them. The mind links up easier with
phases that just passed and that are reaching into the present fleeting
moment. Economic real conditions, for instance, run ahead of
economic projections, and they become at best only in part realized in
practice. We know all too well that in daily life the mind more often
than not fails to catch that moment when realizing factors are in the
present. The mind runs after them, and either manages with luck to
get some hold of them or, more often than not, misses them
altogether. The steps made forward by the realizing factors are ahead
of the mind's grasp that tends to link up with lingering phases of time.
An ancient adage of the Romans puts into a nutshell what has
been said about the self-governing, autogenously moving-ahead and
uncontrollable direction of the realizing factors. Their vessels and
rowboats were much more exposed to the dangers of unknown
currents and vehement forces of nature's water waves (qua realizing
factors), and the adage forewarns: "Water waves carry us, but they are
not under our control" (undae ferunt nee reguntur). To be added to
the uncontrollable direction that the realizing factors take is yet
another observation. It reveals an existential quality in the experience
of human time in philosophical anthology (VIII 117 I PR 123):
92 LIFETIME

[But] man knows only what he ts no more - never

what he is. 29

Or: knowing what we were and have been precludes knowing

what we now are because what we now are is already irretrievably
ahead of us. The tardy activity of the mind that keeps trying in vain to
catch the indivisible and fleeting present moment in the intersection
of realizing factors and ideas leads yet to another observation. It is
quite relevant to today's stock exchange markets. Gains or failures to
gain can be seen only after they already occurred. The self-governing
course and direction of the economic realizing factors on which stock
markets depend, have already run ahead of the broker's calculations.
This running ahead of economic realizing factors constitutes the
essence of the risk implicit in playing the stock market. And it is a
characteristic not only of economic realizing factors; it holds
ultimately true for all of them, it holds ultimately true for the uncon-
trollable course and direction of human history. Making projections
for the more distant future (say, a still unknown storm but that is
already forming behind the horizon) implies always a "reckoning"
with the autogenous courses and the directions that relevant realizing
factors are, by themselves, taking and that always touch on new and
globally changing allocations of economic and political power and
geo-politics. This "reckoning" occurs in the "formation of
expectations" (Erwartungsbildung), a capacity to be found only with
hu-mans. Needless to stress, to attain a more or less convincing
glimpse of the distant future is, for this reason, enormously difficult
by comparison to a prediction about good or bad luck of daily futures.
The relevance of Abraham Lincoln's remark to this: "The best thing
about the future is that it comes only one day at a time" cannot be
surpassed. The likelihood and the elusiveness of predictions of the
future appears to be proportionate to the proximity or remoteness of
the future.
Still, should one be able to bring the courses that realizing
factors take to a closer view, chances are that at least a profile of the
distant future may become transparent in the present. For this to
happen, one has to change the focus away from the immediate bumpy

29This existential time is articulated by Heidegger also, when he states: "Man is he,
who he is, by not being who he is" (GA 55, p. 375).
 THE CONSTITUTION OF TIME 93

and random conditions of the fast running realizing factors toward a

focus on the gen-eral direction they are taking. It is precisely in
moving this focus toward the direction that human drives are taking
and on which real factors rest, rather than a focus on clever cal-
culations that can be made into the future, that can furnish hope to
find acceptable clues for a grasp of a distant future.
Nonetheless, one must not overemphasize either, as we may
have given the impression we did, the autogenous course and
direction that realizing factors are always taking. Mind, too, takes a
general course and even has its own direction to the future other than
those of autogenous courses concerned. In contrast to Kant's idea of
an only stable reason structured by twelve static categories (VIII 24-
29 I PR 39-43), mind, for Scheler, is dynamic, and it grows each time
when it functionalizes with realizing factors toward workable ideas.
Whereas the realizing factors have independent, even "blind"
biologist - not mechanical - causations (XIII 144), mind grows
progressively by learning how to "reckon" with them during growing
functionalizations. During this process, mind not only learns how to
reckon with the realizing factors, it becomes even more and more
aware of learning "how" to reckon with them. This widening and
growth of the mind includes its increasing potential to adjust to the
autogenous flow of the realizing factors in order to gradually become
even their "master." This growth is analogous to the child's growing
learning process of how to reckon and master unexpected states of
affairs when they come up in the child's early and later life.
The mind's growth has two characteristics: (1) Mind is getting
the autogenous flow and direction under increasing control. (2) The
realizing factors open up more frequently their "sluices" for such
controls (VIII 40-2 I PR 54-5). Let it be noted that the increase of the
aptitude of the mind to handle the contingent directions of realizing
factors during the process of the "spiritualization of life" is not only
analo-gous to a child's learning process but, on a larger scale, it is
analogous to the increase of knowledge during the three main periods
of our lives: from childhood to adulthood and to old age.
The dynamics of the growth of the mind is also compatible
with Scheler's investigations of pragmatism that he began in 1909,
and that resulted in his 1926 challenging essay: "Cognition and Work.
An Investigation into the Value and the Limits of the Pragmatic
Motive in the Cognition of the World." (Erkenntnis und Arbeit. Eine
Studie uber Wert und Grenzen des pragmatischen Motivs in der
94 LIFETIME

Erkenntnis der Welt). He regarded this investigation to be a

justification (Begriindung) of what he had said in the 1924 Problems
of a Sociology of Knowledge, enlarged in 1926.
It is worthy to recall that in "Cognition and Work" Scheler
was entirely supportive of one of pragmatism's tenets according to
which the relationship between the human being and the world is not
a theoretical but a practical one. This practical relationship is
manifest in the dependence of ideal factors on realizing factors (VIII
239):

First of all, pragmatism holds correctly that the

primary relation that humans have to the world -
indeed all organisms have - is in no way a theoretical
relation but a practical one; i.e., pragmatism correctly
holds that the whole of the "natural" world-view is
driven and borne by practical motives.

The practical relationship between human beings and the

world had already been articulated in Formalism in the explanation of
the human "milieu." To recall this position, let one more quote suffice
to show the point under discussion (II 154 IF 140):

A sailor, for example, is able to "reckon" with an

oncoming storm from the changes in his milieu
without being able to say which specific change (e.g.,
in the formation of the clouds, temperature, etc.)
serves as a sign.

A word is in place at this juncture with regard to the thinker

who articulated this relationship between man and world radically:
Heidegger. We say "radically" because in his analyses, it is the things
and tools used in the everydayness (Alltiiglichkeit) of Dasein which
"disclose" the world. There is no other alternative than the domain of
tool-handling in the constitution of "world" (Verweisungszusammen-
hang). There is no natural belief, no faith, no inter-subjective
experience with others necessary that discloses world. It is only in
using things that this happens. In Chapter III, however, it will be
shown that they are, according to Scheler, by no means as
fundamental to human existence as Heidegger believed them to be.
 THE CONSTITUTION OF TIME 95

Notwithstanding, Scheler also conceived the everyday natural

world-view as "exclusively" beset with things being used or, as he
put it, with "usabilities" (Brauchbarkeiten), or as Heidegger put it,
with "Zeug," the "stuff around us." (IX 198-99 I PE 306). We must
take it upon ourselves to qualify Scheler's word "exclusively" in
terms of what had earlier been said about values in Chapter I. This
"exclusively" must also imply that things used are preferred and felt
each and every time in the value of their use and which value is pre-
given in the natural world-view. A tool used (Heidegger's
"Werkzeug") and exchanged for another tool, too, is rooted in
experiences of its value and in the leanings to prefer another tool. No
reference is made in Being and Time with regard to values of tools.
After these elaborations it may be commendable to summarize
what has transpired at this point.
The course and direction that realizing factors take is always
ahead of the grasp of them by the mind. A distinction should be made
between a short and a long-term course that the realizing factors are
taking. While a short-term course of them allows for possibilities of
prediction in some way, their long-term courses set off into the distant
future and are, for this reason, enormously difficult to foresee. On the
other hand, it appears that a long-term development of the drives
might render clues for getting in view how the realizing factors may
unfold in the distant future.
Throughout the past and no doubt in the future history of
mankind, there had been and will be a continued growth of the mind's
potential through increasing functionalizations of mind and realizing
factors. Functionalization must therefore be a world-historical
process, a title which Scheler himself once used (V 345 I E 348 [the
English title is not exact] ).

3. The Constitution of "First" and "Afterward" in Drives

It appears that a long-term direction and development of re-alizing

factors has a chance of being uncovered, to whatever degree, in
connection with the long term historical develop-ment of human
drives. This subject matter is now to be investigated and, for this
reason, we take a first look into the constitution of time in the drives
themselves.
96 LIFETIME

While the drives are still indistinct in pure impulsion, they

begin to separate in the transition from pure impulsion to individual
impulsion. During the separation of the indivi-dual drives there takes
place a self-timing in the drives to the effect that they extend into an
inherent tendency toward "first" and "afterward." This stretch in
drives between what is first and afterward in them has nothing to do
with what is first and afterward in clock-time or in our consciousness,
let alone in time-consciousness as its foundation. What occurs in the
initial unfolding of the drives is, first of all, a pre-conscious
unfolding. Said stretch between first and after-ward happens also in
animals, perhaps even in plants whose nebulous temporal stretches of
growth objectively span day and night in their own peculiar "first"
and "afterward." The stretch in drives is a phenomenon in individual
and universal life, not one of human time-consciousness. The
phenomenon of life, - Scheler would have preferred to say of
"aliveness" (das Lebendigsein) - has its own sub-structure of self-
timing.
How, then, do "first" and "afterward" come about in the
drives? They come about in what is urgent or "obtrusive" (dringlich),
or not urgent or obtrusive, in the drives (IX 228 I PE 340). Again, also
this obtrusiveness is a pre-conscious happening. As a phenomenon of
its own, it has no direct object. This is a reason why happenings in
drives can hardly be articulated in language, and it is also a reason
why Scheler at one time said that his theory of drives has been the
least recognized, but that one should not discard it altogether.
As an illustration for pre-conscious happenings in drives, one
may think of having an appetite to eat. During our growing awareness
of wanting to eat something, the drive has already welled up in us
before it started knocking at the threshold of our awareness of having
an appetite to eat some-thing. A drive's sub-intentionality moves to
its proper sub-noema of urgency and obtrusiveness, in our case, of
"edibles in general." The obtrusiveness occurring in one particular
drive constitutes a "first" or "earlier" with regard to other drive-
objects which now begin to recede in the background of the first
obtrusiveness, in our case that of the drive of nutrition. And the
recession of the unobtrusive drives and their particular drive-objects
assumes in this process an "afterward" or "later" in distinction to
whatever was a "first" and "earlier" obtrusiveness.
Drive-objects are not ordinary objects as those of perception;
rather, they are subliminal, indigenous, but also vague drive-noemata
 THE CONSTITUTION OF TIME 97

aimed at by their equally subliminal and vague sub-noeses. Every

drive drives forward, if you will, or "sub-intends" its very own vague
object when it is driving and has not been recessed or moved
backward by an urgency in another drive. All drive-noeses and their
noemata are distinct from those in consciousness, because they do not
seem to follow familiar patterns of time-consciousness. Their stretch
does not appear to have retentions and protentions, probably because
there are no clear "meanings" in their sub-noemata, let alone the
sounds of languages, etc, that are webbed in retentions and
protentions of consciousness. One can at best say that these sub-
noemata are just sub-phe-nomena, if you will, arising from the pre-
conscious "fantasy" running that runs through impulsion and called
by Scheler Drangphantasie. This fantasy suffuses impulsion, all
drives and all perception. It even penetrates into the highest mental
abstractions, such as those of mathematics (VIII 354-5).
Furthermore, the twenty-four or so drives that Scheler
believed humans have are "antagonistic" because each drive has its
very own drive-object that is remarkably different from drives-objects
in other drives.

B. THE CONSTITUTION OF TIME IN LIFE

GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF IMPULSION AND

ABSOLUTE TIME

1. Impulsion

On several occasions we met with the concept of impulsion and

furnished characteristics of impulsion, including those describing it as
a principle that underlies realizing factors as the bonds of blood,
propagation, geographic and geo-political factors, international and
national political power relations, economies (IV 627). We heard that
the three main realizing factors are based on the human drives for
procreation, on the drive for procuring power, and on the drive of
nutrition.
98 LIFETIME

We referred to Scheler's descriptions of impulsion as a "vital

force" or as a "vital energy," and that the latter is not to be confused
with the various forms of physical energy. We also referred to
impulsion in respect to reality qua resistance in that impulsion is the
ultimate seat of the capacity of resis-tance.
A further clarification should now be added with regard to the
meaning of the German word for impulsion, der Drang. The word
Drang comes close to English "urge" and "desire." In English,
however, urges and desires refer to ex-periences of humans, and also
to animals, as in "I have an urge to ... ," "I have a desire for
something," "my cat has an urge to catch a mouse," etc. But our
translation of Drang as "impulsion" provides the broader meaning of
Drang that Scheler uses. Drang is not only at the bottom of all life,
including plants and possible life on other planets; it is also used with
regard to inanimate nature, be it terrestrial or that of other planets.
Impulsion or Drang is also an anthropological term when used
with respect to humans specifically, and it is also a metaphysical term
with respect to the world as a whole, including the Deity-in-
becoming. Hence, impulsion is also a part of Scheler's unfinished
philosophy of a cosmic religion of his second period after 1922.
Whenever the word "im-pulsion" has a specific connotation in what
follows, a state-ment will be made to this effect.
We are now in a position to provide five more characteristics
of impulsion that, albeit general ones also, pave the way toward a
clear understanding of the nature of temporality in Scheler's
philosophy.
These characteristics are:
1. Impulsion is the second metaphysical principle of the
"World-Ground" (der Weltgrund). Its first metaphysical principle is
pure spirit ("Urgeist," or "Geist").
2. As pure, impulsion does not possess reality, it is its
potentiality to become real. Hence, it is "in potentia."
In Thomistic and Aristotelian terms, "in potentia" is a form of
being. In Schelerian terms, it is in impulsion. Impulsion is nothing
relative to something, in other words, relative to no-thingness. In its
pure state, therefore, impulsion is continuous becoming of itself.
Whereas pure impulsion is nothingness and not yet relative to
something, individual impulsion as potentiality to become real is
always relative to something real.
 THE CONSTITUTION OF TIME 99

"Relative nothingness" had earlier been illustrated by saying

"there is nothing on the table" relative to what can be on a table, such
as silverware and china. This "relative to," however, does not allow
all conceivable entities for them to be on the table. This "relative to"
has a direction to what can be there. However, in pure impulsion the
relative nothingness has no direction to specific objects. But there is
only one direction in pure impulsion that is potential to become
realized, and there is also only one direction of pure spirit toward a
goal: a) the direction in pure impulsion toward ideas and values of
spirit, i.e., the direction toward its increasing spiritualization, and b)
there is also a direction of pure spirit, i.e., toward increasing
functionalizations with impulsion. The human being is the "meeting
point" between pure spirit and pure impulsion.
The tendency in impulsion toward spiritualization is referred
to by Scheler as Eros. Eros "motivates" spirit (XI 214); the direction
of pure spirit to impulsion is agape. Agape is spirit's "benevolent
affirmation" of being, and of the being of values (XII 23 5; 114), and
spirit craves and yearns (die Sucht) for the realization of its ideas by
means of impulsion (XI 215). Or: primordial spirit has only a
direction toward the realization of its ideas and values by virtue of
impulsion's for all time yearning to realize them. Since impulsion is,
like spirit, primordial, impulsion is also the primordial realizing factor
from which all the historical and individual realizing factors, treated
in Problems of a Sociology of Knowledge, follow.
3. The two principles of impulsion and spirit are "coordinated
to each other" (sind gegenseitig hingeordnet) in terms of the two
processes of mutually dependent becoming and of functionalization.
Impulsion is the twin of spirit, and spirit is the twin of impulsion. The
World-Ground is twinned.
4. Continuous self-activation of impulsion means that there is
no "cause" for this self-activation of impulsion. 30
5. Scheler draws a sharp distinction between self-becoming
(das Werdesein) and "what comes to be" (das "Seinwerden ").
Whereas the latter is measurable, the former is not.

30 We leave aside at this point Scheler's later disapproval of the notion of God as
creator, or as an Aristotelian "First Cause."
100 LIFETIME

2. Absolute Time

Each of the above five general characteristics of impulsion is imbued

with a supreme temporalization in impulsion itself. It is called,
absolute time.
Scheler makes a distinction between epistemological and
ontological uses of the term "absolute time."
The epistemological use of the term absolute time pertains to
"interpretations" of impulsion's self-activity that lead into two
directions the interpretations of impulsions can take: They lead either
to "irreversible successiveness," or to "reversible motion."
Irreversible successiveness leads to tem-porization, and reversible
motion leads to spatialization.
The ontological use of the term "absolute time" is wi-der than
its epistemological use. Ontologically, absolute time is the form of
any self-becoming process, including non-spatial becoming and
psychic becoming. It also comprises psychological and psychiatric
and also historical processes.
There are seven "general" characteristics of absolute time that
we will come across soon and that will be useful for us to keep in
mind for the rest of the investigation:

I. Whenever there is a "coincidence" consisting of a meaning

and the phase that the meaning occurs in, there is absolute time.

2. Absolute time is inherent in all phases of simul-taneous

"becoming and un-becoming"(Werden und Entwer-den) of all units of
life as well as in the sphere of human consciousness ..

3. There is flow of absolute time in any "transition" from any

A to a B.

4. Among all forms of being, self-becoming is the form of

Being (XI 235-6). The form of self-becoming is absolute time (XI
135). 31

31 In this regard, E.Kelly appropriately referred to a common ground shared by

Scheler and A.N. Whitehead. Kelly informs us that, for Whitehead all predications
follow from processes as well as from tran-sitions from something into something
 THE CONSTITUTION OF TIME 101

5. There are as many absolute times as there are organic units,

individuals alive, and living communities. Ab-solute time is manifest
in the sphere of inter-human con-sciousness, called the "We," that is,
we human beings alto-gether here and now. For this reason, absolute
time is also so-cial and historical time.

6. The manifestation of absolute time is, however, the very

flux of "experienced time" (die Erlebniszeit) in humans (IX 235 I PE
349).

7. Absolute time underlies not only all living nature and the
becoming and unbecoming of the world, but it also underlies the
"Deity-in-becoming."

Let a few comments be added concerning the above range that

absolute time has. Absolute time can neither be objectified in
perception nor in thinking. This is because it suffuses all self-
becoming and un-becoming (including both the roots of perception
and of thinking ); it suffuses the vital phases of self-growth and of
decline, it suffuses all drives and the becoming of consciousness itself
(Bewusstseinswerdung); it suffuses the act-being of the person, and
the non-Darwinian conception of evolution (XII 83-117) and all
historical de-velopment; it suffuses the physical field forces; and it
suf-fuses the joint and simultaneous self-becoming of Deity, world,
and humanity.
The very range of absolute time allows an initial glimpse of
how different in scope Scheler's philosophy of time is from his
contemporaries.

else, in which the interpenetra-ting flow of becoming is of ontological primacy. See

Eugene Kelly, "Yom Ursprung des Menschen" ("Thoughts on the Origin of the
Human Being"), In Person und Wert. Schelers"Formalismus"- Per-spektiven und
Wirkungen. Chr.Bermes, W.Henckmann, H.Leonardy (Eds.). Freiburg I Miinchen:
Verlag Karl Alber, 2000, esp. pp. 255-6.
102 LIFETIME

SPECIFIC CHARACTERISTICS OF IMPULSION AND

ABSOLUTE TIME

3. The Coincidence of Meaning and Phase

In the above listing of the general characteristics of absolute time,

reference made to the simultaneous coincidence of a meaning and a
phase in and with which the meaning occurs. This is the
phenomenological character of absolute time, because it relates to the
flux of consciousness itself, including, as was already said, also
feelings, preferring, and the contents of values. But it is not always
the case that a particular meaning coincides with a phase that belongs
to this meaning in the flux of consciousness. This statement must,
however, be taken only cum grana salis. Let us make the point.
While reading the present page of this text, the flow of
meanings, understood or not understood, coincides with the flow of
their phases that drag their relevant meanings along with them, as it
were. This simultaneous coincidence is only in effect, however, when
one does not pay deliberate attention to something else while one is
reading the page, for example, when one begins to have second
thoughts on what has been read and then begins to reflect upon it. In
this case, the flow of the meanings that coincided with their phases is
somewhat disturbed by such an act of reflection. Or, during reflection,
consciousness distances itself from the previous meanings and looks
at them critically. However, it is also the case that the acts of
reflection themselves are coincidental with the acts of criticizing the
meaning-noemata. In this sense and strictly speaking, the
simultaneous coincidence of meanings and phases appears to be
rudimentary in consciousness, no matter which acts there are that
might on the surface disturb the coincidence, because their meanings,
too, coincide with the flux of their relevant phases. In our context,
obviously, this flux has nothing to do at all with objective time. The
run-off of simultaneous meanings and phases is absolute timing itself
of their flowing coincidence.
What meanings occur below the threshold of con-sciousness
(as images of fantasy in impulsion and, higher up, those in drives, and
again higher up in perception, etc.): All of them occur even more
expressly in terms of said coin-cidence between their meanings and
phases, because on the lower levels of lived-time there is no act of
reflection in the general sense of this term.
 THE CONSTITUTION OF TIME 103

Scheler's argument can be extended metaphysically. For his

philosophy of time also pertains to both the mutual and simultaneous
becoming and un-becoming in and during each phase of the reality of
man, world, and the Deity. He did not or could not anymore elaborate
upon this.

4. Becoming and Un-becoming. Time in the Process of Aging

and Time Shifts in Consciousness

We are taking the following steps. We familiarize ourselves with

specific characters of both impulsion and absolute time. We will then
be equipped to reach our goal, the absolute temporality, which
consists of three constitutive elements: fluctuation, successiveness,
and modification. After this step we will have a solid basis to look
into the constitution of the "objective time" with which especially
modem society is pre-occupied.
Feeding all vital activity, the energy of impulsion consists also
in the activity of bringing about simultaneous becoming and un-
becoming. As distinct from any inanimate objects, both birth and
death are built into this vital activity. Vital activity grows and expires
simultaneously in any phase of its becoming and un-becoming. Both
death and birth belong to the phenomenon of life itself. Life, like
impulsion, is a process; it is a process of the becoming and un-
becoming of all its phases in absolute time. The process is, however,
covered up in our perceptions of living beings as external objects. We
see a plant as it grows, but do not see without difficulties the plant's
simultaneously un-becoming while it is becoming, and vice versa.
Indeed, this process is not perceivable at all because absolute time is
inherent in its inward energetic activity of growth and decline.
To get into view the subliminal and sub-conscious character of
becoming and un-becoming at the heart of im-pulsion and its form,
i.e., absolute time, we first take a look at some key elements of the
process of aging that are implicit in all vital becoming and un-
becoming.
With the exception, perhaps, of Husserl's idea of a
"propensity toward death" (der Hang zum Tode) in time-
consciousness and also of Heidegger's "being unto death" (das Sein
zum Tode), there do not appear investigations on the role of dying and
of death which are inherent in all phases of aging of living beings,
104 LIFETIME

Freud excepted. Strangely enough, Scheler's intmtwn of the

phenomenon of aging (X 9-64. XII 253-340) have not been
investigated as a major theme of his philosophy, especially when the
longevity of populations has been on the increase in our time.
We said earlier that Scheler's philosophy of time is not just
related to the nature of human beings , but pertains to all of nature.
The same holds true for the inevitability of death present in all of the
phases of life-time of living beings. Aging and dying among all living
beings, ranging from the smallest to the biggest of the past and
present, are manifest in all extinct life and, as phenomena, are
contained in new forms of life to come or to be met with perhaps in
other galaxies. This is because the essence of aging, dying, and of
death, is not comparable to an impenetrable wall that all individual
and universal life will eventually run against and come to a stop;
rather, the inter-contained essence of dying and death is manifest in
any phase of the process of living itself wherever and whenever this
process is taking place.
Whether or not there is a universal decline in the un-becoming
of life as a whole is a question which allows two answers within the
treatment of the nature of aging. It is a question that pertains to
objective time, as the expression "as long as there is life" shows.
Thus, the question pertains to many millions of years of existing life.
One answer to the question is that life as a whole and as long
as there was life, it ages and declines unto extinction. In this case the
un-becoming would overcome the becoming of life.
The second answer to the question is more positive; namely,
when impulsion is seen as the second principle of the Deity-in-
becoming and as a twin to spirit. The first principle of spirit cannot
readily be assumed to be finite, but can at least be assumed to grow
asymptotically toward only a poten-tial end while never reaching it.
In contrast to the first view, in this case life-in-becoming overcomes
its un-becoming. Yet, this view would be in conflict with the essence
of life which includes death. Put in other words, the direction of the
process of life starts with a maximum of freedom of growth toward
decreases of that freedom. It becomes limited by its growing
limitation and natural dependencies (Gebundenheit). This un-
becoming in the direction of life, however, is the "opposite" direction
that for Scheler the human mind is taking. For mind begins with a
maximum of limitation and dependencies, but grows toward more
freedom and devotion to pure meanings and higher values. Mind
 THE CONSTITUTION OF TIME 105

develops stages of freedom that are almost bare of vital associations

(X 48).
These opposing directions of declining vital processes and of
the processes of the growing mind appear to support a major theme of
Scheler's later thinking: They allow an un-folding adjustment
between them; that is, neither of the two directions of life and mind
will completely overcome the direction of its opposite. Moreover, the
two opposite direc-tions of aging life and of the maturing mind allow
of their adjustment in terms of sublimation and retro-sublimation.
Scheler's prognosis of an historically unfolding World Era of
Adjustment allows metaphysical perspectives of an adjust-ment also
of sublimation and retro-sublimation, of becoming and un-becoming.
But this particular aspect of the adjusting process we can set aside at
this point and, instead, we can take a look at some issues he discussed
in his first essay on death and after-life as they pertain to his
philosophy of time.
Death occurs in all of the phases of the simultaneous processes
of becoming and un-becoming of life. For this rea-son, death happens
"within" the process of life. This is, of course, not exactly something
new, but it may have been a novel insight made in 1911112 when
Scheler's first inves-tigation on death appeared, entitled, "Death and
After-Life" (Tad und Fort/eben) (X 11-64).
At the beginning of this essay, there are two points made with
regard to human consciousness. (1) The structure of any of the phases
of living processes and of being con-scious of them, possesses three
particular "elongations" (Erstreckungen) of contents that are
contained in any of the phases. These elongations are: the
"immediate" present, past, and future. 32 (2) There are three types of
acts that belong to them respectively: immediate perceiving,
remembering, and expecting. All the contents given in both
immediate remem-bering and in immediate expecting exercise
effectiveness onto the present with all its experiences in it.
This latter point is of foremost importance, because it reveals
well Scheler's philosophy of time as distinguished from that of his
contemporaries. For the point made implies that the phenomenon of

32 The immediate (die unmitte/baren) elongations are the same as the retentions and
protentions in Husserl's "time-consciousness," published in 1928. Scheler gave
details of the elongations already in Formalism (II 437-439 IF 441-443) whose
entire manuscripts were completed prior to 1913.
106 LIFETIME

resistance is effective not only in the aging of organic life, but in the
mind as well.
The resistance between the past and the future with regard to
the present is a key feature of Scheler's philosophy of time, because
resistance is not only effective during shifts in aging processes, but it
is also effective in the time shifts of consciousness and its dynamics
of the past and the future. The argument runs as follows.
Dividing individual life into the three main periods of youth,
middle-age, and old age, the time shifts take place as follows: During
childhood, puberty or the period of youth, the horizon of the future is
unlimited. It is an open domain of endless possibilities, whereas the
horizon of the past is still small and negligible, but the horizon of the
past does already begin to gradually grow. During middle-age
periods, there occur the first signs of the horizon of the future laying
bare that it is narrowing and beginning to move backward toward the
horizon of the present along with exercising initial pressures on the
present. But during middle-age, both the narrowing horizon of the
future and that ofthe growing horizon of the past are also more or less
in balance, both of them exercising increasing resistance on the
present which continues to be squeezed between the two. During this
period, a first awareness that "time flies by" or that we better "seize
the day" begins to dawn and stir in us. The present is "squeezed"
between the growing past and the diminishing future horizon. This
may well be a phenomenological trigger for the familiar mid-life-
crises filled with uncertainties, unfinished tasks, with the impatience
of "running against the clock," with seeking diversions and a
simultaneous escape from the self charged with a subliminal Angst.
With elderly people and in old age the time shifts in of three
horizons of past, present, and future, enter their final phases. The
future horizon keeps inexorably narrowing in the direction unto the
present, while the weight of the past keeps inexorably growing behind
the present like a burden until the present is swallowed up by it, and
all resistance between the life-time horizons collapses and, along with
it, all reality. During the shifts of time-horizons in consciousness,
there happen to be two kinds of effectiveness: (I) There is the
effectiveness coming from the past or from "behind" the present
(Nachwirksamkeit). (2) There is the effectiveness coming from the
future or from what lies ahead of the present ( Vorwirksamkeit). The
description of the time-shifts in con-sciousness implied that the
increase of the horizon of the past occurs at the expense of the
 THE CONSTITUTION OF TIME 107

continuing decrease of the hori-zon of the future. Within this dynamic

of the shifting struc-ture of increase and decrease of the time-horizons
while aging at any moment, the "tendency of the direction of this
fluctuation" between the shifting horizons of time is parallel to the
experience of the direction unto death (X 20).
The direction, however, toward death is independent of five
aspects of life: a) it is independent ofwhat kind of living being that is
in the process of aging; b) the direction is independent of all the
meanings and contents that had been experienced during the main
three phases of aging, and the direction is independent of differences
among races; c) the direction is independent of the divisions made of
periods of a life, such as youth, puberty, middle-age, and demise
which have different measurable periods in objective time among
different individuals and races; d) the direction is in-dependent also of
the increase of fears of death, and e) it is independent of both the
drive for life (der Lebenstrieb) and the death-drive (der Todestrieb).
No matter how much or little we may have had direct
experiences of the intrinsic direction of the process of aging toward
death, the process is residual in any indivisible mo-ment of a life-
time. The direction amounts to the essence of aging. By contrast,
there is no such direction in inorganic matter, because "dead things do
not age" (X 21). 33 Aging, therefore, has to be sharply distinguished
from the visible continuance of the existence of inanimate things.
Two more points must be added.
1. In all of this, there now transpire three cases of what we had
earlier called the "inverted time." a) We met with the experience of
inverted time first in the context of the life-community where it
appeared to be permeating the whole of the community with all its
members. b) The dynamics of inverted time also appears in human
life in terms of the time-shifts in consciousness. c) Concurrently, the
inverted time appears during the three periods of the process of aging
when the future horizon and that of past move toward and against
each other by "squeezing" the present between them. Time is
"inverted" whenever it occurs in the time shifting horizons of the past
and future relative to the present.

33 Later Scheler will tell us the opposite, however, because even an elec-tron is said
to have a "vital history" (Vitalgeschichte) (XIII 127).
108 LIFETIME

2. Inverted time and the dynamic flow of time in the structure

of the shifts of the three time-horizons of the past, the present, and of
the future, and the direction within the structure of the process of
unremitting aging itself, are to be sharply distinguished from
measurable objective time "in" which things and objective processes
occur in our perception. However, the essence of lifetime is neither
"in" objective time, nor is it "in" objective space. Rather, time is, first
of all, "because of' life (XI 160).

5. Absolute Time in Transitions

In the above, we have discussed two major characters of absolute

time.
( 1) The coincidence of contents with their phases. While
reading this text, it was said, there happens to be a flowing
coincidence of contents read in their continuous phases, i.e., while
reading, the contents are in and with their respective phases. Both
coincide. This is not the case when one is observant or thinks of time
while reading a text.
(2) All living processes are simultaneously becoming, un-
becoming, and aging.
We now take up the third major character of absolute time:
transition.
It was indicated that impulsion is in a state of self-becoming
and, therefore, in a state of "not yet." This implied that impulsion, as
the vital force driving forward all the phases in life's developing
processes, is itself in continuous transition from one phase to the
next. Transition is also im-plicit in the phases of self-becoming. Put
differently, the temporalization in self-becoming is transition. For
example, there is transition from a conceptual whatness to its realized
existence, and transitions are also at hand from one whatness to the
next whatness (IX 227 I PE 340). While in absolute time becoming
and un-becoming take place simultaneously, there are transitions in
absolute time also in them and form, in a figure of speaking, a linear,
irreversible process going from one transiting phase to the next.
Let a few examples of transitions of absolute time be given.
Transition takes place from pure impulsion to rea-lizing impulsion; it
takes place during the functionalization of ideas with realizing their
factors that are themselves rooted in drives and their origin,
impulsion. Transition is also at hand during processes going from
 THE CONSTITUTION OF TIME 109

lower levels of being to higher levels, as in the transition from

inanimate materials to ani-mate ones; it takes place between potency
and act, between one thought and the next, between one organic state
and the one following it. Transition takes place from one social con-
dition toward the next; it takes place between one event leading to
another. Indeed, it can be said that transition takes place not only
between any two historical events, but it takes place cosmically
between any two states of sidereal or other changes, between any two
stages of the expanding universe, and even between any changing
states in the atom, as in a quantum jump. It looks as if the transition
suffuses both the natural world we live in, the organisms and their
aging, the universe, the mind, and a Deity-in-becoming. In all of this,
the transitions must not be seen only in terms of objective time in
which they also occur, but firstly in terms of absolute time.
Humans are not concerned with transitions in absolute time.
Rather, they perceive one object first, then another one in objective
time. Transitions appear to them in terms of an objective beginning
point with an objective end point, which can even be chosen
arbitrarily. One speaks of the beginning and an end of a period and of
an era, say, those of the Middle Ages. We can choose any reasonable
dates between which transitions from the early Middle Ages to the
high Middle Ages took place. We can choose the year of 1450 AD as
the year of the end of the Middle Ages. Nevertheless, one cannot
come to an unequivocal agreement making such choices. The reason
for this is that each beginning and end-term, an A and a B, is itself
replete with transition, no matter what beginning and end terms of a
transition have been chosen, no matter how often we choose new A's
and new B's, because they always allow room for transitions that lie
between them. This implies that the time flux going on in transitions
can not be measured originally, because the flux is conjoined with the
second character of absolute time of simultaneous becoming and un-
becoming. It is true, of course, that one can measure the time taking
place between the beginning of making a plan and end making the
plan twenty-four hours later. But the planning of the plan was not
planned in objective time; it came up prior to making the plan. The
"planning" of the plan is comparable to the process of the ripening of
a bud as it passes continuously through succeeding stages and realizes
itself as a fruit (XI 229). Its ripening "transits" intrinsically in the
budding toward the fruit. The fruit is itself (qua the finished plan)
perceivable "in" the measurable space of the garden it grew up in;
110 LIFETIME

and it is "in" the measurable calendar time of the season as well. But
neither the ripening of the bud nor the process of the self-becoming of
the planning was in objective space or time as the finished fruit and
the plan are.
The difficulty in approaching the essence of transition lies in
there being two kinds of transitions to be distinguished. There is an
indigenous transition within transiting processes from an A to a B, on
the one hand, and there is a transition, on the other hand, going from
an object A to an object B. Concerning the objective transition, we
perceive the bud day by day transforming gradually into a fruit that
we expect to be ripe in Spring. Each time, there is the perceived bud
as an object, then the fruit perceived as an object. The objective
transition has taken place in objective clock-time in which an object is
perceived, say, for three months. But the indigenous transitions that
are going on in the budding from one phase of the budding to the next
phase are the condition for the objective and measurable transition.
This is because the vital force driving the process of transition
forward is, by itself, neither a perceivable nor a measurable process.
Which allows us to catch a first glimpse of the distinction to
be made between absolute time and objective time. Objective time has
its foundation in absolute time, and appears to occur to be given only
to humans. However, in practice, we take objective time to be as what
time is all about. It is calculable and manageable for whatever
practical purposes. Yet, its foundation, the absolute time, is not that
simple to understand because it cannot be calculated.
Objective time, however, is not so easy to understand either as
we said. First of all, and contrary to everyday belief, objective time
does not have the dimensions of present, past, and of the future (IX
234 I PE 347) that we take so much for granted in practical life.
Objective time is bare of an absolute "earlier" and "later." What is
earlier and later in objective time is relative to the location (Standort)
of an observer in a four-dimensional space-time system (XI 138).
Objective time is relative to reference points. The global time zones
are rela-tive to each other and to Greenwich Mean Time. They could
be made relative also to a meridian chosen for a Beijing-mean-time.
Objective time does not care, so to speak. Any of the time-zones can
be interpreted as earlier or later than other time-zones. Hence, it
would be going too far to simply state that objective time has no past,
no present, and no future unless one allows for their relativity to each
other.
 THE CONSTITUTION OF TIME 111

Furthermore, we take it for granted that a "now" in objective

time is a static and unmoving time-point that ap-pears in all
calculations of objective time. Yet, an objective present is a "fleeting
now" (XI 138/145) being in transition from one "now" to the next.
In other words, whatever I see and think to be present amounts to a
continuously fleeting moment that is in transition. While I say "now"
and experi-ence this "now," it is in transition from the now that has
just past to the next now joined up with it, a well known theory of
Husserl's fleeting ego-nows which in our context are fleeting in
absolute time.
Let it be added, that Scheler can also say that the past, the
present, and the future, "make no sense" without the lived body
(Leib), and we add, without the aging lived body. The three temporal
extensions are relative to a lived body that sets them off from one
another (II 413-469 IF 415-476) (X 443 I PE 215) (XV 31), but also
during the process of its aging, we may add on the basis of what has
been stated.
The constitution of objective time is based, however, on the
phenomenological proposal suggesting that objective time comes
about by way of acts of reflection and because reflection obstructs the
wellings and upsurges that come forth from drives and impulsion. We
reflect, for example, on what time it is "now" while we are looking at
our wristwatch. Or, (IX 228 I PE 341. Tr. slightly changed):

Indeed, a subjective consciousness of time first comes

about through a person's reflec-tion on the
fluctuations (die Wechsel) in his perceptions and
through the obstruction and resistance he experiences
when he tries to complete tasks of the drives
(Triebaufgaben) that are implicit in self-modification.
He gains a subjective consciousness of time by being
thrown back by this obstruction upon the present and,
further, upon what is given as "already having been."

In more conventional language, one could perhaps re-phrase

this quote by saying:
Only the human capability to temporarily block the
spontaneous beginnings of vital activity leads to an objective time
"in" which actual events now appear. This blocking of vital activity
comes about as the result of the acts of reflec-tion. For example,
112 LIFETIME

arresting wellings in the drive of nutrition by refusing to eat allows us

to choose what to do first and second. In this blocking of the vital
activity in the drive, the drive is subject to an object of reflection and
throws us onto an objective present that tells us what we are doing
with the vital activity of hungering. We can eat concomitantly with
the wellings in the hunger-drive, and we may not eat when we
obstruct the wellings by reflecting on them, for instance, when we
want to fast. Being thrown back on an objective present includes also,
however, being thrown back on an objective past when we had been
eating and satisfying the drive in the morning before going to work.
Granted this to be case, what about the future?
There is a puzzle involved when Scheler tells us that our
original experience of an objective future occurs only after the past
and present have been objectified in reflection. His definition of the
future is that it is the form of the "existence" oflife itself (IX 228 I PE
341 ), i.e., the future is not a result of reflection:

"Future" means everything which an animal

can experience through its self-modification, or, in a
wider sense, that which it can "still" manage, which it
can "still" keep under con-trol, that for which it can
"still" care.

The puzzle in this quote lies in the word "animal." Animals

have only experiences of transitional time which, in their case, can be
described as consisting of a tidal flow glued to vital drive-impulses as
those of "mating time," "sleeping time," "time to" do this or that, of
building a nest or to hibernate. These tides in the animal drives do not
allow them to be blocked which would open up a future for them;
rather, they are attached to the becoming and un-becoming of said
drive-impulses. They are in tandem with them. Nevertheless, animals
do have an experience of what is happening to them and will happen
to them. When having no sufficient food supplies, the animals look
for food in an anticipation of a modification of their feelings of
hunger. This may be referred to as a vital or organismic future felt and
linked to the drive-impulses that yearn for being satisfied. The
aforementioned "first" and "afterward" constituted in the drives
belong to animals also, with the qualification that first and afterward
do not reach the level of an awareness of them, since animals cannot
block their drives and have no acts of reflection to do so.
 THE CONSTITUTION OF TIME 113

A similar state of affairs pertains to plants: the growth of their

self-becoming and self-modifying must share in the direction of
transitional phases in that growth. Plants are the first manifestation of
"Gefohlsdrang, " or sensible impulsion in which drives and feelings
are not separated, but which has a direction at least toward light and
darkness, toward up and down, and of which impulsion plant-life is
most expressive (XIII 127-8. IX 13-17 I M 9-14). 34 The direction of
any tran- sition, then, including those that are both objective
transitions and perceivable ones, is toward a future within that
transition. While the direction of objective transitions can be altered
and even be reversed, this is not the case with transitions in absolute
time. They are irreversible transitions because their run-off takes
place by itself.
Concerning the conception of "time-consciousness"
(Zeitbewufltsein), one should not confuse Scheler's use of the word
with that of Husserl's. For Scheler, consciousness is a becoming
consciousness, i.e., "Bewusstseinswerdung." Or as we can now say:
consciousness is becoming in absolute time. There is still another
phenomenological difference between Husserl and Scheler in this
regard. Whereas Husserl's idea of "time-consciousness" is grounded
in the transcendentally fleeting of the ego as "now-ing" (das Jetzten),
Scheler's concept of the invariably "becoming" of our consciousness
is grounded in pre-temporal and pre-spatial pure fluctuations in
impulsion and the transitions in these fluctuations from one phase into
the next. It is also grounded in Scheler's concept of self-modification,
all of which to be taken as happening jointly in absolute time. The
transition from impulsion to a becoming consciousness goes through
a number of phases, beginning from fantasmic images in impulsion,
transiting through the drives, through inward and outer perception, to

34 "Gefohlsdrang, " literally sensible impulsion, is a somewhat ambiguous concept,

unless one identifies it with impulsion (Drang) but in which case the word is
misleading. While in impulsion temporality and spatiality are not yet separated and
drives are not yet separated either, in pure sensible impulsion it is the drives and
sensibilities that are also not separated. Hence the word "sensible impulsion" is
misleading, because it implies a feeling capacity. The sensible impulsion as the
lowest layer of psychic life is assigned by Scheler to plants, animals, and also to
humans, just as individual impulsion is. The point can be made that sensible
impulsion appears to be an upper layer in impulsion in which drives and feelings
are not yet separated but temporality and spatiality already are. The term remains
unclarified. It may be the result of an awkward German wording.
114 LIFETIME

functiona1izations of realizing factors with ideas of the mind - to

mention the major ones of the transiting phases. Although Scheler
never wrote anywhere that one could, in Husserl's terminology, refer
to pure impulsion as "transcendental" in a sense of a pure
achievement (Leistung), and to an individual impulsion, in which pure
impulsion is working, as not to be transcendental. 35

THE CONSTITUTION OF TEMPORALIZA TION

6. The Phenomenon of Fluctuation in Absolute Time

The explanation of transition given would remain incomplete as long

as transition is not seen in the light of the fluctuation which is
inherent in impulsion, the center of individual life. For showing this,
it is now necessary for us to look first into the phenomenon of
fluctuation itself which, it so turns out, is one of the most difficult
phenomena under discussion.
"Fluctuation," as the word is used by Scheler, is not so much a
common word in English philosophical parlance as it is as "der
Wechsel" in the German language. Although fluctuations do not occur
only on all levels of psychic and mental activities, they can be
illustrated best in occurrences of outer perception. Scheler gives the
examples of a colony of ants moving randomly about over and in the
colony, and of a pond teeming with fish (XI 149). Another example
might be the snow on one's television screen, especially when one
imagines its points of very irregular movements to be slowed down;
there is an example of the swirling of the snow of a blizzard blown
around one's car by variable gusts of winds. People walking
randomly around on a city square and seen from the top of a
skyscraper, can also serve as an example of fluctuating points moving
about irregularly, but at the same time also changing the look of the

35 Pure impulsion is "supra-individual All-Life" (iiberindividuelles All-Leben) (IX

235 I PE 349). All-life is also described as the lived body of the becoming world.
and as a "level" in impulsion. The frequent use of All-Life in Scheler's later
writings has variable meanings. See the index of Vol. X I, and of other volumes of
the German Collected Works under "Alleben."
 THE CONSTITUTION OF TIME 115

square itself by the fluctuating patterns of the random directions

which people are taking in, away from, and walking into the square.
Fluctuations can be interpreted in two ways: a) in terms of an
"irreversible modification" in which an element of the fluctuation will
never return to the starting point it took off from; and b) a fluctuation
can be interpreted as a "reversible movement" of any element in it
that "could" (not necessarily has to) return to the starting point it took
off from. The former case is the interpretation of irreversibility, the
latter that of a reversibility of fluctuation.
In another example, Scheler tries to illustrate that the spots of
light and shadows, moving on the ground by a tree's irregular
movement of its leaves, can be interpreted as never coming back to
the original location on the ground of the shadows and bright spots
they started their movement from. In this interpretation, the lit up
areas and the shadows of the moving leaves "fill out," from moment
to moment, the alternating locations of shades on the ground. In this
case also the whole of the ground is continuously modified by the
alternating dark and bright spots (XI 221 I PE 333). Scheler extended
the irreversibility of fluctuation also to alternating meanings in
consciousness. They, too, are fluctuating, and so are the perceptions
in the environment and of things around us.
The other type of the interpretation of fluctuation is that of
reversibility. The reversibility interpretation tells us that the shadows
and lit-up areas on the ground around the tree can, no matter how long
this may take, eventually arrive back to the starting points they took
off from. In this case, the elements of fluctuation are seen as moving
from one spot to another (IX 221-2 I PE 333-4). Both interpretations
are valid when seen in their own relevance.
Nevertheless, neither analysis tells us much about the
fluctuation in impulsion, the center of life's energy. This is because in
"pure" fluctuation neither of the interpretations is distinguishable
from its respective counterpart. In addition, pure fluctuation itself is
even independent of both aspects of irreversibility and reversibility
(XI 149-50). Indistinguishable and independent pure fluctuation has,
so to speak, no moving and modifying elements in its pure vital
activity, a state of affairs remindful of the physical field theory which
shows that there are neither elements nor bounded particles in a
moving field.
But both interpretations do provide a clue about the origin of
both temporality and spatiality. The Janus-faced interpretation of
116 LIFETIME

fluctuation as irreversible and reversible provides a hint for us that

there is no bifurcation of them in the pure fluctuation in pure
impulsion. Even less is there any temporality and spatiality, neither
time nor space, in the pure fluctuation of the pure impulsion. Both
spatiality (reversible movement in fluctuation) and temporality
(irreversible mo-dification in fluctuation) are still indistinguishable (X
418 I (PE 1860 [tr. slightly changed]):

... every phenomenon of motion has its foun-dation in

the phenomenon of a reversible variation of the
fluctuation in the manifold of an expanse. And, in this
field of an expanse in general, that which is given is
not yet dis-tinguished into a spatial and a temporal
ma-nifold.

The "expanse" of the temporal irreversibility and the expanse

of the spatial reversibility together are a pure and undifferentiated
expanse (das Auseinandersein). From this follows that pure impulsion
is, itself, a pure expanse (IX 221 I PE 333).
What is the meaning, however, of "expanse" with regard to
the constitution of temporality in impulsion? First, the temporal
expanse is a "becoming" expanse that implies transition. Transitions,
we said, occur in the stretch that lies between something that transits
from one point to another, or when a meaning transits to another
meaning. But transition occurs also in all the modifications that life
and organisms themselves are undergoing, not only those that appear
in objective modifications of perception; it occurs throughout the
process also of all aging and, a fortiori, transition occurs in all self-
modification. Not only self-movement but also self-modification
belongs to the primordial phenomena oflife (IX 227 I PE 340).
Since in pure impulsion both irreversibility and rever-sibility
are neither distinguishable nor separated, pure impul-sion is both pre-
temporal and pre-spatial, and yet it must still be the ground for the
dimensions that space and time have. This ground is the pure expanse
of impulsion, which is, for this reason, a "pre-spatio-temporal
expanse." Being what it is at the center of both individual and
universal life, the aliveness of pure impulsion consists in its becoming
and un-becoming in absolute time; and all is becoming inseparably
linked to un-becoming in absolute time, is also prior to time.
 THE CONSTITUTION OF TIME 117

Becoming and un-becoming, "sits" (steckt in) in fluctuation and

precedes the objective time (XV 152).
At this point we want to stress Scheler's consistency in the
distinctions made among the complex phenomena in the constitution
of time. In saying that just as living beings are not in time (XI 160),
so also their root, the pre-spatio-temporal impulsion, is not in time
(XV 152). Hence, both the essence of a living being and of individual
impulsion are not "in time": all of which is consistent with saying that
the form of being, "becoming," antecedes objective time (XV 152).
Moreover, we stated that becoming and un-becoming "in" the
pre-spatio-temporal expanse of impulsion is "pure" a fluctuation and
not yet bifurcated into temporalization and spatialization. Since pure
fluctuation is indifferent to its two interpretations, one must now
distinguish between the pre-spatio-temporal expanse from its change
and transformation into the "temporal expanse;" that is, when pure
fluctuation in impulsion unravels into irreversibility. In addition, one
must also distinguish between the "pre-spatio-temporal expanse" and
its turning into a "spatial expanse," that is, when it unravels and reels
off from pure fluctuation into the reversibility.
Another comment is necessary that comes even closer to the
"pure" impulsion and its pure expanse. Scheler refers to impulsion
also as a "four-dimensional expanse." One is led to the assumption
that the three ordinary dimensions of space, and time as such, form a
four-dimensional expanse.
In speaking of four-dimensionality, one is reminded of the role
that four-dimensionality plays in relativity physics with which
Scheler appears to have been familiar. Let a first observation be made
on the issue of the connection between Scheler's metaphysics and
relativity physics, followed later by a second observation to be made
on the issue.

7. The Four Dimensions of Impulsion and Theoretical Physics

We suggest a digression be made at this juncture into basic issues of

natural science by asking the question: Has the four-dimensional
expanse of primordial impulsion anything to do with Einstein's
Special Theory of Relativity?
In the Theory of Relativity, the separation between space and
time is shown to presuppose the four-dimensional "space-time." We
118 LIFETIME

must bear in mind at this point, that, in contrast to the humanities, in

the science of physics the term "theory" has the meaning of a
"verified hypothesis" which meaning does not pertain to metaphysics.
It has no resem-blance to a verified hypothesis as the word "theory" is
used in philosophy and in everyday use of it. 36
The expression of a four-dimensional space-time in physics
suggests there is no division between space and time as is the case
with Scheler's impulsion. Despite this parallel meaning in Scheler and
Einstein, one must be careful not to stretch the resemblance of the
four-dimensionality too far. Scheler's four-dimensional expanse of
impulsion pertains to vital energy which is not comparable to physical
energy and its various forms. Nor is vital energy readily comparable
to the physical field theory that at Scheler's time was researched by
H.Weyl, Sir A. Eddington, and A. Einstein himself, who were
exploring the possibility of a unification of electro-magnetic and
gravitational fields into one universal field theory. But
electromagnetic and gravitational fields are not mentioned by Scheler
as far as impulsion goes.
A common ground, however, between Scheler and Einstein is
their conviction that everything in the universe is connected with
everything else - a thought that goes back to Anaxagoras (500-428/27
BC), and Scheler thought a unified field theory in physics to be a
compelling theory. In Scheler's metaphysics, the unified field theory
could be thought of as being equivalent to a theory of universal life, a
thought which Scheler may have had in mind when he kept referring
to the aforementioned supra-individual All-life (Alleben). This All-
Life was also referred to as being "in" impulsion (XI 181 ). And
impulsion possesses a layer of atomic structures with which life-
centers "engage" (greifen an). For this reason, it appears that a
relevant manuscript is entitled, "Transition from the Inorganic
Toward the Organic" (XI 156-77). During the process of atoms being
engaged in individual life-centers of impulsion, something like

36 Heidegger explained the Greek roots of "theory" as "thean" and "horan,"

meaning the "letting-lie-before-relationship (den vernehmen-den Bezug) of man to
being, a relationship that is "in" being, and not a man-made relationship (Martin
Heidegger, Parmenides, Ed.: M. S. Frings, Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio
Klostermann, 1982, p. 219; GA, Vol.54). In the English translation of the German
text, Martin Hei-degger. Parmenides, Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana
University Press, 1992, p.l4 7), the translation of "vernehmenden" as "perceptual"
is, to put it mildly, false.
 THE CONSTITUTION OF TIME 119

inorganic matter is in transition toward life in absolute time. Micro-

organic material engages directly with the atomic layers of impulsion.
But we found no more detailed explanation of this engagement in
Scheler's manuscripts other than those published already referred to
in the Collected Works.
Despite this state of affairs, Scheler does make it clear that
both inanimate and animate nature are the result of two directions in
impulsion itself (XI 157; 181). One of these two directions in
impulsion goes toward the inorganic material of ''field-forces," and
the other goes to micro-organic material, called "vital force." It
happens to be our judgment that the direction toward field forces may
hold a clue to a possible link between impulsion and the physical
unified field theory.
Scheler was not speculating about a relationship of transitions
between inorganic and organic micro-materials. It appears that he was
philosophizing from an intuition on the matter, which seems to
become substantiated by more recent scientific findings. For instance,
the change taking place from inanimate to animate states of a virus as
the tobacco virus seem to illustrate Scheler's theory of transition.
More findings substantiating Scheler's insights are the more
recent data gained from bacteria found by T. Kieft in a solid rock, at
140 degrees Fahrenheit, in a mine shaft two miles deep, in South
Africa, and others found beneath the flanks of Mount Taylor in New
Mexico. Moreover, bacteria 250 million years old have been found
encapsulated in salt crystal. Vreeland and Rosenzweig in
Pennsylvania proved that when spores after having been in a state of
suspended animation, "engage" with nutrients - as Scheler would
have put it - and those bacteria began their transition to becoming
alive to reproduce themselves after 250 million years, ten times older
than the oldest organisms known to us living on our planet. This
almost compels us to suggest that the same circumstances could
obtain even on Mars and other planets, provided that life also evolved
on other planets in outer space, a possibility which Scheler sometimes
refers to in conjunction with "All-Life" and the "Deity-in-becoming,"
both having impulsion and spirit and becoming simulta-neously with
the becoming "world."
An even stronger connection between his metaphysics and
science are the two interpretations of fluctuation as seen in light of
post-Schelerian atomic physics. Atomic physics appears to show a
fluctuation comparable to Scheler's notion in Heisenberg's
120 LIFETIME

uncertainty principle (1930-1935). Just as in impulsion's fluctuation

there is either time (irreversibility) or location (reversibility), so also,
in the uncertainty principle, there is either an observation of an
electron's velocity (time) or of its position (location), but there is no
observation possible of both at the same time. Just as with Scheler
there is no simultaneity of the modification of time and of spatial
movement emanating from pure fluctuation of impulsion, so also
there is no possible simultaneous observation of the location and the
velocity of a particle. Whether Scheler had in mind quantum
mechanics or other branches of atomic physics when he was writing
about the four-dimensional expanse of impulsion (which impulsion
does not hold in physics because it is not observable and measurable),
we do not know. However, as mentioned earlier, he did speak of
"atoms" in impulsion that vital energy "engages with" (XI 157).
Another resemblance between Scheler's theory of impulsion
and contemporary theoretical physics can be seen in impulsion's vital,
not physical, energy - if the vital energy of impulsion can be shown to
be underneath, or to be mixed with, the physical energy which would
then unify animate with inanimate matter. Indeed, Scheler states that
philosophy must unify the science of inorganic matter with biology. 37
It led him to conceptualize the world as an organismic universe and
later on to conceive the world even as the "lived body of a Deity-in-
becoming" endowed with both pure impulsion and pure spirit. So
much for the relevance that impulsion has with theoretical physics.
Since the fluctuation of impulsion has neither a sepa-ration of
time and space, nor a trace of measurability of either of them,
impulsion had earlier been referred to as an "undif-ferentiated
expanse" having neither the temporal extensions of the past, the
present, and the future, nor spatial extensions of up, down, right, left,
front, and back.
The constitution in impulsion of the origin of the unraveling of
a) the irreversibility toward modification, tem-porality, and to
objective time and, b) of the unraveling from impulsion of
reversibility toward movement, spatialization, and objective space,

37 Leben und Anorganisches, "Life and the Inorganic," (Xl 158).

 THE CONSTITUTION OF TIME 121

can now be seen in the self-activating, four-dimensional expanse of

fluctuation in pure impulsion.
The graphic below illustrates the order of the steps we have
been taking, and those to be taken also drawn out in the graphic. We
call the graphic the "Triangle of LifeTime." The left side shows the
constitution of temporalization. On the right, there is the constitution
of spatialization, which is not a subject of this inquiry:

Time and Space

\
Temporalization
I
Spatialization

\
Modification
I
Movement

\
Irreversibility
I
Reversibility

\
Succesiveness
I
Apartness

\ I
IMPULSION

Self-Activating Four-Dimensional
Expanse. Self-Activating Pre-S patio-Temporal Expanse
of Pure Fluctuation in the Vital Energy of Pure Impulsion.

The presentation thus far of principles of temporality that

spanned Formalism to the latest manuscripts allows us to now follow
the constitutive paths that will lead to objective time as already
indicated in the above graphic.
122 LIFETIME

8. Irreversible Successiveness

The irreversible successiveness (das Nacheinandersein) is a temporal

expanse that flows from impulsion. This expanse possesses the quality
of self-becoming which is to be disting-uished, we saw, from the
becoming of whatever will be the case at a datable period of time in
the future. But the self-becoming is not datable and has, for this
reason, the quality of absolute time.
An example that Scheler provided for us may serve as an
illustration for the meaning of irreversible successiveness.
Let a rock be suspended over a pane of glass, and let the rock
be dropped on it. There are two interpretations of the fall of the rock:
a scientific interpretation and a phenomeno-logical one. The scientific
interpretation pertains to physical laws of falling bodies; furthermore,
it pertains to measurable gravity, acceleration, distance, and velocity
that together determine the measurable time of the fall.
Phenomenologically, however, the state of affairs is different.
As given in consciousness, the whole of the process is there at once,
and not in terms of successive points of time of the falling rock which
depend upon the force of gravity. In consciousness the process is
given before the rock falls on the glass. Consciousness does not
analyze what is happening before, during, and after the falling rock. It
does not need a step by step analysis of the process in retrospect, nor
does it need to calculate in advance the scientific factors of gravity,
distance, and others. Rather, the intuition grasps at once the noematic
meaning-content of what is and will be or could be happening without
any need of observation or of determining the data about the causes
and effects of the fall. What is the essence meaning-content of the
process? It is the whole of the content of the effectiveness
(Wirksamkeit) upon which the concepts of cause and effect depend. 38
Even if one brackets the whole process and the awareness of what
happens, argues Scheler, the order of the foundation of the givenness
of effec-tiveness before the cause and the effect of the fall remains
intact (X 485 I PE 265). Spatial and temporal measurements as well
as the determinations of causes and effects rest on the unity of the
meaning-content of the whole process. That is to say that the

38Concerning the relationship between effectiveness and resistance qua reality see,
X 483-485.
 THE CONSTITUTION OF TIME 123

phenomenon of effectiveness suffuses this whole. Clearly, the

element of time in consciousness, the duration inherent in the
meaning of effectiveness, is totally different from any of the objective
time measurements necessary for the scientist.
In support of this state of affairs, Scheler offers the following
argument. There is a direct relationship which the irreversible
successiveness of a process has to effectiveness. Whatever will follow
from and after an A (in our case, from the releasing of the suspended
rock) is already given "in" the very A as the intuited effectiveness
prior to a B (in our case, the broken glass) (X 478). From this
argument follow three principles: (1) The intuition of the whole
process has no need to resort to the rational conclusion that B was
"caused" by an A to be broken. (2) The temporal expanse of absolute
time, irreversible successiveness, lies in the whole of the process that
contains its own beginning and its own end. Beginning and end do not
have to be determined by external factors when the meaning of the
phenomenon of effectiveness is concerned. (3) Nor is the intuition of
the whole of the process in need of an act of recollection of what had
happened after the glass broke into pieces to make us know what
happened. The intuition itself is at best suffused with an "immediate
remembrance" (retention) and an "immediate expectation"
(protention) ofthe event.
The latter point is quite consistent with the nature of retention
and protention and their immeasurably small phases of transitions
into the other. This is because the irreversible successiveness runs
along infinitesimally small transitions from one phase over to the next
phase. Indeed, transition and irreversible successiveness are alike in
that both satisfy the notion of a continuum in which between any two
points - no matter how closely chosen to each other - there are always
other points ad infinitum.
This state of affairs becomes more complex, however, when
an intuition is incorporated itself into the process of irreversible
successiveness. The act of intuition that embraces and fills out the
meaning of the whole process does itself not fill out a phase of time
(X 487 I PE 267). Hence, the intuition of irreversible successiveness
has two quasi contradictory elements. (1) The time of the whole
process is filled with the meaning-content of effectiveness. (2) The
act correlating to this meaning (noema), however, does not itself fill
out time.
124 LIFETIME

This contradiction in intmtwn may be illustrated by the

graphic below. Let line A B be a continuum of points representing
those of irreversible successiveness, and let line A 'B' also represent a
continuum of points which represent irreversible successiveness. Both
lines have different lengths in perception, yet, they do have the same
number of points because any of the points on the line A B is in one-
to-one correspondence with a corresponding point on line A' B' (G.
Cantor). This can be proved when one lets the bottom line A B move
upward and merge with A'B', making line A B the same line as line
A'B.' Letting now the identical A B and A'B' line move further
upward to point C, this will event-ually make them identical with
point C. C, however, is a point which, by definition, is not extended.
By analogy: the unextended point C is the act not filling out time:

A further remark should be added with regard to the

irreversible successiveness that occurs in the everyday, pre-scientific
experience of the natural view of the world. No matter how often a
series of events is repeated, it is not the case that in any repetition of
them (the falling rock and impact on the glass) there is a causal
relation between them: (X 477-8):

Rather, this combination is g1ven already in each

individual case when a thing has an !:ffect by its
action on another thing that suffers from the action.

In our case, an object A acts on a B which suffers from A's

action. In the natural world-view all things act and suffer. Both
activity and passivity of things are properties of the natural view of
 THE CONSTITUTION OF TIME 125

the world. Whatever processes there are in the natural world-view,

they are whole processes with their inherent effectiveness (X 4 79) and
suffering. The intuition of an effectiveness that is prior to
explanations of causes and effects is manifest in the natural
experience of things around us. It is a matter of course that in the
natural world-view of humans ever new things around them emerge
from nowhere into being (aus dem Nichts ins Sein treten), and ever
new things also keep sinking back into nowhere (X 479-80) with-out
there being cause-effect relationships.
The above implies a basic quality of time we came across first
in dealing with values. The fall of the rock, and said emergence of
entities from nowhere and sinking back into nowhere, is given in
terms of the duration throughout which irreversible successiveness is
taking place. The fall's measurable clock-time is secondary. So are all
explanations of the causal relations. A duration is a continuing
present that is lasting during the continuous flux of the irreversible
successiveness that itself continues to vary the uninterrupted duration.
Let this be illustrated in music, whose essence is representable by a
continuum, not by a sequence.
While listening to the irreversible successiveness of the chords
of a fugue that opens the theme of the melody and restarts them at
specific bars several times over (called the "voices"), and listening to
each opening of the theme that dovetails into the next while every
preceding opening con-tinues developing and building up more and
more melodious units, the primary melodic theme of the fugue of the
first opening remains sustained in the whole of the duration of the
fugue that keeps on being varied by ensuing voices and changing
keys. The whole of the fugue continues on in its durational
presentification while the whole of its duration is not audible at once,
but it is experienced as being "heard" in the background of the
irreversible successiveness of tones and chords. A good illustration of
this would be Bach's Fuga 1, C major, of the "Well-Tempered
Clavichord, " vol.l.
The phenomenon of duration plays even much more of a role
than we just indicated. It imbues our individual being. Our feeling of
life (X 19) endures throughout the numerous changes of feeling good,
bad, happy, indifferent, etc. Duration suffuses all the moving phases
of aging toward death. So does even the whole of the relative natural
view of the world, no matter how much humans are preoccupied with
technologies alien to the natural world-view, but into which they
126 LIFETIME

always keep on falling back (X 451 I PE 225), no matter how high

technological and scientific abstractions may have soared with them.
The duration ofthe natural world-view is there to stay despite the sun
being a fixed star. For "The Sun also Rises." And so does the highest
form of duration, i.e., that of Being with its primary form of
Becoming (II 235-6). 39
Indeed, in the duration filled out with the meaning of
effectiveness in consciousness - both the beginning and the end of the
fall - are, as we said, inherent "in" the meaning of effectiveness. The
beginning and the end of a vital process, too, are inherent "in" the
duration of the whole of a life-time. Beginning and end are not caused
by extrinsic factors as efficient causes, unless it is the case that an
end-point has been externally conditioned by an accident, or by any
other event.

9. Temporalization through Modification

There are different concepts of modification in Scheler's metaphysics

that have to be now distinguished:
(1) There are modifications called "variations" of the acts of
the person. (2) There are modifications constituted in impulsion. (3)
There are modifications in the field theory of theoretical physics.
The sequence given of the three types of modification
corresponds to the sequence of three dynamic "centers" (VIII 359-6):
the person-centers (Personzentren), the vital-centers (Vitalzentren),
and the force-centers (Kraftzentren).
The modifications taking place in these three centers are as
follows:

39 In our context, the title "Being and Time" (Sein und Zeit) would be misleading
because the two words should not be separated for the reason of their duration.
Heidegger left a short manuscript behind, entitled "Zein, " a contraction that ties the
two German words of Sein and Zeit into one. He told me, however, that the
manuscript was "unbrauchbar" (not usable). Yet, the tying together of the words
"Sein" and "Zeit" into Zein is to the point in regard to the Schelerian "unseparated"
spatio-temporal expanse.
 THE CONSTITUTION OF TIME 127

a. Modification as Variation of Acts of the Person

Since the first type of modification is a special case of mo-dification

with regard to Scheler's Value-Ethics, the person, and time (II 384-5 I
F 383-6), it must be mentioned.
According to Formalism, a person "varies" in any act that the
person acts out. While the direction of each person's acts are in terms
of any person's individual "qualitative direction" of acts, their
direction is unique for this or that individual person. The direction
itself marks the dynamic identity of each person throughout all of his
or her varying types of acts. In this, the person acts out human
existence in terms of ever new varying types of acts while the person
itself is at the same time also "in" any one of the acts acted out.
The variation through different kinds of acts is not, however,
related to phenomenal and objective time. This is because personal
variation is a "pure becoming different" (ein pures Anderswerden)
and not the same as the becoming different of a thing or of a state of
affairs. The act-variation is a modification that does not take place on
an unchanging substance or substratum. The person exists solely in
and during the execution of acts. Act-executions are the temporal
form of existence-in-person. They do not presuppose any medium on
which the acts place. This yields a definition of the first type of
modification: A person-center is above time (iiberzeitlich), that is, the
person-center is above objective time. The executions of the acts are
"point-wise" (punktuell) and they enter "into time" without having
time-extensions of their own (X 297 I PV 175). Within the context of
the constitution of time, we must keep in mind, then, that person-
centers are timeless modifications. In the act-being of the person they
form a direction of this act-being.

b. Modification as Constituted in Impulsion

The explanation of modification as having its origin in im-pulsion is

formulated in the first sentence of the quote below, and it lies at the
core of Scheler's philosophy of time (IX 227 I PE 340):

A creature that did not modify itself would have no

access to time. Time, like space, is not originally
given to intuition or percep-tion, but is a modification
128 LIFETIME

of our active and practical behavior. To have to want

to do "first" one thing, "then" another, to have barely
enough time to do it, to have "already taken care of
it," this dynamically experi-enced ordering of
projects, not objects, is the basic experience of
temporality. It is from this experience that phrases
which express the periodic modes of behavior of
everyday life get their currency:, e.g., "Now it is time
to get up," "time to eat," "time to sleep," "time to
work," "there is barely enough time" to get this of
that piece of a job done, "just enough time" to do it.

Temporality as the form of activities, it follows, is a

dynamically experienced self-ordering of vital projects. As we had
already seen, it is only when human beings withhold and suspend the
spontaneous ordering of projects that they are then able to reach the
point of handling time as an object in which individual objects can
now be ordered in units of time and measurements. A fundamental
difference between this human ability of suspending the natural and
spontaneous ordering of projects, on the hand, and that of animals, on
the other, is that the animals cannot bring about a suspension of the
spontaneous self-ordering of such projects as "time to eat," "time to
sleep," "time to mate," "time to migrate," and "time to hibernate." In
other words, the timing of these activities is not separated from the
spontaneous activities themselves. Even less is this the case with
plants. They, too, have self-ordering and are the most immediate
expressions of general impulsion (IX 13-6 I M 9-12). Their self-
ordering during blooming, during the shedding of deciduous foliage,
but also their tendency of turning away from darkness, or away from
light, are some examples of the self-ordering of modifications
occurring in plants.

c. Modification and the Field Theory of Theoretical Physics

As we stated in section 7, both Scheler and Einstein held that

everything is connected with everything in the universe. On this basis,
the field theory cannot be a fictitious theory, nor can the two
directions that impulsion takes be fictitious, namely toward atomic
inorganic material by way of field-forces, and toward micro-organic
 THE CONSTITUTION OF TIME 129

materials by way of vital forces with no empty space and time in

impulsion between them.
The formalization and de-materialization of absolute
interpretations of physical reality, which were formerly part and
parcel of past classical mechanics (VIII 379), we owe to experiments
arranged by Michael Faraday (1791-1867). His contributions to the
invalidation of core concepts of classical mechanics as extended
material substances and Newtonian space and time, are relevant also
to our context. A falling star, for instance, has ceased to be a material
star falling through empty space as we see it fall in our perception of
it. Our perception and image is one of the natural world-view. In
Faraday's interpretations of such falling material objects, however,
there are just the modifications of field forces that represent the
ultimate units of effectiveness (X 489 I PE 270; (XI 137).
Field forces are, like the vital force centers, difficult to
visualize, because in our natural perception, visualization, and
imagination there are assumed to be material particles that also the
mind tends to assume in the notion of "matter." After all, the Greek
word "a-tomos" denotes "in-divisible." The image of the natural
world-view of indivisible, atomic particles moving "in" empty space
has, for this reason, long been taken for granted in the philosophy of
space and matter since Democritus (460-371 BC.) and Leukippus (5th
c. BC.). In contrast to this image, Hermann Weyl, with whose
writings Scheler was familiar, describes a field theory in the
following manner: An electron is a small area of an electric field. It is
no material particle in a field; rather there is an enormously high
intensity of energy in the field loaded with enormous concentration.
Such an energy-knot (Energie-knoten) does not have a delineated
perimeter at all that we presuppose to be in a "particle." The energy
knot passes over and transits into the field's surroundings.
Being nothing else but intensity of a field force, and not a
particle, the electron's movement is comparable to an image of water
waves which have no unchanging substance of water. In this
comparison, paradoxically, waves undulate without water. Too, in
this illustration, an electron's velocity is to be compared to vertical
phases underneath the visible "water waves." Hence, there are only
phases of velocity and field laws and which were verified in terms of
field equations for electro-magnetic fields by J. C. Maxwell (1831-
1879). The phenomenon of field intensities, therefore, did away with
any material substance altogether, and replaced it with continuous
130 LIFETIME

modifications of intensities of fields. In this picture, the entire

universe is nothing but a continuous flux of indigenous field forces.
Both nuclei and electrons are highly concentrated intensities of fields
subject to continuous modifications of intensities.
Concerning the modification of field forces, there happens to
be a link between field forces and impulsion, because Scheler
attributed, as we already mentioned, atoms to impulsion with which
micro-organic materials "engage" in individual impulsion. We also
stated that the metaphysical impulsion has two sides: an inanimate
and an animate side (XI 157, 181) or, in a figurative expression of
this, im-pulsion is both convex and concave, neither of which can be
without the other. The inorganic material in individual im-pulsion
stems from pure impulsion in which force centers (Kraftzentren) exist
in absolute time. But, the figuratively speaking mutually inclusive
convex and concave sides of impulsion have different directions: the
extended field forces are in a transition toward materialization
(Materiierung), and vital force centers are in a transition towards
temporalization. However, both the directions toward materialization
and to temporalization have to be simultaneous, because there are no
separations in impulsion. There is no separation between
materialization and temporalization, nor is there a separation between
the spatialization and temporalization as indicated in the graphic of
the triangle of lifetime.
The image of visible water waves qua electrons that move on
the surface of the non-material surface of "water," and the vertical
phases underneath as phases of their velocity, makes the electron an
"ideal" center of energy in the self-activity of fields. There is no
empty space anywhere in fields, let alone a Democretian dualism
between empty space and atomic entities floating in it. A field does
not "occupy" space either, and Scheler's idea that empty space is a
"fiction" of the natural world-view turns out to corroborate the
physical field theory: There is only a four-dimensional continuum of
fields.
Although Scheler's references to scientific theories in regard
to impulsion remained sketchy but to the point, one observation we
made earlier, however, appears to perfectly coincide with a statement
to be found in his fragmentary philosophy of time: The dynamic
origin ofjieldforces is in absolute time (XI 137). The same holds, as
was pointed out, with the origin of vital energy. In Scheler's
 THE CONSTITUTION OF TIME 131

philosophy of time, then, both field forces and vital forces have in
common absolute time.
Since there are no separations of time and space in impulsion,
and since there is no separation between before and afterward,
between near and distant, and no separation either between inanimate
and animate, we can now draw the conclusion that there is also no
separation either between field forces and vital forces. According to
the nature of impulsion itself, both field forces and vital forces must
in their origin be one and the same. They must be united "in one"
before they separate.
There are two more links existing between impulsion and
science. We take only a quick notice of them, because Scheler did
not go into appropriate investigations.
The first relation is between the four-dimensional expanse in
the primordial impulsion and Einstein's Theory of Relativity. In the
Theory of Relativity the separation between space "and" time pre-
supposes four-dimensional space-time. The second relation pertains to
the Quantum Theory and the concept of reality qua resistance. The
quote below sounds like a conviction although its ramifications in the
surrounding text beckons for further research (VIII 146-7 I PR 148-9):

The philosophical theory whereby reality is nothing

but resistance against acts of vital movement and
given prior to all other qua-lities of "corporeal"
things (duration, gestalt, color, etc.), coincides very
closely with the results of theoretical physics
concemmg the ultimate subjects of physical
statements.

Underneath this claim which Scheler did not elaborate on,

there appear to be three hints in the manuscripts mention-ed below,
and which could show what line of thinking he could have pursued
had he lived longer. Resistance has its roots in impulsion. Impulsion
aims or is directed toward a production of a "maximum" of reality but
with a "minimum" of its energy. Or: "The smallest quantum of
effectuation is the simplest element of this unified impulsive
happening" (XI 187). Each impulse occurring in impulsion possesses
four characters: (1) "Intensity" (qua a knot of energy in the general
field theory); (2) a "four-dimensional direction," (3) a phase in
132 LIFETIME

absolute time (XI 186-7; 189), and (4) these three characters are
complemented by saying (XI 161):

Ultimate elements of the organism are not those of

inorganic nature. They are identical in both organic
and inorganic nature - and they are subject to only
statistical laws.

Statistical laws are central to micro-physics. I suppose the

above is all of what one can glean from the manuscripts mentioned
that concern the relevance of the quantum theory and the theory of
resistance qua reality.
The explanation and description of modification in the theory
of fields would support Scheler's statement that inorganic matter must
be united with the science of biology (XI 158). The thought may have
led him to conceptualize the world as an organismic whole, and later
on, to conceptualize the world, as we stated, even as the "lived body
of a Deity-in-becoming" endowed with both primary impulsion and
spirit and the growth of functionalization between them. Since there is
no separation between irreversibility and reversibility in pure
fluctuation of pure impulsion, the "undifferentiated expanse" of pure
impulsion has neither temporal nor spatial extensions, a point we
made insofar as it holds up to the Theory of Relativity. But it also
appeared to us that the meeting point between the science of inorganic
matter qua fields (physics) and the science of animate matter qua vital
centers (biology) is, ultimately, that of absolute time.

C. THE CONSTITUTION OF OBJECTIVE TIME

1. The Void

We have arrived at the proximity where an account of the constitution

of objective time can now be submitted. In contemporary philosophy,
objective time has in general been undervalued. More recently,
objective time has either been subordinated to ontological or
phenomenological explications of time or, perhaps even more often, it
has been seen as central only to science and, therefore, as having only
 THE CONSTITUTION OF TIME 133

little relevance to philosophy. In our presentation thus far, the concept

of objective time has also had an air of having been undervalued by
our going more into details of absolute time without which, however,
objective time, in our contexts, was not thinkable.
Scheler's analysis of the constitution of objective time, which,
as the above graphic of the triangle of lifetime showed, runs parallel
to the constitution of objective space. It leaves no doubt that he had
no intention to prejudice the significance of objective time, although
he did refer to both objective time and space as "ficta." Still, the
actual signi-ficance of objective time lies in its being a human time
and which occurs already in the pre-scientific natural world-view.
Although especially as individuals living in a society, we
experience quite nonchalantly the objective time almost throughout
our lives; and although we take it for granted when we are looking at
the hands moving around the dial of our watch; and although we take
objective space equally for granted when we are looking at an empty
chair on which we want to take a seat: the line of thinking about the
constitution of objective time and of space which Scheler offers is
more complicated than one would expect it to be.
This is because both objective time and objective space are
equally "empty" time and "empty" space. They are considered empty,
as they were in classical mechanics. In this emptiness we think all
things to be "in," ranging from atom-things to most distant star-things
- ourselves included -. In the natural world-view and in everyday life,
both the temporal and spatial emptiness indeed function as Newtonian
empty containers.
The emptiness of objective time and of space is called by
Scheler "the void" (die Leere), which he considered to be a "peculiar"
phenomenon that invites a maximum of interest (IX 219 I PE 331).
All levels of the constitution of time, beginning with its origin
in impulsion up to the modifications are, however, "filled" with
contents. That is, absolute time is already filled in impulsion with
fantasmic images (Bilder) (XI 40-45 I MA 115-20), and absolute time
is replete with subconscious images, with contents of feelings, with
experiencing contents of aging, with all contents of consciousness
and of projects ofthe will. 40

4 Concerning fantasy and the complex phenomenon of the "fantasmic images"

(Bilder), I do not wish to repeat myself and refer to the coverage of them in The
Mind of Max Scheler, op.cit., pp. 139-144.
134 LIFETIME

In sharp contrast to this, objective time and space are given as

void and empty, unless we fill them out ourselves with things and
objects. This may be done, for instance, in technology. Technology is
design made into the void. 41 In this sense, empty time and space are
relative to anything which can fill them out and are, in the sense
described, also specimens of relative nothingness.
How, then, does the "void" of objective time and of space
come about? What constitutes the void?
At the origin of the constitution under discussion, the void of
time and of space is an experienced void before it becomes an object
of reflection. But what is this experience? With regard to space,
Scheler tells us (IX 219 I PE 331):

The phenomenon of the void is of the greatest

interest. It arises, in the last analysis, from the
experience that occurs when a drive-hunger
(Triebhunger) for spontaneous movement has not
been satisfied or fulfilled.

For this reason, the objective void of space is pre-given to the

perception of entities (IX 222 I PE 334):

... the fiction of an empty form given prior to things,

arises first from the fact that when we apprehend a
phenomenon of movement, our immediate and
ecstatic expectation leads us to trace in advance a
representation of a sphere that already contains the
"possible" future place of the moving object. Since
this representation is an "ecstatic" perception, that is,
not "related to the self," the place the body takes up in
this next moment appears to us like an "empty place"
which it subse-quently "occupies," just in the way I
sit down on an "empty" chair.

Since objective time is the void of time, Scheler states further

(IX 227 I PE 343):

41 M.S.Frings, "Zum Problem der Technik bei Max Scheler. In: Studien zum
Problem der Technik. Phiinomenologische Forschungen, 15, 1983. E. W. Orth, Ed.,
p. 58.
 THE CONSTITUTION OF TIME 135

Just as in the case of space, here, too, it is only man

who brings forth the strange phenomenon of an empty
form of becoming (des Werde-konnens), a form of
empty time ... Empty time seems to precede all events
(in their being and becoming) ...

Concerning objective space and time, the experience of the

internal power of a "Konnenserlebnis," i.e., of a lived experience of
"being-able-to" self-move and self-modify, is the result of the
unfulfilled hunger in drives. The vital power of self-modification and
of self-movement is the experience of a never-ending unfulfillment.
Self-modification and self-movement are never fulfilled, because they
consist in humans endless possibilities. Still, the endless possibilities
of self-modification and of self-movement are all experienced in the
continuous mode of an unfulfilled "being-able-to." All the drives have
one element in common: their unfulfillment. The unsatisfiable hunger
going on in drives is not given a detailed explanation by Scheler as
one would expect as issues of objective time and space also remained
unexplored.
One could explain, however, the unfulfillable drive-hunger by
comparing the human drives with those of animals on the basis of
what has been said about absolute time.
First, our explanation hinges upon the contention that drives in
animals "time themselves" or are self-timing. For example, the urge
for propagation among animals comes up largely in cyclic, seasonal,
or regular periods of "mating time." When this happens, the drive
becomes fulfilled in the timing of itself. By contrast, at least a number
of the human drives, if not all of them, do not have anything like a
periodic self-timing, certainly not as to the propagation drive. At best,
there is a symbolism of seasonal celebrations of it as in love poetry
the references to "spring" or to the month of May. Outside this
symbolism, there is little or no self-timing in human drives
recognizable except, perhaps, during the first two of the three stages
ofyouth, maturity, and old age. Another exception to this may be the
self-timing of the nutritional drive (siesta, lunch, etc.) but which
largely differs among populations and under different climatic
conditions. The drive-urges appear to occur more or less at random or
at odd occasions; but they can also be provoked and stimulated in
pursuits of seeking sensuous pleasures. We can also hold them back
136 LIFETIME

and defer them when we plan, say, to go and eat out later on. None of
this we find in the animal kingdom.
On the other hand, this does not mean that in indivi-dual cases
human drives cannot be naturally fulfilled at all. The sexual drive is a
case in point. A fulfillment of human sexual drives pertains to one of
the four types of intercourses we had distinguished earlier (VII 36 IN
25). This particular intercourse of the four types was described as
replete with the love of the other person, and results in a total
identification during the mutual climax of the partners. That is, the
love descends from the love of the person and his and her looks down
into their sensible lived bodies and the simultaneous climax. The
genuine love among partners does not, in this case, begin from
physical sex and pass from below up to a point of possible love of the
other person. By recognizing said exception of sexual fulfillment, the
difference between human and animal drives is that the drives in
animals are fulfilled through said self-timing that occurs "in" the
drives, whereas the human drives do not have such self-timing and
remain, for this reason, unfulfilled and hungering. Indeed, the
unfulfillable hunger in human drives of pining for fulfillment out-
weighs, as Scheler states, their mostly artificially or willfully
satisfiable zones.
The predominance of the unfulfillment of the drive-hunger over
against the smaller satisfiable zones in drives is quintessential for the
constitution of objective time and of objective space. The
constitution of objective time originates in the unfulfilled void of
drives. The void is the unfulfillment in drives. It is "transferred"
(iibertragen) (IX 2321 PE 345) into our perception or to the
perceivable void, and then into representation (die Vorstellung) or a
represented void. The void of objective time and of space is intuited
(angeschaut), but it is at the same time an intuited "fictum" of fantasy
(IX 219 I PE 331 ), because its origin lies in the unfulfillment of in the
drives which are constituted in impulsion. Whether this "fictum" can
determine the essence "of' something remains an open question. 42
Said transference of the void from unfulfilled drives to
representation lies well within the meaning of "transition," which is
one of the three characters of absolute time. The void constituted in

42Concerning "essence," see Eugene Kelly. Structure and Diversity. Studies in the
Phenomenological Philosophy of Max Scheler. Chapter Four: The Concept of
Essence, pp. 53-65. Dordrecht I Boston I London: Kluwer Academic Publishers,
1997. Phaenomenologica, 141.
 THE CONSTITUTION OF TIME 137

the unfulfillment of drives transits up to perception and representation

with their endless possibilities for humans, especially those of self-
movement and self-modification. Just as all the endless possibilities
outweigh actualized self-movements, so also the endless possibilities
filling out self-modifications outweigh all the actualized self-
modifications (IX 230 I PE 343). The drives in animals are, in a
Nietzschean terminology, "fixed" (jestgestellt). Their drives show no
hunger and desires other than those which time themselves for
immediate satisfaction. It is in this self-timing that they trigger
immediate fulfillment while their drive objects are united with this
self-timing. The unison of drives and of self-timing is that of the
subliminal coincidence of contents and phases, one of the characters
of absolute time.
Human drives are not so fixed. Humans can, for the better or
for the worse, "use" their drives ad libitum. There is very little if any
coincidence between their urges, on the one hand, and their timing, on
the other. Humans can even encourage the urges in their fantasies or
by artificial means of stimulation. For this reason, there is in the
human drives the aforementioned character of absolute time missing
in contrast to animals: little or no coincidence between the drive-
object and phases of self-timing. The human urges remain ravenous
for natural fulfillment in a befitting time, but they do not get it. It is in
the absence of simultaneity of urge and fulfillment that, in the
constitution of the void, its origin is to be seen.
At this stage of the discussion the unfulfilled void in human
drives is still far from being an objectified void as such. An
objectified void presupposes various degrees of vital curiosity of
something (Neugier) inherent in the drives, a point not mentioned by
Scheler in Idealism-Realism. This prompts us to add a few comments
concerning this issue which lies also on the first level of the
constitution of the void of objective time.
Vital, pre-rational curiosity is a drive which humans share
with the higher animals, especially with the anthropoid apes (VIII 65 I
PR 77). As an innermost impulse, the vital curiosity sets in whenever
inveterate anticipations within the environment are disturbed by
something unfamiliar. At such moments, the vital curiosity
immediately seeks to explore the new and unexpected situation in the
otherwise familiar environment. The impulse of this curiosity belongs
to a "large group of power drives" which are related to "drives to
construct and to play." In humans, vital curiosity first leads to a desire
138 LIFETIME

to know (die Wissbegier) before the curiosity transfers to the higher

love of knowledge per se. Desires to know could not occur if the
source of all drives, impulsion, did not already contain the a direction
toward its spiritual constituent of fantasy.
The direction of impulsion toward spiritualization is identified
with the fantasy in impulsion. This vague direction of impulsion
becomes specified such that each drive begins to have its own drive-
objects of fantasmic images (Bilder). In the drive of propagation, the
image in fantasy is directed toward a vital curiosity of an otherness in
gender; in the drive for power it is directed towards vital curiosity in
growth and overcoming of whatever lies in the way of the power to
achieve growth; and in the nutritive drive, the direction of fantasy
goes to the vital curiosity of pure, but not specific, nutritious intake.
The directions of fantasy in the three major drives possesses, it
follows, three directions leading to human objectification:
1. The vital curiosity builds up into the knowledge of
"salvation" (das Heil) among life-communal groups; and it results in
the beliefs in transcendent being, or beings.
2. Vital curiosity results in "astonishment" about what is and it
results in the search for causes in or behind reality.
3. Vital curiosity results in interests to learn. Among higher
animals the result is "practical intelligence." Among humans, vital
curiosity results further in the "knowledge to control entities" in
nature. This process leads to science and technology.
Our references made to vital curiosity was intended to show
that objectification presupposes curiosity for what is to be observed
and understood objectively. Or, observation and understanding are
solicited by vital, then rational curiosity. This includes the
objectification of the void of time and of space.
A decisive issue to be solved in the constitution of objective
time lies in the question whether or not resistance qua reality, whose
source is in impulsion, precedes this objectification. The answer is
yes. This is not only because the origin of the capacity of resistance is
to be seen in impulsion and in the order of the constitution of the
objective void. Rather, resistance must first itself be objectified and
precede and must even "force" the objectification of time, since
objectified resistance first occurs in experiences of our own se(f-
modifications, be they during our aging, be they physical or personal,
or be they any other modifications that happen during our existence. It
is only when reality is itself objectified, and when the experience of
 THE CONSTITUTION OF TIME 139

self-modification turns into an object, that the decisive step leading

toward the objectification of time and of its void can take place. This
crucial step lies in the transition going from the objectified resistance
and self-modification which can now open up the objectified time and
the void "in" which entities are now perceived (IX 232 I PE 346).
Note, however, that underneath the process of objectifying the void of
time, there is still remaining absolute time in the progression of the
transitions taking place during the constitution of objective time and
of the void.
The above point of objectified resistance is the first among several of
the "preliminary stages" happening during the objectification
concerned. The second stage consists in that our experiences of
"being able to bring about effects" (Konnenserlebnis) now transit to
effects which the external things have or may have among
themselves. Objectified self-modification leads over to modifications
of external things seen in outer perception. Modifications belong to
essential requirements for an emergence of objective temporality. The
much debated "time-consciousness" comes up only by means of
reflections made on earlier perceptions and modifications.
These preliminary steps toward the objectification of time
ranging from the capacity of resistance up to perception, are suffused
with the distinction between a lived-experience of time as the primary
form of absolute time, and objective time as the outcome of the
objectification of resistance.
We now tum to the second level in the constitution of
objective time and its void.

2. Distance

The "objectification" of entities is expressed in words like "object"

and "objective." These words have a presupposition stemming from
the Latin source. "Objectare" and "objicere" connote that something
is thrown "against" (ob-) us in our perceptions and mental activities.
The corresponding German noun of "object," is "der Gegenstand,"
which connotes the very same as something standing there "against"
(gegen) us. But this is a different matter in the objectification of the
void.
We saw that resistance is located in impulsion which yields
reality. Hence, a "reality" of the void, which is ever so much taken for
140 LIFETIME

granted in the natural view of the world, must also be the result of
resistance. The experience of resistance against the vital powers of
self-modification "forces" upon us objectifications of an external void
of time as the possibility of modifications occurring in real things.
The first stage of the objectification of temporality, however,
appears to be debatable at this stage. It was said that in order to
objectify the taken-for-granted character of empty time in the natural
view of the world, first reality should be objectified. But how can
reality qua resistance, be objectified in the first place? Scheler states
that the vital phenomenon of resistance which originates in impulsion
can, indeed, be objectified qua reality by the human mind. In other
words, it looks as if resistance remains the vital and irreducible
phenomenon to be found in impulsion whereas reality that is given at
the same time in, and with, resistance of impulsion, is torn off to
become a perceivable and also a conceptualizable reality bringing
about objective time and its void. There are three clues, however, for
a solution of this problem of the puzzle of the objectification of
temporality in the first stage.
The first clue had already been mentioned in Chapter II, A, 1
a.: Every sphere of consciousness contains resistance, including the
sphere of external perception. A second clue is contained in Man 's
Place in Nature (M): Since impulsion in the human being is, in
contrast to impulsion in the animals, suspendable because humans can
block both impulsion and drives, this capacity of blocking (hemmen)
impulsion and drives is an eminent ability of human existence. It is
called the ascetic part of human nature, and the human being is "the
ascetic of life" (IX 44 I M 54-5). To temporarily block both
impulsion and drives does not amount to a phenomenological
reduction, however, but is declared to be an "individual technique"
(IX 207 I PE 318). This blocking of the innermost zones in our life-
center and its drives can be accomplished by various techniques, for
instance, by fasting, restrammg, ignoring, abstaining, and
withholding. The third clue of what looks like a divider of reality in
external perceptions can be found in the treatise "Idealism-Realism,"
Section 3, entitled "The Problem of the Transcendence of the Object
and the Consciousness ofTranscendence" (IX 190-193 I PE 295-300).
The third clue amounts, as the first clue above, to a phenomenological
clarification of the complex problem of the objectification of the void
of time. Scheler draws on his distinction between ecstatic knowledge
and knowledge as such. The former is not related to an ego or a
 THE CONSTITUTION OF TIME 141

transcendence of objects, because the world is not an object in

ecstatic knowledge. But the world can become an object when a re-
flexive act, in which an ecstatic act (ekstatisch gebender) turns onto
itself, hits the central self as the starting point of acts. This is to say
that the act of reflection is in touch with the consciousness of the self
(IX 193 I PE 299), which has the same origin or is co-original with
the consciousness of the transcendent objects, and it is co-original
also with the acts of external perceptions. A transcendent object is, by
dint of acts of reflection, part and parcel of any consciousness. Its
objects continue to be steadfastly "in" consciousness as what they are
in the act of reflection. The co-originality of both consciousness of the
self and of the transcendence of objects are linked up. It is needless to
stress that this state of affairs precedes acts of "judgment" through
which objects had traditionally been understood as being "formed" by
us.
Granted all this to be the case, what precisely is the nature of
an act of reflection? What does reflection have to do with an
objectified temporal void?
The answer that we are given by Scheler is fasci-nating. This
is not only because it sets him very distinctly off from Husserl' s
"time-consciousness" and from Heidegger's temporality of Dasein.
His answer to the question is that both consciousness of self and the
consciousness of transcendent objects are themselves an outgrowth
(die Folge) of a pulling back, or the "receding" (eines Riickzugs) of
the reflexive act. The object held steadfastly in the consciousness
that is in the state of reflection yielding knowledge of transcendence,
plus a fortiori knowledge of a transcendent void, is not the result of
consciousness actively turning toward the objects. Rather, a
transcendent object is the result of a consciousness that pulls away
and recedes from an object. The presupposition in the word "object"
mentioned above comes to the fore here. This pulling back or
receding of consciousness implies that an object does not come to us
by throwing itself "against" us. Rather, the mind undergoes a
phenomenological distance from what is becoming an object by
pulling back and away or receding from the object. In this sense, an
object may even emerge from the ego-less ecstatic knowledge.
It is not always commendable to use analogies for complex
states of affairs such as this one. But there are two analogies which
suggest themselves here and which can bring into sharper focus for us
what has been said about the coming about of transcendent objects.
142 LIFETIME

The first analogy is a physical one. When we are reading a

book and are becoming doubtful of what we have been reading, we
tend to pause and "lean back" looking away from the book and
through the window while re-thinking what we were reading. It is in
this distancing oneself away from the text of the book that
clarifications and critical questions may come to dawn on us and
provide an improved understanding of what we were reading.
The second analogy pertains to art. Standing close to the
canvas of a pointillist painting, one can see only colorful but discrete
dots, and not what the painting depicts. It is a different situation, of
course, when we take a more distant position by receding backwards
away from the dots on the canvas, because then the objective
depiction of what the painting tells us is corning slowly to the fore
and becomes clearly visible. Or: the transcendent object IS now
emerging and has even a horizon around it.
One more comment for clarification of the above.
We met earlier with the concept of "transference" in the
constitution of human temporal existence. We explained the
constitution of the void as beginning with the void of the
unfulfillment of and in drives that transfers up to the void in
representation. We indicated also that the transference of this kind is
tantamount to transition in absolute time.
There is another transference to be mentioned that pertains to
the constitution of causality which is, of course, a significant
phenomenon of all causes and effects given in objective, measurable
time. The origin of causality is not in objective time. The origin lies at
the center of an individual life but the objective cases and effects are
the "result" of what initially has taken place "through me" (IX 237 I
PE 351). Yet:

That it [the transference] has taken place is as clear as

day, while the 'how' is obscure.

But this much is not obscure: causality stems from our own
spontaneous acting. It originates in what took place "through me" and
results in an effectuation (die Auswirkung) which our vital center
exercises on the immediate, natural surroundings. As soon as a project
has been realized by one of our own actions, the origin of the
phenomenon of causality is at hand. That is, when we experience
something as having been realized by and through ourselves, the very
 THE CONSTITUTION OF TIME 143

effectuation of causal processes in our surroundings, where the

realization had taken place, has already transited from us to the
external causal relationships and now also given in our perception.
This transference going from a self-causation to a perceivable and
conceptual causality is only one among other instances of absolute
time transferring contents into objective time.
The role this transference plays can be traced back to
Formalism. Scheler conceived the lived body here as having a
fundamental "schema" which, as a phenomenon, remains even when
there are no organic functions experienced, as in a dreamless sleep,
during narcosis or comatose conditions. But, in practice, the lived
body is the ultimate center of reference (Bezugssystem) of the three
human spatial extensions (II 409; 461 IF 411; 466). The transference
of these three lived body extensions over to the three objective
dimensions of space is tantamount to the constitution of spatiality
consistent with Scheler's theory of transfers. But the transfers
themselves do remain "obscure," we are told. This obscurity
resounds again later in the writings of M. Merleau-Ponty ( 1908-1961)
whose investigation of the spatial lived body orientations coincide
widely with those Scheler offered in Formalism.
 CHAPTER III
AT THE CROSSROADS OF THE PRESENT AND
THE FUTURE

A. THE DIAMETRICAL DIRECTIONS OF DRIVES AND MIND

A preliminary note is in place.

As we live today at the crossroads where a long past and an
inchoate millennium have come to meet, the question should be asked
whether the above philosophy of time can tell us something about the
imminent or distant future, a question that Scheler's contemporaries
E. Husser! and M. Heidegger did not specifically ask at their time,
despite their interest in the nature of time. In the final chapter we will
answer the above question in the affirmative.
In Chapter II, section 2, entitled, "The Function of Time in
Realizing Factors," it was stated that the descending order of the enu-
meration of the realizing factors with which the mind keeps function-
alizing, reveals an appropriate one-to-one correspondence with the
given order of the drives of propagation, power, and of nutrition. The
interrelationship within the descending order of realizing factors and
drives respectively, was referred to as significant for an understanding
Scheler's grasp of the future. We will see that the descending order of
the three types of realizing factors will reveal a constitution of the
present and a view of the distant future.
This Chapter will cover three points as a result of what has
been observed.

1. The growth of mind

2. An example of predicting a near future
3. The role of objective time in the age of capitalism.

We decided not to deal with the present-day Future Studies of

Wendell Bell, Nicholas Rescher, and others, each working in their
own ways. This is because our subject of Scheler's philosophy of time
is ever so much suffused with subconscious factors as human drives
and their origins in the individual centers of life, impulsion, and in
 TIME AND CULTURE 145

other factors that had surfaced in our study. Scheler's intuitions in

matters of the future will provide us with a number of avenues serving
to expand investigations in futuristics.
In what follows, we will not treat in depth either the main
types of predictions to be listed later, nor the differences in what they
aim at since this would no doubt require a separate study altogether.

1. The Growth ofMind and the Devolution ofDrive Directions

The shift of the predominance of drives from the drive of propagation

to the drive for power and to the drive for nutrition, and the shifts of
their respective objects, is concomitant with a peculiar stages in the
growth of the mind (VIII 24-9 I PR 34-43).
The procedure of what Scheler calls an "inverse prolongation"
(Ruckverlangerung) inherently belongs to the thematic of our study.
The procedure consists in conclusions drawn from specific acts of the
mind that give access to specific segments of being. It will occupy us
well into the following section.
The procedure runs as follows: Just as in the life of an
individual, the mind's experiences keep growing from childhood,
adolescence until old age, 43 so also during the long eras of history, the
scope of universal understanding and knowledge has grown along
with the increasing functionalizations occurring between the mind
and real factors. There is a remarkable intellectual difference between
stone-age man and present-day technological man, although stone-age
man is likely to have carried the seeds of future human development.
Present-day humanity has arrived at a crucial point of existence (XI
198):

We appear to have arrived at a "midpoint in time" of

the world: The era of a predominating spiritualization
has begun: that is, the unbecoming of this world.

While the mind increasingly functionalizes with things along

with simultaneous accumulation of knowledge, there are concurrent
decreases of the vitality of an individual's body. Applying the inverse

43 In literature, Asian cultures, fairy tales, mythology, etc., the "sage" represents
wisdom and maturity of mind.
146 LIFETIME

prolongation, one would have to expect the same to happen with

universal life, also called by Scheler All-Life (das Alleben). This is in
fact the case. All-Life, including possible life on other planets, is also
in a process of aging. It has begun to "recede" (sich zuruckzuziehen)
toward the death of this world and, we could add, in terms of the
second thermo-dynamic law. While the receding processes of life is
taking place parallel with man's accumulation of knowledge and the
growth and expansion of his mind, however, the Deity's coming-to-be
gains power and intensifies (erhalt immer mehr) its existence (XI
198). The essence of Scheler's argument for the growth of mind and
its intensifying urge to control nature is contained in a 1924/25
aphorism, entitled, "About Aging" (XV 182):

When humans get older they tend to get a better grasp

of that which is typical of something, and tend to look
at things in wider contexts. During this process, their
attention to fortuitous particulars may also be de-
creasing. Both advancement of mechanization ... and
the ascent to the mental acts are two sides of one
unfolding process that begins with the unity of sense
in both instinctive behavior and perception. The more
everything becomes manageable by machines, the
higher the mind can ascend to its own tasks- just as a
piano player's perfect mastery of keyboard techniques
ascends to the highest degree ofmusicality. 44

In other words, increasing manageability of things and techno-

logical accomplishment are signs of the growth of the mind. The more
occupation there is with things by way of technology and automation,
the more mind becomes free to attend to tasks of its own.
In an age of increasing manageability of human needs by
means of economics and technology, the mind's inadequacy in the
past to act independently of the "drama of drives" is being overcome
in the growth of functionalizations with realizing factors anchored in

44 The translation here is close to literal. But in today's vocabulary, what is here
called "mechanization" would stand for "technology," and the expression "by
maschines" would stand for "technologically." Concerning keyboard techniques, I
provided in Person und Dasein, op.cit., pp 31-37 a phenomenologial analysis of the
act of hearing and of a violinist being "lost" in playing Bach's Chaconne, rather
than paying attention to finger techniques.
 TIME AND CULTURE 147

the power- and nutritive drives. Mind, it was stated in Chapter II, 2,
has learned to "reckon" with realizing factors. The drama of drives
that in the past, beset with preposterous instances of social chaos and
cataclysmic wars, has begun, no matter how unnoticeable still, to give
way to a more peaceful existence. The distant future is going to be
"undramatic and unhistorical"(XIII 164; 152) and will have less wars.
An upcoming increase of attention to useabilities and utility-values
has two positive consequences: In terms of the era of economics we
have begun to live our lives in, the frame of mind will attain more of
economic attitudes, implying that wars just don't "pay," rather than
attain a moral attitude that wars ought not to be waged. In terms of the
age of technology one can say that the more there is technological
interest, activity, and progress, the less drive-conditioned hostility and
violent behavior.
These points made by Scheler some eighty years ago appear to
have had some consequences on todays' foreign policies. Although
over the past fifty years or so, numerous warnings had been launched
against possible abuses of atomic power, aggressive actions, and
threats that as a consequence of this power, international foreign
policies have seem to have gradually turned away from such warnings
in favor of economic and technological considerations, and they have
at the same time also turned slowly toward indefinite "globalization"
tendencies replacing the traditional cultivation of national interests.
Numerous inventions made in communication technology starting
with Marconi's first transatlantic phone call in 1901, for example,
were already instrumental in this development. As to the fast growing
communication technology itself, Scheler saw both a positive and a
negative aspect of it. On the one hand, communication technology is a
condition for fast and easier international understanding but, on the
other hand, communication technology can be used in particular cases
to increase feelings of alienation and even of intense hatred among
peoples. World War I is proof of these two sides of communication
technology (IV 402). Nine years after World War I, Scheler stressed
that it was the foremost task of politicians of the future to guide and
direct global adjustment with a "minimum of destruction, explosions,
blood, and tears" (IX 153 I P 104). But in that same year of 1927, he
had also already an inkling that Italy's Fascism could lead to World
War II (XIII 95-6 I ID 164 [1976]) while it was growing also in
Germany at the same time.
148 LIFETIME

It should be mentioned even if just in passing that the theory

of the growth of the mind and its bond with the "functionalization" of
ideal factors with realizing ones is well within the growth of interest
in Pragmatism in that experience starts as a "practical" experience as
we referred to in Chapter II, 2.
It is at this point that we can formulate Schelerian argument:
A specific mental attitude is going to pervade the future growth of
mind. This "mind set," whose quintessential significance had already
been anticipated as we shall see by Kant, plays a crucial role in the
initial periods of the future, called "Man in the Era of Adjustment."
Scheler furnishes an analogy for these initial periods, and for what
might in the future happen when these periods will be over. He sets
himself off from both Christian and positivist concepts of history
found in Europe and counters them with a global view of his own (IX
l541P 105):

... the structure of history resembles a river system in

which a great number of rivers continue their
particular courses for centuries but, nourished by
innumerable affluents, finally tend to converge ever
more directly and to unite in one stream.

Capitalism's mind-set is what hovers over the large number in

the system of rivers of realizing factors that are taking particular and
autogenous courses of their own into the future. Capitalism is the
initial phase of the third period of human history in the The World
Era of Adjustment, that is not only nourished by numerous economic
and non-economic factors, but also by many different systems of
value preferences, i.e., of different forms of "ethos" found among
cultures. The forms of ethos take much longer periods of adjusting to
each other than forms of trade (IX 154 I P 106). Thus, the capitalist
mind-set should not be interpreted as "one" uniform mind-set,
although its goals may be that. It is not "one" uniform mind-set,
because there is not "one" mind, or "one" spirit, in history. Mind
exists "beforehand only in a concrete multiplicity" of manifold groups
and cultures (VIII 25 I PR 40). Hence, the capitalist mind-set should
also be seen to be relative to different groups and peoples.
Furthermore, the multiplicity of group-minds implies that their
growth is not a uniform either; rather, they set in at different periods
and they have different rates of growth. It is not only the case that the
 TIME AND CULTURE 149

realizing factors, illustrated in the analogy of the river system, have

different rates of growth, but there are different rates of growth in
the multiplicity of minds also.
Taking the latter point as stated, one can expect the sociologist
Max Scheler to tell us something about what may be the very origins
of capitalism and its mind-set. We will take the issue up.

2. The Three Eras of History and The Transition from

Absolute to Objective Time

In most cases, a prediction covers a stretch of time from a given

present to a usually near, but on occasion also distant future.
Scheler's only time-oriented predictions are different. They
first go back to the past, reach over to the present, and only then do
they offer a description of something that might happen in the future.
That is, the three time dimensions of the past, present, and the future
are retained and encompass the prediction-making. Or, whatever is or
can be predicted must have sources in the past. In the context of the
three eras of history, the past reaches back to the origins of recorded
human history itself, just as the projections made from these can reach
into a distant future. Predictions made in this case are of macroscopic
scope.
What does it mean, however, to say that a large range of
predictions has to include not only the near but also the remote past?
The answer we get to the question is, however, contrary to what had
been said all along (XIII 159):

History begins when nothing is predictable - even

when history would take a path toward "perfect"
knowledge of facts and laws! History - begins with
"freedom"! Whatever was earlier than freedom was
still "natural."

Freedom is an antipode of predictability. Freedom is not only

apparent in the ascending levels ofthe world (X 163) but it is residual
in the human being itself. Still, freedom always refers to something
"from what" there is freedom (X 165). The nature of what freedom is
"from" pertains to the autogenously self-governing directions and to
the self-governing waves of realizing factors based in drives which, in
150 LIFETIME

tum, are based in the ultimate realizing pole of impulsion which is

interwoven with its opposite pole of pure spirit (or the individual
mind). The unpredictability of history is due to human freedom, but
freedom must in part also be limited because of the aforementioned
increases of the knowledge of realizing factors whose types must also
be increasing along with the functionalizations of the ideas that mind
increasingly has with realizing factors. The mind's increase of insight
and knowledge must, therefore, allow some kind of predictability in
terms of the mind's learning to focus on what will be and, therefore,
on what can be "reckoned" with in the self-governing courses that the
realizing factors are taking.
This starting point of the mind's growth and its contacts with
the realizing factors provides possibilities to make predictions. This is
not the only condition for this growth. Another condition for the
growth is found in Scheler's metaphysics. It refers to a separation to
be made between the pre-Kantian and Kant's own philosophy. The
argument runs as follows: While pre-Kantian philosophy took a path
of thinking that started from the object of the "cosmos" and tried to
pass from the cosmos to absolute being. However, Kant showed in his
transcendental dialectics this to be an impossible undertaking: The
world must first be related to the human being as the starting point
par excellence of philosophy Or (IX 82 I P 10):

The concrete world and its modes of being are not

"being in itself' but only an approximate counter-
balance to the entire spiritual and physical order of
man and a "segment" of being itself. A conclusion as
to the true attributes of the ultimate source of all
things can only be drawn by starting from the essence
of man, explored in "philosophical anthropology."
This conclusion is an inverse prolongation of the
spiritual acts which originally sprang from the center
of man.

This includes the thesis also that all predictions must first be
related to the human being. They are not to be made by first looking
into how things are going to be apart from the human being. Hence, if
historical predictions can be made with some success, they must be
made in terms of the inverse prolongation that spans the direction
from the human being as a starting point to being. We said predictions
 TIME AND CULTURE 151

"with some success" because, as the quote states, the mental-psycho-

physical organization of human beings allows only a segment of being
to coincide with their organization (see also VIII 359).
The met-anthropological contention 45 of inverse prolongation
refers to the following: (1) The universe exists independently of hu-
man existence. There is no reason to assume that, if human life would
become extinct, say, after of a massive catastrophe, the existence of
the universe, too, would become extinct at the same time. (2) Despite
this independence there exist essential relationships between certain
classes of acts of the mind, on the one hand, and segments of the
being of the world, on the other. The ground of being itself must
therefore also have acts or operations in it which allow finite humans
to access them. For example, the absolute time par excellence is the
individual person's "experience" of absolute time (IX 235 I PE 349).
Scheler's inverse prolongation from man to being - also referred by
him as the "transcendental mode of inference" (die transzendentale
Schlussweise) - provides us, therefore, with a clue that the ground of
being, too, must be of absolute time. The general characteristics of the
ground of being, or of the "world-ground," had already been briefly
discussed in Chapter II. It had then been said that this ground consists
of the twinned principles of impulsion and spirit. Both revealed that
absolute time itself has three characteristics: (1) the coincidence of
meanings and phases; (2) becoming and un-becoming, including the
becoming of consciousness, and (3) transition. We can now see that
what had been said about absolute time was inferred from the
absolute time of our own impulsion. Absolute time is experienced
prior to the objectification of time, or prior to "objective time"
including its void.
It would separate us too far from our project of presenting
Scheler's philosophy of time if we were to consider the validity of his
transcendental inference that spans the nature of the human being and
a part of the world-ground. Instead, we will proceed to gain further
insight into time predictions, and in so doing, we will make use of the
transcendental inference as it stands. It will appear to us that Scheler

45 The distinction to be made between metaphysics, philosophical anthropology,and

met-anthropology, is explained in M.S. Frings, The Mind of Max Scheler. Op. cit.,
pp. 253-25.
152 LIFETIME

both implied and applied the inference to the following historical

prediction.
The three major drives have the developmental sequence of
(1) the drive of propagation, (2) the drive for power, and (3) the drive
of nutrition. The sequence is inferred from the familiar three phases of
individual living beings in general and to human beings in particular,
namely, the phases of human adolescence or youth, of adulthood and
of the later aging process. In each of these three periods in the life of
human individuals as well as the transcendental inference to be made
for the three eras of history, a corresponding drive is predominant in
both individuals and the three historical eras respectively.
This predominance in human beings and in history is reflected
in the object of each drive: (1) the urge and tendency to dominate
over human beings, (2) the urge and tendency for gaining power over
both human beings and things in nature, and (3) the urge and
tendency to dominate only things in nature. The role that the objects
of the drive dominations has, descends, therefore, from the
domination over humans, to that over human beings and over things,
and finally to the domination over entities in nature. Let a graphic
illustrate this:

Shifts of the Predominance ofDrives Shifts ofDrive-Objects

Drive ofPropagation Power over Humans

l
Power Drive
l
Power over Humans and

l
over Things

Nutritive Drive Power tver Things

The process of this devolution of drives covers three eras of

history. The process is linked up with sociological factors intrinsic to
three different drive-objects, and it is linked up with two characters of
absolute time: transition, and becoming and un-becoming.
 TIME AND CULTURE 153

In our context, it is in this devolution of the drives and their

objects that there is hidden a significant factor with regard to time:
There take place shifts of the transition of the predominance among
respective social forms, and there is a shifting taking place of the tran-
sition of the predominance of absolute time down to objective time. It
is to these shifts that we now tum our attention.

a. The Shifts of Sociological Transitions

1. In the first era of history, the predominance of the procreative drive

is, sociologically, related, to the social form of the life-community,
i.e., to tribes, clans, family-life, and home-communities. 2. During the
second era of history, there is a predominance of the drive for power
which is sociologically related to the social form of society. 3. During
the future era of the predominance of the nutritive drive, there will
take place a gradual development of international cooperation, and of
a cultural, economic, and technological globalization, that will lead,
supposedly, to a solidarity among humans.
The shifting from social form of the life-community to society
and to a future solidarity is not a linear development. Rather, all
social units are co-original. Any life-community has societal elements
in it no matter how few. Any society includes life-communities and
both of them carry with them tendencies toward solidarity among
humans in one form or another.

b. The Shifts from the Predominance of Absolute Time

to the Predominance of Objective Time

There are three shifts that lead from the predominance of absolute to
the predominance of objective time.
1. Absolute time is predominant in the life-community i.e.,
during the first era of history.
2. Absolute time has a diminished role during the second era
of the predominance of society, when measurements of objective time
play an essential role in the life of individuals.
3. In the era of adjustment, objective time will be even more
predominant. This is because there will be strong urges to bring under
control objective things through technology and economics. Clock-
154 LIFETIME

time regulates more and more whatever activities society engages in

by methods of quantification aiming at high degrees of effectiveness .
The amount and type of activity and work is and will be gauged to
preset frames oftime, or time-windows. "Quality time," so-called, has
already become dependent on objective time and may or may not be
programmed within a time-window in which individuals have to go
to work.
The sometimes concealed unity of Scheler's philosophy comes
to the fore at this juncture, because it is only now we can see these
three shifts from the predominance of absolute to that of objective
time in their relationship to the increasing speed of the historical
changes of religion, metaphysics, and of science (VIII 63-4 I PR 76).
Religion undergoes only very slow changes in history, metaphysics
and relevant world-views change faster, and science undergoes the
fastest changes. In our context of the crossroads of the past and the
present, the abundant discoveries and progress achieved almost week
by week in technology as an applied science, are going on with such a
speed that the indivisible values of the mind, even less sacred values,
can hardly keep up with that progress. Especially in medical sciences,
moral solutions and judgments on such discoveries as the function of
stem cells, artificial insemination, of cloning, etc., have begun to
cross over into moral dilemma, dispute, and impasse. Or: the moral
issues and their solutions lag behind the fast pace of technological
progress taking place in objective time. Indeed, absolute time linked
up with the higher values of the mind and of religion, in distinction
from the transient and lower value ranks tied to objective time,
appears to be an issue in the quest for clarifications of moral issues
brought about by quantifiable values and objects
It is not only characteristic of issues just referred to that in the
experience of objective time human beings keep running against the
clock and pre-set objective "time-windows." "I have no time," i.e.: I
cannot see a possibility for doing this or that in the time "at my
disposal." In the age of management, technology, and economics,
people are constantly squeezed in time-windows. This is a different
experience of time than that found in pre-societal, communal groups.
Members of life-communities live with the flow of the predominance
of their individual- and group-experiences of absolute time. There are
no or only very few time-windows that may stem the natural flow of
their members' activities. This pertains to what is sometimes referred
to in the United States as "Indian time." It has no time-window. And
 TIME AND CULTURE 155

one can also substantiate the phrase when one lives with a tribe. It
denotes work not done within a period of a time-span pre-set by a
societal contract, or work is done "at a time" whenever, and outside
clock-time. It is done "as time comes."
One must not, however, separate so sharply as we just did the
experience of time in life-communities and societies. For the flow of
absolute time toward objective time is a transitional process that
involves simultaneous becoming and un-becoming. This means that
absolute time does not succumb entirely to objective time. Absolute
time does not succumb either to the three eras of history, nor does it
succumb to groups and individuals. And since the natural view of the
world is given in all sociological forms and their transitions, both
absolute and objective time must be dynamically present in those
transitions, or (X 452 I PE (226):

A finite segment of indeterminate magnitude

of both space and time is present in this nat-
ural world, where the two are the same for
things as well as events. An empty and a filled
space, an empty and a filled time are also pre-
sent in that world.

Two remarks may be added to the above. They pertain ( 1) to

the type of predictions that occur within the respective predominance
of absolute time or the predominance of objective time, and (2) to
absolute and objective time with regard to things. Let us mention a
few cases of predictions.
Prophesies are divinely inspired predictions that pertain to
what will happen to humans by the designs of God, gods, or as told by
prophets. They appear to be linked up with absolute time. When a
prophesied event happens, the event is, as a rule, not datable, as the
"day" of final judgment. Societal predictions like economic ones
represent a mixture of space and time. They pertain to things which,
like merchandise, are mostly localizable in some form of space as in
an environment and are in objective time; but they are also linked up
with events of absolute time occurring as they do in the transitions of
market changes. They pertain to the near or distant future relations as
they occur between humans and things. But weather predictions are
overwhelmingly spatial and pertain to climatic conditions in nature
that are measurable. One can apply these three different predictions to
156 LIFETIME

the above graphic of the downward directions of drives: from the

predominance of absolute to the predominance of both absolute and
objective time and, lastly, to the predominance of mostly objective
time experiences.
We frequently used the word "thing." These references to
things had a reason. They will lead us now to a detailed assessment of
capitalism of our own time as well as of the role that things play in it.
In preparation for this we want to take yet another look at an earlier
comparison made between Heidegger and Scheler concerning things
used.
Although there are a number of hints concerning the nature of
the modes of time in Scheler's works, as in his essay "The Theory of
the Three Facts" (Lehre von den drei Tatsachen) (X 431-502 I PE
202-87), he did not study this relationship further. But we are now in
a position to make a specific point on this relation. The point concerns
a thing's being, or not being, in use.
A thing being used is different from a thing not being used and
just looked at. A thing can appear in two different modes of time. The
difference pertains to the Schelerian "usability" of things and the
Heideggerian "at-handedness."
On the basis of what we said about absolute time and
objective time, we can understand that any thing being used is in a
mode of absolute time, because a thing used implies transition,
becoming and un-becoming as well as coincidence between the
phases of its use and the meaning of its use in the irreversible
successiveness of that thing being in use, say, the hammering with a
hammer. By contrast, a thing not used is an object in objective time,
because the absence of its use makes the thing, the hammer, a
measurable thing. And one can also expect a hammer now just lying
on the work-bench to be there tomorrow and clock its time of not
having been used from now until tomorrow.
As it appears, Heidegger did not focus in Being and Time on
the difference between at-handedness (Zuhandenheit) and present-to-
hand (Vorhandenheit) in the light of the differences of the modes of
time we just established with regard to Scheler's distinction between
absolute and objective time. While a hammer is being used, the
hammer reveals itself in "how" it is a hammer "in" using it. "How" is
a temporal pronoun. The hammering temporalizes the thing hammer.
The "how" implies the extensions of past, present, and future. By
contrast, the hammer sitting on the work-bench does not temporalize
 TIME AND CULTURE 157

at all. It is what it is. The pronoun "what" refers to an inert object in

objective time, whereas how-ness does not, and refers to a temporal
process that implies the value of a hammer which brings us back to
the threefold division made in the "ontology of values:" existence,
whatness, and value-being.
Indeed, one can also argue that a thing being used, and that
even entities that exist only in modes of time as sounds, should not be
called "things" in the traditional sense of this word. By tradition, a
things have always been in objective space and time and, as such,
they can be handled, manipulated, and managed. But a things' usage
makes it linked to absolute time.
Things as measurable objects are in objective time and belong
to all applications of them in the technology of the age of capitalism.
At the beginning of our age of technology, economics and capitalism,
things began to be experienced as plain and cold objects, and also
increasingly experienced in their extrinsic profitability. Although they
are being used in absolute time, their use keeps slipping out of human
hands, and changes the objects into automated and computerized
items of objective time by way of robot technologies and cybernetics.
They are not only slipping out of the human hands, they also become
more distant. Objects far away can be steered by a few computer
clicks on earth, as a rover sitting on Mars. This distance makes things
even more interrelated with other things in objective time. 46

3. Types of Predictions and Their Classification

In Chapter II, section 2, "The Function of Time in Realizing factors,"

a key quote was provided, in which Scheler maintained that the
essence of the experience of time is experiencing the future (IX 228 I

46 In his 1942-3 Lecture Parmenides (GA 54, p. 119), Heidegger recalls the time
when a letter written on a typewriter (qua a thing) was taken to be a little as an in-
sult. Yet, the typewriter did replace handwritten letters, because the latter obstructed
the fast pace of modem life. In this development, says Heidegger, a word has just
turned into a "means of transportation," which hides the character of the person
typing. Today, letters look alike, never mind fonts. In this also people typing letters
and messages look alike in them. The science of graphology that interprets both
character and personality by handwriten texts has no role in this anymore.
158 LIFETIME

PE 340). The statement invites us to describe types and

classifications of pre-dictions.
There are a number of different words used for predictions.
Predictions are referred to as forecasting, foretelling, foreseeing,
prognosticating, prophesying, fortune-telling, palm reading, reading
astrological signs, auguring, divining, and others. They point to a ubi-
quitous interest in prediction-making in many walks of life. But dif-
ferent words for predictions appear to imply also types of predictions.
We mentioned Scheler's preferred type of prediction-making, which
encompasses the distant past, the present, and the distant future. But
on a narrower and more familiar scale of time, there are predictions
that have their starting points in a given present. For example,
Huxley's Brave New World (1932) in which Henry Ford's birthday is
taken as a historical marker; Huxley's 1958 diatribe against over-
population and over-consumption, Brave New World Revisited; or G.
Orwell's' 1984 (1949), or Nazi Germany's prediction of a "thousand
year Reich."
Quite a different type of predictions are economic ones that
are made in terms of economic cycles, such as the 2000-year age
cycle, the 5000 year civilization cycle, the 170 years drought cycle, or
the 41 or 50-months stock-market cycle.
Different as the types of predictions may be, they appear to
converge in one point. They are made in objective time in which the
future is, figuratively speaking, a box into which the expectations and
predictions are placed. In our context, such objective time predictions
except cyclic economic predictions, lead to a linear arithmetic series
of time-points that begins with a present to a near or distant future.
This is different with predictions that are now almost extinct,
prophesies. The content of a prophesy may have been at work for
generations before it was fulfilled or not, and its time of origin may
not even be known or remembered in a strongly secular society as
ours. The final judgment may be a case in point. More distinctly, the
content of the prophesy may even be unknown to whom it pertains. In
the Greek mythological story of Perseus, Perseus was never aware of
the oracle which predicted even before he was born that he would kill
his grandfather. He was not even aware of the prophesy itself when
his discus hit and killed, indeed, his grandfather sitting somewhere in
the arena that surrounded an athletic field with the games going on. In
such kind of prophesy, there appears to be a peculiar absence of time
with regard to the person about whom the prophesy plays itself out.
 TIME AND CULTURE 159

Another type of prediction is what is called in German "die

Ahnung," a word used in German everyday language. It is not easy to
translate, but it comes close to a "vague anticipation," to an "inkling,"
and to a sometimes vague and continuous pre-feeling, foreboding, or
premonition, that does not want to go away. It may pertain to a pre-
feeling of our own death (which the ancient Romans expressed in
their saying: finem appropinquare sentio ), it may pertain to a pre-
feeling of an accident to occur before driving to work in the morning,
or to an unexplainable and unremitting anticipation, haunting a person
who feels he has a yet unknown disease, it may pertain to someone
who senses the death of a friend far away. Ahnung is a pre-feeling that
we might also have for a split second when we say good-by to
someone leaving us while we foresee we will never meet that person
again. Ahnung does not begin in objective time, it just comes up.
Although there are no explainable reasons for its vague, yet persistent
anticipations, they can prove to be true and to be justified later when
we receive a message that confirms what we had been anticipating for
a long period of time. But it is not infrequent that persons who have
anticipations of the kind tend to reject or belittle them out of fear they
this feeling might contain truth. Scheler even held that such feelings
can contain an "intuitive evidence," which he called Ahnungsevidenz
(X 217). Christ's pre-feeling of death is an example of such an
anticipatory evidence. Moreover, vague but true anticipations are not
always those of one person. They can even pervade larger groups of
people infected with a psychic contagion of fearing a war will be lost
before there are any signs for an oncoming defeat.
Furthermore, a special case of vague anticipations happens in
science. The Ahnung can point to uncertain, ambiguous, and even
unscientific discoveries that could be made in the future, but which at
the present can only be described by oxymorons but continue to hang
in the air. G. Saccheri (1667-1733) and J.H. Lambert (1728-1777), for
example, had such inklings of what was later on called non-Euclidean
geometry. Despite unintelligible paradoxes contradicting principles of
Euclidean geometry, Saccheri and Lambert had to admit that Euclid's
the fifth postulate of parallel lines was not absolutely true because
two parallels do, indeed, meet in non-Euclidean geometries. Less
known is probably that even Kant, who, like Newton, was a champion
of Euclidean geometry, could not deny either that the concept of a
figure enclosed in two straight lines only, is no contradiction, coming
160 LIFETIME

close to non-Euclidean geometry. 47 There must have been a spreading

Ahnung that Euclid's geometry was not absolute, after all.
The same kind of vague inklings of what today is the Internet,
must have been going through the minds of people when G. Marconi
in 1901 received at St. John's, Newfoundland, the signals that were
transmitted across the Atlantic from Poldhu in Cornwall, England.
The curvature of the earth was seen as an insurmountable obstacle for
such a transmission, yet, it proved to be no problem at all. It would be
interesting to pin down present-day vague collective inklings of the
kind which such people as novelists or scientists may have of future
technologies, and that might already betray some structures of
prescience in them.
Since there are obviously various types of predictions, one can
classify them in three categories: There are (1) spatial predictions,
there are (2) temporal predictions, and there are (3) mixtures of
spatial and temporal predictions.
Each of them shows a different degree of predictability. For
example, spatial predictions like weather forecasts, projections for
agricultural crop-yields, of increases and decreases of populations,
astronomical predictions, and even predictions of changing locations
of sunshine and shadow in summer for planting a tree or for building
a house, etc., are, despite the shortcomings that do occur, much easier
to make than historical time predictions, as predictions of the future of
capitalism, of democracy, or of acts of terrorism. The difficulties of
the third kind of predictions concerning mixtures of the first two, as
we find them in economics, but also predictions of an end result of
athletic competition lie, among others of the type, somewhat between
the former two. Max Scheler's philosophy of time refers us mostly to
the difficult historical time-predictions.
Like economic predictions, sociological predictions appear to
be also mixtures of the temporal and spatial predictions also because
of the ideal and realizing factors involved in them. Moreover, there
are predictions made with regard to absolute time in which only a few
calendar years in objective time would be mentioned. But they have a
special basis. They are made upon the basis of the "essence of life"
which is (1) non-spatial, (2) a process in time and, as we already

47 Critique ofPure Reason, A 220; B 268.

 TIME AND CULTURE 161

heard, (3) whose essence is "future" (IX 224, 228; XI 160 I PE 337,
341).
Before we embark on the next section, let us gather the main
points about predictions made on the basis of some of the concepts we
came across in the text:
1. The near or distant future is relative nothingness. The future
is relative to the passing present, and it is relative to a near or distant
past.
2. Because the future is "relative nothingness," any present to
which the future is relative must contain clues for the future.
3. This relative nothingness enters into functionalization with
the possible contents of what, at that present moment or period, is
possible or probable. This is to say that what is possible or probable
in a prediction must belong to some specific historical period.
However, a present can contain also impossible ideas. The ancient
Greeks and Romans, for instance, could not, in the period of time they
lived in, make predictions saying that there will be airplanes,
although flight was as a possibility recorded in their mythologies. But
this was not even a remote and vague inkling of humans in actual
flight today.
4. There are two tools which one can use to make predictions.
We are able to "calculate" what will happen in the future, and we can
"reckon" with what will happen in the future (VIII 22-3 I PR 38). The
former relates to objective time. The latter relates to absolute time.
The former relates to calculative thinking, the latter to intuition.
5. Time-predictions are more difficult to make than spatial
predictions. Yet, all predictions remain difficult to be made, because
any realized moment of any historical past, present, or of the future, is
always "incomplete." (V 34 I E 40-1 ). Thus any prediction must by
necessity also be incomplete, because of any incomplete historical
present it is made in.
We add one more point.
6. Predictions become most certain when it is made in fantasy
whose origin, we saw, is in impulsion. There seems to be only one,
albeit a fragmentary note made by Scheler on this state of affaires. In
the manuscript "Metaphysics and Art" (Metaphysik und Kunst), there
is an incomplete sentence written in between the lines on the upper
part of a page. It runs: "He who would have told us in 1913 that there
would be a time coming when the dollar would be worth twelve
162 LIFETIME

billion marks ... " 48 In the context of the discussion about fantasy in
which this unfinished sentence appears, this particular human being
would have been extremely important, since his or her fantasy would
have hit the now historically more or less correct prediction of what
did happen among a myriad of possibilities. Had this prediction in
fact occurred, it would by necessity have been made in terms of a
coincidence of content and phase in absolute time, typical of fantasy.
Scheler's historical and long-term time-related predictions
allow at least some degrees of verification concerning the
development that goes on during the transitions from the genealogical
era of the life-community (drive if propagation) to the second world-
era of society (drive for power). During these eras, countless wars
have been waged. On a much smaller scale, Scheler offers a
prediction of a specific case of what is likely to happen in the
immediate future after a war has come to an end.
Concerning the predominance of the drive-objects pertaining
to propagation and power, one must realize that it was during the first
era and in part during the second period until to today that wars were
common by the very definition of the drive objects of propagation and
power. The drive-object of propagation was defined as "power over
humans," and the drive-object of power was defined as "power over
humans and things."
War was of growing interest to Scheler and war became an
ingredient in his vision of the three eras of history. He belonged to a
number of German thinkers, such as Kant and Hegel, who supported
the argument that culture is a product not of peace but of war. The
Heraclitean motto Scheler gave to his book, The Genius of War and
the German War. was taken from the German poet Fr.v.Schiller
(1759-1805) and runs: "But war, too, has its honor. [It is] the mover
of human destiny." Part of the book was published in 1914. The
whole of it was published in 1915, and appeared again in 1916 with a
some less passionate forms of diction .. The "war book," as it was then
called, was filled with a harsh critique of United Kingdom and loaded
with subjective expressions of anti-British feelings then rampant in
Germany. It was very likely motivated also by feelings of a pervasive
German resentment of envy of the expansion of the British Empire.
World War I was also the time when Scheler, still a Catholic convert,

48 Manuscript: BI 154, p. 8. "Metaphysik und Kunst" is contained in Vol. XI, pp.

28-45. For its English translation see the listings in the back of this book.
 TIME AND CULTURE 163

harshly condemned capitalism that he thought was an British product.

He maintained that the very "anti-human" character of capitalism was
not profit-making as such, but profit-making at the cost of the human
person who is becoming dominated by the rule of money (IV 640);
and in an uncompromising defense of the value of every individual
person, which he had established in his Formalism, he would even
proclaim," We hate capitalism until we die" (IV 662).
Considering war as such, Scheler's war-book does not tell us
much about the essence of war. He says that there is a number of
positive effects that wars can have. We briefly enumerate them here
for our purposes, and then ask the question: What happens in the
immediate future after a war has come to an end?
In the rarely discussed 1916 essay, entitled, "War as an All-
Encompassing Experience" (Der Krieg als Gesamterlebnis) (IV 267-
282), Scheler mentions the positive effects wars can have. They may
well be understood by our veterans of wars today. We may mention
here the four major wars waged during the past century and in which
American soldiers participated: World War I, World War II, the
Korean war, and the Vietnam war, all of which began with or were
declared by the administrations of Democratic Presidents.
In comparing war with peace, Scheler finds that in peace
humans are inclined to take a microscopic look at the world, whereas
during a war the opposite is the case. In peace times, people take a
macroscopic view of the world; or, as one would say today, during
peace people are inclined of being more observant of their individual
lives their immediate environment. Shortly before and during a war,
however, people are more alerted by international situations at hand
and all occurrences in them. During peace, says Scheler, the "angle of
inclination" of interests that humans take in and with each other
increases, but at the expense of faith and religion. Peace breeds self-
interest. In the waning of faith and religious experiences during peace
times, it is felt that God is there because of man, not man because of
God. In addition, the waning of faith and religious experience breeds
increases of cultivations of the divisible and sensible values and of
anything that protects the values of security, wealth, and luxury.
During times of war, however, this angle of inclination moves
upwards: There is an increasing experience of the power of God and,
in its wake, of the power of love of other human beings by assisting
and helping people in need and desperation. Both friend and foe,
allies and enemy, pray to their God, or for the freedom from suffering,
164 LIFETIME

Jehovah, Allah, Nirvana, etc., for the justice of their own cause, while
desires for sensible pleasures are fading. The emphasis on the value of
the community ("life values") characterizes periods of wars and after,
as also does the emphasis on art, national language and on national
spirit. In seeing ever so many cultural works destroyed during wars,
humans mourn their losses and move toward higher values as the
renovation and appreciation of cultural goods as architecture. Among
both "soldiers in the trenches and among the millions of people at
home" there are seeds growing for such a new appreciation of cultural
goods and values. A ''future" of new possible cultures begins to be
dreamed of, and designed in human fantasies. Yet, only a few of
thousands of individual fantasies will make it, perhaps one that was in
the mind of a soldier who returned home, argues Scheler.
Furthermore, war engenders a collective guilt after it has been
waged although this collected feelings is rather short-lived. Wars can
generate collective feelings of repentance over what had happened
but, again, also this feeling is short lived. 49
From among the positive effects that wars can have and were
specifically listed above, there appear to be two major effects that a
war can have. 1. A war unites people on either side and war is "the
great originator of unification" (der grosse Gemeinschaftsbildner).
Concerning this effect wars have, Scheler makes explicit mention of
the "American Union" as the result of the Civil War. 2. In The Genius
of War and the German War, a positive effect of wars is seen in the
moral effect they have when compared to peace-time when individual
and group-hates, envy, revenge, and anger, are on the increase. But
war has a morally purifying effect. It bears resemblance to the fresh
scent of air cleansed after a thunderstorm. "War is the thunderstorm
of the moral world" (IV 70).
In regard to positive effects that wars can have, and in regard
to the sometimes inexorable urge for power over human beings that
still exist both nationally and internationally today, there began a
tendency already after World War I to soften this urge and power
struggles by way of international debate, and by rethinking the future
in the light of what had happened in the past. This effort lead to the
League of Nations, and after World War II, it lead to the United

49 Concering individual and collective repentance and guilt, see M. S. Frings, Per-
son und Dasein. Zur Frage der Ontologie des Wertseins, op.cit., pp. 68-87.
 TIME AND CULTURE 165

Nations. In both cases the topic of food supply and health, of relief
organizations, and of international economics brought with them a
rather significant change of the global map and a second look on the
ethos of capitalism.
After World War II, the historical significance of the growth
of international diplomacy as a part of the role of the United Nations
achieved some success of peaceful settlement in cases of European
and Asian political border disagreements; none, however, in the Near
East. The peaceful agreements, however, found a match in the steady
growth of modem "economic borders." They are distinctly different
from political borders and not negotiated politically or legally, but the
economic borders are emergent by themselves on the basis of the
realizing factors of poor, average, or rich resources of a region, be it
the food and water supplies ever so relevant to the drive of nutrition,
or be it the vital material resources of energy relevant to the drive for
power to conquer nature and its entities. All of this is tied in with the
professional management of the resources. In short, economic borders
are not the borders staked out peacefully for political real estate. (The
word "peace" stems from Latin "pax" and its verb "pango," meaning
"to stake out"). Rather, economic borders form resource estates.
Whereas the influence of the economic borders of the United States
and of Europe extend far beyond their political borders, the Sudan's
economic borders do not appear anywhere close to the Sudan's
political borders, partly because it has until now been the battleground
of a twenty year civil war, in which an Islamic government keeps
crushing black Christian rebels.
If there is a minimum of economic borders but a maximum
urge for staking out political borders, power struggles are likely to
continue, as is the case with Israel and Palestine. This implies that
struggles for peace are more likely to succeed when economic borders
become subject to international diplomacy.
Scheler's projection of the future made during the nineteen-
twenties on the basis of the devolution of drive directions amounted
already at his time to the growth of an economic era with sociological
changes we touched upon. A formation of global togetherness will in
part supersede attention to political borders: There is going to happen
global trade and economics. In the World Era of Adjustment the urge
for power over whatever parts of world population, Scheler predicts,
will give way to the emerging urge for interests in and controls over
things in nature for the benefit of humankind. On the basis of his
166 LIFETIME

theory of the devolution of drives, one can say that Scheler caught at
least a glimpse of the direction of future events. He forecast that this
direction will be beset with values of life and pragmatic values - but
at an expense of a global diminution of faith.
What is in our times understood to be "globalization" differs
substantially from Scheler's vision of this with regard to the World
Age of Adjustment. The recent concept of globalization was a veiled
expression for an aggressive program that contained Western
conceptions of management, regulation, marketing, take-overs by
multinational companies, and the like, and it was thought up during
the first term of the Clinton administration. Understandably, it was
materialist. This globalization concept had mostly a cosmetic, perhaps
spurious consideration of the two highest value ranks of culture and
religion. Instead, it lent itself more to an investors' heaven. This kind
of globalization left little or no room for an inclusion of poor
countries like the Sudan. Characteristic for such a concept was the
President's Secretary of State M. Albright's view quoted in U.S. News
& World Report (vol.130, No.14) as saying that the issue ofthe Sudan
is "not marketable to the America people." That was one opinion. But
anti-globalization forces hastened to make their points also, as we
know. Among them were those who condemned the widening gap
between the rich and poor at home and abroad, and the exploitation
by foreign banks in Southeast Asia, and the idea that work is
tantamount to rewarding investors. That was another opinion.
This brings us to specific features of capitalism, unfortunately
rarely referred to and understood by politicians. These features had
intensely been investigated during the first quarter of the twentieth
century. We choose three major theoreticians on the subject: Max
Weber, Werner Sombart, and Max Scheler. Their analyses were as
relevant then as they are today for present-day issues of capitalism, be
they economical, political, or existential. In their researches they
struggled hard to uncover the very origins of capitalism, ( 1) the pre-
political, (2) the sociological, and (3) the philosophical-existential
origins of capitalism.
 TIME AND CULTURE 167

B. CAPITALISM: THREE THESES CONCERNING ITS

META-ECONOMIC ORIGIN

1. Max Weber

Max Weber (1864-1920) is, of course, the most known among Ger-
man sociologists of the early twentieth century, whereas W. Sombart
(1863-1941), Max Scheler, and others like E. Troeltsch (1865-1923),
remained in his shadow. A reason for this is that Weber's work, The
Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, published in German in
1904-05, became available in English as early as 1930, translations
and slow rates of publication numbers at the time notwithstanding.
Weber, Sombart, and Scheler represent different views on the
origins of capitalism. But they also agreed on various issues, among
them their rejection of Marxist economic determinism. They also
agreed on a number of terms used in their writings, but they differed
on their meanings. For instance, Weber's useage of the term "Geist"
(Spirit) differs already in the title of his major work from Sombart's
and Scheler's use of the term. It goes without saying that Weber's
well known thesis concerning the origins of capitalism should, for our
purpose, just be summarized in the light of our subject.
Religious and ethical ideas are constitutive for the rise of
capitalism. Weber's research concerning profit-making in the ancient
world, such as in Buddhism, Hinduism, and Judaism, showed that
profit-making as such has always been an activity of human routine.
But what is new about it today, is the new "spirit" that suffuses profit-
making in the West. What is this "spirit" and what, precisely, is the
spirit of capitalism?
The spirit is what Weber calls the "rationalization" of modem
life. This rationalization is expressed in many areas of human activity,
such as in the multitude of providing scientific proofs, in political
constitutions, in contracts, in legalism and officialdom all are based
on rationalization. It is easy to see that the new spirit implies that
irrational profit-seeking should be held back for the sake of rational
profitability. But Max Weber's rationalization-mind implies negative
elements, i.e., the Western world is locked up "in" the penchant for
rationalization in all walks of life. Western rationalization is an "iron
cage" (das stahlharte Gehause ), which is a symbol that reflects a
168 LIFETIME

reality fraught with the rationalization of bureaucracy of whatever

areas of activity.
Yet, the prime cause of the new spirit was sixteenth century
Calvinism. This is because rational profit-making was itself the result
of the Calvinist conviction that the more work individuals could show
for themselves through accomplishment and achievement, the more
they could draw a check on predestination. Behind this attitude was
the conviction of Calvin himself that any introverted relationship to
God as had been practiced in monasteries, for example, could not be
preparatory to salvation. Rather, it is an extroverted, active
relationship to God by means of work and display of success that
provides the indices for the predestination of individuals. Hence, to
work for the sake of demonstrating success, was motivated by the
belief in predestination.
This general line of thinking about the origin of capitalism
was followed by other German sociologists as E. Troeltsch, and it was
followed also to a certain extent by Sombart and Scheler who also
argued that there must be a nexus between religion and capitalism. 50
But this is as far as they agreed to the theory.

2. Werner Sombart

Sombart's (1863-1941) researches on capitalism are very extensive.

Modern Capitalism (Der moderne Kapitalismus) and Der Bourgeois
(The Bourgeois) are only two of many works he wrote on the subject.
Sombart moved away from Weber's religious sources of capitalism
and saw its origins in sociological conditions.
Sombart traced the source of capitalism down to the
fourteenth century. In particular, he traced it back to Leon B.
Alberti's work, Della famiglia, which dealt with the issue of

50 See Scheler's essays on Sombart with references to Weber, "Der Bourgeois,"

"Der Bourgeois und die religiosen Miichte," and "Die Zukunft des kapitalistischen
Geistes," (III 341-395). F. Bosio, Borgesia socialismo e intuizione del mondo.
With Introduction. Italian tr. of three essays of Max Scheler. Brescia: La Scuola,
1982. Roberto Racinaro, Lo spirito del capitalismo e altri saggi. With Introduction.
Traduzione di Roberto Racinaro. Napoli: Guida editori, 1988. Henri Leroux, "La
legitimation du capitalism selon Sombart, Scheler, et Weber." Universite des Scien-
ces Sociales de Grenoble. UER de Philosophic et Sociologic, Actes du Co/toque du
25 avril/985. pp. 137-152.
 TIME AND CULTURE 169

domestic life during the 1430ies. Alberti was the illegitimate child of
a nobleman. In his works on architecture and studies on education and
ethics, he proved to be a prototype of Renaissance man. Werner
Sombart held that there were five sources of capitalism: a new type of
Western human beings, Catholicism, Protestantism, Judaism, and the
central source being the sociological conditions at hand. He disagreed
with Weber's analysis of Calvinism and Puritanism. Rather, there was
a novel type of human being emerging at the end of the Middle Ages.
The social conditions of this new type of humans were those of the
rising "bourgeois," a middle class European person with traits of
inferiority because the bourgeois's constant desire and tendency to
compare himself with the upper classes and the nobility. He is imbued
with materialist interests and concerns about increasing his property
which he protects at any cost. He does not take risks, because he is
afraid of losses, especially those of the securities for which he can't
work enough. Today, one could perhaps compare the earlier
bourgeois as a person who can't find sleep when his bank's balance
statement differs by a cent or two from his entries in his checkbook,
and who can't exactly be the same as the people of the upper classes
either, but of whom he desires day and night to be a part.
The word "bourgeois' is, of course, French and refers to
French society and its past. The title of Moliere's 1670 comedy, Le
bourgeois gentilhomme (The Would-be Gentleman) already betokens
the pathological bourgeois attitude of comparing and competing with
others.
Sombart was interested also to look into a person type that is
opposite to a bourgeois. This other type of person does take risks,
and does enjoy taking them. He has a feeling of self-value and is
anything else but avaricious, envious, or jealous of those who do
better than he can. A person, that is, who does not need to compare
himself with other people's station, because he has strength of
personality enough to admit, when appropriate, his shortcomings
without losing strength ofhis self-value.
These two types of person are referred to also in Scheler's
essay on "Ressentiment" (III 114-122 I R 111-117). With regard to
ressentiment, one can argue that Scheler saw one source of capitalism
in the bourgeois's futile attempts to make up for his ineptitude by
trying to equal the personal strength and higher social stations and the
nobility. Said contrasting person-types had, by the way, been of a
general interest at the time and earlier. H. Bergson, the German
170 LIFETIME

Jewish industrialist and friend of Scheler's, W. Rathenau as well as

W. James were among those interested in these types of persons (Ill
356). But Sombart appears to have been more explicit on the subject.
The modem bourgeois is a cold calculator, an inferior vital,
not mental or intellectual type of a human being. He is filled with
anxiety and is, therefore, preoccupied with security and warranties for
every thing he owns or will own; he is a domestic and a routine type
of person. By contrast, the opposite type of a bourgeois individual has
a character of a "generous squanderer" and of a "seigniorial" master
who never dodges dangers whenever they face him or her.
A major result of Sombart's complex studies is this: Whereas
the bourgeois is an avaricious and self-seeking type of human being,
the seigniorial master is anyone showing traits of "luxury" and of
"luxuriant growth." 51 He is an "entrepreneur" (der Unternehmer), or
a "leader," with "fullness of soul" in contrast to the bourgeois's void
and fearful soul. Whereas the bourgeois is selfish and one who always
works to expand on his or her social and financial status, the entre-
preneur tends to focus on the common-weal, although this may also
be mixed with selfish interests. But as self-seeking and ambitious, the
bourgeois has also no intention to work for a public good.
In 1913 Sombart published a two volume work, Luxury and
Capitalism (Luxus und Kapitalismus) in which he offered a theory
about other sources of capitalism. He argued that capitalism has its
basis in the growth of consumer goods which, in tum, would call for
an expanded credit system. In this work, Sombart returns to economic
origins of capitalism which are different from the Marxist "economic
relations of production." Indeed, Sombart even says that capitalism
stems from the natural desires for "sensuous pleasures" that stimulate
the production of relevant goods which may satisfy those desires.
This theory was apparently well ahead of Sombart's own time in that
it pointed to the drive-related forces that propel many pursuits of
profit-making and, for most researchers, economics in general.
The above sketch of Sombart's theories on the origin of capi-
talism reveal them to be in part subject to a vulnerable critique. This
is because Sombart's work is multi-faceted and appears to have no
general denominator or message that could be summarized in a few

51 The two plurals of "luxuria," "luxuriae" and "luxuries," indicate exuberance.

 TIME AND CULTURE 171

sentences as Weber's theories. True, both the bourgeois and the

social conditions are meta-economic and sociological sources of
capitalism, but Sombart's theory of sensuous pleasures that call for
the production of goods which, supposedly, are to satisfy pleasures, is
in part also a materialist source of capitalism. Nevertheless, it is such
and other conflicting arguments contained in his early and later works
that his theories show many possibilities for new perspectives on the
hitherto unresolved origin of capitalism. The many insights Sombart
offered are, without any doubt, in need of further exploration.

3. Max Scheler

Scheler's writings on Capitalism are the least known among English

speaking students and scholars, because most of them have either not
been translated yet, or because they appeared only relatively recently
in the German Collected Works. Hence, it is incumbent upon us to
cover his views on the origin of capitalism in more details within the
scope ofhis philosophy of time.

a. Despair

Despite his familiarity with Weber's and Sombart's positions, Max

Scheler offered a number of new findings of capitalisms' origin. His
analyses were based on his pioneering "philosophical anthropology,"
which is a new philosophical discipline of investigating the nature of
human beings both anthropologically and metaphysically, i.e., in their
"situatedness in the cosmos"(Die Stellung des Menschen im Kosmos).
Scheler initiated philosophical anthropology in the 1920ies ..
The time of the beginning of capitalism, Scheler suggests the
thirteenth century when the debates about conflicts between capitalist
topics as interests and principles of Catholic theology, esp. those of
St. Thomas, were under discussion. It was also a time when the social
form of the life-community, characterized by solid religious practices,
began to give way to the growth of society when people began to be
increasingly detached from religion in favor of secular interests. A
quote taken from the essay, "Der Bourgeois und die religiosen
Miichte" ("The Bourgeois and the Forces of Religion") may serve as
172 LIFETIME

a point of departure toward a perhaps amazing idea of Scheler's of the

origin of capitalism (III 381):

The despair of modem human beings in matters of

religion and of a metaphysical view of the world is
the very root and the beginning everywhere of the
boundless drive to work that characterizes these hu-
man beings. Already Blaise Pascal knew of this type
of human beings who, because of their inner meta-
physical insecurity, throw themselves right into ex-
ternal business - a type of human being whose
clearest example is found in Calvinism. Other roots of
the spirit of capitalism are to be seen in the psychic
power that despair plays in matters of religion and of
world outlooks; these roots have to be seen also in a
growing hatred of the world and of culture; and, in
principle, they are to be seen in the distrust among
humans (see Weber's attestations) and which distrust
contributes to a disintegration of all life-communities
in favor of "lonely souls and their gods." Finally, in
the roots mentioned above, all relations found among
human beings have been reduced to external and legal
documentation and to useful interests.

The insecurity that characterizes Western humanity is a result

of the subconscious despair in modem society that stems from the
gradual departure from faith in God. In this regard, already Pascal
observed (Pensees, 141 and 143) that people already at his own time
were wasting their lives by keeping busy playing with balls and
running after them, and by keeping themselves busy with external
business, rather than with their own inner personal life. Excessively
extroverted interests are, in Pascal's and Scheler's mind, a convenient
way to escape from one's lonely soul that is filled with anxieties and
uncertainties. But this is not the only effect which this paramount
extroverted style of life brought with it. It brought with it also the new
attitude toward the world we live in. Scheler appears to have been
occupied with this subject since his 1914 book, The Nature of
Sympathy (Wesen und Formen der Sympathie) up to the end of his
life. He believed that the Christian attitude toward the world had
sufficiently been exemplified by St. Francis Assisi ( 1181182-1226) as
 TIME AND CULTURE 173

an attitude that is not only to be recommended but also to be practiced

in opposition to capitalism. In his essay "Christian Socialism Seen as
Anti-Capitalism" (IV 615-675), which came down to us in form of a
manuscript written for a lecture he gave in Munster 1919, he pleads
for a Christian attitude toward the world that human beings should
learn how to obtain. The attitude Scheler proposed was one of human
solidarity to be distinguished from socialism and capitalism. Scheler's
proposal did not meet with much public interest. But what, precisely,
had Scheler in mind in our context?
He described his views by looking into the capitalist attitude
toward the world. In this attitude, people experience world as an ob-
ject that requires constantly to be improved upon, to be changed and,
therefore, as an object that always requires work to be done on it. In
addition, the growth of the world population requires also increasing
amounts of food supplies, of energy, housing, education, and access
to medical treatment, to mention only a few of growing needs. The
growth of world-population requires long-term predictions concerning
shrinking of natural supplies. All of this, Scheler anticipated.
In this context, Scheler also perceived a rising "hate" of the
world, because the world is experienced as an "obstruction" in the
excessively extroverted work done on it and on its objects. Most of
the time, objects do not conform to human plans, experiments, and
projects, or it may take excessively hard work and a long time to
make them conform to the human endeavors and needs.
Scheler's word "hate" of the world may be too strong a word
in English to characterize this modem attitude. True, a feeling of the
hate of a particular object occurs when we put in hard work to realize
a project, or when we find out that our effort to realize it turned out to
be an effort in vain ("this dam thing just won't work"). But these are
individual cases. The hostile and unkind attitude toward the world in
general might better be described as "dislike," or as "dissatisfied," or
as being "disenchanted" with the world and the environment. "What a
world we live in." This dislike is the very opposite of St. Francis
Assisi's humility and love ofthe world, including its shortcomings, as
a gift to us. Humility and love ofthe world, however, have no, if any,
place in a capitalist mind-set.
The dissatisfaction with the world is implicit in the feelings of
a deeply hidden despair among individuals of society, because this
feeling is linked to the experience and the perception of a perplexed
and profane world allowing at best only modest amounts of positive
174 LIFETIME

expectations, optimism, and of faith. The complexity of this mind-set

leads us directly into Scheler's concept of the existential origin of
capitalism: "Angst."

b. Angst

"Angst," is a German loan word, and refers to feelings of fear, dread,

anxiety, and apprehension. These concepts are based in a fundamental
Angst. Angst is not infrequently accompanied by constrictions in the
chest and clogging feelings in one's whole body. The word Angst is
cognate with the German adjective "eng," which means just that:
"constricted," "congested" "narrowed." It is the meaning of "eng" as
"congested" which is central to Scheler's use of the word. Angst is a
"phenomenon of congestion" (Stauungsphanomen) and, as such, it is
a phenomenon of life, not of the mind. In contrast to Heidegger's
explication of Angst, humans can also "dilute" their Angst. They can
even "take a breath" from it (IX 284-5) by inhibiting impulsion from
which Angst is issuing forth in absolute time; and humans can even
"destroy" Angst by immersing themselves into impulsion itself by
way of the technique of the "dionysian reduction" (XI 251-2; 258).
(This reduction is not explained in detail, but the dionysian reduction
appears to be the very opposite of the reduction and inhibition of
resistance qua reality and its seat, impulsion.)
There are six characters of Angst noteworthy to be listed here
for our purpose:
1. Angst can generate a continuous attitude and disposition to
escape from one's self. There are two kinds of such an escape:
a) There is an escape from one's own inner self through over-
involvement in external work. In 1899, Scheler had already conceived
work as a modem "narcosis" to diminish and overcome the suffering
from the world (I 190). He now extends this argument by saying: the
more extroverted activity, the less Angst.
b). There is the escape from the selfby means of fixations and
obsessions with calculation (III 325). Fixation and obsession with acts
of calculating soothe Angst. Calculation covers up the disposition and
attitude of inner Angst, because the calculation things is a suitable
way to strengthen confidence in both protection and security.
Insurances are institutions of protecting individuals by means of
 TIME AND CULTURE 175

calculation of all types, such as statistics of life expectancy.

Calculation replaces the self-in-Angst with a confidence in the self.
In these two senses of escape, Angst generates the will to do
external work and to calculate. But unwavering work, and calculation,
are part and parcel of the capitalist mind-set. And also: all work that
is prompted by underlying Angst, is done by the bourgeois (III 356-7)
whose soul is saturated with insecurity and, therefore, with Angst.
2. A distinction is to be made between "pure" Angst, on the
one hand, and empirical, psychological, and psychiatric Angst, on the
other.
The essence of pure Angst lies in the relation that Angst has
to resistance qua reality. Indeed, Angst lies at the center of impulsion.
It is for this reason, that pure Angst is in absolute time, whereas
empirical, psychological, and psychiatric Angst are, at least in part,
observable data which can be treated and, therefore, are linked to
objective time. As such, Angst is a consequence (eine Folge), or as
we preferred to call the earliest phases that flow from impulsion,
Angst "unravels" from impulsion in the irreversible successiveness of
absolute time. From this follows that the objective world of capitalism
is, because of capitalism's meta-economic origin in Angst in absolute
time, tethered to impulsion.
There are two possibilities of the unraveling of Angst from
im-pulsion. ( 1) It occurs when the intensity of an experienced
resistance is larger than the activities in the drives "against" which
resistance is experienced (IX 257); (2) Angst lies in the ratio of the
dissatisfaction and of satisfaction in human drives. Therefore,
increases of Angst are proportionate to the dissatisfactions in drives.
Or: the larger amount of dissatisfaction in drives, by comparison to
the degrees of satisfied amounts, constitutes Angst (IX 269). Hence,
Angst is also linked to the absolute self-timing of drives.
3. Angst as such, is not empirical Angst. It is basic to human
existence for Scheler as it is for Heidegger. Scheler acknowledges this
point but adds that this view was also shared by S. Freud. However,
it is Scheler's understanding that Angst can be suspended, blocked,
and even be diverted (verdriingt) by the mind's intrinsic ability to say
"no" to whatever stirrings there are in the drives - humans can even
accomplish a "cancellation of drives" (die Triebverneinung). This is
accomplished by the human mind in the sense of a "pure will" to
block the experience of reality qua resistance altogether. We came
across this same point in our discussion of "Distance." Now we can
176 LIFETIME

see that since Angst is the "pure correlate" of the experience of resis-
tance itself, the technique of suspending the resistance qua reality
amounting to "de-realization" (Ent-wirklichung) is tantamount to the
cancellation of Angst itself (IX 44, 269 I M 54).
Nevertheless, the cancellation of both drives and of Angst are
possible only for a limited amount of time. Indeed, the cancellation of
drives and of Angst takes place in objective time, because impulsion
must have been reflected upon prior to the cancellation of the drives
and of Angst by pure willing.
Scheler's example for this is by way of an order of foundation
that holds among relevant phenomena: Suffering is the foundation of
joy; a guilty conscience is the foundation of a good conscience; guilt
is the foundation of merit; injustice is the foundation of justice;
forbiddance is the foundation of permission and command; the
(mythological) "who is at the fault" is the foundation of the modem
"what" is at fault. The order of foundation shows that the negative
and non-affirmative bases are the foundation of their positive
counterpart.
Said order of foundation is relevant also to Angst (IX 269):
Angst is the foundation of courage and of the power drive (society).
This drive permeates the other two main drives as was implied by the
word "power" used in the drive objects shown in the graphic that
illustrated the three eras of history.
4. The direction of Angst has no determinable goal, because it
goes toward all possible resistance, i.e., the direction of Angst goes to
the totality of world-resistance. Nevertheless, there are specific cases
destination that Angst can have :
a) The destination of having Angst of ourselves and of our
internal life (including the Freud's Id) "with which we have to deal"
whether we want to or not.
b) The destination of Angst of outer nature to which humans,
by comparison to animals, are inadequately adjusted.
c) The destination of Angst of groups. Group-Angst or social
Angst includes Angst of an authority. In a mass, Angst has a
destination toward an alpha-animal or a leading person; in the utility
cooperative, Angst has a destination to administrators in charge of
individuals. In the life-community Angst is directed toward an elder,
and in society toward a leader, and the destination of Angst in the
encompassing person is a holy man. These destinations of Angst
 TIME AND CULTURE 177

pertain also to the bourgeois-Angst of upper classes and their

representatives.
d) The destination of Angst of moral authority that the mind
experiences in cases of a guilty conscience.
5. With regard to the three kinds of world-centers, the force-
centers, the vital centers, and the person-centers, Angst sets in first in
vital centers (IX 270).
6. Angst has its overall origin in the resistance of world, in
"world-resistance" which, as all kinds of resistance, originates in im-
pulsion. The sixth point is the reason why Scheler launched a sharp
critique of Heidegger's prioritizing "care" (IX 268). Scheler notes
that neither Angst nor care "disclose" the world. Rather, the
disclosure of the world stems from very "antagonist" of Angst: love
(IX 272; II 266-7 IF 261 ).
Concerning Angst, let a final observation be made with regard
to both Weber and Sombart. Angst appears to be a phenomenon that
underlies both their theories also. Angst underlies Weber's theory that
"rationalization" is essential in the pursuit of work. Rationalization
appears to be a means to secure something, namely, to be chosen for
predestination. And Angst seems to underlie Sombart's theories also.
The parsimony of a bourgeois releases competition and accumulation
of assets which, too, provide security for him or her to become at
least a "would-be gentleman."
The above descriptions of the origin of capitalism to be seen
in 1. Calvinist motivation, 2. in sociological bourgeois emulation, and
3. in Angst, may suffice to have shown that the origin of capitalism is
meta-economic. Surprisingly, Kant further corroborates this result.

c. Scheler and Kant

A comment on Scheler's theory of Angst as the origin of capitalism

should be added with regard to Kant, whose thought on the matter
appears, surprisingly, to corroborate with Scheler's.
While Scheler's analysis of the role of Angst is central in his
analyses, he, nevertheless, keeps the more traditional explanations of
the origin of capitalism alive. In doing so, he refers again to the role
of the drive of nutrition traditionally associated with the phenomenon
of capitalism. This traditional notion joined up well with his thesis
that capitalism is, in the devolution of drives, a child of the third era.
178 LIFETIME

This era constitutes - as we showed in the section, entitled, "The

Three Eras of History" - the gradual formation of the World Era of
Adjustment, which supposedly took its roots at the time of World War
I. The subliminal object of the nutritive drive are, we also saw, the
powers and controls over external and, as far as possible, over also
internal phenomena and states of affairs. Furthermore, it was shown
that the predominance of the nutritive drive is to even out historical
differences among peoples to the effect of cultural, political, racial,
economic, and other factors of historical adjustment. The adjustment
or conversion of historical differences furthers the tendency of getting
under control entities in nature (technology). From this followed that
the human mind of the third era of adjustment is more and more
deflected from looking for and attaining power over groups by way of
war and conquests. And from this followed Scheler's prediction that
the future "economic mind-set" will prevail, and result in a reduction
of the frequencies of wars and hostilities, a process that has, although
very slowly, begun in more recent times.
There is a noteworthy accord between Scheler and Kant, rare
as such an accord may be, but on which I wish to briefly report, as it
has not been articulated with regard to Scheler's prevision of the
World Era of Adjustment. We ask therefore: In what, precisely, do
Scheler's and Kant's ideas converge in matters of economics and the
capitalist mind-set?
An answer to the question can be found in Kant's 1786 short
essay, "Conjectural Beginnings of Human History" (Mutmasslicher
Anfang der Menschengeschichte). 52 The point may be summarized as
follows.
Although for Kant the nature of human reason is static and
unchanging, he does recognize a pre-rational period when reason was
not yet static but began to "stir" (sich regte) at a time when it was still
in cahoots with human drives. For the Protestant Christian Kant, this
pre-rational period was when Adam and Eve lived peacefully in the
garden of Eden. Kant's conception of the nutritional drive is based on
the Old Testament. Consequently, drives were originally expressive

52 In Kant's eighteenth century German, the word "der lnstinkt" stands for "der
Trieb," meaning "drive;" whereas our English "drive" translates in eighteenth
century German as "passion." We continue to use the word drive, rather than
Kant's "Instinkt" to avoid possible confusion. As to Scheler and Kant, see also P.
Blosser, Scheler's Critique ofKant"s Ethics, Athens: Ohio University Press, 1995.
 TIME AND CULTURE 179

of "God's voice" which guided the first humans as well as animals to

find the right food for them to live on. In Adam's and Eve's garden
there was an abundance of nutritional growth. Whatever was harmful
growth, the drives' guidance was unmistakable in telling them so in
terms of the two senses of smell and taste.
Pure reason emerged as soon as the objects in the nutritional
drive began to be "compared" with the objects of other drives. The
origin of reason proper lies for Kant in the act of comparing sensible
data that originate in different objects of drives. This would have to
include also acts of comparing the differences of the male and female
looks of gender and private parts, not mentioned by a perhaps strait-
laced Kant. After reason had begun to stir, reason "deserts" from its
previous ties with the drives (wird abtriinnig), and it begins to play
tricks (schikanieren) on the voices of nature and of God, and which
voices first came to be heard in the nutritive drive. It was as soon as
reason had deserted the drives, that human beings became filled with
"Angst," because they suddenly realized that to live means to be "at
the brim of an abyss."
This Angst is the result of a process of endless comparing the
differences that obtain among the drive-objects, and thus the endless
acts of making comparisons lead to the "infinity" of all of what can be
given in comparisons. This, in tum, summons the task to be dealt with
in the future: There is not only an infinity at the birth of reason but,
by necessity, at reason's birth there opens up also human freedom.
Kant expressly states that the pre-rational predominance of drives and
their voices are exchanged for the human "state of freedom."
Peace in Eden was designed for the pre-rational state of the
first humans and willed by God. War, however, Kant stresses, came
along with the drive for propagation, simply because propagation is
the origin of the formation of different groups, peoples, races, and
cultures. War does not only have negative but also positive elements:
If there were no wars, the different formations of groups and peoples
would gradually "amalgamate," and such a process would run the risk
of becoming subjected to one particular dominating people. It is pre-
cisely because of wars by which nature can prudently (weislich) keep
different peoples apart and separated from one another. Still, nature
also keeps them together and even unites them by way of their
interdependent individual inclinations of "self-interest."
It is this self-interest shared by all peoples that links Kant to
modem capitalism. In the future the peoples' self-interest will lead to
180 LIFETIME

what Kant calls the international "spirit of trade" (der Handelsgeist)

and which spirit has its roots in the non-belligerent nature of the drive
of nutrition.
Kant and Scheler, so it appears, had a different starting point
in their assessment of the role of the drive of nutrition and its future
effects. Kant's starting point and prediction of a "spirit of trade" was
the role that drives played in the Old Testament. Scheler's starting
point for the prediction of the World Era of Adjustment and of the
role that economics plays was his phenomenology of drives. Yet, both
reached the same conclusion.
Kant's thesis of the "spirit of trade" to come is, however, not
quite the same as Scheler's thesis of the future of the World Era of
Adjustment. Kant's spirit of trade appears to be not only a more
careful prediction than Scheler's, but it is also a more careful one than
a number of utopias envisioned from Plato on up to Herr Marx. In
particular, Kant's prediction is more careful than today's
speculations about an emerging political globalization. He would
undoubtedly recognize the dangers inherent in all of these
speculations, which imply the amalgamation of peoples, of classes,
and, last not least, of egalitarianized cultures. Hence, the danger is not
only to be seen in the aforementioned possibility of one people to
become dominant over the rest of peoples, as Kant sees it, but it is the
danger of facing the extinction of the individual values found in each
people and in each culture. Scheler's essay, "Man in the Era of
Adjustment," does not mention this particular exposure to an
extinction of individual values. He lets, instead, all cultures and
peoples come together in that "grand river," in which the populations
and cultures would eventually dovetail and adjust, an idea that Kant
would sharply contest in the name of individual freedom.
We already did, however, qualify this possible negative result
of Scheler's theory by saying that a World Era of Adjustment fully
achieved would extinguish the factor of all social resistance among
individual groups, classes, and peoples, and that an elimination of
resistance itself would amount to the death of the reality of the human
race altogether. Because of Scheler's theory of resistance qua reality,
then, Kant's theory still concurs, to whatever degrees, with Scheler's
prognosis, and vice versa. But present-day ideas of a future political
globalization, simplistic as they are by comparison to those of Kant
and Scheler, would not stand a chance with either of them.
 TIME AND CULTURE 181

d. The Paradox of Capitalism and Socialism. The Belief in Idols

No matter what critique could be launched against the present concept

of globalization; and no matter to what degree Kant's idea of the spirit
of trade, and of Scheler's World Era of Adjustment, are bearing out,
today the role of the clashing antipodal forces of both capitalism and
socialism must be addressed.
A general remark on the concept of capitalism should precede
the comments to be made on this point.
Capitalism hinges upon three commonly accepted interacting
factors: (I) private ownership, (2) the material means of production
as plants, mines, production lines, real estate, buildings, investment,
and more, referred to as "capital," (3) the employees and workers that
have, by comparison to owners, relatively modest capital of their
own. Workers and employees sell their work, services, and skills to
their employers, entrepreneurs, or to various types of business
leaders, all of which we shall refer to simply as owners.
A fourth point is indicative of possible conflicts that could
result from the points 1, 2, and 3. The reason for conflicts lies in the
fact that the larger groups of employees and workers have, at least in
a democracy, the right to be free in that they cannot be compelled to
work for the owners and their material means of production; even on
the terms of their contract they have, in general, the freedom to go on
strike. On the other hand, by offering their work and services to the
owners, they also have only little or no controls over the means of
production, unless they have shares in them or are represented other-
wise in the ownership. In either case, however, wage demands and
negotiations are constantly possible that can impair and even paralyze
production. Hence, the employees and workers do have a handle on
production and capital.
In addition, in democratic capitalism everyone can entertain his or her
own opinion and has the right of expressing it in terms of free speech.
The Romans came already close to Amendment I of the Constitution,
with their proverb, "there are as many opinions as there are people"
(quat homines tot sententiae). In addition to the nexus of the above
three interacting factors, the studies made on them are not
infrequently tied to objectives pursued by politicians who support one
or the other side of the issues' coin. Political interference penetrates
the simmering antagonism between capitalism and socialism, between
182 LIFETIME

the right and the left, between conservatives and liberals, between
owners and employees. However, the political opponents concerned
are not that different from each other either as they often maintain by
charging each other with partisanship. No matter what partisanship,
the World Era of Adjustment is an inevitable era coming and will it
affect also capitalism and socialism, not necessarily to the liking of
present-day politicians and respective sympathizers. And this is why
(IX 165 I P 119. Tr. slightly altered.):

Even the opposition between a capitalist and socialist

economic order which so one-sidedly preoccupies our
epoch, will find adjustment.

This brings us to two observations Scheler made on the effects

capitalism has had on contemporary society.
(1) On first sight, Scheler's prediction of an adjustment of the
capitalist and socialist economic order looks paradoxical. But central
in his argument is that private owners and entrepreneurs, employees
and workers, share the capitalist mind-set together. How?
First, capitalism is not an economic system. Capitalism is a
cultural system. It is an ethos in which we live our lives (III 382).
Hence, in capitalism material possession and capital do not play the
role as is commonly believed they do by socialists and liberals. Not
being an economic system (IV 616), capitalism has neither material
origins, nor is it dependent on the differences among social classes
(IV 642). Rather, the paradox of the antipodes of capitalism and
socialism lies in the general "mind-set" of our age, the mind-set in
particular of the employees and workers who participate, strangely
enough, in the same mind-set of employers and owners. Workers and
employees, too, can be seen as capitalists: They are "mini-capitalists"
or "Kleinkapitalisten" (IV 635; 641 ), while entrepreneurs and
owners are macro-capitalists or "Grosskapitalisten." Whether mini- or
macro- capitalists, they share a paramount mind-set of the culture we
live in.
A culture has an "ethos" that was characterized in Formalism
by value-preferences and preferences among value ranks that a
culture represents. Today's capitalist ethos is characterized by the
preferences of calculable and quantifiable values, by calculable profit-
making, by leaning toward financial and other quantifiable advantage.
Hence, the mini-capitalists are also suffused with the preferring of
 TIME AND CULTURE 183

albeit smaller quantifiable and material advantages. Mini-capitalists

are bourgeois types of persons. But whereas the macro-capitalists are
the owners of the lion's share of material goods and of profit-making,
in this ethos they are "no less bourgeois" than mini-capitalists (IV
640). No matter what differences there may be between owners and
workers, and between capitalists and socialists in the traditional wider
meanings of these terms, the mind-set of capitalism is the same on
either side of the coin. An argument for the point made appears to be
the following.
The "capitalist trade unions" ( Gewerkschaftskapitalisten) seek
satisfaction also of their own insatiable, capitalist hunger in terms of
spiraling wage-demands as do the macro-capitalists in their own ways
of seeking expansions, pursuing mergers, etc. By themselves, wage
demands and financial success are not negative when they alleviate
people's plight and are accompanied by reasonable moderation. But
in our times, moderation is not a Platonic virtue. Wage demands and
large profits are negative goals when the capitalist spirit goads both
workers and owners toward demands of material gains and profits
without end and towards extroverted obsessions and having success.
In our epoch of decreasing religious faith along with an increasingly
extroverted mind-set, all the bearers of it have "lonely souls."
Scheler's conceptualization of "Angst" as capitalism's meta-
economic origin pertains, therefore, also to the capitalist "ethos": the
preference of the lower ranks of divisible values and an alienation
from the higher and indivisible value ranks. This one-sided ethos
must, on the basis of the order of the five value ranks established in
Formalism, either be discarded or improved upon.
Whereas the capitalist mind-set as such has nothing to do with
the differences among social classes, it pursues an absolutization of
the quantifiable and calculable idol of the lower value ranks: the
"Mammon" (IV 662; V 263 I E 269) - be mammon large or small. In
this ethos, mammon is often even a higher value than the value of the
individual person. It is in this confusion of the nature of values and
their ranks in a calculating society that macro- and mini-capitalism
are "anti-human" (IV 640). Time is money.
The absolutization of mammon everywhere, instead of holding
the value of the individual person to be the highest value, is the very
reason why Scheler could state, "We hate [capitalism] until we die"
(IV 662). The reason for the statement, we can now see, is relevant in
three contexts within which it is made. a) The statement is relevant to
184 LIFETIME

the spheres of consciousness discussed at the beginning of Chapter II

with regard to the deceptions occurring in the sphere of the absolute.
b) The statement is relevant to the capitalist ethos as a "perversion" of
human nature in that the sphere of the absolute in consciousness is
beleaguered with the false idol of "mammon" (IV 662). c) Finally, it
is relevant to the phenomenology of the person, Formalism, Part II,
where the person is shown to be the highest value (II 498 IF 507).
We should also mention an external reason for the Scheler's
harsh criticism of capitalism. His the three essays on capitalism, "The
Bourgeois," "The Bourgeois and the Powers of Religion," and "The
Future of Capitalism" (III 341-95) were written in 1914, roughly at
the time when his book, The Genius of War was published. At that
time Scheler shared, as we stated, the intense and asinine German
propaganda against the British before and during World War I (1914-
1918) and who were also regarded by Scheler to be a main source of
capitalism.
(2) The coverage of the meta-economic origin of capitalism is
significant enough to emphasize that the capitalist mind-set is not
only beset with strong aspirations of winning over others and with an
incessant obsession to be "first" in whatever area of competition, but
it is also to be emphasized that this mind-set suffuses all walks of life.
Let an illustration be made.
Scheler's analyses show that he must have had an inkling of
one type of person of this mind-set: the present-day egotist "what's-
in-it-for-me" generation. This type of person appears to fit well in the
ethos of the larger parts of the Western population. "What-is-in-it-for-
me" does not necessarily pertain to financial benefits, rather, the
individuals concerned have reached a point when they are not only
over-occupied with the two lower value ranks and profit-making.
They have reached a point of self-importance in that they represent
rampant and dogmatic beliefs coupled with limited perspicatiousness.
The "what's-in-it-for-me" attitude and individual dogmatic beliefs are
symptomatic for what appears to be a neurotic sensitivity to any
objections launched to their inflexible beliefs and convictions. This
sensitivity has become a persistent phenomenon in society not only
among minorities of whatever orientation, among support groups, in
political partisanship, among pro-life and pro-choice blocs, among
current world-views such as evolutionism and creationism, among
extreme rightist nationalism and extremist liberalism, racism, but also
in political and even religious revisionisms. These phenomena point
 TIME AND CULTURE 185

to a decrease of the general connection between religion and world-

views, and which decrease intensifies the extroverted preoccupation
to the degree of almost exclusively earthly interests and convictions,
no matter whether they are unpersuasive, blurred, or ambiguous.
Which refers us back to the above quote on human despair. It
referred us to present-day preoccupations with extroverted concerns
and business at the expense of both religious faith and a shared view
of the world (Weltanschauung). In saying that both mini- and macro-
capitalists are of the same mold of the Western "homo capitalisticus"
(Ill 366; IV 632), it is obvious that capitalism hinges, as indicated, on
the two lowest ranks of quantifiable and divisible values and the ranks
of pleasure values and of usefulness. The extent of the role of lower
value ranks is mirrored in the social form they predominantly occur in
society. On the basis of the sociology of knowledge, the ethos of
capitalism is as divisive as society is multi-structured, including its
enormous amount convictions.
With this account, we appear to have come full circle with
what had been said about the structure of time among the ranks of
values.
The circle began with Chapter I. Concerning values per se, we
recall that sensible values as pain are localizable, limited, and
manageable, and that the pragmatic value of usefulness of things is,
likewise, localized, limited, and manageable. From this followed that
localizability, limitation, and manageability of things and their values
are divisible and clockable in objective time.
This cannot apply to the values feelable only by the person,
because they are neither localizable, limited, nor are they manageable
in objective time. Practical management or a localization of good and
evil is not possible in the domain of moral values either.
Since the lower value ranks are divisible in stark contrast to
the higher ones, we can see that the manageability and localizability
of the lower values corroborates their calculability and divisibility.
Things that bear these values must lend themselves to objective time,
because they can be managed, priced, sold, divided, and negotiated in
objective time. The two lowest value-ranks are par excellence typical
of the capitalist propensity to "calculability" (die Rechenhaftigkeit).
This propensity is rampant; we find it in politics, athletics, games,
house holding, construction and, unfortunately, it has spread even into
areas and institutions that represent spiritual and sacred value ranks,
universities and churches.
186 LIFETIME

4. Objective Time in Capitalism. A Cultural Observation

"The pathos that modem human beings connect with the label
of 'work' " (VIII 193), and the urge and will to work, are neither the
result alone of the Weberian theory of Calvinist motives to attain
predestination, nor can this will be regarded as a result of Sombart's
theory of the bourgeois. One can also argue with Scheler as we did
that the modem pathos to work stems, from a desperate, sub-
conscious hunger for a substitute to replace the dwindling of faith in
God and afterlife (X 11-15). This theory of the dwindling of faith
going hand in hand with an unbridled will to work for earthly
possessions and profit can stand on its own without a Calvinist
predestination and bourgeois class theory, when both despair and
Angst are seen as the source of capitalist extroversion. Moreover, the
dwindling of faith, the dwindling of the courage to face death, and the
modem bent to escape from one's self, are not only accompanied by
the overabundance of technological pursuits and industries that
produce countless objects designed to satisfy sensuous pleasures, but
they are also accompanied by the weakening of a capacity of genuine
"spiritual joy," especially among people living in gaudy cities of
society. Scheler mentions Berlin in this regard.
During the process of the preferring of the lower value-ranks
characteristic for the capitalist ethos, the word "world" lost much of
its spiritual connotations. In the West, the word "world" used to have
the meaning of a presumably created world, or of a transient abode
from which human beings could, perhaps, gain heaven. Whereas the
world had even been the abode of holy men of whatever religion, in
our times it is depreciated just as a technological and environmental
object in objective time that requires uninterrupted labor and work to,
allegedly, preserve it. Or: " ... only a depreciated world can release
boundless energy to work!" (Ill 375).
The experience of the world as a physical object being there to
be changed, worked and improved upon, obstructs the pursuit of the
realization of higher values of the person as those of culture and
religion. The experience of the world as an object encourages the will
to "conquer" and to control its objects in their status of being in ob-
jective time. What a vast difference this is from Weber's theory of
gaining, through work, predestination and heaven. It is, rather, the
 TIME AND CULTURE 187

fascination with objective entities of the world in objective time that

prompted the mental modes of "calculation" and of "reckoning" with
objects as well as the will for an endless production of technologies to
reach and realize calculable goods and goals.
The negative side of this process cannot be stressed enough.
Calculative thinking itself underestimates and abates the old faculties
of contemplation, of imagination, of intuition, of manners and moral
conduct, of conscience, and of religious consciousness. This under-
estimation appears to be quite apparent in present-day elementary and
secondary education. To attain "skills" of handling mechanical and
calculable operations, such as they are needed in working with com-
puters, occupy a great deal of time in modem curricula. Necessary as
these skills are, they diminish if not impair the students' appreciation
and the capacity of grasping the indivisible values of human sciences
as literature, world history, foreign languages, and others, in which
calculating thinking has at best only moderate functions. Concerning
language, reading, writing, and a proper use of the native tongue, the
tendency of calculative thinking is reflected in euphemisms. "To
create," originally connoted with religion, has become a word used
for "to construct," "to produce," for "number crunching," all of which
betray that, in the world of the capitalist mind-set, there are not only
measurable objects, but also words are being managed in speech. Or,
whatever is not measurable or manageable, as good, evil, tragedy, or
love, is not anymore taught in schools as a substantial part of the
human world that we live in. Legalese, offialese, computerese, or
correct politicalese, are just some examples of contrived linguistic
fabrications that mirror a calculating and managing mind-set.
To be included in the experience of the world as an object in
objective time, is the increasing role also of the human body as an
object, while the role of the human body as a lived body appears to
lose its fundamental role and an interest in public life. Attending to
the object-body, surrounded as it is at the same time by other "thing-
objects," enjoys more interest in the perception ofthe human body. It
is worked on more than it was in the past. Indeed, it is the looks of the
object-body that is supposed to be what we are. In capitalist terms, the
object-body, not the lived body, is experienced as our "possession"
(Besitz) that needs constant exterior upkeep and management. The
body is not anymore experienced as a member-body which "belongs"
to a life-community, i.e., as a lived-body experience. This remarkable
change of attitude toward objective physical appearance is reflected
188 LIFETIME

also by "rights" designed to protect the object-body. They pertain to

birth control, to the bent toward an abolition of capital punishment, or
to the ubiquitous practice ofwork-outs and athletics. In this, the body
ceases to belong to a community "from which" and in which it took
its existence and "with which" it would die.
We have come across objective time in several capitalist con-
texts as those of manageability, localizability, limitation, lower value
ranks, and both the world and the human body as objects.
This brings us to a final cultural observation of capitalism.
In the above Chapter II, section 2, entitled, "Distance," the act
of reflection - unique with human beings - was shown to be an act of
retrogression, of backing off or receding from an object. Reflection,
it was pointed out, does not, figuratively speaking, move forward to
be closer to an object. Rather, pointillist art illustrated for us that the
opposite was the case. In the context of the capitalist mind-set, we can
now ask the question: How does a determination of an understanding
of objects through phenomenological retrogression in reflection apply
to the world as a whole?
According to our theory of retrogression, one could argue as
follows: the more phenomenological distance of retrogression there is
from objects, the more objects will emerge in the spatial expansion of
their background. Or: the more retrogression, the more room in the
objective void for ever new objects to emerge. If this theory is at
least partially valid, it would lead to an unprecedented relationship
between Scheler's theory of the growth of the mind and the
retrogression. If so, the growth of the mind would not only be
concomitant with the devolution of drives and with the mind's
increasing functionalizations with realizing factors. Its growth would
equally be concomitant with an increasing retrogression, which
results in said expansion of the objective void, providing ever more
room for the emergence of new objects in it, be these new atomic
objects in the micro-world or new objects like black holes, etc., of the
vast spaces ofthe universe.
On the basis of the analysis of absolute time, we are now in
the position to submit the following proposal.
The growth of the mind and the steady increase of retro-
gression amounts to an ontological status of absolute time with its
three characteristics of the coincidence of new meanings and their
phases, of the becoming and un-becoming in the processes of their
emergence, and of the transition from given objects to ever new
 TIME AND CULTURE 189

objects, including the transition from relative nothingness to reality.

That is, the retrogression in absolute time is, in the structure of being,
one factor that makes possible, or at least assists, the process of
objectification in objective time itself based on the absolute time of
universal and individual impulsion.
In practice, the types of objectification of all possible entities
through management, calculation, classification, statistics, are relative
to today's capitalist mind-set. This is echoed in a number oflife-styles
of our calculating age. Let the result of our observations be stated in
advance: The structure of current life-styles is divided or discrete.
Since the historical origins of capitalism, roughly during the
decline of the Middle Ages, knowledge has increasingly broken up
into divisions of specialization. Knowledge and research did not only
lose the medieval and Renaissance air of aiming at a unifying goal
such as one God or truth around which knowledge was also supposed
to accumulate and settle, at least by intention. Instead, the word
"knowledge" has frequently been used in a sense of knowing discrete
facts and factoids that have little or no relations among each other.
This tendency was especially encouraged over the past century by the
growth of the numbers of disciplines and specializations. While this
process had been essential for today's knowledge and enquiry, the
enormous increase of specialization that occurred especially in the
natural sciences, in technology, in economics, sociology, and in
history, make the literal meaning of the term university, uni-versity=
"ad unum versus" virtually an obsolescent term.
The intense experience of discreteness in the present culture of
the West occurs in various areas outside our subject matter and cannot
here be treated here appropriately. To mention a few cases, however,
we find the phenomenon of discreteness in modem art as in paintings
of disconnected parts of faces or disconnected blotches of paint on a
canvas. A-tonal chords have little or no transitions; in performances
of plays, unlike plots are detached from each another but seen in
objective allocations. In TV advertising, contents of quick actions are
disjointed. The fast disconnected time-frames of clashing values are
designed to attract and raise the level of attention. The performances
of dancers are remarkably evident for calculable and manageable
discreteness. The intermittent jerks of the dancer lack transition from
one jerk to the next; periodic and monotonous beats briefly keep
interrupting the "dance," only to be repeated over and over again. An
190 LIFETIME

objectively regularly interrupted timing of versified noises of rap are

particularly discrete, and monotonous.
On the whole, the penchant for discreteness seems to have no
unifying background. It is not expressive of a unifying world-view,
except that of a discrete world-view itself. The term "discreteness"
implies shortcomings, precisely because of the gaps existing in any
form of discreteness. This is also why a cultural discreteness has no
unifying phenomena such as the moral exemplarity of a model person.
But the discrete view of the world does go hand in hand with the
specialization in the discrete disciplines of knowledge. In the pre-
sentation of the order of values in relation to their time, we saw that
excessive pursuits of quantifiable values cannot furnish unifying
phenomena as a moral compass that would hold societal individuals
more together. There has hardly been a claim by a scientist of rank
saying that science could, indeed, provide a general unifying moral
orientation pointing toward a moral goodness. The weakness of the
roles that the human sciences play today may be the factor underneath
Western capitalist divisiveness, divisive moral judgments included.
To wit: moral bearings could be emphasized and provided for our
young and youngest students by offering curricula including readings
in Shakespeare, H. Melville, H. Anderson, the Grimm brothers,
Dostoevski, Sophocles, Harriet B. Stowe, La Fontaine all of whose
dramas, stories, and fables, do provide personal examples (Vorbilder)
so important not only in early childhood but also for the exemplary
role of parents (II 561-2 I F 575). Part of the violence in capitalist
society may well have its source in the lack of unifying model persons
and education in the humanities providing basic moral orientation.
This lack and inadequacy is characteristic - it follows from the order
of the ranks among values - for the discrete world-view of capitalism,
in which indivisible values and ranks are held to be secondary to
calculative and manageable knowledge.
The contemporary discrete ethos of divisible values is likely to
have only little duration in time. Because of its discrete orientation
without the back-ground of a unifying Weltanschauung, this ethos
appears to be a floundering ethos. Yet, Scheler's assessment made in
1914 that the days of capitalism are counted (III 360) did not stand
the test of history either as we, living at the crossroads of the old and
a new millennium, can witness. He apparently saw his false projection
in 1926 when he wrote that an "increasingly progressing capitalism"
might be carried further by a new level of intellectuals and an elite
 TIME AND CULTURE 191

which could contribute to the foundation of a novel development of

knowledge in the future (VIII 382). Any world-view, including that of
capitalism, remained for him, however, only episodic. The capitalist
episode is situated in a much wider, long-term third historical era
whose process already began, The World Era of Adjustment among
peoples and cultures.
Is there advice for today's politicians ofthis era? Yes.
In the historical process of The World Era of Adjustment,
"every political objective" conceived in formally correct terms, is, in
fact, a task of guiding and directing the phases of this adjustment so
that it may proceed with a minimum of destruction, explosion, blood,
and tears (IX 153 I P 104).

C. ABSOLUTE AND OBJECTIVE TIME IN TWO

PRESENT ISSUES OF CONCERN

1. WORLD POPULATION

a. Exposition of the Issue

The reader might have wondered why up to this juncture we covered

the historical significance of the nutritive drive in more detail than the
procreative and power drives, which remained in our evaluations of
drives in the background. This was required in our treatment of the
subject of the future of humanity. Still, the sequence provided of the
three main drives, the procreative, the power and the nutritional drive,
calls for an explanation and for an answer to the question why Scheler
adhered to this particular order in the first place. The nutritional drive
has sometimes been taken to be the most important among drives by
economists (X 143-4 I PV 81), especially, when this drive was used
for the promotion of political and ideological interests (K. Marx). But
one could argue also for other reasons in favor of the primacy of the
nutritional drive, saying that the drive of propagation cannot be the
primary one, simply because it sets in during a much later period in
the development of an individual than the drive of nutrition which is
192 LIFETIME

predominant already during the earlier phases of infancy and early

childhood and also among animals.
Scheler counters this line of thinking in the treatise on "Shame and
Modesty" ( Ober Scham und Schamgefohle), where he says that the
drive of propagation contains feelings that are much more urging
than those of other drives (X 143 I PV 81 ). In this regard, the drive of
propagation is the strongest of the main drives but manifest mainly in
women, whereas with men it is the sex drive that is the driving force
for propagation (XV 207; X 85 I PV 22). The drive of propagation in
women precedes the birth of the child and, therefore, it precedes also
the power and the nutritive drives. The mother's instant caring for the
child after giving birth is a continuation of her procreative drive that
now makes possible the satisfaction of the child's nutritive or hunger
drive.
Births and population are inseparable, but they are dependent
on some extrinisic factors. The growth and decline of populations are
related to objective time, because they can be counted and recorded,
for example, in a census. Nevertheless, already long before a census
has been taken, a population must have already increased, decreased,
or stabilized. This is because drives constitute the timing of "first"
and "afterward" in absolute time, as we had seen, making objective
counting, including that of a census, possible. Population growth and
decline are, therefore, based on the absolute time of the propagation
drive.
Populations are also related to spaces of the terrestrial surfaces
a population lives on. Both the growth and the decline of populations
are dependent on terrestrial factors as water supplies, on arable land,
on the geographic characteristics, on climatic conditions and on the
frequencies of disasters (flooding, earthquakes, drought), and even on
those conditions that do not allow human life to really develop. In
part, populations grow or decline in their dependency on the degrees
of the magnitude of these factors. Within these dependencies, there
are two extremes.
1. A population may be growing on a too narrow terrestrial
surface and thus may become intolerably dense. In this case, poverty
is prone to grow. A case in point is India.
2. A population can decline because of adverse conditions of
food supply. It can decline also because of a decrease of the rate of
propagation related to the above extrinsic factors.
 TIME AND CULTURE 193

Concerning population dynamics as related to objective time

one can say: There can be a fast or a slow growth, a fast or a slow
decline of a population; and a population can also remain on more or
less stable levels.
Looking at the past, it appears that the growth and the decline
of populations have a structure analogous to the three main periods of
individual and general life: early age, adult age, and old age (trans-
cendental inference). If this analogy holds at least in part, both
population growth and decline must be related also to absolute time,
because underneath the three periods of history there are three shifts
of drives which are, as we showed, replete with absolute time.
These remarks may suffice to indicate that populations must
be related to both objective and absolute time. As history shows us,
populations become historical in periods when they flourish, then they
come of age, and finally disappear or do not readily disappear but live
on for a long stretch of time and still in alternating patterns of growth
and decline similar to the movements of water waves. The case of the
growth, coming of age, and of decline of population is similar also to
the three stages of cultures rising, peaking, and declining.
In general, it is more common to observe the objective spatial
conditions of populations. Another way of observing the growth and
decline of populations is a quite different and difficult one. One can
take a look at their world-views and at the religions which
populations are practicing in order to see whether world-views and
religions have an influence on their growth or decline. If so, this
influence must also pertain to capitalism, because if capitalism is a
(discrete) world-view, rather than an economic system, then it must
have a relation to the dynamics of populations also and wherever
capitalism exists. So far the exposition of the issue.

b. Population in Capitalist Countries

Evaluating capitalism as to its influence on population growth and

decline, one must address at least one of the more ominous socio-
biological and environmental problems that humans are facing today,
and probably will be facing in the near future: Do their respective
governments sufficiently realize the grave issues that loom behind
population growth and decline? No doubt, food and water supplies,
living space and shelter, have already begun to approach unacceptable
194 LIFETIME

limits for this planet's inhabitants which will have to live on it in the
future. According to United Nations' figures, the present growth of
global population is an annual seventy-eight million people. There are
6.1 billion people presently living on our planet. One billion of them
are in the age group of fifteen to twenty-four. They will have to face
the threat of a spreading starvation occurring around 2070 when the
human population is likely to have reached nine billion people; they
will have to ponder how to achieve a balance of environmental
reserves and population growth, and how to avoid the devastation of
the environment through human activities, and how to avoid in the
future false predictions on devastations. Or they might have to check
their conscience and their value system. But population growth has
also natural limits as it does in the animal world; to exceed them may
be fatal but, as a rule, among all or most species a growing birth rate
appears to regulate itself when the rate approaches the dangers of
extinction.
Max Scheler made a contribution which is a rewarding study
toward understanding in more depths the changes of population rates.
He placed the issue in another context than in the more familiar ones
we just touched upon. He suggested the above mentioned difficult
route of examining population growth and decline in light of world-
views and religions which may or may not have an effect on the will
to propagate and to have children. There are two sides to the issue.
The world-views may have effects on curbing the growth of a
population, or they may have an effect on enhancing its growth.
His essay, "Problems of Population in Light of World-Views"
(Bevolkerungsprobleme als Weltanschauungsfragen) (VI 290-324),
goes into questions of the kind, and into some explorations also of the
psychological reasons that underlie both birth control and population
decline, seen in this connection which population dynamics has with
prevailing world-outlooks and religions.
Since Scheler puts the issue of population in light of "world-
views," a word more often in use in German than it is in English, the
meaning of "world-view" should again be taken up.
It is to be noted first that his use of the term "world-view" has
a meaning different from the term of a "natural world-view" or "the
natural view of the world." We recall that a natural world-view refers
to the way the world addresses itself as relative to the individuals of a
culture and historical epoch in terms of what is "without question" to
them. But in the essay, "Problems of Population" the term "world-
 TIME AND CULTURE 195

view" is understood also in the light of cultures and historical periods.

Scheler applies the term "world-view" in W.v. Humboldt's meaning
of "Weltanschauung" (VI 7 I II 306 IF 302), which still today is also
the general understanding of the term in German. Hence, Scheler's
use of "die Weltanschauung" corresponds to its literal meaning of the
German word, indicating (1) that "world-view" is the possession of a
view of the world as a whole, and (2) that the word's component of
"anschauung" stands for an "intuition" of a view of the world as a
whole, not as something made up, as is the case with an ideological
world-view. Yet, both the expressions "world-view" and "natural
view of the world" are sometimes hardly distinguishable in the essay
in that both expressions point to an intuition of the world. Because of
its intuitional character, a world-view is not man-made, but grows,
lives, and will slowly die by itself (VI 291 ). It can also survive
generations and millennia. Concerning time, the mode of duration
pertains to both the natural view of the world and to a world-view as a
whole. And it is because of their duration that neither of them should
be linked to objective time.
There is also a major phenomenological difference, however,
between "the natural view of the world" and a "world-view." The
natural view of the world remains the foundation underneath the rise
and decline of cultures and their individual world views. Whereas in
all natural world-views the sun also "rises" and "sets," as we saw, the
natural world-views show, nevertheless, differences among various
cultures that they are relative to, especially in terms of what is given
in respective religions. These latter differences were not recognized
by Husser! and Heidegger, we wish to again emphasize, because such
differences do, in fact, occur in any natural view of the world in their
relevance to cultures and populations.
A non-natural world-view has no foundation that it shares
with other world-views. A Christian world-view is quite different
from a materialist world-view, and both are quite different from an
Islamic one, although in any of these differences human intuition is at
work. Still, underneath such and other non-natural world-views there
remains the intuition of things given "without question." That is, the
natural view of the world is wider in scope than a non-natural world-
view (VI 16, VIII 61 I PR 74).
There are and have been many types of non-natural world-
views. They partially overlap and can even penetrate into each other.
Today's capitalist world-view, for example, has the meaning of a
196 LIFETIME

market place for any object to be potentially manipulated, calculated

and traded. This world-view pertains, for instance, to energy tapped
from the sun, marketed, bought by people, taxed by governments. It
pertains to what is marketable in terms of the values of usefulness and
of profitability, i.e., in terms of the second lowest value rank of the
order of values. It overlaps, however, also with any world-view in
which trading, too, was or is commonplace, as in cases of barter. Yet,
the capitalist world-view also sharply differs from the world-view of
the ancient Greeks or from those of ancient Asian Indian and Chinese
cultures. In contrast to the capitalist culture, the ancient Greek, Asian
Indian, and Chinese world-views had largely been organological, not
at all mechanical and discrete as we described it. In ancient times, the
whole of the world was intuited as alive, including moving stars,
night and day. In ancient Greece matter was experienced as
something alive as the word "hyle" for matter testifies in its meaning
of wood, forest, or woodland. The Western present-day world-view,
however, takes it for granted that even the smallest components of
matter are inanimate, such as the quarks in the atom or h-quanta.
All the differences among world-views have a source. This is
because they are grounded in a prevailing ethos, the "system of value
preferences." Depending on the value preferences prevailing, every
world-view reflects a particular structure which corresponds to that
system of value preferences on which a world-view is based (X 347,
357/PE99, 111).
In addition to the function of the term world-view, Scheler
also uses the expression "world view" in a sense more familiar today,
i.e., in the sense of a "man-made" formulated intellectual world-view"
(Bildungsweltanschauung), authored by an ideologist for a political
reason as that of Marx (communism), or as implicit in the theories of
a thinker like Darwin (evolutionism). Formulated intellectual world-
views frequently occur in Scheler's essay mentioned, because they
can play a significant role in determining rates of propagation, as they
do in liberalism and socialism. We will now tum attention to some of
them, and see that the formulated word-views pertain also to our time
of population dynamics.
Although world-views are born, grow, and slowly die by
themselves, this does not apply to the man-made and contrived world-
views. The latter are formulated in an objective period of time and
have, therefore, less historical reality, as was the case with Marx's
"socialist imperialism," so referred to by Scheler. Formulated world-
 TIME AND CULTURE 197

views disappear when a new emerging ethos is taking roots in a

population and when governments are toppled by new leaders
representing new world-outlooks ..
Before we look into familiar world-views and their possible
effect on population growth and decline, let us put the concepts we
thus far used into an order of foundation. This order emerges from
various texts spread over Scheler's works. The order may assist us to
pinpoint the various connotations of the term "world-view."

1. The natural world-view is the foundation of, and relative to

cultures. The sociological subject ofthe natural world-view is the life-
community. Beliefs are given "without question." The natural world-
view is followed by an ethos.
2. An ethos is a system of value preferences of a culture and a
historical epoch. They are roughly equivalent to a mind-set.
3. A mind-set is representative of a world-view.
4. A world-view is not necessarily the same as an ethos.
5. Metaphysics can be a "posited" (setzende) world-view, and
it provides the foundation oflater formulated world-views .

We are equipped to find some reliable clues for answering the

question of why and how the capitalist world-view may have an effect
on population decline or growth. First, Scheler offers four examples
of world-views to substantiate his theory of the relationship between
population and world-views: the ancient Jewish, the Christian, the
liberal, and the socialist world-views.
The Jewish world-view has, since ancient times, been close to
the natural world-view. The Old Testament stresses the vital value of
fertility and the will to have children: "Be fruitful, and multiply ... "
(Genesis, 1:22). A belief in after-life grew only slowly among the
ancient Jews, because the after-life was believed as already existing in
the procreation of children. Hence, after-life was not a conception of
transcendence. Fertility and offspring are, therefore, ancestral and
religious elements of this world-view. They stem population decline.
Catholic Christianity curbs procreation because of its various
versions of asceticism (abstinence, celibacy, chastity, the "fig leaf,"
shame, virginity); and so does the sacrament of marriage having the
prescript of monogamy, notwithstanding certain passages in the Old
Testament. In Catholicism, monogamy remains the only allowed
condition for intercourse, with only one purpose: the procreation of
198 LIFETIME

children. At least theoretically, the procreation of children is, on this

premise, on the increase as long as a firm recognition of monogamy is
in effect.
Parts of Catholicism were upheld in orthodox Lutheranism as
the condemnation of birth control. Luther himself emphasized that the
purpose of marital intercourse is the procreation of children. He even
asked for the death penalty for adultery. In a number of other matters,
of course, he deviated from the Catholic moral codes. Virginity and
monkshood lost their traditionally accepted value with him, and so
did the marital sacrament in favor of the acceptance of civil
marriages. Luther deviated especially from the concept of the "will"
to procreate, because procreation in his thought became a matter of
individual conscience and responsibility, rather than of ecclesiastical
doctrine. In liberal Protestantism, the Augustinian principle according
to which marital intercourse betokens a divine will for the
procreation of children, was also discarded. The major effect
Protestant propagation had on population dynamics is to be seen in
the emphasis on personal responsibility, not on the individual will for
propagation. Therefore, propagation is largely based on individually
rational intentions and deliberations, and not on obedience to
doctrines.
After treating Schleiermacher's (1768-1834) theological ana-
lyses of Protestantism, Scheler turns to liberal and socialist world-
views, which are among the most eye-catching modem formulated
world-views. His main argument concerning liberalism's effect on
population is taken from H. Spencer (1820-1903), considered as "the
great philosopher of liberalism" (VI 314 ).
In liberalism, the Protestant accent on personal responsibility
for or against procreation is seen as independent of any doctrine of
churches. Liberalism rejects moral regulation from above. Although it
is also a proponent of monogamy, it does formally introduce civil
marriage, and it also makes divorce proceedings easier. Marriage is a
personal, not a clerical contract. It can be invalidated. Already these
few tenets point to the claim that a distinction must be drawn between
love, on the one hand, and the will to propagate, on the other.
The background of the formulated world-view of liberalism is
twofold:
1) Liberalism rests on a belief in a natural harmony existing
between the adaptation of population to available food supplies. This
 TIME AND CULTURE 199

harmony, or a natural limit as we called it above, is a natural harmony

which exists already in the animal world.
2) Liberalism has a foundation in the belief that higher human
organizations present in the higher levels of cultural development are
concurrent with decreases of both the will to propagate and fertility.
This relationship of higher human organizations and propagation also
be traced back to the animal world. Overall, the following conclusion
can be drawn from the liberal world-view: It curbs both population
growth and overpopulation. To be added to this world-view is what
had been called "The New Ethics" which was emerging in Europe
during the twenties, Scheler lets us know. Its mores allowed "free
love" without intending procreation, but with the intention to counter
prostitution. The New Ethics supported the women's rights to their
body and it supported the right to practice birth control before and
during marriage.
One can add another tenet of the liberal views on population,
namely, that it was instrumental in the surge of one of the four types
of sexual intercourse we came across earlier: "pleasure" sex at the
expenses of "abusive," "purposeful" and "truly loving" intercourse,
the latter binding the partners in emotive identification. Pleasure sex
has apparently always existed along with prostitution, and it does not
lend itself readily to population growth. This type of sex must become
rampant in a society with a decline of losing the sense of shame, i.e.,
of a feeling of a temporary protection from intercourse and a feeling
of self-value. Shame delays for a while intercourse while it keeps
raising the future intercourse to more and more personal levels which
are higher than those of mere pleasure sex (X 65-154 I PV 1-85). It
also appears that pleasure sex goes hand in hand with the cultivation
of the object body in a society. There are ever more means, devices,
and techniques available today just for the sake of having pleasure
during intercourse with no off-spring in sight.
By contrast, the ancient Jewish world-view has had a specific
purpose for intercourse: propagation and after-life. Nevertheless, it
also contained a utilitarian element, because the woman was held to
be the means to procreate children as the bearers of this after-life. We
wish to also emphasize that the "truly loving intercourse" in which
the partners merge in simultaneous climax and personal identification,
does not appear to be dependent on world-views that the partners
have, nor is it dependent on any social form they happen to belong to.
The mutual identification in love is as private as it is rare, we said
200 LIFETIME

earlier. It is far above pleasure feelings and far above having a

defined purpose or making use of one another. By contrast, the other
types of intercourse do or at least can play a part within the context of
relevant world-views and social forms.
It should also be stressed again that absolute time suffuses the
experience of said mutual identification in a distinct difference from
the other types of intercourse, in which experiences of objective time
prevail. Pure love must be related to absolute time because of the
partners "falling" into a self-emerging love prior a will and reasoning.
This is precisely why it is independent of world-views, of prescripts,
of cultures, of racial and social status.
On the basis what has been said on capitalism, the capitalist
world-view encourages sex as associated with objective timing and
planning, because intercourse is an object of manageability, of selling
and of marketing in order to enhance the frequencies of pleasures and
sales of whatever means to promote pleasure sex. We now tum to the
formulated world-view of socialism
A number of aspects of liberalism's world-view can be found
also in socialism. Indeed, socialism is the "daughter of liberalism"
(VI 316). The more prominent representative of socialism is said to
have been F. Engels, rather than Marx. Some of the main beliefs
Scheler traced in the socialist formulated world-view with regard to
population are the following:
1. Matters of privacy and of religion are expressly judged as
negative. All religious motives for procreation should be abandoned.
Socialism's earthly and materialist world-view rejects or ignores any
function of religion in matters of propagation.
2. Birth control promises to stop the growth of capitalism and
it promises also to reduce possible exploitation of the work-force by
entrepreneurs. But an increase of the class of workers will at the same
time increase its political power.
The latter point played a substantial role in the formulated
world-view of German national socialism (1933-1945). The National
Socialist Party of Workers rejected birth control because it would
affect negatively the growth of the German "master-race." All women
having four and more children were rewarded with "The Mothers'
Cross Medal" (das Mutterkreuz). The growth of the white Germanic
master-race was needed for more "Lebensraum," as it was planned in
the Ukraine (die Getreidekammer) and also projected for population
increase. This article of the Nazi-Weltanschauung also contributed to
 TIME AND CULTURE 201

the outbreak World War II in 1939. The racist doctrine was cultivated
further by specially chosen elite members of the SS who were to
produce the purest specimen of German blood to be born by specially
chosen elite Nazi-women in special camps provided for the purpose.
3. In 1913, there was a little-known socialist support for a
"pregnancy strike" (Gebiirstreik), which was initiated after its French
model (greve de ventre) and by the social-democrat and propagandist
E. Bernstein, himself influenced by Engels. It was maintained that
having children is, before anything else, a "social" accomplishment.
Still, birth control remained any woman's decision. Neither God nor
husband have a say in this. Socialists and the leftists alike saw in the
pregnancy strike a promising vehicle to eradicate the capitalist idea
that all work done by humans is tantamount to work done by humans
as merchandise. At this point, we can take a look at the world-view
of capitalism itself and the possible effects it may or does have on the
population dynamics.
First, we recall that the capitalist world-outlook has not been
formulated. It had its emergence around the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries and has ever since been growing. There has never been a
manifesto nor an agenda to be followed.
Second, there exist incompatibilities in the growth and decline
of populations among capitalist countries. The familiar belief that the
density and concurrent poverty of a population is a function of the
decline of a population can, for instance, at our time be disproved.
Industrialized Japan has more people living per square mile than does
poverty-stricken India. Or, the declining birthrates in industrialized
Germany are appalling despite her high standards of living, whereas
those in the United States compared to Germany's do not have a
function with a decline of birth rates. Birth rates keep rising. But one
can also maintain that the growth of the American population at
present may well be indicative of more religiosity among Americans
than among Germans. Church services in the United States are more
attended than they are Germany. There is even a high rate of Germans
leaving the churches today, because of the mandatory church taxes
(Kirchensteuer) they would otherwise have to pay. In our context,
church taxes are indicative of one of the main elements of capitalism:
taxes, and interests. Furthermore, Catholics in the Southern Sudan are
one of the poorest, if not the poorest population on earth. It shows no
noticeable population increase in the unending religious war waged
against the destitute population, whereas in capitalist countries higher
202 LIFETIME

birthrates can often be a function of poverty. These incompatibilities

are facts to be recognized in the relationship between world-views
and population increases and decreases.
Although there are immanent problems of overpopulation in
several parts on the globe, there are at the same time frightening signs
of population decline. One is at a loss sometimes to find satisfactory
explanations for population explosion and implosion. The lack of
explanation may, however, be partially conditioned by the failure to
consider that world-views may have on either of them.
Scheler conceived Western capitalism to belong in part to the
Christian world-view that embraces sundry denominations. That is to
say that he and his friend W. Sombart agreed with Max Weber that it
was Protestants and Puritans, not the Catholics, who at the end of the
nineteenth century became economically successful because of the
capitalist mind-set. We recall that Max Weber traced the latter back to
the Calvinist belief in predestination and to Puritan ascetic life-styles.
Economic prosperity accomplished through man's intense work was a
sign, if not a proof, for the predestination for an after-life in heaven.
Perhaps the inscription on the reverse side of the one-dollar bill, i.e.,
the Great Seal of the United States, is still an echo of the Calvinist
spirit of predestination: Annuit coeptis. "He [God] has favored our
undertakings" (Virgil, Aeneid, IX: 625).
Despite a population decline among German, perhaps also of
French and Spanish Catholics, the propensity for population decline is
to be sought mainly in Protestantism. Protestants are, arguably, more
of capitalists in spirit than Catholics are. Indeed, the difference in the
number of children per family, and the will to propagate, are depen-
dent on either Protestant or Catholic economic conditions (X 29). But
population decline in a number of the Western capitalist nations is to
be traced back to their calculating mind-set and to their disposition to
plan and map out rationally plans and arrangements of their lives (VI
308-309), somewhat akin to the present-day family-planning concept.
These considerations led Scheler to two underlying reasons for
declines in population:

I. The psychology of the motives for the individual decisions

made on unwanted pregnancies and birth control.
2. The increase of rational planning and calculation in matters
of prosperity conditions.
 TIME AND CULTURE 203

ad 1: Concerning birth control, there are nine psychological

motives for it (VI 308):

a. Ego-centric societal desires to relish pleasures and enjoy

life.
b. Excessive parental care and attention for the children that
parents already have.
c. Apprehension of future economic conditions.
d. Apprehension of looming reductions of property values and
parental possessions.
e. The concern over the preservation of the woman's health.
f. A woman's desire or ambition to become a "lady." [Today
this argument might be more applicable to women who seek
leadership positions in business, politics, and in other areas]
g. Pressures resulting from inflated prices.
h. The squandering of money, and extravagant life styles that
go beyond nutritional needs in family budgets.
i. The preservation of satisfactory life standards in periods of
smaller wage and salary raises.
j. Fear ofloss of respect as a result of extra-marital affairs.

There may be a tenth motive for unwanted pregnancies which

was exceptional or non-existing at Scheler times but common today:
contraceptives and availability of abortion clinics.
But birth control, one should also realize, had been practiced
already among primitives prior to and independently of capitalism. It
was practiced already during the earlier periods of recorded history in
such ways as insertion of worms into the vagina. The motives could
have been the woman's health, lack of food, or poor shelter. Most, if
not all of the above motives for practicing birth control are, however,
characteristically capitalist motives, as the preservation of a woman's
health for the sake of going to work or the advertisement for sales of
contraceptives, and numerous other sex related devices.

ad 2. The argument of the role of prosperity in relation to birth

control runs as follows:

In capitalist countries, it is neither prosperity nor calculating

thinking alone that tend to curb pregnancies. Rather, this tendency
lies also in the will to withhold pregnancy grounded in this mind-set.
204 LIFETIME

Both prosperity and the will to withhold to procreate are, however,

also a direct result of the Protestant theory of grace. The theory of
grace tends, on the one hand, to make the human being's relation to
God inert and, on the other, it is the cause of the notorious "hyper-
activity" that replaces the relationship with God by the intense and
extraverted activity with earthly matters.
Scheler regarded prosperity and the a lack of a will to have
children to be two equivalent causes for capitalist population decline,
and as the main two factors for an understanding of the dynamics of
population rates. His argument does not only follow directly from the
"import of a Weltanschauung" concerning population dynamics, but it
also explains why, sociologically, the population of the upper classes
tends to decline faster than that of working people and lower classes.
This happens to go well with Karl Marx's saying that capitalists are
mostly Protestants and Puritans who sacrifice bodily pleasures to the
fetish of gold, and are the ones that take the gospel of renunciation
seriously (VI 309).
A final observation on Scheler's theory of Weltanschauungen
and population dynamics follows: If world-views do have an effect on
population figures, this theory should be extended to populations also
outside Europe and the Americas. Scheler mentions, for instance, that
in China at his time, the population of the well-to-do was on the
increase and growing faster than Chinese lower-classes, in contrast to
Europe. This is, of course, not the case in today's China where the
communist formulated world-view stipulates that there be only one
child per family to avoid overpopulation.
Additional investigations would have to be made also on the
effects that Buddhist, Hindu, Taoist, and Islam religions and their
world-views - all of them also being in the temporal mode of duration
- have on the populations concerned. Without such studies, Scheler's
"Problems of Population as Seen through Questions of World-Views"
does remain a worthy, but also an incomplete prognosis for global
population trends, and for possible remedial action to be taken when
necessary.

2. POLITICS AND MORALS

a. Exposition of the Issue

 TIME AND CULTURE 205

The contentious topic of politics and morals has been debated for a
long time, especially, however, in modem times. 53 The treatment of
the issue spans Sophocles' Antigone, who was immured alive because
she placed the value of providing the funeral rites for her brother over
politics, and Shakespeare's Macbeth, the story of murder instigated
by Lady Macbeth's political ambition, and later versions of both
literary masterpieces. In recent times, financial, lustful, and immoral
scandals surrounding politicians at home, and abroad, have either
made the populace question politics in general, or led to efforts to
"clean up the house." For Max Scheler, the best of politics "honesty"
(XIII 67).
The topic of politics and morals was bound to be of interest to
Scheler in light of Formalism in which he had treated the subject of
moralities, and in light of also his continued interest in both domestic
and foreign politics as this is evidenced throughout his works. The
topic itselfbecame a salient one not only among Western populations,
but also with regard to specific moral issues emerging from new
technologies and growing economies. Atomic technology is as much
of a moral issue as is profit-making. This pertains also to certain
politicians who, as a rule, do not seem to be too familiar with moral
issues in the foundations of pure ethics. They sometimes assert having
"no recollection" of an issue presented in court or in government
investigations against them but, in fact, do have recollections. This
kind of convenient selective amnesia is, under the law, not really
contestable but, morally, it is mostly a lie.
The topic of the relation between politics and morals became
significant during the past century, because of many mass murders
sanctioned by whatever politicians, even up to present times, and
because of a number of wars, especially the war in Vietnam which
was sanctioned, rightly or wrongly, by large numbers of politicians
both at home and abroad.
Scheler took up the issue in the Winter of 1926/7 in a speech
entitled: "Politics and Morals" (XIII 7-74). It was prompted in early
1926 by the invitation of the then German Secretary of Defense

53 The term "morals" pertains to the morals characteristic of a certain period, say,
of the times we live in today. The German word "Moral" in the title of Scheler's
essay, "Politik und Moral" is in English equivalent to the term "morality" also
pertaining to a period. We use morality synonymously with morals. Scheler's small
distinction made in Formalism between "Moral" and "Moralitiit" does not appear
relevant in our context.
206 LIFETIME

(Reichswehrminister), 0. Gessler, who asked Scheler to address the

corps of officers on the subject in Berlin because the corps was deeply
divided on the issue. Scheler added another lecture, entitled: "The
Idea of Eternal Peace and Pacifism" (XIII 77-121 I ID 154-166; 36-
150), which he gave at the University of Cologne early 1927. He
planned to present the lecture again at Frankfurt University, but died
there a few days after the beginning of first semester. The Cologne
lecture was Scheler's last.
At the end of the third Foreword written for the third edition in
1926 of Formalism, Scheler makes a reference to both "Politics and
Morals" and "The Idea of Eternal Peace and Pacifism" saying that
they are "applications" of principles established in Formalism.
We will discuss below only Scheler's hitherto untranslated
essay, "Politics and Morals." With regard to the essay, "The Idea of
Eternal Peace and Pacifism," we referred to a smaller but essential
part of the essay in the Section A of the present Chapter, "The
Diametrical Direction of Drives and Mind." We shed light here on the
historical devolution of drives, on the decreases of wars, and on
absolute and objective time. Having begun our investigation with
Formalism and its relation to the phenomenon of time, we are in a
position to move directly to politics and morals, not only as a subject
per se, but also in light of the relationship that both politics and
morals have to time.
Given the elucidation of capitalism as a product of today's'
Western calculating mind-set that is strongly related to objective time,
and which mind-set has already infiltrated the East; and given
Scheler's explanation of the type of human being that represents this
mind-set, the "homo capitalisticus," the question must be answered
how this mind-set's morality relates to an important, if not a central
vehicle of capitalism, politics. It was between 1926 and 1928 when
Max Scheler presented a solution to this question, beginning with an
historical inventory, as it were, that showed four fundamental types of
relations between politics and morals (XIII, Part I: 7- 74).

b. Politics and Morals: Four Types of Their Relations

Scheler's distinction between four types of relations between politics

and morals is quite thought-provoking. The relations will prove to be
relevant to present-day attitudes toward them, especially when we
 TIME AND CULTURE 207

bear in mind the barbaric actions of dictators of modem times. The

four types of relations are also relevant to the opportunist politicians
who pursue ego-centric goals, for example, by using elections for
making moral promises they know they will or cannot not keep later
on. In these and also other regards, Scheler drew a sharp distinction
between those politicians who cannot be trusted, on the one hand, and
statesmen and more or less non-partisan leaders and "geniuses" of
politics, on the other. The issue of politics and morals also pertains to
politics in business when, for example, a moral obligation to relieve
employees from unfair management, treatment, and competition, are
disregarded.
We first quote Scheler with regard to what politics and morals
are (XIII 48):

What is politics? Politics is based on the drive for

power which is the foundation of a will with the goal
to realize in a commanding way [souveran] positive
values within the limits of the value-order of a public
community.

What is a morality? A "morality" understood as a sys-

tem of precepts (Gebotssystem) of what ought to be
done is a technique designed to realize in private life
the order of values within a given ethos.

The two quotes articulate two essential differences between

politics and morals: a) On the one hand, there is the objective of
politics to accumulate power within a public community and, on the
other, there are moralities which have goals and goods, i.e., values,
and which its individuals ought to realize in private life ..
Let us add to this that the Greek etymon of the word politics,
"polis," is related to "polos," a "pole" or a post, which symbolizes a
center of a community around which its people discuss their business.
In ancient Athens this center was the "agora," the market place. In
ancient Rome the center was the "forum." During the Middle Ages
there stood a "cathedral" or a church in the center of towns; in
modem times the "pole" is city hall.
2. Politics is based in the power-drive and is, as all phenomena
based in drives, anchored in absolute time.
208 LIFETIME

A morality, however, is, as an ethos, a system of prevailing

value-preferences in the order of the five value ranks (II 45 I F 23).
This order implies that a morality can be a value system relative to the
lower values and relative to higher values. Concerning the former,
the predominance of an experience of objective time, as in society,
relates to a dominant role of a type of the model persons (II 569-70 I
F 583-4) that belongs to either of the two lower ranks ofvalue; model
persons are "leaders" including economic leaders (utility values); and
they can be masters in the art of living, enjoyment, amusement and
entertainment (pleasure values). The relation to objective time does
not hold when exemplars of person are "pure," i.e., not historically
existing.
By contrast, a morality can also be gauged entirely to higher
values. Those model persons are heroes, a genius or a holy person (of
any religion). Such a morality is not exactly the one we live in today.
In the age of a pathos of work, i.e., of capitalism, which itself is a
morality system of specific value preferences (II 258 I F 252), the
roles of the model persons of heroes, geniuses, and of the saints are
out of fashion, sometimes even the objects of societal downgrading
and ridicule. A morality, then, is in the cases mentioned related to the
time experiences which occur in both lower and higher values and
their ranks. After stating the general differences between moralities
and politics, we can now focus on politics.
The public community par excellence of politics is the state
(der Staat). The type of model person representative of the state is the
statesman, who is neither a politician nor a diplomat. Statesmen are
rare, because they must represent the highest standards for which
Scheler is pleading. To wit:

a) A statesman must be "above" parties. He is either non-

partisan or bi-partisan.
b) He must be "riding" on political parties, and should not
have himselfbe ridden by them.
c) He must pursue strategies, in contrast to a diplomat, who
pursues tactics.

Diplomatic tactics are maneuvering procedures which aim at

partisan and negotiated advantages and success for their government.
In contrast to tactics, the Greek etymon of the word "strategy" tells us
already that a statesman must "lead' and ''plan." He must lead and
 TIME AND CULTURE 209

plan on levels which are wider than the national scale would allow,
namely, toward the realization of vital goods and values for people in
general. He must do so not only for his or her own nation, but must
have all nations in mind when making decisions to this effect.
The diplomat, however, has to be clever (schlau) and able to
deal and negotiate behind the backs of people (hintenherum). He is
not quite trustworthy. But statesman is he or she, who at all times can
be trusted in his or her care for the salvation (das Heil) of his or her
people and the salvation of other peoples (XIII 44 I X 341-344). A
statesman is passionate. A statesman represents, as does a hero, the
values of life (X 341-344 ), but he must also, we add, be representative
of the mental value of justice.
These observations were necessary ( 1) because they provide a
background of the four types of relationship existing between politics
and morals, and (2) for the sake of the explanation later of Scheler's
own evaluation of these relationships. He presented and described the
four historical types of the relationship between politics and morals in
the following manner:
1. The first type of the relationship is at hand when a morality
is subordinated to politics. In this case, a morality of whatever norms
and rules has little influence on the politics pursued.
Historical representatives of this relationship between politics
and morality are said to be J.Bodinus, Duns Scotus, Th. Hobbes, B. de
Mandeville, K. Marx, F.La Rochefoucauld, W.I. Lenin, M. Luther, Fr.
Nietzsche and B. Spinoza. The more "democratic" representatives of
the relationship are J. Bentham, J.St. Mill, and H. Spencer. For them,
to be political means to be useful to the public community. In more
recent times, the subordination of morality to politics is substantiated
by various dictatorships and countries where no or only a few moral
precepts and rules are allowed to have an effect on a ruling political
government: China, Cuba, Nazi Germany, the past Soviet Union, and
a number of African, Asian and Latin American states.
Scheler's emphasis in the discussion of morals which are
subordinated to politics lies on the concept of power (die Macht). All
political comportment is based on the drive for power to find and
achieve deliberate means and ends. A group that lives under said
dominance is also believed to be only a good group when it is in the
possession of power (XIII 18-20), and when this group's morals are
within a smaller scope of judgment and scrutiny than that of politics.
Under such circumstances, the morality of groups remains secondary.
210 LIFETIME

But morals can also function as a convenient vehicle for individuals

having political power. When a morality functions in this way, its
precepts are, as a rule, understood to be derivative of, or tailored to,
politics.
This situation can go so far, argues Scheler, that a morality
can be used and can even have a function, as politics "on a smaller
scale" that is characterized by self-interests among the individuals of
such groups. The dominance of self-interest, instead of love and
feeling, means that a morality can be just an appendage to political
interests. 2. The second type of the relationship between politics and
morals is the opposite of the first. Politics is subordinated to morals.
All political action is to follow moral laws, precepts, codes, and rules.
This relationship may take on two forms: It can appear in the
form of a "negative politics" or of non-resistance, and it can appear as
"positive politics" when it is carried out in light of a prevailing
system of values that a morality rests on. In both cases, it is the
morality that can restrict, define, and even determine political action.
During the Middle Ages, for .example, both Christian ethics and the
natural law were the foundation for the execution of politics. Today,
most of the Islam nations illustrate well the second type of the
relationship. The second type can also be illustrated by just smaller
groups as those of Str.Winthrop of Rhode Island, the Amish, and
others of the American colonies, who endeavored to create a
theocracy, a state of God, on the basis of the Bible thereof, or a
number of Islamic groups on the basis of the Koran.
3. The third type of the relation between politics and morals is
the "Machiavellian-Issue." Scheler's concise but clear explanations of
Machiavelli's conceptions of virtu, necessity, and of fortuna as well
as his account of Machiavelli's understanding of the human being are
recommendable reading.
The basic principle of the third type of the relation between
politics and morals is that politics and moral laws are independent of
each other. Yet, any statesman is still allowed to violate this mutual
independence, when a) the objective interests of the state (raison d'
etat) are threatened and b) when a statesman's interests in his
personal political ascent are in jeopardy. The statesman is bound by
only one objective: to expand the power of the state. Hence, for the
sake of the Machiavellian statesman, there are no restrictions: neither
are there moral precepts telling the statesman what to do, nor is there
 TIME AND CULTURE 211

anything above politics and morals, as an order of values. A

statesman is also not bound by conscience.
Let a summary just be presented here of Machiavelli's notion
of the human being that Scheler elaborated on.
a) Machiavelli's notion of the human being is determined by
virtu, i.e., by the bridled and checked, ordered and dynamic, thrust of
the drive for power.
b) Machiavelli's understanding of the human being is in terms
of necessity as a causal coercion and as a means to goad the inactive
masses of people into the vital forces of the virtu. Human beings do
not do anything good unless they are driven to do so. Hunger and
poverty, for example, can turn them into hard working people. This
argument could, perhaps, serve as a theoretical source of capitalism,
because it encourages the incentives to work as much as possible. But
for Macchiavelli it is the laws of the state, not work, that make the
masses good masses.
c) Finally, human beings are under a constant sway ofjortuna.
Whereas humans tend to succumb to whatever inexorable fate that
faces them, they are asked to brave and counter their fate. Fortuna
and its ancient Greek corresponding goddess, Tyche, is a force that
makes people powerless by herself turning the wheel of chance which
is the symbol of the ceaseless rise and fall of both good and misery -
beyond human control. But this can be offset in braving fate by means
of virtu which can free humans from fortuna's compulsion (XIII 28-
29).
4) The fourth type of the relationship between politics and
morals was a popular one during the times of German Idealism. It was
espoused by Hegel and articulates the tradition of a glorification of
the Prussian state. Its main tenet is that a "Morality of the State" (die
Staatsmoral) as a cultural authority and as world-conscience is the
ideal agency for establishing moral norms for a state and individuals.
Scheler rejects especially this kind of the relation between politics
and moralities. A cultural authority that claims to be representative of
an objective morality must fail to see the fact that each historical
moment is different from the next, and that it will never recur again.
Therefore, such an authority does not allow universal norms to be
valid for all times. For the same reason, a statesman, who must face
uninterrupted changes of historical events, cannot be subjected to
general norms either, nor can he be made accountable to a static and
institutionalized morality.
212 LIFETIME

Even less could a statesman be made accountable to the Holy

See, to public opinion, or to a so-called world-conscience. A states-
man's accountability to a Pope is not acceptable to people other than
Catholics; accountability to public opinion fails because of changes
of value-preferences; and an accountability to a "world-conscience,"
refers to a word, quips Scheler, which does not make sense (XIII 36).
The morality of a statesman is not to be seen in what he or she
can or cannot do by according to decisions made in objective time.
Rather, the statesman must be able to place himself at the core of both
national and global situations and must follow the "call of the hour,"
regardless of personal self-interest or opinions held by a population.
This view of the statesman is in agreement with Scheler's emphasis
that a state has no worldly authority above it that could tell the state
what ought or ought not to be done (XIII 53); whereas a morality can
have an authority above which can at least have an influence on what
should or should not be done. This moral authority is God as apart
from any positive religion and individual religious beliefs.
A "call of the hour" fulfills the first principle of absolute time
in that an hour's meanings suffuse the phases of meanings in which
they occur. An example of such an historical co-incidence of a call of
the hour may well have been Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg address.
In such a case, the past and the future come together in the meanings
running off in their phases of absolute time or the phases are suffused
with them in this call: "the right word at the right time" and "the right
time for the right word." Such reciprocity begs silent attention by all
who listen
The idealist conception of the "morality of the state," and of
the cultural authority that a state is supposed to have must be replaced
by an international court of law that acts according to internationally
accepted laws (XIII 36). Statesmen just cannot be made accountable
to the "morality of a state."
As basic to the issues concerned, Scheler rejects all of these
four types of relationship in light of Formalism. But his rejection, did
not refer to particular results of Formalism as he claimed it did in the
1926 Foreword. We submit, therefore, a reading of his rejection in
light of two pivotal concepts in Formalism: person and values.
 TIME AND CULTURE 213

c. The Mutual Exclusion of Politics and Morality

in Light of the Person

The mutual exclusion of politics and morality is explained in Part B

of the essay "Politics and Morals" (XIII 43-72). There are no direct
references to time although the element of time is implicit, as we saw,
in all the values of the person. In what, then, is the exclusion between
political and moral comportment to be seen in the light of time? 54
Political comportment is at the service of self-interests. In
politics, the person is given as an object which has to be "reckoned
with" (rechnen mujJ) in order to realize self-interests (XIII 19). In
politics, therefore, the person amounts to be a means to achieve one of
the politicians' major goals: that of his own empowerment. This goal
is rooted in the drive for power. In politics, the person does not have
the status of being the highest value as it does in Scheler's ethics of
values. Rather, the person is a means to realize the primary objective
of politics of the realization of only the vital value of the "well-being"
of a public community.
Concerning values that are higher than life-values, the mental
and sacred values, politics can only "cultivate" them, but it cannot
realize them through political action (XIII 52). The power drive does
not reach into the two ranks of the values of the person. (We made a
qualification to this earlier, saying that the mental value of justice is,
nevertheless, a value dealt with in politics, and we can add that it can
be a realizable value through political action.)
Furthermore, every person possesses, as we saw, a constant,
unchangeable self-value that is unique for this or that person (II 499 I
F 509). In politics, however, this self-value, and the values of groups
of persons, can only be assessed as being lower or higher. The value
of each individual person can be diminished or even be extinguished,
as does occur in dictatorships and for racial reasons, or for a political
orientation of a person concerned. In Formalism, however, the self-
value of the individual person is shown to be not only above racial-,
gender- or age-groups; the value of the person is shown to be even
"above" and "outside" the state, in contradistinction to politics where
the value of the person is either "below" the state or "for" the state (II
391; 503 IF 392-513).

54For varient views on this point consult Eugene Kelly, Structure and Diversity,
op.cit, pp. 216-26.
214 LIFETIME

For instance, a person can be "below" a state in an egalitarian

system with its deeply seated resentment against persons of whatever
higher qualities (Ill 114-122 I R 137-144). 55 Egalitarian resentment is
felt by the disadvantaged, the encumbered, by thwarted persons. The
forms out of which the essence of resentment grows are envy, malice,
revenge leashed because of weakness, and spite. All of them blur into
each other in egalitarianism and, therefore, cover up its political
relevance. This resentment can sometimes be a convenient means for
partisan politicians to make egalitarian politics a social issue for their
own political ends.
Devaluating higher or different levels of a person and of a
particular class in the name of egalitarian ends are not uncommon in
education reforms that are calling for the lowest learning standards
which can be handled by any student in the name of "education for
all." Indeed: In the name of the unique self-value of each and every
individual person, Scheler launches a warning that may serve as the
unstated motto of our presentation (IX 145 I P 94): "One can commit
no greater error than to consider democracy and elite as mutually
exclusive concepts."
Concerning egalitarianism one must also make a distinction
between political and moral equality.
The 1776 Declaration of Independence tells us that all humans
are equal; and the "egalite" of all human beings is also cited in the
famous motto of the 1789 French Revolution. But they pertain to
political, not moral, equality of all human beings before the law. This
is part of the cornerstone of Formalism as well: democratic equality
must hold among all persons living on earth. But moral inequality
holds before God only. Or: moral aristocracy "in heaven" must not
exclude democracy "on earth" (II 500 IF 509).
The difference between legal equality and moral inequality
lays bare the very abyss that exists between politics and morals. To
boot, political equality before the law has no immediate bearing on
mental and sacred values of the person. They are never dependent on
politics. Political equality, and politics in general, are pertinent to the
equal distribution of vital goods as food, shelter, medical, and all per-
sonal care, and to justice. Hence, political equality has to respond to

55 All resentment, not only that of egalitarianism, belongs to issues of moralities as

the full German title of Scheler's essay indicates, "Ressentment in the Structure of
Moralities" (Das Ressentiment im Aujbau der Mora/en).
 TIME AND CULTURE 215

vital human needs which are divisible, distributive, and manageable

needs, goods and values (II 500 I 509-10). Moral inequality, however,
relates to ranks of indivisible, non-quantifiable, and non-manageable
mental and sacred values as well as to the moral values of good and
evil. They belong to absolute time experienced in the order of the
love, the ordo amoris.

d. The Mutual Exclusion of Politics and Morality

in Light of Values

The mutual exclusion of politics and morals is the result of principles

established in Formalism which we have discussed but at this
juncture should now be summarized. Values are initially felt and
neither first willed nor given in rational deliberations. Mental and
sacred values are given in feelings that are different in their essence
from feelings of vital values. Vital values are relative to one's lived
body, to the heroic side of the person, and they relative to life in
general, whereas mental and sacred values are personal values given
in personal feelings. They cannot be reduced to biological
dispositions (XIII 52). The mental and sacred values are not only
independent of needs and requirements of a lived body, they are also
independent of the changes in the lived body's sensible feelings.
Feelings of mental and sacred values are also independent of the life
values of the environment. It is true, that pain temporarily reduces the
mental value of art appreciation or interests in law and philosophy.
But all mental values as such will re-institute themselves when
physical pain begins to subside.
While politics deals with life values, human phenomena such
as love and hate are personal values and are felt by persons alone,
regardless of whether persons are or are not the subjects of a state or
whether a person belongs to this or that party of a state. In its origin,
and as such, love is non-political. Yet it can, like hate, be "put to use"
for political purposes. Hate can be whipped up in order to bring about
racial hatred, to banning marriages of partners of different races, or in
order to practice whatever discrimination.

e. The Mutual Exclusion of Politics and Morality

in Light of Human Destiny
216 LIFETIME

We saw that there are three main drive-objects that typify three eras
of history: (1) The era beginning in the dark origins of history, (2)
The era that reaches into our own time and overlaps with (3) the era
of the future that has already begun..
Within this context, we listed the three devolving laws of the
changing predominance of drives that happened in those eras in which
three shifts in of the main human drives occurred. The first law of the
predominance pertained to the propagation drive. Its inherent object
was the "power and control over human beings." The second law
pertained to the predominance of the drive for power whose object
was said to be two-fold: "power over humans" and the "power over
entities in nature" (beginnings of technology). The third law pertained
to the third world-era when the predominance of the drive for power
begins to weaken, making room for the increase of the predominance
of the nutritive drive with its drive-object "power over entities."
In this third world-era, i.e., in the World Era of Adjustment,
the frequency of all belligerent activities will diminish in favor of the
slow but steady process of a convergence among peoples, cultures,
races, ethnic groups, genders, socialism and capitalism toward each
other. Both individual and social interests will yield to the increasing
interest in the conquest and controls over entities. (Also the "meaning
of being" may be fading away because of the strong urge for conquest
and controls over entities. The fading of being may in our context be
the coincidental with Heidegger' s "Forgetfulness of Being.")
A first impression of Scheler's law of shifts in the respective
predominances of the drives and their objects suggests it to be an
assumption. However, in pointing to the metaphysical method of the
transcendental elongation or the transcendental inference in Chapter
III, A, 2b, individual life is reflected in the historical law of said
shifts, or these shifts found in human individuals are passing on or
they "transfer" to the shifts of the three historical eras.
Given the Schelerian map of eras showing us three different
levels of effectiveness that drives and their objects have in each era,
we ask the question: "What does this have to do with politics and
morals?
On the basis of what has been said in the three Chapters of our
investigation of Time, an answer to the question can be given: The
evolving world-era of adjustment will result in a future solidarity
among humans. Solidarity is the mutual experience through which all
 TIME AND CULTURE 217

people are co-responsible to realize the order of values and begin also
to feel this co-responsibility. Scheler calls the realization of solidarity
and the realization of the order of values: the "human destiny" (XIII
58). He offered a graphic for this (XIII 43):

Human Destiny

t
Order of Values
~~
Politics Morality

The projection of the future as a gradually forming global

solidarity is "one moral ideal" (II 530 I F 542). Ethics in general
tends to culminate in a moral ideal. Kant's categorical imperative is a
case in point. Within Scheler's metaphysics a moral ideal has itself a
basis in the reality qua resistance.
Taking the convergence of peoples and cultures again as a
number of rivers that lead to the future ofhumanity, solidarity appears
to be an escort of the realization ofthe era of international adjustment.
This projection of solidarity (XIII 58) has a phenomenological basis
(II 523-6 IF 534-6) when the following is realized:
In the "fundamental article" of the cosmos of moral persons,
"community" and communality is the essence of the person; or, the
"other" is, therefore, the precondition for me or the "1." Communality
as established through the "thou" rests, therefore, on reciprocity. Or,
moral comportment is mutual among the individuals that live in
communities. In tum, moral mutuality is based on the social acts of
consciousness. In contrast to individual acts, the social acts contain a
response in them, no matter whether the responding acts are realized
by others or not. All social acts presuppose and imply other persons.
The nature of acts of loving, promising, giving orders, asking, imply
response. Even when social acts are in practice not responded to, they
nevertheless contain references to others "in" the social acts. An act
of asking is a social act which explains perhaps best the point made.
A question implies, by necessity, an answer, otherwise it would not be
an act of asking question. If there is no answer, the absence of it is
also inherent in the question. Or: "I do not have the answer" to what
218 LIFETIME

you are asking. Heidegger tackled the "question" of being and argued
that a response to a question is even prior to the question asked, 56 but
he stayed within the question of Being only. He did not deal with
social acts such as moral acts where the said mutuality also holds.
All acts of experiencing solidarity with others, past, present,
and in the future are equally based on mutuality: in co-responsibility.
Co-responsibility can be that of mutual merit and of guilt. That is,
solidarity can change. It becomes different when values are realized
or not realized. Phenomenologically, co-responsibility rests on the
nature of social acts, whether they are realized or not realized.
Scheler's argument for a general solidarity are hard to agree
with. If in our society today, someone would tell us that we are co-
responsible for the deeds done by others in which we had no part, is,
indeed, "incomprehensible" (III 120 I R 142). As one says, "this was
not my fault," or "I have nothing to do with this." After all, can I be
co-responsible for a child dying today of starvation in the Southern
Sudan? In moral solidarity with all others, I am. We are guilty of the
starvation of the child, no matter how far away the persons and the
political institutions may be who let this moral crime today happen.
Indeed, the cosmos of solidarity with others even extends to possible
persons living on other planets (II 523 IF 534).
Despite the above "incomprehensibility" of mutual solidarity
referred to by Scheler, the co-responsibility of solidarity is alive in the
genuine life-communities and in the encompassing persons. In this
regard, there is an abyss between politics and morality. Concerning
the highly litigious society we live in today, we may "legally" not be
co-responsible for the distant child dying of starvation. There is no
law under which a citizen living far away from the unknown child
could be indicted to be guilty. But any person who closes his or her
eyes from the moral crime that happened today in the southern Dinka
or Nuer tribes is, in terms of a universal solidarity, co-responsible.
The notion of a universal co-responsible solidarity, must be
incomprehensible with people living in a litigious system of society
was, apart from its religious formulations that all sinned in Adam,
articulated in Pascal's Pensee 505:

[... ] The least movement affects all nature; the entire

sea changes because of a rock. Thus in grace, the least

56 Being and Time (Sein und Zeit), 7.

 TIME AND CULTURE 219

action has an effect on everything else by its con-

sequences, therefore everything is important. In each
action we must see beyond the action at our past,
present, and future state, and at others whom it
affects, and see the relations of all those things. [... ]

In present-day technological terminology one could, perhaps,

say that solidarity has a relevant analogue in the "world-wide web"
in the sense that all persons are linked in co-responsibility for any
good or evil deed, no matter how far away the deed may happen.
To pursue the matter of universal solidarity further is beyond
our thematic. But an answer to one question pertinent to Scheler's
philosophy of time remains to be answered: Does solidarity have a
time-quality? Yes.
Solidarity-time is first to be seen in the duration that it must
have among humans. The reason for this is (1) the very duration of
solidarity in the life-community without which there cannot be a
society, as we were told, and (2) the human destiny of the realization
of the order of the ranks of values. All social forms of togetherness,
including both the life-community and the society - no matter their
differences - are "co-original" (IV 379), and none of the five social
forms we discussed is outside the destiny of realizing the order of
values.
Politics, too, is part of moral destiny. Its role of realizing the
order of values pertains to the order of the ranks of values and to
international obligations beyond partisanship. In politics, the order of
values is realized especially with regard to the mental value of justice.
The statesman must be "ensouled" with the principle of solidarity
which, as Scheler explained in 1927, is the principle of "mutuality"
(Gegenseitigkeit). We are reminded of Pascal, reading (XIII 58):

According to the principle of "mutuality" everyone

has incomparably more "guilt" than one could ima-
gine, but everyone has also accumulated more merit
in the creation of good things than one can imagine.
In the principle of mutuality, the chain of effects is
infinite.

The time quality of "duration" in solidarity belongs to

absolute time. But in addition: co-responsibility satisfies the first
220 LIFETIME

character of absolute time: the coincidence between meanings and

phases, the meaning of co-responsible merit or guilt experienced "in"
the phases of their occurrence. Inasmuch as a universal solidarity is
on a higher level than that of societies and life-communities,
solidarity may look like an abstract idea; but its functionalization with
realizing factors of deeds done in societies, life-communities and
encompassing persons, it 1s a becoming reality m its
functionalizations.
The mutual experience among humans is absolute time in the
strictest sense of the term. Solidarity-time has its phenomenological
foundation in the social-historical and absolute time of the "We" ofus
humans together, past, present, and future (IX 235 I PE 349). In less
abstract language, the meaning of solidarity in relation to time comes
down to this:
Regardless of race, gender, religion, period of time, or ethics,
the individual person's self-value as a member of a community, must
never be subordinated to any object-value in objective time. The
value of the becoming and simultaneous un-becoming of the person
of said starving child must not be subordinated either to divisible and
short-lived values of political tactics. The self-value of the person of
the starving child is in the transition of absolute time flowing from
person to person, the "we-time" of the moral cosmos. An
international co-responsibility for the future of the World Era of
Adjustment may not have awakened us yet for co-responsible guilt or
merit. But the moral guilt of the tragedies of starvation which have
haunted humanity since times of yore, may perhaps soon dawn in the
future of "Man in the World Era of Adjustment."
 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES

1. The German Collected Works (Gesammelte Werke)

2. Current English Translations
3. Secondary International Literature

1. THE GERMAN COLLECTED WORKS

(Gesammelte Werke)

Publishers:

1954 - 1985: Francke Verlag: Bern, Switzerland

1985 - Bouvier Verlag, Bonn, Germany

Vol.l. Friihe Schriften [Early Writings] pp. 434. Eds.: Maria

Scheler and Manfred Frings.

Vol. 2. Der Formalismus in der Ethik und die materiale Wertethik.

Neuer Versuch der Grundlegung eines ethischen Persona-
lismus [Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of
Values. A New Attempt Toward the Foundation of an Ethical
Personalism] pp. 659. Ed.: Maria Scheler.

Vol. 3. Vom Umsturz der Werle. [The Tum-Over ofValues] pp. 450.
Ed.: Maria Scheler.

Vol. 4. Politisch-Piidagogische Schriften. [Political and Educational

Writings] pp. 717. Ed.: Manfred Frings
Vol. 5. Vom Ewigen im Menschen [On the Eternal in Man] pp. 488.
Ed.: Maria Scheler

Vol. 6. Schriften zur Soziologie und Weltanschauungslehre [Essays

Concerning Sociology and the Theory of Weltanschauung]
pp. 455. Ed.: Maria Scheler.
222 LIFETIME

Vol. 7. Wesen und Formen der Sympathie. [The Nature of Sympa-

thy] pp. 372. Ed.: Manfred Frings.
Vol. 8. Die Wissensformen und die Gesellschaft. [Forms of Know-
ledge and Society] pp. 538. Ed.: Maria Scheler.
Vol. 9. Spate Schriften [Later Works] pp. 384. Ed.: Manfred Frings.

Vo1.1 0. Schriften aus dem Nachlass. Band. I: Zur Ethik und

Erkenntnistheorie [Posthumous Works. Vol. I: On Ethics
and Theory ofKnowledge] pp. 583. Ed.: Maria Scheler.
Vol.ll. Schriften aus dem Nachlass. Band. II: Erkenntnislehre und
Metaphysik. [Posthumous Works. Vol. II: Theory of Cogni-
tion and Metaphysics] pp. 296. Ed.: Manfred Frings.
Vol.12. Schriften aus dem Nachlass. Band III. Philosophische An-
thropologie. [Posthumous Works. Vol. III: Philosophical
Anthropology. pp. 382. Ed.: Manfred Frings.
Vol.l3. Schriften aus dem Nachlass. Band IV: Philosophie und Ge-
schichte. [Posthumous Works. Vol. IV: Philosophy and
History] pp. 292. Ed.: Manfred Frings.
Vol. 14. Schriften aus dem Nachlass. Band V: Varia I. [Posthumous
Works. Vol. V: Varia I] pp. 471. Ed.: Manfred Frings.
Vol. 15. Schriften aus dem Nachlass. Band VI: Varia II. [Posthumous
Works Vol. VI: Varia II] pp. 224. Ed.: Manfred Frings.

2. CURRENT ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS.

Abbreviations for Books on the Left Margin. For Translations in

other Languages See: www.maxscheler.com

BOOKS

E On the Eternal in Man. Tr. Bernhard Noble. London: SCM

Press, 1960. Hamden: Archon Books, 1972.

F Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values. A New

Attempt toward the Foundation of an Ethical Personalism. Tr.
Manfred Frings and Roger L. Funk. Evanston: Northwestern
University Press, 1973. Reprint 2001.
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 223

M Man's Place in Nature. Tr. Hans Meyerhof New York:

Noonday, 1961.

N The Nature of Sympathy. Tr. Peter Heath. Introduction by W.

Stark. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1954. Reprint: Harn-
den: Archon Books, 1970.

P Philosophical Perspectives. Tr. Oscar Haak. Boston: Beacon

Press, 1958. Contains: 1. Philosopher's Outlook. 2. The Forms
of Knowledge and Culture. 3. Spinoza. 4. Man and History. 5.
Man in the Era of Adjustment.

PE Selected Philosophical Essays. Tr. David R. Lachterman.

With Introduction. Contains: 1. The Idols of Self-Knowledge.
2. Ordo Amaris. 3. Phenomenology and Theory of Cognition.
4. The Theory of the Three Facts. 5. Idealism and Realism
[Parts 2 and 3].

PR Problems of a Sociology of Knowledge. Tr. Manfred S. Frings.

Edited with an Introduction by Kenneth Stikkers. London:
Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980.

PV Person and Self-Value. Three Essays. Tr. Manfred S. Frings.

With Introduction. Dordrecht I Boston I Lancaster: Martinus
Nijhoff Publishers, 1987. Contains: 1. Shame and Feelings of
Modesty. 2. Repentance and Rebirth (tr. by Bernhard Noble
taken from the above On the Eternal in Man). 3. Exemplars of
Person and Leaders.

R Ressentiment. Tr. William W. Holdheirn. Edited with an

Introduction by Lewis A. Coser. New York: The Free Press of
Glencoe. 1961. Reprint: New York: Schocken Books, 1972.
Reprint with an Introduction by Manfred Frings. Milwaukee:
Marquette University Press, 1994.

ESSAYS

A "An a pnon Hierarchy of Value-Modalities." Tr. Daniel

O'Connor. In Readings in Existential Phenomenology. Eds.:
224 LIFETIME

Nathaniel Lawrence and Daniel O'Connor. Englewood Cliffs:

Prentice Hall, 1967.

CM "Concerning the Meaning of the Feminist Movement." Tr.

Manfred S. Frings. Philosophical Forum, Fall, 1978.

FU "Future of Man." Tr. Howard Becker. Monthly Criterion 7,

February 1928.

HU "Humility." Tr. Barbara Fiand. Aletheia, II, 1981.

ID "The Idea of Eternal Peace and Pacifism." Tr. Manfred S.

Frings. Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology 8,
October 1976, continued Janurary, 1977.

IM "The Idea of Man." Tr. Clyde Nabe. Journal of the British

Society for Phenomenology 9, Octobrer 1978.

L "Love and Knowledge." Tr. Harold J. Bershady with Peter

Haley. In Max Scheler. On Feeling, Knowing, and Valuing.
Selected Writings. Edited with an Introduction by Harold J.
Bershady. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1992.

MA "Metaphysics and Art." Tr. Manfred S. Frings. In: Max

Scheler (1874-1928) Centennial Essays. Ed.: Manfred Frings.
The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1974.

MS "The Meaning of Suffering." Tr. Harold J. Bershady. In Max

Scheler. On Feeling, Knowing, and Valuing. Selected Writings.
Edited with an Introduction by Harold J. Bershady. Chicago:
The University of Chicago Press, 1992.

PC "The Psychology of So-Called Compensation Hysteria and the

Real Battle against Illness." Tr. Edward Vacek, S.J. Journal of
Phenomenological Psychology. Vol.15, 2, Fall 1984.

PO "On the Positivistic Philosophy of the History of Knowledge

and its Laws of Three Stages." Tr. Rainer Koehne. In The
Sociology of Knowledge. A Reader. Eds.: James E. Curtis and
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 225

John W. Petras. New York: Praeger Publishers. London:

Duckworth, 1970.

RR "Reality and Resistance: On Being and Time Section 43." Tr.

Thomas Sheehan. In Listening, 12.,3, Fall, 1977.

SC "The Thomist Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism." Tr.

Gertrude Neuwith. [Misleading title and reduced translation of
"Der Bourgeois und die religiOsen Machte".] Sociological
Analysis, 25, Spring 1964.

ST "Toward a Stratification of the Emotional Life." Tr. Daniel

O'Connor. In Readings in Existential Phenomenology. Eds.:
Nathaniel Lawrence and Daniel O'Connor. Englewood Cliffs:
Prentice Hall, 1967.

SW "Sociology and the Study and Formulation of Weltanschau-

ung." Tr. R.C. Speirs. In Max Weber's "Science and
Vocation." Eds.: Peter Lassman and Irving Velody with
Herminio Martins. London: Unwin Hyman, 1989

T "On the Tragic." Tr. Bernard Stambler. Cross Currents, 4,

1954. Reprinted in Tragedy. Vision and Form. Ed. R.W.
Corrigan. San Francisco, (no date).

W "Max Weber's Exclusion of Philosophy. Tr. R.C. Speirs. In

Max Weber's "Science and Vocation." Eds.: Peter Lassman
and Irving Velody with Herminio Martins. London: Unwin
Hyman, 1989.
226 LIFETIME

3. SECONDARY INTERNATIONAL LITERATURE.

Selected Literature Relevant to the

Text of this Book

Allodi, Leonardo. "Die Analyse des rnodemen Menschen bei Max

Scheler und Werner Sornbart." Annali di Sociologia- Soziologisches
Jahrbuch (bilingual) 5, 1989, pp. 458-493.

_ _ _ . "Guerra e pace tra filosofia della storia e sociologia della

cultura." In Max Scheler: L 'idea di pace e il pacifismo. Tr. Leonardo
Allodi. Franco Angeli, Ed. Milano 1995 (2nd ed. ), pp. 25-119.

Ave-Lallernant, Eberhard. "Max Scheler. Die Nachlasse der

Miinchenener Phanomenologen in der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek.
Wiesbaden: Harassowitz, 1975, pp. 41-124.

_ _ _ ."Religion und Metaphysik irn Weltalter des Ausgleichs." In

Tijdschrift voor Filoso.fie, 42/2, 1980, pp. 266-293.

_ _ _ ."Die Lebenswerte in der Rangordnung der Werte." In Vom

Umsturz der Werte in der modernen Gesellschaft. Ed.: G.Pfafferott.
Bonn: Bouvier Verlag, 1997, pp. 81-99.

Bendix, Reinhard. Max Weber. An Intellectual Portrait. With an

Introduction by Guenther Roth. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London:
University of California Press, 1977, pp. 490.

Berrnes, Christian. "'Welt' als Ursprung und Ma/3 des Denkens und
Philosophierens. Weltkonzepte in Max Schelers Philosophie." In:
Denken des Ursprungs - Ursprung des Denkens. Schelers Philoso-
sophie und ihre Anfange in Jena. Eds.: Chr. Berrnes, W. Henckrnann,
H. Leonardy. Wtirzburg: Konigshausen & Neumann, 1998, pp. 54-67 .

- - -. "Geist und Leib. Phanornenologie der Person bei Scheler

und Merleau-Ponty." In: Person und Wert. Schelers 'Formalismus'-
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 227

Perspektiven und Wirkungen. Eds.: Chr. Bermes, W. Henckmann, H.

Leonardy. Freiburg I Munchen: Verlag Karl Alber. 2000, pp.l39-161.

Blosser, Philip. Scheler's Critique of Kant's Ethics. Athens: Ohio

University Press, 1995, pp. 221.

_ _ _ . "Scheler's Ordo Amoris. Insights and Oversights." In

Denken des Ursprungs- Ursprung des Denkens. Schelers Philosophie
und ihre Anfange in Jena. Eds.: Chr. Bermes, W. Henckmann, H.
Leonardy. Wurzburg: Konigshausen & Neumann, 1998, pp. 160-171.

Boboc, Alexandru."La signification de l'anthropologie philosophique

de Max Scheler." In: Analele Universitatii Bucuresti. Seria 'Filo-
sofie', 2 (1972), pp. 119-132.

Bosio, Franco. "L'uomo e l'assoluto nel pensiero de Max Scheler."

In: Verifiche, 2, 1982.

____. Invito al pensiero di Scheler. Milano: Mursia, 1995, pp.

214.

- - - -. "Arbeitswelt und Geistwelt beim fruhen Scheler." In

Denken des Ursprungs - Ursprung des Denkens. Schelers Philosophie
und ihre Anfange in Jena. Eds.: Chr. Bermes, W. Henckmann, H.
Leonardy. Wurzburg: Konigshausen und Neumann, 1998, pp. 184-
189.

Brejdak, J. "Self-interpretation of Time as a Rule of Individuation in

Scheler's, Dilthey's and Heidegger's Conceptions of Man." In:
Analecta Husserliana. Dordrecht I Boston I London: Kluwer Aca-
demic Publishers. (In print.)

Brujic, Branka. "Ethos der wissenschaftlich-technischen Welt und die

Idee des Menschen von Max Scheler." In Synthesis philosofica, 1-2,
Zagreb, 1986, pp. 97-111.

____ ."Ethos und geschichtlicher Werdeprozess." In Denken des

Ursprungs - Ursprung des Denkens. Schelers Philosophie und ihre
Anfange in Jena. Eds.: Chr. Bermes, W. Henckmann, H. Leonardy.
Wurzburg: Konigshausen und Neumann, 1998, pp. 98-106.
228 LIFETIME

Caronello, Giancarlo. Il formalismo dell'etica e l'etica materiale dei

valori. Prima versione italiana integra/e. Nuovo tentativo di fon-
datione di un personalismo etico. Transl. With Introduction. Editione
italiana a cura di G.C. Torino: Editione San Paolo, 1996, pp.783.

Cho Jeong-Ok. Liebe bei Max Scheler. Unter besonderer Beriick-

sichtigung des Begriffs 'Eros'. Eine kritische Interpretation insbe-
sondere an Hand seines Werkes: Wesen und Formen der Sympathie.
Dissertation. Universitat Miinchen, 1990, pp.l67.

Cusinato, Guido. "La tesi dell'impotenza dello spirito e il problema

del dualismo nell'ultimo Scheler." In: Ver[fichi, XXIV, 1995, pp. 65-
100.

____ ."Absolute Rangordnung und Relativitat der Werte im

Denken Max Schelers." In: Vom Umsturz der Werte in der modernen
Gesellschaft. Ed.: G. Pfafferott. Bonn: Bouvier Verlag, 1997, pp. 62-
80.

____ ."L'oggetto della Filosofia in Max Scheler fra Funktiona-

lisierung e Ausgleich." In: L 'oggetto della storia della Filosofia. Ed.:
R. Racinaro. Napoli, 1998, pp. 319-349.

____ .Katharsis. Lamorte dell'ego ed il divino come apertura al

mondo. Con una Presentatione di MS. Frings. Napoli: Editione
Scientifiche Italiane (ESI): 1999, pp. 402.

____ . Scheler. Il Dio in Divinire. Padova: Editione Messagero

Padova, 2002.

Da Re, Antonio."Valore e conflitto di valori nell'etica fenomeno-

logica." In: Fenomenologia e Societa, 14, 1991, pp. 41-98.

Frings, Manfred. "Max Scheler: Capitalism. Its Philosophical Foun-

dations." Philosophy Today, 1986. pp. 32-42. [French translation by
Henri Leroux as "La fondation historico-philosophique du capitalisme
chez Max Scheler." In: Cahiers Internationaux de Sociologie, 85,
1988, pp. 353-368.]
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 229

____ . The Mind of Max Scheler. The First Comprehensive Guide

Based on the Complete Works. Milwaukee: Marquette University
Press. 2nd ed. 2001, pp. 324 .

- - - -. "Rand- und Textbemerkungen in Sein und Zeit." In: Max

Scheler. Spate Schriften. Gesammelte Werke, Band IX. Bonn: Bou-
vier Verlag. 2nd ed. 1995, pp. 384.

____."Rand und Textbemerkungen in Husserls 'Ideen' (1913)."

In Gesammelte Werke Band 14. Schriften aus dem Nachlass, Band V.
Bonn: Bouvier Verlag, 1993, pp. 471.

Gabel, Michael. Intentionalitiit des Geistes. Der phiinomenologische

Denkansatz bei Max Scheler. Untersuchungen zum Verstiindnis der
Intentionalitiit in Max Scheler "Der Formalismus in der Ethik und die
materiale Wertethik." Leipzig: Benno Verlag, 1991 (Erfurter theo-
logische Studien, Band 61), pp. 250.

____ ."Ausgleich und Verzicht. Schelers spiiter Gedanke des

Ausgleichs im Licht seines phiinomeno1ogischen Ansatzes." Phiino-
nologische Forschungen. Ed.: E.W. Orth. 28-29, 1994, pp. 204-239.

Henckmann, Wolfhart. "Die Begriindung der Wissenssoziologie bei

Max Scheler." In: Philosophisches Jahrbuch, 85, 1978, pp. 275-300 .

----
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Husserl, Edmund. Die Bernauer Manuskripte iiber das Zeitbewusst-

sein (1917-18). Husserliana XXXIII, Ed.: R. Bernet and D. Lohmar.
Dordrecht I Boston /London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001.

Janssen, P."Die Verwandlung der phiinomenologischen Reduktion im

Werke Max Schelers und das Realitiitsproblem." In: Phiinome-
nologische Forschungen. Ed.: E.W. Orth. 28-29, 1994, pp. 240-270.
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Kelly, Eugene. Max Scheler. Boston: Twayne Publishers. 1977, pp.

203.

_ _ _ ."Essences." Aletheia, VI, 1993-4, pp. 100-15.

____ . Structure and Diversity. Studies in the Phenomenological

Philosophy of Max Scheler. [esp. Chapters 12-14] Dordrecht I Boston
I London: Kluwer Academic Publishers (Phaenomenologica, 141 ),
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____. "Yom Ursprung des Menschen bei Max Scheler." In:

Denken des Ursprungs - Ursprung des Denkens. Schelers Philoso-
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Kiss, Endre."Max Schelers 'Umsturz der Werte' als Kritik der

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Leonardy, Heinz. Liebe und Person. Max Schelers Versuch eines

'phanomenologischen' Personalismus. Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff,
1976.

____ . "La demiere metaphysique de Max Scheler." In: Revue

philosophique de Louvain, 78, 1980, pp 553-561.

____ . "La demiere phi1osophie de Max Scheler." In: Revue

philosophique de Louvain, 79, 1981, pp. 367-390 .

- - - -. "Edmund Husserl. Les annotations dans le Formalisme de

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 BIBLIOGRAPHY 231

- - - -. " 'Es ist schwer, ein Mensch zu sein'. Zur Anthropologie

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____ . "Intellektuelle und Krieg: Max Schelers Wandel vom

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 BIBLIOGRAPHY 235

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Xiaofeng, Liu. Personwerdung. Eine theologische Untersuchung zu

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 INDEX OF SUBJECT MATTER

aging; becoming, life 103-110, consc. 113-114, 154

154 death, un-bcm 105
body 111, 195 empty time 136
consciousness 102, 107-109,
135 expanse 117
duration 127 functionaliztn 70, 99
life values 9, 23, 73, 78 impuls. 103, 112
mind 149 life, directn. 104, 108
transition 117 phases 102, 188
real factrs. 89, 98
agora; 206 self-; 99, 108
spirit, Deity 51-52, 55,
Angst; capit. 175-176, 178 83, 87, 100-101,
drives 77 104, 120-121, 134
impuls. 177, 183 world, view 69, 148
group, 178
suspended 178 children 44, 53, 81, 190, 193,
resistance 176-1 77; Heid. 81 196-203
middle age 106
death 4, 9, 11, 25, 28, 34, 45, 55,
animal; Angst 177 58, 60, 73, 81, 103-107, 127,
drives 139-140, 179, 198 149, 161-162, 181, 186, 197
impuls. 52, 54, 142
librlsm. 198 duration 3, 12-13, 33, 41-42, 45,
percptn. 144 47, 56-57, 59, 63-64 ,73-76,
psych. cont. 34 124, 126-127, 133, 190, 194,
time 26,95-97,112-113,130, 203, 218-220
138
tools 41 economics 5, 33, 67, 88, 149-
val.ranks 1, 3, 5, 9-11, 42, 150, 156-157, 159, 162,
57 166-167, 180-181, 190, 236

atom, atomic 5, 49, 71, 83, elite 215

empty space 13 5
field 130 drives; abs.time; const. of time
impuls. 119-121 69, 95, 108, 113, 138, 191-
inanim. 195 192,206
moral issue 204 animals 13, 112-113, 137,
retrogr. 131, 188 139
warnings 150 curiosity 140
impuls. 51, 86, 95, 108-109
becoming; acts 128 Kant 179-181
abs.time 100, 101, 103, 108- main dr. 69, 97, 154, 177,
110, 117-118, 123, 154, 157, 191
159 mind, devolut. 84, 147-149,
aging 102-104 155, 167, 178, 188,205
bacteria 120 obstr. 142
being 127 peace 150
238
phenomen.96, 101-102,143
real factrs. 92, 94, 152
resist. 176
unfulfill. 137-139, 145
world eras 70, 95, 178, 215
expanse; abs. time 124
Einstein 133
four dim. 118-119, 121-122
impuls. 117-118,123,134
pre-spati o-temp.
functionalization; (impulsion,
spirit, mind) 117-118
field theory 119-120, 128, 130-
133
fluctuation; abs.time I 02, 115,
117
time horizs. 165
impuls. 114, 116, 118, 121,
134
interpr. 115-116, 120
consc. 116
functionalization; impuls.mind
98, 134, 148-150, 152, 188
ont., proc. of- 70-71,
real factrs. 92, 94, 114, 148-
150, 152
rel.nothng. 162
values 72, 74, 219
impulsion (see abs.time, expanse,
fluctuation);
abs.time 97-114; 117, 130-
132,135,147, 154,176,190
Angst 175-176
atomic 119-120
cosmic, universal. 51-52, 86
Deity 57, 104
drives 86, 95, 138, 140, 142,
!52
Einstein 119, 133
field forces 131-132
Heisenberg 120
indiv. 86, 95
fantasy 96, 102, 140, 163
four dim. 118, 121-122, 133
modification 129-130
resistance 86-87, 141-142,
176
LIFETIME
vital energy 85, 87, I 03
intercourse; types and time I O-
Il, 138, 199-201
drives, unfulfillment 138
religion 197-200
life; values 9-14, 22, 26, 30, 36,
39-40, 49-54, 167, 208, 214-
215
phenomenon 95, 176
time 80-81,86-87,90,92,97,
100-108, 110-112, 115-120,
127, 129, 135, 140, 143-148,
154, 156, 158, 162, 177, 186,
192-195, 197,201
spiritualization 92
Mars 120
mind 8, 51-52, 65, 86, 142, !51
abs.time I 09
Angst 176, 177
atom 131
being 154
drives 147, 150
functionalization 94, 114-150
growth, adjustm. 92, I 04,
148-149, 151-153, 178, 185,
188
lagging, distance 90-91, 144
real.factrs. 65, 83, 85-8, 89,
94
sports, body 50, 53-54
vital energy 55
Weber 169
pragmatism. 37, 38, 93, !50
reflection 24, 44, I 02, 111-1 12,
136, 141, 143, 188
retrogression 185, 188
sublimation 54-55, I 04
solidarity; artificial 43, 58
duration 41-43,59,218-220
global 156, 173, 216-217,
220
Pascal 218, 220
time, abs.; Angst 175-176
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 239

characters 99-114, 139, 145,

154-155
cult.issues 191-192, 199, 204,
206,211,214,219
drives 137-138, 155
eras 152, 156
field, vital forces 131-132
filled 135, 137, 158
fluctuation 115, 117, 119
impulsion 133, 135, 176
love 11
mind, 189
("reason") 90
shifts 156-157, 194
soc.forms 155-158
use ofthings 159-160
values 12, 54, 157
prediction 158, 162-163

time, objective xi, xiv

aging 104, 108-109
Angst 175
body 187
charactertistics 110-112, 117
capit. 147, 164, 176, 186-
188, 189
constit. of void 134-139
culture 191-192, 194, 196,
199,204-205,207,210,219
eras 152, 154, 156-157
fluctuation 117-118
good,evil31, 72,74
onto!. 69
person 128-129
pheno. 99, 102, 122-124
prediction 158, 160, 162
resist. 140-142, 188
uses 159
sociol. 33, 35, 45, 59, 62, 75-
76
values, love 3, 8, 11, 12, 24-
26, 185

world-view, natural 36, 41, 47-

49, 75, 93-94, 109, 126-127,
130-132, 134-135, 142, 158,
196
formulated 195-198, 203
world-view (Humboldt) 194-
196,199-201,203-204
 INDEX OF NAMES

Albright, M., 166

Alberti, L.B., 168 Hartmann, N., 65-66
Anaxagoras, 118 Hawthorne, N., 28
Anderson, A., 190 Hegel, G.W.F., xiv, 88, 162,211
Arendt, H., 29 Heidegger, xiv, xv, xvi, 6-7, 36-41, 48-
Aristotle, xiii 50, 62, 65-66, 70, 80, 82-84, 94-95,
Artemis, 51 103, 118, 126, 141, 144, 156-157,
174-175,177,195, 216-217,227
Bach, J.S., 125, 146 Heisenberg, W., 119
Bart, K., 39 Henckmann, W., 101
Beethoven, L.v., 51 Herrmann, F.W.v., 37
Bell, W., 44 Hitler, A., 12, 39
Bentham, J., 209 Hobbes, Th., 209
Berdyaev, N., 29 Humboldt, W.v., 194
Bergson, H., 169 Husser!, E., xv, xvi, 18, 22, 25, 32, 48-
Bermes, Chr., 2, 101 50,82,84,103, Ill, 113,114,141,
Blosser, Ph., 32, 178 144, 195
Bodinus, J., 209
Boehme, J., 29 James, W., 38, 170
Bosio, F., 168 Jesus Christ, 14
Brentano, Fr.v., 21 Juvenal, 54
Brueghel, P., 83
Bruno, G., xiv Kah Kyung Cho, 47
Buddha, 14, 84 Kant, I., x, xiv, xv, 29, 30, 59, 76, 84, 93,
148, 150, 159, 162, 177-181
Kelly, E., vi
Cantor, G., 21, 87, 124
Kieft, T., 119
Clinton, W., 165
Dante, A., 28
La Fontaine, J. de, 190
Darwin, Chrs. R., xvii, I 0 I, 196
La Mettrie, J.O. de, 19
Davy, M.-M., 29
La Rochefoucauld, Due, 209
Democritus, 129
Lenin, V., 209
Descartes, R., xiv, 19-20
Lconardy, H., 2, 101
Dostoevski, 28, 190
Leroux, H., 168
Duns Scotus, 209
Leukippus, 129
Lincoln, A., 92, 212
Eddington, Sir A., 118
Luther, M., 197,209
Einstein, A., xiv, 71, 78, 117-118, 128
Embree, L., 15
Machiavelli, N., 210
Engels, Fr., 200
Mandeville de, B., 209
Marx, K., 191, 196, 200, 204, 209
Fichte, J.G., 83-84
Maxwell, J.C., 129
Freud. S., I 04, 175-176
Melville, H., 29, 190
Frings, M., 37, 47, 80, 85, 118, 134, !51
Merleau-Ponty, M., 2, 143
Mill, J.St., 209
Gessler, 0., 205 Milton, J., 28
Goethe, J.W.v., 28 Mohammed, 14
Gogarten F., 39 Moliere, J.B.P., 169
Grimm, Brothers, 190
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 241

Napoleon, 64
Newton, 1., xiv, 159
Nietzsche, Fr., xiv-xvii, 28, 209

Orsippos, 54
Ortiz, A., 47

Parmenides, xiii, xiv, 48, 77, 118, 157

Pascal, B., 20-21, 172,218-219, 237
Plato, xiii, xv, 54, 61, 62, 180

Racinaro, R., 168

Rathenau, W., 170
Rescher, N., 144
Ricoeur, P., 29
Rosenzweig, W., 119
Roth, A., 21

Scheler, M., xiii-xvii, 1-5,7-8, 10-15, 17-

27, 29-34, 37-39, 41, 44, 46, 48-50,
52-53, 55-56, 59-61, 63, 66-68, 70,
72-73,76-85,87,89-91,93-101, 103-
106, 111-115, 117-120, 122-123,
126-137, 140-141, 143-151, 154,
156-178, 180-184, 186, 188, 190-191,
194,196-200,202-219
Schelling, F.W.J., 29
Shakespeare, W., 190, 205
Sornbart, 166-171,177,186,202
Sophocles, 190
Spencer, E., 198, 209
Spinoza, B., 209
St. Augustine, xiii
St. Francis Assisi, 172-173
St. Thomas, xiv, 171
Staude, J.R., 29
Stein, E., 64
Stikkers, K., 85
Stowe, H.B. 190

Troeltsch, E., 167-168

Tyrnieniecka, A.-T., 15

Verducci, D., 37
Virgil, 202
Vreeland, R., 119

Weber M., 39, 166-169, 171-172, 177,

186,202
Weyl, H., 118, 129
Whitehead, A.N., 100

Zeus, 50-51
 Phaenomenologica
I. E. Fink: Sein, Wahrheit, Welt. Vor-Fragen zum Problem des Phiinomen-Begriffs. 1958
ISBN 90-247-0234-8
2. H.L. van Breda and J. Taminiaux (eds.): Husser/ et Ia pensee moderne I Husser/ und das Denken
der Neuzeit. Actes du deuxieme Colloque International de Phenomeno1ogie I Akten des zweiten
Internationalen Phiinomenologischen Kolloquiums (Krefeld, 1.-3. Nov. 1956). 1959
ISBN 90-247-0235-8
3. J.-C. Piguet: De l'esthetique a Ia metaphysique. 1959 ISBN 90-247-0236-4
4. E. Husser/: 1850-1959. Recueil commemoratif publie a!'occasion du centenaire de Ia naissance
du philosophe. 1959 ISBN 90-247-0237-2
5/6. H. Spiegelberg: The Phenomenological Movement. A Historical Introduction. 3rd revised ed. with
the collaboration of Karl Schuhmann. 1982 ISBN Hb: 90-247-2577-1; Pb: 90-247-2535-6
7. A. Roth: Edmund Husserls ethische Untersuchungen. Dargestellt anhand seiner Vorlesungs-
manuskripte. 1960 ISBN 90-247-0241-0
8. E. Levinas: Totalite et infini. Essai sur l'exteriorite. 4th ed., 4th printing 1984
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9. A. de Wae1hens: La philosophie et les experiences naturelles. 1961 ISBN 90-247-0243-7
10. L. Eley: Die Krise des Apriori in der transzendentalen Phiinomenologie Edmund Husserls. 1962
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11. A. Schutz: Collected Papers, I. The Problem of Social Reality. Edited and introduced by M.
Natanson. 1962; 5th printing: 1982 ISBN Hb: 90-247-5089-X; Pb: 90-247-3046-5
Collected Papers, II see below under Volume 15
Collected Papers, III see below under Volume 22
Collected Papers, IV see below under Volume 136
12. J.M. Broekman: Phiinomenologie und Egologie. Faktisches und transzendentales Ego bei Edmund
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13. W.J. Richardson: Heidegger. Through Phenomenology to Thought. Preface by Martin Heidegger.
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14. J.N. Mohanty: Edmund Husser/'s Theory of Meaning. 1964; reprint: 1969 ISBN 90-247-0247-X
15. A. Schutz: Collected Papers, 11. Studies in Social Theory. Edited and introduced by A. Brodersen.
1964; reprint: 1977 ISBN 90-247-0248-8
16. I. Kern: Husser/ und Kant. Eine Untersuchung iiber Husserls Verhaltnis zu Kant und zum Neu-
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17. R.M. Zaner: The Problem of Embodiment. Some Contributions to a Phenomenology of the Body.
1964; reprint: 1971 ISBN 90-247-5093-8
18. R. Sokolowski: The Formation of Husser/'s Concept of Constitution. 1964; reprint: 1970
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19. U. Claesges: Edmund Husserls Theorie der Raumkonstitution. 1964 ISBN 90-247-0251-8
20. M. Dufrenne: Jalons. 1966 ISBN 90-247-0252-6
21. E. Fink: Studien zur Phiinomenologie, 1930-1939. 1966 ISBN 90-247-0253-4
22. A. Schutz: Collected Papers, lll. Studies in Phenomenological Philosophy. Edited by I. Schutz.
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23. K. Held: Lebendige Gegenwart. Die Frage nach der Seinsweise des transzendentalen Ich bei
Edmund Husser!, entwickelt am Leitfaden der Zeitproblematik. 1966 ISBN 90-247-0254-2
24. 0. Laffoucriere: Le destin de Ia pensee et 'La Mort de Dieu' seton Heidegger. 1968
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25. E. Husser!: Briefe an Roman Jngarden. Mit Erlauterungen und Erinnerungen an Husser!. Hrsg. von
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 Phaenomenologica
27. T. Conrad: Zur Wesenslehre des psychischen Lebens und Erlebens. Mit einem Geleitwort von H.L.
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28. W. Biemel: Philosophische Analysen zur Kunst der Gegenwart. 1969
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34. M.M. Saraiva: L'imagination selon Husser/. 1970 ISBN 90-247-0273-9
35. P. Janssen: Geschichte und Lebenswelt. Ein Beitrag zur Diskussion von Husserls Spatwerk. 1970
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36. W. Marx: Vernunft und Welt. Zwischen Tradition und anderem Anfang. 1970
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37. J.N. Mohanty: Phenomenology and Ontology. 1970 ISBN 90-247-5053-9
38. A. Aguirre: Genetische Phiinomenologie und Reduktion. Zur Letztbegriindung der Wissenschaft
aus der radikalen Skepsis im Denken E. Husserls. 1970 ISBN 90-247-5025-3
39. T.F. Geraets: Vers une nouvelle philosophie transcendentale. La genese de Ia philosophie de
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1971 ISBN 90-247-5024-5
40. H. Decleve: Heidegger et Kant. 1970 ISBN 90-247-5016-4
41. B. Waldenfels: Das Zwischenreich des Dialogs. Sozialphilosophische Untersuchungen in Anschluss
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42. K. Schuhmann: Die Fundamentalbetrachtung der Phiinomenologie. Zum Weltproblem in der
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43. K. Goldstein: Selected Papers/Ausgewiihlte Schriften. Edited by A. Gurwitsch, E.M. Goldstein
Haudek and W.E. Haudek. Introduction by A. Gurwitsch. 1971 ISBN 90-247-5047-4
44. E. Holenstein: Phiinomenologie der Assoziation. Zu Struktur und Funktion eines Grundprinzips
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45. F. Hammer: Theonome Anthropologie? Max Schelers Menschenbild und seine Grenzen. 1972
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46. A. Paianin: Wissenschaft und Geschichte in der Phiinomenologie Edmund Husserls. 1972
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48. J. Rolland de Reneville: Aventure de l'absolu. 1972 ISBN 90-247-1319-6
49. U. Claesges und K. Held (eds.): Perspektiven transzendental-phiinomenologischer Forschung. Fiir
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50. F. Kersten and R. Zaner (eds.): Phenomenology: Continuation and Criticism. Essays in Memory
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56. K. Schuhmann: Die Dialektik der Phiinomenologie, I. Husser! iiber Pfander. 1973
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58. R. Williame: Les fondements phenomenologiques de Ia sociologie comprehensive: Alfred Schutz
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59. E. Marbach: Das Problem des Ich in der Phiinomenologie Husserls. 1974 ISBN 90-247-1587-3
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62. Ph.J. Bossert (ed.): Phenomenological Perspectives. Historical and Systematic Essays in Honor of
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63. H. Spiegelberg: Doing Phenomenology. Essays on and in Phenomenology. 1975
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64. R. Ingarden: On the Motives which Led Husser! to Transcendental Idealism. 1975
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65. H. Kuhn, E. Ave-Lallemant and R. Gladiator (eds.): Die Miinchener Phiinomenologie. Vortriige
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66. D. Cairns: Conversations with Husser! and Fink. Edited by the Husserl-Archives in Lou vain. With
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67. G. Hoyos Vasquez: Intentionalitiit als Verantwortung. Geschichtsteleologie und Teleologie der
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68. J. Patocka: Le monde nature! comme probleme philosophique. 1976 ISBN 90-247-1795-7
69. W.W. Fuchs: Phenomenology and the Metaphysics of Presence. An Essay in the Philosophy of
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70. S. Cunningham: Language and the Phenomenological Reductions of Edmund Husser!. 1976
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71. G.C. Moneta: On Identity. A Study in Genetic Phenomenology. 1976 ISBN 90-247-1860-0
72. W. Biemel und das Husserl-Archiv zu Lowen (eds.): Die Welt des Menschen - Die Welt der
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73. M. Richir: Au-dela du renversement copernicien. La question de Ia phenomenologie et son
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74. H. Mongis: Heidegger et Ia critique de Ia notion de valeur. La destruction de Ia fondation
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76. Th. de Boer: The Development of Husser/'s Thought. 1978
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77. R.R. Cox: Schutz's Theory of Relevance. A Phenomenological Critique. 1978
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78. S. Strasser: Jenseits von Sein und Zeit. Eine Einfiihrung in Emmanuel Levinas' Philosophie. 1978
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79. R.T. Murphy: Hume and Husser!. Towards Radical Subjectivism. 1980 ISBN 90-247-2172-5
80. H. Spiegelberg: The Context of the Phenomenological Movement. 1981 ISBN 90-247-2392-2
81. J.R. Mensch: The Question of Being in Husser/'s Lagical Investigations. 1981
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82. J. Loscerbo: Being and Technology. A Study in the Philosophy of Martin Heidegger. 1981
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83. R. Boehm: Vom Gesichtspunkt der Phiinomenologie II. Studien zur Phiinomenologie der Epoche.
1981 ISBN 90-247-2415-5
 Phaenomenologica
84. H. Spiegelberg and E. Ave-Lallemant (eds.): Pfiinder-Studien. 1982 ISBN 90-247-2490-2
85. S. Valdinoci: Lesfondements de Ia phenomenologie husserlienne. 1982 ISBN 90-247-2504-6
86. I. Yamaguchi: Passive Synthesis und Intersubjektivitiit bei Edmund Husser/. 1982
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87. J. Libertson: Proximity. Levinas, Blanchot, Bataille and Communication. 1982
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88. D. Welton: The Origins of Meaning. A Critical Study of the Thresholds of Husserlian Phenomen-
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89. W.R. McKenna: Husser/'s 'Introductions to Phenomenology'. Interpretation and Critique. 1982
ISBN 90-247-2665-4
90. J.P. Miller: Numbers in Presence and Absence. A Study of Husserl's Philosophy of Mathematics.
1982 ISBN 90-247-2709-X
91. U. Melle: Das Wahrnehmungsproblem und seine Verwandlung inphiinomenologischer Einstellung.
Untersuchungen zu den phiinomenologischen Wahrnehmungstheorien von Husserl, Gurwitsch und
Merleau-Ponty. 1983 ISBN 90-247-2761-8
92. W.S. Hamrick (ed.): Phenomenology in Practice and Theory. Essays for Herbert Spiegelberg. 1984
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93. H. Reiner: Duty and Inclination. The Fundamentals of Morality Discussed and Redefined with
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94. M.J. Harney: Intentionality, Sense and the Mind. I 984 ISBN 90-247-289I -6
95. Kah Kyung Cho (ed.): Philosophy and Science in Phenomenological Perspective. 1984
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96. A. Lingis: Phenomenological Explanations. 1986 ISBN Hb: 90-247-3332-4; Pb: 90-247-3333-2
97. N. Rotenstreich: Reflection and Action. 1985 ISBN Hb: 90-247 -2969-6; Pb: 90-247-3128-3
98. J.N. Mohanty: The Possibility of Transcendental Philosophy. 1985
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100. E. Levinas: Collected Philosophical Papers. 1987
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101. R. Regvald: Heidegger et le probleme du neant. 1986 ISBN 90-247-3388-X
102. J.A. Barash: Martin Heidegger and the Problem of Historical Meaning. 1987
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103. J.J. Kockelmans (ed.): Phenomenological Psychology. The Dutch School. 1987
ISBN 90-247-3501-7
104. W.S. Hamrick: An Existential Phenomenology of Law: Maurice Merleau-Ponty. 1987
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105. J.C. Sallis, G. Moneta and J. Taminiaux (eds.): The Collegium Phaenomenologicum. The First Ten
Years. 1988 ISBN 90-247-3709-5
106. D. Carr: Interpreting Husser/. Critical and Comparative Studies. 1987. ISBN 90-247-3505-X
107. G. Heffernan: Isagoge in die phiinomenologische Apophantik. Eine Einfiihrung in die
phiinomenologische Urteilslogik durch die Auslegung des Textes der Forma/en und transzendenten
Logik von Edmund Husser!. 1989 ISBN 90-247-3710-9
108. F. Volpi, J.-F. Mattei, Th. Sheenan, J.-F. Courtine, J. Taminiaux, J. Sallis, D. Janicaud, A.L. Kelkel,
R. Bernet, R. Brisart, K. Held, M. Haar et S. Usseling: Heidegger et /'idee de Ia phenomenologie.
1988 ISBN 90-247-3586-6
109. C. Singevin: Dramaturgie de /'esprit. 1988 ISBN 90-247-3557-2
110. J. Patocka: Le monde nature/ et le mouvement de /'existence humaine. 1988ISBN 90-247-3577-7
Ill. K.-H. Lembeck: Gegenstand Geschichte. Geschichtswissenschaft in Husserls Phiinomenologie.
1988 ISBN 90-247-3635-8
112. J.K. Cooper-Wiele: The Totalizing Act. Key to Husserl's Early Philosophy. 1989
ISBN 0-7923-0077-7
 Phaenomenologica
113. S. Valdinoci: Le principe d'existence. Un devenir psychiatrique de Ia phenomenologie. 1989
ISBN 0-7923-0125-0
114. D. Lohmar: Phiinomenologie der Mathematik. 1989 ISBN 0-7923-0187-0
115. S. !Jsseling (Hrsgb.): Husserl-Ausgabe und Husserl-Forschung. 1990 ISBN 0-7923-0372-5
116. R. Cobb-Stevens: Husser! and Analytic Philosophy. 1990 ISBN 0-7923-0467-5
117. R. Klockenbusch: Husser! und Cohn. Widerspruch, Reflexion und Telos in Phanomenologie und
Dialektik. 1989 ISBN 0-7923-0515-9
118. S. Vaitkus: How is Society Possible? Intersubjectivity and the Fiduciary Attitude as Problems of
the Social Group in Mead, Gurwitsch, and Schutz. 1991 ISBN 0-7923-0820-4
119. C. Macann: Presence and Coincidence. The Transformation of Transcendental into Ontological
Phenomenology. 1991 ISBN 0-7923-0923-5
120. G. Shpet: Appearance and Sense. Phenomenology as the Fundamental Science and Its Problems.
Translated from Russian by Th. Nemeth. 1991 ISBN 0-7923-1098-5
121. B. Stevens: L'apprentissage des signes. Lecture de Paul Ricceur. 1991 ISBN 0-7923-1244-9
122. G. Soffer: Husser/ and the Question of Relativism. 1991 ISBN 0-7923-1291-0
123. G. Riimpp: Husser/s Phiinomenologie der Intersubjektivitiit. Und Ihre Bedeutung fiir eine Theorie
intersubjektiver Objektivitat und die Konzeption einer phanomenologischen Philosophie. 1991
ISBN 0-7923-1361-5
124. S. Strasser: Welt im Widerspruch. Gedanken zu einer Phanomenologie als ethischer Fundamental-
philosophie. 1991 ISBN Hb: 0-7923-1404-2; Pb: 0-7923-1551-0
125. R.P. Buckley: Husser/, Heidegger and the Crisis of Philosophical Responsibility. 1992
ISBN 0-7923-1633-9
126. J.G. Hart: The Person and the Common Life. Studies in a Husserlian Social Ethics. 1992
ISBN 0-7923-1724-6
127. P. van Tongeren, P. Sars, C. Bremmers and K. Boey (eds.): Eros and Eris. Contributions to a
Hermeneutical Phenomenology. Liber Amicorum for Adriaan Peperzak. 1992
ISBN 0-7923-1917-6
128. Nam-In Lee: Edmund Husserls Phiinomenologie der Instinkte. 1993 ISBN 0-7923-2041-7
129. P. Burke and J. Vander Veken (eds.): Merleau-Ponty in Contemporary Perspective. 1993
ISBN 0-7923-2142-1
130. G. Haefliger: Uber Existenz: Die Ontologie Roman lngardens. 1994 ISBN 0-7923-2227-4
131. J. Lampert: Synthesis and Backward Reference in Husser/'s Logical Investigations. 1995
ISBN 0-7923-3105-2
132. J.M. DuBois: Judgment and Sachverhalt. An Introduction to Adolf Reinach's Phenomenological
Realism. 1995 ISBN 0-7923-3519-8
133. B.E. Babich (ed.): From Phenomenology to Thought, Errancy, and Desire. Essays in Honor of
William J. Richardson, S.J. 1995 ISBN 0-7923-3567-8
134. M. Dupuis: Pronoms et visages. Lecture d'Emmanuel Levinas. 1996
ISBN Hb: 0-7923-3655-0; Pb 0-7923-3994-0
135. D. Zahavi: Husser/ und die transzendentale Intersubjektivitiit. Eine Antwort auf die sprachprag-
matische Kritik. 1996 ISBN 0-7923-3 713-1
136. A. Schutz: Collected Papers, IV Edited with preface and notes by H. Wagner and G. Psathas, in
collaboration with F. Kersten. 1996 ISBN 0-7923-3760-3
137. P. Kontos: D'une phenomenologie de Ia perception chez Heidegger. 1996 ISBN 0-7923-3776-X
138. F. Kuster: Wege der Verantwortung. Husserls Phanomenologie als Gang durch die Faktizitat. 1996
ISBN 0-7923-3916-9
139. C. Beyer: Von Bo/zano zu Husser/. Eine Untersuchung iiber den Ursprung der phanomenologischen
Bedeutungslehre. 1996 ISBN 0-7923-4050-7
140. J. Dodd: Idealism and Corporeity. An Essay on the Problem of the Body in Husserl's Phenomen-
ology. 1997 ISBN 0-7923-4400-6
141. E. Kelly: Structure and Diversity. Studies in the Phenomenological Philosophy of Max Scheler.
1997 ISBN 0-7923-4492-8
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142. J. Cavallin: Content and Object. Husser!, Twardowski and Psychologism. 1997
ISBN 0-7923-4734-X
143. H.P. Steeves: Founding Community. A Phenomenological-Ethical Inquiry. 1997
ISBN 0-7923-4 798-6
144. M. Sawicki: Body, Text, and Science. The Literacy oflnvestigative Practices and the Phenomeno-
logy of Edith Stein. 1997 ISBN 0-7923-4759-5; Pb: 1-4020-0262-9
145. O.K. Wiegand: lnterpretationen der Modallogik. Ein Beitrag zur phiinomenologischen Wis-
senschaftstheorie. 1998 ISBN 0-7923-4809-5
146. P. Marrati-Guenoun: La genese et Ia trace. Derrida lecteur de Husser! et Heidegger. 1998
ISBN 0-7923-4969-5
147. D. Lohmar: Erfahrung und kategoriales Denken. I998 ISBN 0-7923-5117-7
148. N. Depraz and D. Zahavi (eds.): Alterity and Facticity. New Perspectives on Husser!. 1998
ISBN 0-7923-5187-8
149. E. 0verenget: Seeing the Self Heidegger on Subjectivity. 1998
ISBN Hb: 0-7923-5219-X; Pb: 1-4020-0259-9
150. R.D. Rollinger: Husserls Position in the School of Brentano. 1999 ISBN 0-7923-5684-5
151. A. Chrudzimski: Die Erkenntnistheorie von Roman lngarden. 1999 ISBN 0-7923-5688-8
152. B. Bergo: Levinas Between Ethics and Politics. For the Beauty that Adorns the Earth. 1999
ISBN 0-7923-5694-2
153. L. Ni: Seinsglaube in der Phiinomenologie Edmund Husserls. 1999 ISBN 0-7923-5779-5
154. E. Peron: Phenomenologie de Ia mort. Surles traces de Levinas. 1999 ISBN 0-7923-5935-6
155. R. Visker: Truth and Singularity. Taking Foucault into Phenomenology. 1999
ISBN Hb: 0-7923-5985-2; Pb: 0-7923-6397-3
156. E.E. Kleist: Judging Appearances. A Phenomenological Study of the Kantian sensus communis.
2000 ISBN Hb: 0-7923-6310-8; Pb: 1-4020-0258-0
157. D. Pradelle: L'archeologie du monde. Constitution de l'espace, idealisme et intuitionnisme chez
Husser!. 2000 ISBN 0-7923-6313-2
158. H.B. Schmid: Subjekt, System, Diskurs. Edmund Husserls Begriff transzendentaler Subjektivitiit
in sozia1theoretischen Beziigen. 2000 ISBN 0-7923-6424-4
159. A. Chrudzimski: lntentionalitiitstheorie beim friihen Brentano. 200 I ISBN 0-7923-6860-6
160. N. Depraz: Luciditi du corps. De l'empirisme transcendantal en phenomenologie. 2001
ISBN 0-7923-6977-7
161. T. Kortooms: Phenomenology of Time. Edmund Husserl's Analysis of Time-Consciousness. 2001
ISBN 1-4020-0121-5
162. R. Boehm: Topik. 2002 ISBN 1-4020-0629-2
163. A. Chernyakov: The Ontology of Time. Being and Time in the Philosophies of Aristotle, Husser!
and Heidegger. 2002 ISBN 1-4020-0682-9
164. D. Zahavi and F. Stjernfelt (eds.): One Hundred Years of Phenomenology. Husser!' Logical Invest-
igations Revisited. 2002 ISBN 1-4020-0700-0
165. B. Ferreira: Stimmung bei Heidegger. Das Phiinomen der Stimmung im Kontext von Heideggers
Existenzialanalyse des Daseins. 2002 ISBN 1-4020-0701-9
166. S. Luft: Phiinomenologie der Phiinomenologie. Systematik und Methodologie der Phiinomenologie
in der Auseinandersetzung zwischen Husser[ und Fink. 2002 ISBN 1-4020-0901-1
167. M. Roesner: Metaphysica ludens. Das Spiel als phiinomenologische Grundfigur im Denken Martin
Heideggers. 2003 ISBN 1-4020-1234-9
168. M.S. Frings: LifeTime. Max Scheler's Philosophy of Time. A First Inquiry and Presentation. 2003
ISBN 1-4020-1333-7

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