Nicolai Hartmann, "Max Scheler †"

Nicolai Hartmanns Neue Ontologie und die Philosophische Anthropologie Philosophische Anthropologie Herausgegeben von Hans-Peter Krüger und Gesa Lindemann Wissenschaftlicher Beirat: Richard Shusterman (Philadelphia) und Gerhard Roth (Bremen) Band 11 Nicolai Hartmanns Neue Ontologie und die Philosophische Anthropologie Menschliches Leben in Natur und Geist Herausgegeben von Moritz von Kalckreuth, Gregor Schmieg und Friedrich Hausen Gedruckt mit freundlicher Unterstützung der Projektgruppe „Complexity or Control?“ und der Potsdam Graduate School. ISBN 978-3-11-061390-2 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-061555-5 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-061436-7 ISSN 2191-9275 Library of Congress Control Number: 2019932024 Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über http://dnb.dnb.de abrufbar. © 2019 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Druck und Bindung: CPI books GmbH, Leck www.degruyter.com Danksagung Dieser Band steht am Ende eines längerfristigen Arbeitsprozesses, bei dem uns von vielen Seiten Unterstützung zuteilwurde. Zunächst danken wir der Helmuth Plessner Gesellschaft e.V. und der Potsdam Graduate School für die großzügige Förderung der Tagung im November 2016. Dann danken wir dem Institut für Philosophie der Universität Potsdam und hier insbesondere Hans-Peter Krüger dafür, die Veranstaltung am Institut durchführen zu dürfen und ferner für die rührige Unterstützung vor Ort. Joachim Fischer danken wir für viele Anregungen bei der inhaltlichen Vorbereitung der Tagung. Dann danken wir der Lüneburger Projektgruppe „Complexity or Control?“ sowie noch einmal der Potsdam Graduate School für die Gewährung eines großzügigen Druckkostenzuschusses. Dem Verlag Walter De Gruyter und den Reihenherausgebern Gesa Lindemann und Hans-Peter Krüger danken wir für die Bereitschaft, den Band in Nicolai Hartmanns „Hausverlag“ und in der Reihe Philosophische Anthropologie veröffentlichen zu dürfen. Lisa Spöri danken wir für eine erste Durchsicht der Beiträge und Thomas Ebke für zahlreiche Ratschläge hinsichtlich der Edition. Einen ganz besonderen Dank möchten wir schließlich Matthias Wunsch aussprechen, der von den ersten Überlegungen bis zur Vorbereitung dieser Publikation als engagierter Ansprechpartner zur Verfügung stand. Berlin, Juli 2018. Die Herausgeber https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110615555-001 Inhalt Moritz v. Kalckreuth/Gregor Schmieg/Friedrich Hausen Einleitung 1 Katrin Felgenhauer Philosophie aus der Ferne? Zur Autonomie des Seins im a-zentrischen Ansatz Nicolai Hartmanns und 11 im ex-zentrischen Ansatz Helmuth Plessners Jörn Bohr Wie ist eine „anthropologische Einlösung“ der Kategorienlehre Nicolai 29 Hartmanns überhaupt möglich? Georg Toepfer Schichtenlehre, Phänomenologie und Kategorialanalyse in der Philosophie 45 des Organischen von Nicolai Hartmann und Helmuth Plessner Gregor Schmieg Das Reflexivitätsproblem und die Kategorienlehre Versuch einer Aktualisierung 63 Matthias Wunsch Lebendige Individuen und ihre Umgebungen Zur Frage ausgedehnter Grenzen bei Nicolai Hartmann 89 Carlo Brentari “Consistency” and maintenance of the personal identity in Nicolai 111 Hartmann’s Philosophie der Natur Moritz v. Kalckreuth Bedingungen und Vollzug von Personalität Was wir von Helmuth Plessner, Nicolai Hartmann und Max Scheler über 127 die Frage nach der Person lernen können Antonio Da Re Person, Gesamtperson und Geistiges Sein Nicolai Hartmann im Vergleich mit Max Scheler 153 VIII Inhalt Steffen Kluck Tradition als Anthropinon? 173 Frédéric Tremblay Ontological Axiology in Nikolai Lossky, Max Scheler, and Nicolai 193 Hartmann Friedrich Hausen Hohe und höchste Werte Zur Verteidigung einer umstrittenen Idee bei Scheler und 233 Hartmann Anhang Nicolai Hartmann Max Scheler † Translated by Frédéric Tremblay 273 Personenverzeichnis Sachverzeichnis 277 263 Nicolai Hartmann Max Scheler † Translated by Frédéric Tremblay Abstract: This is a translation of the obituary that Nicolai Hartmann wrote for his colleague and friend, Max Scheler, after the latter’s premature death in 1928. In this eulogy, after emphasizing the unfortunate incompleteness of Scheler’s lifework, his keeping abreast with the development of the various sciences, his power of intuition, and the fact that he was a philosopher of life without for that matter having a Lebensphilosophie, Hartmann chronologically recapitulates Scheler’s life achievements, beginning with his career in Jena, his interest for ethical principles, his relation to the phenomenological movement in Munich, his theory of values, wartime in Berlin, his work on the sociology of knowledge, he gives us glimpses into Scheler’s unwritten and still fluctuating metaphysical views, his ever-growing interest in ontological questions, which was guided by his continued interest in the problem of man, his power of relearning, and the apparent contradictions in his thought, which, Hartmann says, was primarily the thought of a “problem-thinker.” The original German text was first published in Kant-Studien: Philosophische Zeitschrift der Kant-Gesellschaft, 33, 1928, ix‒xvi. The original pagination is indicated in angle brackets. Keywords: Nicolai Hartmann, Max Scheler, Twentieth Century German Philosophy, Phenomenology, Axiology, Theory of Values, Material Value Ethics, Intuition of Values <IX> On May 19th, Max Scheler succumbed to a heart attack in Frankfurt. In the midst of his newly begun teaching activities at the University of Frankfurt, in the midst of his work on his great anthropological and metaphysical projects, he was taken by death, as unexpectedly to himself as to his numerous friends and students. His lifework remains unfinished. He, who was not yet even fifty four years old, still saw it as lying more in the future than in the past. He was neither deluded by the high degree of scientific fame and recognition that he enjoyed, nor by the far-reaching impact of his writings within as well as beyond the German border, nor by the long inflamed controversy for and against his philosophy, nor The work for this translation received support from the Russian Academic Excellence Project at the Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University, Kaliningrad, Russia. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110615555-014 264 Nicolai Hartmann by again the fact that, year after year, many of the best minds – and not only the youngest – continue to work fruitfully on paths to which he pointed. Some modest researchers never get to see and follow the effect that they have. Scheler was given this gratification early on. But he never let himself be blinded by this. To him, it did not mean accomplishment, but rather the beginning of greater things. For he felt called to greatness. And there is no doubt that he could attain it. These were not empty, unrealizable projects, which he carried out with restless inward labor; they were well thought out, slowly matured, often most minutely detailed intellectual goods – the fruit of the most positive research and creation of his best years. The great lecture series of his nine-year Cologne teaching activity, from which many striking words arose in the auditorium, the works of his students, the speeches and essays, in which he himself made many anticipatory pronouncements, sufficiently testify to that. His sudden death thus leaves a gap in the vital course of German philosophy, which could be filled neither by an eager wish, nor by faithful advances on the part of others following in his footsteps. If his lifework, compared to its inner plan and the magnitude of its scope, has remained a fragment, it turns out to be much more than a fragment if one takes into account what was done purely in and of itself and if one measures its achievement in comparison to the others around it at the same time. It was in Scheler’s nature to create all that he created from direct contact with the latest and most advanced achievements of research in the special sciences. His unique power of rapid, intuitive <X> comprehension, the high gift of singling out the essential from intricate contexts on the first try, understanding it in a plastic form and subordinating it to larger points of view, enabled him to do so. He was incessantly following what was happening in the social sciences and psychology, in physiology and clinical research, in religious studies, and theoretical physics. The most recent advances were always to be found together in his “intellectual workshop”. He never joined them eclectically, but always reconstructed an organic whole from the ground up. His vitality in keeping up with the scientific developments and his constant reshaping of his ideas gave his work the actuality and penetrative power that could keep his contemporaries – and not only academics – in suspense. But, to friends who sought him personally, he had the same effect, although in completely overwhelming proportions. Scheler, like none other, had the ability to develop, even recast, his thoughts in conversation, offering insights and opening up perspectives, in which everything had been directly intuited (geschaut) or at least traced back to what had been intuited (Geschautes). He could present a barely born idea in a plastic-concrete and convincing manner, in such a way that a mere glimpse was needed to follow and to understand for oneself. This wonderful power of intuition never left him. It Max Scheler † 265 spread wherever it found eager learners, the abundance of which seemed to know no bounds. In it lay the secret of that power, which always attracted the best to him, which resulted in everyone taking leave from him with a gift. And many have been consumed for years wrestling and laboring with the gift of such an hour with Scheler. The first quarter of our century, which was the time when a whole intellectual world came to maturity, was a period of profound change for German philosophy. It is characterized by the overcoming of psychologism, positivism, and Neo-Kantian Idealism, the reawakening of metaphysics, the recovery of the plenitude of problems (Problemfülle), and the slow rise of a philosophy close to life (lebensnahen), filled with life (lebenerfüllten), and therefore that does justice to life (Leben gerechtwerdenden). What is reflected in Scheler’s academic career is far from a mere reflection of this development. He was essentially a moving force here and, on more than one decisive point, he was the leader. This, too, lies deep in his personal character. For, with him, all philosophy was from the very outset a philosophy of life, and in a sense different from that of those who coined this slogan and included it in their book titles. He did not need to turn life into an object, he did not need to philosophize “about” life; with him philosophy flowed from the outset from the plenitude of life. For him, life and philosophy were not two different things. The wealth of his ideas came from the wealth of the plenitude of presence (reiche Gegenwartsfülle) <XI>; he was an expression, a token, a testimony to what was filling his own life and the life of his own time. A heightened capacity for the most intense experience was, in his case, identical to a heightened capacity for intuitive grasping and philosophical analysis. He bridged the chasm between life and thought, which most of the great philosophers found so difficult to close. He lived embracing the world and embracing life. The enjoyment of a happy moment was sacred to him. He knew how to embrace each moment in a loving manner as it unfolded, much like the fleeting presence often received through him, through his loving compassion and radiance, its coronation, its consecration. To extract the eternal from the ephemeral in the grasping and the restoring, and to hold on to its meaning in the timelessness of his mature thought, was his own gift, the never-ending source of his power of thought. It was this gift that made him – who never wrote a philosophy of life – a real and true philosopher of life. “Whosoever thought the deepest loved the liveliest”¹ – this poetic expres-  Note from the translator: “Wer das Tiefste gedacht, liebt das Lebendigste”. This is a line from Friedrich Hölderlin’s ode entitled “Sokrates und Alcibiades”, which was published in Musen-Almanach für das Jahr 1799, herausgegeben von Friedrich Schiller, Tübingen, 1798, 47. 266 Nicolai Hartmann sion inspired by Socrates fits him, too, although in reverse. For, it was because his love was the liveliest, and because in him this love took the form of thought, that he thought the deepest. At the turn of the century began his career in Jena. The writing with which he introduced himself to the intellectual world, Die transzendentale und die psychologische Methode (The Transcendental and the Psychological Method) (1901), is dedicated to the central point of contention over which the schools were then battling. This writing already indicates the form of his subsequent way of working: the uncovering of the weaknesses on both sides in order to reach a new, positive understanding. To a far greater extent than Scheler could foresee at the time, what his investigation showed was that both parties of that battle succumbed, both “methods” gave way to a third, which was brought about by Husserl’s Logische Untersuchungen (Logical Investigations) around the same years. Thus, change took place in him in close contact with the passage of time. He often hurried ahead, but his sight always remained fixed on the foundations. The problem of methodology as such could not fetter him down for any lasting period. He had the keen instinct of all productive minds, namely that genuine method does not arise in methodological awareness (Methodenbewußtsein), let alone through research on the method, but rather crops up unsought when the researcher is oblivious to the issue. But the matter that kept him captive since his dissertation of 1899, and that continued to occupy him for a decade and a half, was the problem of “ethical principles”, the question of the essence <XII> of the Good, the Ought, the valuable (Wertvollen) and the unworthy (Wertwidrigen), action (Handlung) and ethos (Gesinnung). In order to master this question, a new kind of approach was needed – that third method, on the track of which he was from the beginning. It fell on him like a ripe fruit of advanced work, when he joined, during his Umhabilitation ² in Munich, that circle of “phenomenologists” who had just then begun to reap the fruits of Husserl’s intellectual work. Here, he found an arsenal that suited his intuitive way of thinking. This finding was and remained the decisive event in his philosophical development. In the circle of the similarly inclined and like-minded, he quickly became a master of the new procedure, and brought about the great force of traction in phenomenology, which raised it to an intellectual movement by means of his wealth of problems (Problemfülle), and which is now leading its progress.  Note from the translator: The term Umhabilitation refers to the process through which professors or private lecturers acquire their authorization to teach (venia legendi) at a university in a shortened procedure. Max Scheler † 267 What first reached maturity was the ethical problem. Three writings full of new deep insights bear witness to this: the two smaller works Über Ressentiment und moralisches Werturteil (On Ressentiment and Moral Value Judgment) (1912) and Zur Phänomenologie und Theorie der Sympathiegefühle (On the Phenomenology and Theory of the Feeling of Sympathy) (1913), as well as the fundamental work Der Formalismus in der Ethik und die materiale Wertethik (Formalism in Ethics and the Material Ethics of Values) (Part 1, 1913). Scheler marshaled the new theory of values on two fronts: against Nietzsche’s value relativism and against the Kantian formalism of the moral law. At the same time, he adopted from both sides that which was actually positive and obvious: the multiplicity and the richness of content of the realm of values, as Nietzsche sees it, and the apriority of valuational consciousness (Wertbewußtsein), as Kant had proved it for the categorical imperative. He thereby performed a historical synthesis of such importance, made a field of research accessible to such an extent, that he paved the way for philosophical ethics in the long-run. There was something groundbreaking and eminently positive about this: the idea of the feeling of values (Wertgefühl) and of the intuition of values (Wertschau) based on it. That the acts of preference and of value-feeling, such as acceptation (Anerkennung) and rejection (Ablehnung), approval (Billigung) and disapproval (Missbilligung), admiration (Bewunderung) and indignation (Empörung), love and hate, are also value-disclosing acts (werterschließende Akte); indeed, that in their presence in all human activity the presence of the values themselves are also disclosed – this thought, which was in itself quite simple and had been, so to speak, immediately learned from life, was by no means obvious in an era when the act could only be interpreted in psychogenetic terms and the content only in Kantian-formal terms. It required a radical break with a long series of traditional prejudices to establish the validity of the new insight. The energy with which Scheler executed this break, the intuitive force with which he could not <XIII> only establish the meaning of the material (i. e., contentual) value-a priori (Wertapriori) in all regions of value (Wertgebieten), but could also make the reader aware of his own living feeling of values (Wertgefühl), stands alone among the philosophical achievements of those years. It opened an insight into the still untrodden realm of values, showed not only the gateway to its undiscovered riches, but also the means and ways of heaving it up, and thereby retrieved for ethical research an almost buried field of objects. At the same time, however, it shone into the depths of human nature as no one had been able to do since Nietzsche. Therefore, in this first major group of works also lay, besides the foundations of the new ethics, the beginnings of his later religious-philosophical and anthropological studies. 268 Nicolai Hartmann The war years dragged him back to the present. He was able to convincingly disclose the meaning of the events and intellectual currents of the time. Thence appeared his books on war, the first of which, Genius des Krieges (The Genius of War) (1915), penetrated broad circles and made him known to the stranded inhabitants of Berlin.³ At the same time, however, an ever-stronger religious tone came to permeate his thinking. Already, the second, broad-based part of his book on ethics (1916), was concerned, alongside the theory of personhood and value, with the problem of God. The essays – rich in ideas – that he published in 1921 under the title Vom Ewigen im Menschen (On the Eternal in Man) are devoted to the philosophy of religion. In the meanwhile, his sociological studies were maturing in numerous articles. Here, too, he was the leader of new paths. In contrast to Marx and those of a materialist orientation, under his hands came into being a sociology of intellectual life (des geistigen Lebens), of cultural creations, of knowledge (Wissens) and of science (Wissenschaft). His collection of writings Zur Soziologie und Weltanschauungslehre (On Sociology and the Theory of Worldviews) (1923/24) and his last major work Die Wissensformen und die Gesellschaft (The Forms of Knowledge and Society) (1926) are overflowing with ideas. The second part of the latter, entitled “Erkenntnis und Arbeit” (“Cognition and Work”), gives a significant preview into his metaphysics, which has long been planned yet has never been developed, and its epistemologico-theoretical foundations. Based on what is available, however, it is not easy to say whither his metaphysics tended. For it had not even fully matured in Scheler’s own mind, and whoever often had the opportunity to hear his intimations on the subject could very well sense the fluctuating state to which even its ultimate fundaments were still liable. In the course of the last decade, his idea of God had altered most profoundly. Still in 1916, in the second part of his book on ethics, his worldview was a decidedly personalist one: God stood at once as the highest “collective person” (Gesamtperson) and as the value of all values at the center of the world. From this position, Scheler was able to reach the wide circles of those who had church-positive sensibilities (positiv kirchliches Empfinden)⁴ in such a  Note from the translator: what we translate here as “stranded”, and which we could also have translated as “secluded” or “isolated”, is the word “zurückgezogen”. Hartmann is presumably referring to the fact that during WWI Berlin was isolated in the sense that poverty and shortage of paper decreased the circulation of new books, journals, newspapers, and such luxuries. On this see, e. g., Arnulf Scriba: “Berlin in the 1914‒1918 War”, Cahiers Bruxellois – Brusselse Cahiers, 2014/1E (XLVI), 173‒188.  Note from the translator: In the second half of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the “church-positive orientation” (die kirchlich-positive Richtung) was a conservative movement Max Scheler † 269 way that <XIV> they saw in him the pioneer of a newly awakening religiosity. But the inner dynamic of his thought did not stand still. It inevitably led him further. What must have appeared to them like a breach of their fixed dogma was just plain philosophical consistency. The gravity of the problem of reality, which preoccupied him more and more year after year, coerced him toward a reorientation. The problem of ontology, which had begun to reawaken in various minds during these years, had also preoccupied him. And, in accordance with the radicalism of his nature, he could not, as always and everywhere, make a merely half-baked work on this subject. The importance (Gewicht) of the lower, non-spiritual forces of being (ungeistige Seinsmächte) demanded to be expressed and recognized. Scheler found this expression in the form of a voluntarism, which in some respects was reminiscent of that of Schopenhauer, but without the latter’s “pessimism” given its anticipation of perfection and its final goal. He conceived the secret of the world as a world-development (Weltentwicklung) on a grand scale, from the alogical and blind urge for being (Seinsdrang) up to the fulfilling of value and meaning in pure spiritual being (geistiges Sein). But this was also at the same time the secret of the divine essence, because he understood this very process as the becoming of God in the world. Scheler’s strength was his power of constant relearning (Umlernen), of steadfast metamorphosis and reorganization, the insouciance with which he abandoned his earlier claims as soon as they could no longer satisfy him and be adequate for the shifting problems (Problemlage) of the time – it was precisely this that must have been the stumbling block for those unable to advance at the same pace. It was precisely for the fluctuation of his metaphysical intuitions that he was accused; it was considered as a defection, as a kind of desertion. His relearning (Umlernen) appeared as a lack of continuity, as a concession to the moment. The inner consistency standing behind it was, of course, all the more difficult to see in the distance as Scheler’s writings still had to account for what remained unaccounted for. He may well have prepared this account, but did not live to present it. At bottom, however, it is precisely on this point that those who are not pressed by ideological bias will not be misled into rejecting his views indiscriminately. The mastery of the fine art of progressive relearning (Umlernens) is not given to everyone. Even among the great [thinkers] of history, only a few possessed it. With it, Scheler stands in a line of thinkers including Fichte, Schelling, within German Protestantism that was opposed to theological and ecclesiastic liberalism. Hartmann is possibly referring to this movement, although he may also only be referring to whoever had a favorable attitude toward the church. 270 Nicolai Hartmann Nietzsche, and, yes, even Plato. The fact that he was leading not only at a point in time, but also continued to lead the unfolding of problems and the development of theories in more than one field, was made possible only through his own progression, which was always keeping up with the times and was often moving forward. Certainly many concessions to the historical moment will be noticed [in his work] <XV>. He himself has at least sought to conceal this in the judgment about his own earlier works, e. g., about his war books. Nevertheless, what he said at the time was often enough the decisive word at the decisive hour. There is also a right of the moment (Recht des Augenblicks) and a truth of the moment (Wahrheit des Augenblicks). Not everything that is true in itself is thereby the truth that is needed at the moment. Whoever wants to do justice to the gravity of the hour can only do so by becoming its spokesperson, not by standing aside in the ivory-tower (weltfremd). Could someone unable to face the truth of the moment even plausibly utter the eternal truth? Whoever walks in front of the line must inexorably move forward. He must not shy away from the appearance of inconsistency. Scheler did not shun it. That is why the odium of those who were left behind befell on him. But he just accepted the consequence of his inner consistency. He was not a system builder, even though everything he touched instantly took a systematic form under his hands. He made no sense to those who, from a thesis – no matter how well grounded ‒, leisurely draw implications without constantly revising their own foundation. He was at bottom a problem-thinker (Problemdenker). He kept pushing back to the origins. And, often, when he found something new, he had to contradict the old. Is that not, after all, a false philosophical criterion, whether one contradicts oneself? How much had Nietzsche, how much had Kant contradicted themselves! Every newly considered problem has its own dynamic, its own logic, its own consequence. Those who do justice to it [i. e., to the newly considered problem], unaffected by some utopian postulated uniformity, are the genuine problem-thinkers. From the constructed representation of a system (Systembild), it is easy to give uniform perspectives. But this does not do justice to the world of reality (Wirklichkeit). The world is not without contradiction. To understand it [i. e., the world of reality] cannot mean to formulate its essence in theses free of contradiction. And even if all contradictions were at last to find their solution, one must still initially admit the contradictions, do justice to them. The philosopher may do this in all kinds of ways. He can, like Cusanus, understand the concrete world as the world of opposita and reserve coincidence for the divinity. Or he can, like Hegel, make contradiction the theme of everything and follow its development through the stage-realms (Stufenreich) of the world as a dialectic. But he can also simply let himself bear witness in his own life and in his thinking without any anticipated scheme. And then it comes about that life and think- Max Scheler † 271 ing become a constant relearning. Scheler took that path. His life and thought thus became an undeviating struggle and thrusting forward. And so, at every step, this path was just a single great undeviating genuine philosophical testimony to truth. <XVI> If we look a little deeper into this struggle, it is not difficult to grasp the unity it contains as a great line. At bottom, there is a single central problem that has guided him on all of the intricate paths of his lifetime: the problem of man. Psychology and metaphysics, epistemology and sociology, ethics and ontology – they all converge on this one subject, the most distant and at the same time the nearest. To give an account of this large-scale convergence was the plan of his anthropology. In it, the fruit should have become ripe, which so many blossoms had preceded. But to reap that fruit was denied to him. As was the case on a smaller scale during his lifetime, the fact that other fruits could be reaped, which he had nurtured, it now seems to be, at the time of his death, at the very center of his lifework. An overabundance of intellectual goods (gedankliches Gut) is Scheler’s legacy, which now befalls to posterity. To accept this legacy is now up to this posterity.