Scheler vs. Heidegger, Part III: The Ontological Structure of 'World'--'Being-In' and 'Being-Toward'

The last post (Part II) has indeed generated fruitful dialogue, but the content of that dialogue has not made me change the course of my initial trajectory in this comparison of the thought of these two great German phenomenologists. Dominic has argued that the question is misposed, and by its specific framing, there is "no way Scheler can come out on top" since we may have implied (we have in now way 'proposed') we go "hunting for Heidegger's Dasein in Scheler's account." But what is the question exactly? It is, yet again, as John White proposed: Whether "a human being's 'Being-in-the-world' is better characterized morally and practically as 'Being-toward-value'." This is my question; it is in no way framed insufficiently, for we are not yet granting Dasein's relation to the world is the measure by which we are judging Scheler's ontology, but we are asking which relation better characterizes a human one, and harmonizes most with human experience.

But there are still many more steps we need to take in this regard, because, whereas a priority for Heidegger is precisely to explicate and establish this relation explicitly through his description of the unified phenomenon of being-in-the-world, Scheler's is not as explicit. So, indeed, this takes some searching to fill in what White might mean by 'Being-toward-value,' noted after his delineation of Scheler's philosophy of love. Therefore, we are searching, not at all for Dasein in Scheler, but only Scheler's own conception of this unified relation toward 'world.'

For this end, I will move from the anthropological problematic of Part II, to a discussion of Heidegger and Scheler's conceptions of human beings relation to the world, precisely in the ontological structure of 'world,' laying emphasis on the element Heidegger described as "in-ness." Having laid this foundation, we will both raze to ruins Heidegger's criticism of Scheler's anthropology by revealing Heidegger's inherently shallow description of it in §47, and simultaneously lay the framework by which we can understand how Scheler's system of material values (with there lack in Heidegger) and the personal being's relation to them serves as the final death blow, viz., the characteristic that shows the superiority of Scheler's ontology.

In his chapter, "The Essence of Spirit," in Man's Place in Nature, Scheler magnificently describes the essential difference between animal and man as the difference between environment and world and the relation of the respective being to each. The animal can never separate itself from its environment, i.e., can never recognize things as objects. That which is most characteristic of man, however, transcends life and "leads back to the ultimate Ground of Being." This element is called spirit.

The first important characteristic is that spirit transcends environment, which enables man to relate to things as objects, counting himself as something very different: spirit is never an object, but lives dynamically in its acts. The spiritual being is "'free from the environment'", that is, '"open to the world.'" Such a being therefore is correlative with 'world.' However, this by no means indicates a kind of static conception of a single and 'self-given' world, or in the sense of a subject-object dichotomy, but he is simply establishing first a kind of "fundamental ontology" if you will: A spiritual person is fundamentally constituted by a "world-openness." "Man, then, is a being that can exhibit, to an unlimited degree, behavior with is open to the world. To become human is to aquire this openness to the world by virtue of spirit"(39). Furthermore, "man as a spiritual being is a being that surpasses himself in the world. As such he is also capable of irony and humor which always indicate the transcendence of actual existence (Dasein)"(46-7). In a sense, then, spirit--not the spiritual being constituted as a whole, but its "center"--is outside space and time.

Did I not say, however, that I would lay emphasis on the "in-ness" of this relation between person and world? Indeed, but this claim of transcendence is important for two reasons: first because in relation to Heidegger, this is very new, for Heidegger exerts his entire energy on this "in-ness," and not enough, I think, on any transcendent element. And secondly, because it is this transcendent element, coupled with the "in-ness" where Scheler is most powerful, for he breaks the tradition of thinkers who typically end up on one side or the other. Cf. Idealismus-Realismus.

Again, Heidegger's project largely concerns the "Being together with" the world. "Being-in" means not the bare, being in something, but the relation which two beings have in their common being in space. Dasein's being-in, "in the sense of being absorbed in the world" is elaborated by experience of throwness and angst, and ultimately will be the ground for historicity. Due to this, Heidegger rightly notices how things in the world are not just an agglomerate of independent objects, but are beings in unique relation and reference to Dasein, and are seen primarily, in their everydayness, in terms of their meaning and function for Dasein. I will admit there is strength in this analysis, and as we shall see it entails a concept of world very similar to, if not taken over from, Scheler's account. But it is largely one sided. Even in relation to the question of the Being of beings, and the meaning of being as such, a fundamental ontology need not only rests on this intimate relation. Rather, human beings are also characterized, and thus more completely characterized, by an element of transcendence from Dasein, meant (in Scheler's context) in the sense of "being-there"--"actual existence." For does not Heidegger even presuppose such a transcendence--that we can make things as objects for ourselves--in his very phenomenology? If he did not, Dasein would be nothing more than an animal inexorably bound to, and therefore unable to detach from, its environment! Thus Scheler shows that the constitution of Dasein must mean more than simply "being-in-the-world," i.e., "being absorbed in the world," so not to incur the inevitable fate of objectless animality. Where does one draw the dividing line? If Dasein is that for which being is an issue, this already entails a type of transcendence, but a transcendence lost a midst Dasein's "being-in" or "being together with the world." Or should we say, being together with the environment? A human being is rather better characterized by "being-toward," which reveals Scheler's emphasis on person as "being that can exhibit, to an unlimited degree, behavior with is open to the world."

But Scheler, even in emphasizing a transcendent element of spirit, is by no means an idealist: the spiritual person is still vastly different from Kant’s subject as transcendental apperception. We simply have to have recourse to Scheler’s earlier Formalismus it find an answer, in the section: “Person and World” (F 393-6). The world is always “the correlate of the person,” and so he is never a ‘part’ of a world. Every world is only “the world of a person.” Here he discounts all attempts to establish that there is only one single world, one “regarded as ‘self-given’ and ‘absolute,’ [but its] singularity and sameness are only an illusion.” Why is this the case? It is so because the person experiences the world in terms of different sets of meanings and value structures that arise from ones experiences of the world and the ‘cogiven’ idea of God and his macrocosmic world. Thus, like Heidegger, the world for an individual person is not simply a set of objects with static ‘natures’ but are things imbued with meaning and function—with value. This is why one can experience many things in a given life, but only a small number of those things actually mean anything to him, i.e., actually arise out of neutrality and, thus are meaningful.

These elements are very similar in Scheler and Heidegger, but we have yet much work to do, because this notion of world is as yet, for Scheler, in a very undeveloped form for the very crux of his conception has not yet been met, for a full understanding of meaning in the world inextricably follows upon Scheler’s very precise philosophy of material values, and the person’s exact relation to those values, and therefore relation to world, cannot be understood without first understand his notion of love! These are absolutely key in Scheler’s theory of ontology to the extent that what I said here in elaborating Scheler’s position should not be taken by any means, complete, but still largely undeveloped. For what we have yet to do is enter the realm of ethics—for what could be called Scheler’s fundamental ontology is first and foremost an ethical one, for the person, imbued with value, and relating by love-toward-value, is fundamentally constituted by an ethos. And it upon entering the realm of ethics that we precisely leave Heidegger in the dust.

In other words, what I have sought to do here in this post is to go no further than “being-toward” and to discover how it relates to “being-in.” It is the element of transcendence that is included in the former and not the latter that places “being-toward” as a better way of characterizing ontology.

What we have left to do is uncover the "being-toward-VALUE, which will prove to be no small and easy task, but will, again, constitute the proverbial death blow to Heidegger who remains only on the bare level of 'world,' or perhaps Dasein is simply and only an animal in its environment.