Autor: Scheler, Max

Buch: Ressentiment

Titel: Ressentiment

Stichwort:

Kurzinhalt:

Textausschnitt: 2. Ranks among values (eü)
10b
2. In order to bring into focus the ranks that hold among values we must first look at some details of the nature of values themselves. This will provide us with a platform from which we can see the nature of value deceptions and value illusions which constantly plague all people charged with ressentiment. (Fs)
11a What are values? There is a great deal of mention of values in present-day society. It seems that many people, more often than not in managerial or political higher offices, believe that talking about values implies knowing already what they are. The talk about values was also fashionable in Germany during Scheler's life-time. The determination of the nature of values was also at that time, as in ours today, in need to be staked out. It was one of the many life-long areas of Scheler's pursuits, in glaring contrast, we must add, to the majority of twentieth century philosophers who, like Heidegger, sometimes misconstrue entirely the nature of value-being by referring to only one or two classes of them. Being at the threshold of the twenty-first century, one can be pretty sure that twentieth century philosophy will likely be characterized in the future by its conspicuous lack of research and concern into the being of values, and the foundations of ethics. (Fs)
11b First of all, values are given to us in feeling them. True, they can be thought of, and willed, but only after they have passed through feeling them. This is analogous to colors, says Scheler's, which can only be seen. Just as colors are given to us "in" seeing them, or sounds "in" hearing them, values are first given to us "in" feeling them. Note, however, that colors and sounds, like values, can also be present to thinking and observation. However, this is only pursuant to the respective primary acts of seeing, hearing, and feeling respectively. (Fs)
11c Feeling, on the other hand, is different from acts of seeing and hearing in that it does not occur exclusively in sense perception as seeing and hearing do. It is true that we can also feel a number of values with the senses, like pain given in the sense of touch. But feelings can be entirely personal also in which cases they are not given in any of the five senses. Injustice, for instance, is felt in a personal, not sensory feeling. (Fs)
11d Furthermore, values are, like colors, independent of the things they belong to. The value "useful" may pertain to a piece of furniture or to a pen I am taking notes with. Just as the vermilion of a rock fish may also be the color of a car. This independence that values have of their substrates has far reaching consequences. Let it be mentioned only that the independence values have of things, and vice versa, is an ontological basis for all negotiable values in economics, say, those negotiated in a stock-market. In this regard, the independence holding between values and things is itself rather useful for human beings to pursue technical as well as technological aims, etc. (Fs)
12a But said independence has also unfortunate effects in society. In society, values are believed to be mostly quantifiable. Their quantifiability is used to bring them under control mechanisms, such as in programs designed to stem inflation, in order to acceptable value conditions can be sustained. We can without difficulty see at this point that the controllability of quantifiable values is based in their independence of things. This state of affairs makes it possible that the global human house-hold (eco-nomics) can be kept in relative order, or not. (Fs)
12b The excessive use of quantifiable values in modern society implies the forbidding tendency to look at the entire realm of values, including values which are not at all quantifiable, as manageable values. The value of persons itself, which is not quantifiable, has become subject to being rated by quantifiable work hours and success. In such cases, not only is the unique self-value of an individual person ignored, but also the entire realm of values is subordinated to quantification. The education of children is, unfortunately, no exception to this value-deception, because education is largely seen to be effective first if there is enough money for it available. The dedicated teacher is subsumed to this contortion of a cultural value. (Fs)
12c Scheler foresaw this untimely development in light of pursuit to bring into bold relief the dignity and unique value of the individual person. He stressed that the concept of "person" is totally indifferent to race, gender, ethnicity, to being rich or poor, and to individual beliefs. And he suspected there to be a stealthy societal resentment creeping among those who lack fullness of personality but compensate their hollow selves by judging others by the quantity of their work and success, all independent of social stations. It is therefore false to assume that only socially disadvantaged persons can suffer from ressentiment. There is an tragic lack of love in society. Indeed, at the end of the text before us, Scheler charges society with quantifying the most precious quality human beings have, love itself, in that love of the individual person is being replaced by a quantified love for humanity expressed in fund-raisings for this our humanity. The value of individual and undivided samaritarian love of the other -- for the sake of which the young Scheler turned as a teenager toward Catholicism period (his mother was Jewish, his father Lutheran) is giving way to a false humanitarianism. Both the value-independence and the givenness of values in feelings we just discussed suggest that values have criteria of rankings. Before we list the value-ranks, we wish to mention some criteria which are indices for the heights and levels these ranks have among each other. The criteria of the heights of values run through all ranks. They are:
1. The higher a value-rank is, the less its values are divisible and controllable, and the less they depend on material.
2. The higher a value-rank is, the more it lasts in time.
3. The higher a value-rank is, the less its values can be willed and managed.
4. The higher a value-rank is, the more its values generate personal contentment, happiness, and inner peace.
13a All valuations we make in our lives are applicable to these criteria. Values themselves divide in five, spectral value-ranks. Like individual values themselves, the five value-ranks themselves, too, have an analogy to colorations, because colorations, too, rest on a few ranks of spectral colors, without which there can not be colorations of things. (Fs)
14a The five value-ranks are not specifically treated in the present text, but underlie it all the way through. They are treated in detail in Scheler's aforementioned Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values, and his essay "Ordo Amoris." In chapters III, IV, and V of the present text some of them are seen in light of ressentiment feelings. (Fs)
14b Starting with the lowest rank and continuing in ascending order, the ranks of values are as follows:
14c The lowest rank contains all values given in tactile feelings of the body. They range from the value of bodily "comfort" down to "discomfort." We share these values with animals but, according to the independence values have of their substrates, what is comfortable to one species may not be so for another, and what is comfortable to one individual is not necessarily comfortable to another. (Fs)
14d The next higher rank ranges from the value of "useful" down to the negative value o "not useful." These are pragmatic values and are connected with things, work and anything expedient, as the Greek word "pragma" suggests. They also pertain to technology as the Greek word "techne," meaning "cunning of hand," "craft," "art," suggests. We also [eg: share?] these values with animals, say, when birds are building their nests trying to find most useful material for this. But with humans the pragmatic value-rank encompasses much more. It spans the usefulness of the atom and the exploration of outer space; indeed they function in utilizing the sun's energy. The emotive preferring of the values of these two lowest ranks, i.e., leaning toward them, over higher ones is rampant in a society typified by an excessive cultivation of the human body and utility values. These excesses are reflected in exorbitant sums of money and time spent annually in industrialized nations for sports, entertainment, tools and gadgets, everything of which amounting to an international multi-billion dollar industry. The preference of the tow lowest value-ranks is unfortunate in comparison to the modest funds available for cultural values like global education, the arts, and equal distribution of nutrition on our planet, something which Scheler regarded to be one of the highest priorities of moral behavior a person-to-person love. He once referred to the preference of the lower two ranks over all others as the deceiving "star of society." (Fs) (notabene)
15a What distinguishes the two lower value-ranks mentioned from all other ranks is also their localizability in organs and things. Discomfort of body pain is as localizable as is a thing's usefulness. (Fs)
1. Kommentar (23.03.13): Lonergan: Wertskale aufgrund der Analyse der Intentionalität -- Scheler: Wertskale aufgrund von "Sichtbarkeit" -- dennoch stimmen beide überraschend überein.
15b The next higher rank contains "life values" in two ways: They either pertain to the function and appearance of life and nature, on the one hand, or to human heroism, on the other. They range from the value of "noble" down to "deficient" or "bad." A knight riding a horse, or an old oak tree, have a noble aura about them, whereas the appearance of a pragmatic thing like a computer does not. The life values inherent in heroic actions must serve at least in part the preservation of life. What distinguishes rank of life-values from the former two lower ranks is that they are not localizable. They spread through an entire organism as health, fatigue, feelings of oncoming death do; or the nobleness of an heroic action is not a part of such action but suffuses it from its beginning to its end and beyond its presence. According to this order thus far given, it is not surprising, that for Scheler life values of agriculture and environment are higher than both pragmatic technological and sensible values. (Fs)
15c The fourth highest rank contains mental and cultural values given only to the person. There are three kinds of them: Aesthetic values, which encompass the values of "beautiful" down to "ugly," legal values of "right" and "wrong," and the value of the "cognition of truth."
15d The highest value-rank spans the "holy" and "unholy." Its values, too, can only be felt by a person. (Fs)