Metaphysical Horizons: Spirit and Life

Abstract

In this chapter, I will focus upon Scheler’s complex, diffuse, and, I think, ultimately misbegotten later work in metaphysics. Scheler’s thought underwent a seachange in these final six years,¹³⁹ and seems to have lost its connection with the phenomenological method, which dominated his earlier work. These changes include, first, the abandonment of attempts to provide an Augustinian rather than a Thomistic foundation for Roman Catholic belief, and the turn toward the development of an original speculative metaphysics that would give us some form of access to absolute being. Second, the shift to metaphysics is coupled with his development of a form of vitalism applied to both humanity and the Ursein, which latter is characterized as a duality of interpenetrating and mutually founding primordial spirit and universal life. Third, Scheler abandons his concern for the phenomenological exhibition of essences unrelated to the metaphysics he was preparing, and proposes instead what he calls the ontology of essence. Here there is a shift from a concept of the spirit as the ontological ground¹⁴⁰ of human consciousness and of the autonomous will of moral agents, to one that understands spirit as receptive and apparently impotent to alter the course of events in the world, but which, paradoxically, is given a creative and active role in the cosmos. Fourth, Scheler’s concept of personhood, so prominent in the phenomenology of Der Formalismus in der Ethik, gives way to the development of a philosophical anthropology independent of Heidegger, but one born of a struggle with, and meditation upon, Sein and Zeit. In this chapter, I develop and analyze these central themes in the late work. By reference to them, I seek to incorporate the detailed movements of his thought into a general picture of his late philosophical itinerary, and to diagnose its philosophical significance and validity. I will emphasize but not limit my presentation to the recently published manuscripts.