Max Scheler

German phenomenologist (1874–1928); Munich phenomenology school. Author of Der Formalismus in der Ethik und die materiale Wertethik (1913–16), Vom Umsturz der Werte (collection containing "Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen", 1912), Die Stellung des Menschen im Kosmos (1928), among many others. MP's 1935 review of Scheler's Ressentiment (the first sustained MP-engagement with phenomenology in print) is reprinted as Chapter 7 of *Texts and Dialogues*.

Key Points

  • MP's 1935 review of Ressentiment (originally La Vie intellectuelle 1935) is one of MP's earliest published philosophical writings. It analyzes Scheler's reading of Nietzsche (the "Catholic Nietzsche," per Troeltsch's nickname) and develops MP's anti-reductive method via the four-fold "rhythm of ressentiment": reductions in the theory of life (Lamarckism/Darwinism reducing growth to preservation), of emotions (Cartesian-Spinozist mechanism), of knowledge (criteria-search displacing direct evidences), of morality (utilitarianism, altruism, Comtean replacement of love-of-neighbor by love-of-the-human-race).
  • Scheler's two-stratum analysis of emotional life (which MP endorses): Gefühlzustand (affective states — anger, rage, rapture, whole in themselves) vs reines Fühlen (intentional acts — sympathy, love, hatred, pursuing terms other than themselves). Only intentional acts have phenomenological access to values; states do not. The intentionality of values is "a-logical" — not reducible to intellectual significations.
  • Scheler's hierarchy of values: agreeable / vital / spiritual (truth, beauty, justice) / sacred. Moral values are not located in this hierarchy but realize values across all levels. Absolute moral value tends toward the highest values. MP's qualified endorsement: this gives Kant's "a priori" a material content (objects of concrete intention with extratemporal necessity) without falling into Kantian formalism.
  • The polemic against humanitarianism: MP follows Scheler in distinguishing Christian agape (love of neighbor as carnal-particular) from humanitarian altruism (Comte's human race). The latter, MP argues with Scheler, is structurally a ressentiment-phenomenon: love-of-the-human-race conceals self-hatred and condescension to others' suffering. Pascal's le moi est haïssable falls under the same diagnosis.
  • MP's qualifications of Scheler: (a) Scheler doesn't sufficiently address the theology implied by Christianity-as-non-ressentiment; (b) Scheler's distinction between vital and spiritual asceticism risks aestheticizing religious value; (c) the relation between "spiritual person" and embodied consciousness in Scheler is not fully developed.
  • Significance for MP: The 1935 review is the earliest documented MP articulation of an anti-reductive method applied across philosophical disciplines (life, emotions, knowledge, morality). It pre-dates The Structure of Behavior (1942) by seven years and the freud-without-demonology method of the 1954–55 Passivity course by 19 years. The 1935 attestation is a load-bearing genealogical anchor for MP's lifelong methodological commitments.
  • Bertram's Nietzsche, Essai de mythologie (1932 French translation) is MP's secondary source: Bertram argues that Nietzsche's "enemies" (Schopenhauer, Wagner, Socrates, St. Paul) are "internal enemies" — phantoms of his own mind. MP cites Bertram alongside Scheler to argue that the Christianity Nietzsche attacks is also a phantom of Nietzsche's own ressentiment-formation, not Christianity properly so called.

Connections

  • was reviewed by MP in 1935 — Chapter 7 of merleau-ponty-1992-texts-and-dialogues
  • grounded MP's earliest reading of Nietzsche — Scheler is MP's mediator for the ressentiment analysis
  • anchors the 1935 anti-reductive method anticipating freud-without-demonology
  • contrasts with Comte / Mill / Spencer — humanitarian altruism diagnosed as ressentiment by Scheler-MP
  • appears as a peer of gabriel-marcel — both are 1930s phenomenology-existentialism interlocutors that the early MP engaged via review

Sources

  • merleau-ponty-1992-texts-and-dialogues — Chapter 7 ("Christianity and Ressentiment", 1935; original "Christianisme et ressentiment" La Vie intellectuelle 36 [1935]), pp. 109–24. MP's most sustained early engagement with Scheler. Translation by Gerald G. Wening.
  • Scheler, Ressentiment (trans. William W. Holdheim, Schocken Books 1961) — MP's primary source.
  • Bertram, Nietzsche, Essai de mythologie (trans. Pitrou, The Hague: Reidel, 1932) — MP's secondary source for the Nietzsche-as-self-target reading.