Scheler's Critique of Husserl's Theory of the World of the Natural Standpoint

INTRODUCTION
Scheler's critique of Husserl's theory of the world of the natural standpoint may be understood as a decisive factor in the transition of phenomenological philosophy from the "rationalism" of Husserl to the 'existentialism" of Heidegger. Husserl's theory that the value characteristics of the world are founded on the natural characteristics signifies, as we will show, that the individual objects of the world are "logical individuals." By criticizing this view, and by showing that it is really the value characteristics which found the natural characteristics, Scheler demonstrated that the individual objects of the world are .'axiological individuals," which are prior to whatever logical structure the world may have. This viewpoint prepared the way for Heidegger's conception of the world as a system of referential relationships between different practical realities [seienden], which Heidegger conceived as being prior even to Scheler's world of "axiological individuals."[1]
In the present essay we will be concerned solely with Scheler's critique of Husserl's concept of the world, leaving the exact relationship between Schler's world and the world of Being and Time to be inferred by the reader. The "critique of Husserl's concept of the world" that we shall be discussing must be understood as a critique that is implicit in Scheler's theory. Scheler himself does not present his theory as a critique of Husserl's theory-he never even refers to Husserl throughout his discus- lion of the world-but his theory can be understood and reformulated as such a critique.[2] It is in this fashion that we will present Scheler's theory in the following.
Scheler's theory can be viewed as a critique of two different principles in Husserl's theory of the world. These two principles correspond to the two senses of "foundation" that are operative in Husserl's and Scheler's theories. The first sense of “foundation" is the sense in which a characteristic is the foundation of the individual "whatness" of an object. In this sense a foundational characteristic is a characteristic that is determinative of the nature and unity of an individual object.[3] The second sense of foundation is defined by both Husserl and Scheler as referring to the dependency or independency of the being and givenness of a characteristic. As Husserl defines this, if "an A cannot as such exist except in a more comprehensive unity that associates it with an M. we say that an A as such requires foundation by an M."[4] Scheler defines this sense of foundation in terms of the givenness of characteristics: "I maintain that a value B is the 'foundation' of value A if a certain value A can only be given on the condition of the givenness of a certain value B."[5] Thus in this second sense of foundation, a characteristic is a foundational characteristic if its being and appearance (givennes) is necessary for the being and appearance of another characteristic. We will begin our analysis of Husserl and Scheler by examining their theories of the foundational structure of the world in the first sense of the term, and then we will examine their theories in the second sense of the term.

I. THE FIRST SEN~E OF FOUNDATION: THE NATURE AND UNITY OF OBJECTS
For Husserl, the world of the natural standpoint consists, first of all, of the corporeal things of nature:
Our first outlook upon life is that of natural human beings, imagining, judging, feeling, willing, 'from the natural standpoint" ...'I am aware of a world, spread out in space endlessly, and in time becoming and become, without end. I am aware of it, that means, first of all, I discover it immediately, intuitively, I experience it. Through sight, touch, hearing, etc., in the different ways of sensory perception, corporeal things somehow spatially distributed are for me simply there.[6]
These things are not "pure things of nature," but are endowed with (certain value characteristics: "I find the things before me furnished not only with the qualities that befit their positive nature, but with value- characteristics."[7] These value-characteristics are founded upon the positive material qualities, which themselves form the substrate of the individual objects of the world. Husserl expresses this most succinctly In Experience and Judgement: "In the world of experience, nature is the lowest level, that which founds all others. The existent in its simple, experienceable properties as nature is the substrate which lies at the basis of all other modes of experience, of all evaluation and conduct."[8]
Material nature, which is the correlate of the acts of sensory perception, founds all other characteristics of the world in that it is constitutive of the individual objects of the world. For Husserl this means that the objects of the world are "individuals" in a purely logical sense or the term:
Sensory perception. ..plays among experiencing acts the part of an original experience, whence all other experiencing acts draw a chief part of their power to serve as a ground. Every perceiving consciousness has this peculiarity, that it is the consciousness of the embodied self-presence of an individual object, which on its own side and in a pure logical sense of the term is an individual or some logico-categorical modification of the same.[9]
The perceiving of these "logical individuals," the things of nature, is not an isolated occurrence in the natural standpoint, but is the way In which the world is continually apprehended: "The natural wakeful life of our Ego is a continuous perceiving, actual or .potential. The world or things and our body within it are continuously present to our perception."[10]
Thus, in his 1935 Lecture, "Philosophy and the Crisis of European Man," Husserl could characterize our environing world as a world comprised of the individual things of nature: "The environing world shows that nature is a homogeneous totality, a world for itself, so to speak, surrounded by a homogeneous spatiotemporality and divided into individual things, all similar in being res extensae and each determining the other causally."[11]
Values are founded on these individual things of nature by way of having a contingent predicative relation to them. Values are "characters" of the "nuclei" of these things, characters which "harbour explicitly or implicitly" the logical form of being their "predicates."[12] These "predicates of value"[13] are not necessary to the unity of the thing, for they may "fall away" while the thing which stood out as "having value" remains as a concrete and independent individual.[14]
This theory of the foundational structure of the individual objects of the world is in sharp contrast to the theory that can be found in Scheler's different works. In Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values (1912 and 1916), Scheler designates the world of the natural standpoint as the milieu: "The complete content of the things, events, etc., of the 'natural way of looking at the world' is the 'milieu.’”[15]
Scheler later states, in On the Eternal in Man (1921), that the content of the milieu is found "in all directions, in space, in time, externally, internally, and in respect of the divine as well as of ideal objects."[16] In contrast to the basic thesis of Husserl, Scheler maintains that the individual objects of the milieu are "value things or goods (and affairs [Sachen]) not primarily things of perception."[17] These value-objects, or "axiological individuals,"[18] are of three kinds: 1) affairs, 2) value state-of-affairs, and 3) goods.[19] What is common to these three value-objects is that the foundation of their individual object-unity lies in their value- structure, not in their natural thing-structure. This means, in opposition to Husserl's theory, that values are not contingent predicates of natural things, but are themselves the foundations of the natural characteristics that belong to the different objects of the world. This can be shown by analyzing the constitution of the affairs, value-state-of-affairs and goods, which are the three kinds of objects that make up the world.
The value-objects that Scheler designates as affairs are "things in sofar as they are of value (and essentially useful).[20] An affair is a thing, it may be a "natural thing of perception,"[21] which has a certain value. But this does not mea that the value is founded on a thing whose natural "thinghood" constitutes the unity and "whatness" of the affair. Rather it is the value of the thing that is determinative of the unity and "whatness" of the affair. Scheler mentions a property as an illustration or an affair. If we examine the structure of a property we will see that Scheler's theory is correct. The acre of land that I own is composed of the natural realities of grass, soil, stones and, more generally, of extension, shape and color. But these natural realities are not what determine the "whatness" of the acre of land as “my property." Rather it is the value these natural realities have of being Illegally at my disposal and use" that constitutes their unity and ”whatness" as "my property." It is the value-stratum of the affair that determines the affair to be what it is, not the natural stratum.
Scheler's concept of a value-state-of-affairs differs from his conception of an affair in that its structure is more intricate. A value-state-of- affairs is a value-complex that founds a state of affairs. A state of af- fairs is an activity (for example, a gymnastic exercise), an event (for example, a neighbor’s farm burning down), or a certain arrangement of objects (for example, a lamp on the desk).[22] The value-complex is a structure of value-qualities that unifies these states of affairs into distinct "objects"-that is, into distinct value-state-of-affairs. The most de- tailed description that Scheler gives of a distinct type of value-state-of- affairs is of the act of murder. The state of affairs in the act of murder is the activity of terminating somebody's life. For example, it may consist of the physical activity of picking up a gun, aiming it at a man's chest, and squeezing the trigger. This state of affairs is not, however, "'hat founds the individual “whatness" of the murder. What founds the murder as such is the value-complex that is present in the act. This value-complex lies in the volitional intention of "annihilating the person and his value."[23] This is evinced by the fact that the very same state of affairs could form an entirely different "individual whatness" if a different value-complex lay in the volitional intention. For example, the value-complex of “carrying out a legally demanded capital punishment" would make this same physical act of shooting a gun at the man an “execution" instead of a "murder."
A good differs from both affairs and value-state-of-affairs in that it II .a 'thinglike unity' of value-qualities or value-complexes which is founded in a specific basic value."[24] II A good is related to a value-quality as a thing is to the qualities that fulfill its 'properties'."[25] The basic value not only unifies the value-qualities of the good but also the other qualities that belong to the good, such as “colors and forms in the case of material goods."[26] The basic value of the good is not “fortuitously"[27] found on a thing, as is the case with affairs, where, for example, the value of being "legally at my disposal and use" is fortuitously found on this particular segment of land. Rather the basic value of the good is .hat determines from the beginning the synthesis of the value-properties and material properties in the good. For example, in a painting the basic value of beauty determines the synthesis of the various aesthetic values, for example, of classical beauty—symmetry and proportion of shapes and forms, he centeredness of the subject, the idealization of the bodies that are represented, etc.,—; and the basic value of beauty determines the synthesis of the various material properties, for example, the different paint pigments, the egg-tempera and lime base, and a canvas of a certain shape and size. Other examples of goods are the well-being of a Church, State, and life-community, a scientific institution, a book, and a piece of cloth (for example, a napkin or an article of clothing).[28]
Hence in all three of the types of objects that make up the world of the natural standpoint-the affairs, value-state--of-affairs, and goods- the values are not founded on the natural realities, but are themselves the foundations for the natural realities.

II. THE SECOND SENSE OF FOUNDATION: THE BEING AND! APPEARANCE OF THE CHARACTERISTICS OF OBJECTS
This foundational priority of the values over the natural realities also holds for the second sense of foundation. In this sense values arc the foundations of natural realities by being the condition for their being and appearance. Before we explicate Scheler's theory of this second type of foundational priority of values, let us examine Husserl's contrary view that the natural objects of perception, and the other types or presented objects (for example, objects of imagination and thought), are the foundations of values.
Husserl maintains in Ideas I that the condition for the appearance of a value is that it appear on the basis of a presented object: "Valuing involves a consciousness of the [presented object] as a supporting foundation."[29] More fully, a "perceiving, fancying, judging [is] as the base of a stratum of valuation."[30] The value-stratum of the object is a dependent stratum; it can only appear as founded on the presented stratum. On the other hand the presented stratum is independent of the value-stratum; it may still appear once the value-stratum has fallen away:
The stratifications, speaking generally, are so ordered that the uppermost strata of the phenomenon as a whole can fall away without the residue ceasing to be a concrete complete intentional experience. ...For instance, 'valuation' [is] a dependent phase [that] stratifies itself over and above a concrete presentation, or conversely falls away again.[31]
The foundational priority of the presented strata is such that they are always the dominant feature of the objects that appear to me, even when these objects have value-predicates. Thus when a presented Thing of nature appears to me with a certain value, I "apprehend" the Thing, but I do not "apprehend" its value ("apprehension" means for Husserl a focal mode of awareness-a "mindful heeding" and "noting" of an object, whether "attentively" or "cursorily."[32]): " A turning toward a Thing, to be sure, cannot take place otherwise than in the way of apprehension. ...But in the act of valuation we are turned towards values. .. without apprehending [them]." Thus when "we are directed towards some [presented object] in an act of appreciation, the direction towards the [presented object] in question is a noting and apprehending of it; but we are 'directed'—only not in an apprehending way-also to the ,value."[33]
Scheler argues in a number of his works that both these theses concerning the priority of the presented characteristics of an object are incorrect. First of all, he claims, values are given prior to the presented characteristics of the object that bear the value. In The Nature of Sympathy, Scheler writes that this pertains to a law he has found "to he basic wherever presentative acts are involved (in memory, perception, anticipation, imagination, or the apprehension of meaning); namely, that the value-qualities of objects are already given in advance at a level where their imaged[34] and conceptual features are not yet vouchsafed to us, and hence that the apprehension of values is the basis of our subsequent apprehension of objects."[35] In Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values Scheler gives a more exact phenomenological determination to this law:
We know of a stage in the grasping of values wherein the value of an object is already very clearly and evidentially given apart from the givenness of the bearer of the value. Thus, for example, a man can be distressing and repugnant, agreeable, or sympathetic to us without our being able to apprehend how this comes about. And, a landscape or a room in a house can appear 'friendly' or 'distressing,' and the same holds for a sojourn in a room, without our knowing the bearers of such values. This applies equally to physical and psychical realities.[36]
What Scheler means by this independence of the values from their bearers is not that the values can be given independently from the objects that have the values, but that they can be given independently from the particular characteristics of the objects that bear the values. When an object first appears to me as having a certain value, the characteristics of the object that bear the value do not explicitly and individually stand out in the object as the bearers of the value, but are merged into the indeterminate totality of the object. The particular characteristics of the object that bear the value are not known as such at a stage when the value of these characteristics is known. We can easily understand this when we recall our own experiences of having an "instinctive liking," or an "instinctive dislike," of someone without really being able to explain what it is in the person that makes us like or dislike him. It is this kind of experience that Scheler is referring to when he writes that "a man can be... sympathetic to us without our being able to apprehend how this comes about." Here the man that has the value of being "sympathetic" is given along with his "sympathetic value, but the particular traits and characteristics of the man that bear this value are not given as such. We do not know how or why the man appears "sympathetic" to us-we would be unable to ex- plain to another person why we found him to be "sympathetic." It will only be through subsequent acquaintance and familiarity with the person (or through a "psychological observation" of him) that we will come to realize that he appears "sympathetic" to us because he has personality traits that are similar to our own, for example, he is detached, thoughtful, reserved, otherworldly, inward, etc. It is these characteristics of being detached, thoughtful, etc., that were the bearers of the “sympathetic" value when we first met him, although at that time they were indistinct characteristics that were merged into the person's appearance as a whole, and did not stand out as the particular characteristics of the person that were the bearers of his "sympathetic" value.
It is this givenness of the object, but not of the characteristics of the object that bear the value, that Scheler also indicates by his statement that "a landscape. ..can appear 'friendly' or 'distressing'. ..with. out our knowing the i bearer of such values." By saying that the landscape "can appear" as "friendly" or "distressing," and can appear as such without our knowing the bearer of the "friendly" or "distressing" values, Scheler clearly means that the landscape is not the unknown bearer of the values. For if the landscape appears as "distressing," the landscape is thereby known as the object that is "distressing," and cannot be the unknown bearer of the" distressing" value. The unknown bearer of the "distressing" value is rather the particular characteristics of the landscape that account for the landscape's appearance as "distressing." These characteristics may be pin-pointed as the "dark and jagged rocks that line the horizon," the "broken pieces of timber that are strewn about the foreground," the “grass being whipped by the wind," and the "moaning of the wind itself." However, when I first glance at the landscape, and receive the overall impression that it is "distressing," I do not apprehend these particular characteristics as the characteristics that are the bearers of the "distressing" value. It is only in my subsequent "looking about" the landscape that these characteristics will gradually emerge and stand out as the characteristics that make the landscape "distressing."
Accordingly, Scheler's thesis that values can be given independently of their bearers is not the (absurd) claim that the value of an object can be given apart from the givenness of the object itself. Rather it is the claim that the particular presented characteristics of the object that bear the object's value are not given with the same immediacy as the value itself. The foundational priority of the value-stratum of the object is not a priority over the object itself, but over the presented characteristics of the object that are the bearers of the value-stratum.
This foundational precedence of the value-stratum of an object not only entails that the value is the first "messenger"[37] of the object's nature. The value-stratum of the object is also the prominent and determinant factor in the subsequent awareness of the object.[38] It guides the awareness of the presented and natural characteristics of the object. It is as if the value of the totality of which this [presented] object is a member or part constitutes a 'medium: as it were, in which the value comes to develop its content or (conceptual) meaning."[39] Scheler's theory appears evident if we have regard to the numerous instances that verify it. To take just one instance, when I walk into an old and run-down house what I first apprehend is the value of "dreariness." As I walk through the different rooms, it is through the "medium" of this value that every material characteristic comes to my attention: the faded and peeling wallpaper, the dark, unlit rooms whose floors are empty and bare, the dirty windows that barely can be seen through, and the old and rusty faucets that look as if they have been unused for years. What I am primarily directed towards is the value of "dreariness" that appears to attach to and unify all of these different material characteristics. It synthesizes them into the overall impression the house gives me of being a "dreary ,place."
In conclusion, we may say that the central insight that Scheler achieved into the constitution of the world of the natural standpoint was that its value-stratum is more fundamental than its presented and natural stratum.[40] It is values that found both the individual objects of the world and the being and appearance of the different aspects of the world. As Scheler writes in "Ordo Amoris" (1914-1916), far from the environing world being organized at bottom in terms of natural properties and laws, "the structure and total content of each man's environment... is ultimately organized according to its value structure."[41]
Husserl's motivation for believing in the primacy of nature over values is a complex one. One of the motives may well be that mentioned by Scheler in On the Eternal in Man. This concerns the abstraction of values from objects that is involved in the process of philosophically thematizing the world.
In the scholar this kind of abstraction can become so habitual, so much his 'second nature,' that he is in fact inclined to regard the value-free entity of both psychic and natural phenomena not only as more fundamental in esse than their value-qualities but even as preceding them in the order of .perception.[42]
But perhaps a more fundamental motive is one that Scheler discusses in his essay "The Theory of the Three Facts" (1911-1912). Scheler notes that the belief of the British Empiricists in the primacy of sensation has taken roots in many ways as one of the basic assumptions of modern thought. In Husserl, Scheler writes, this belief took the form of a "presupposition that sensory contents furnish the foundation of every other content of intuition."[43] It was on the basis of this pre- supposition that Husserl erected his theory of the world as the natural standpoint. It is only once this presupposition is recognized as a presupposition, and as an ungrounded one, that we will be able to see that from the natural standpoint values appear as "the most fundamental of all possible spheres of fact."[44]

[1] Cf. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. Macquarrie and Robinson (New York: Harper and Row, 1962), Chapters III and V. Heidegger’s critique of Scheler is implicit in Chapters Three and Five. Heidegger hints at the nature of this critique when he writes that “the existential-ontological foundations” of Scheler’s concept of the acts of feeling and presentation [vorstellen] are “obscure” (p. 178). This means for one thing, that the acts of feeling [interessenehmenden] have a foundation on the “existentialia” which disclose the world. And this in turn means that the “value-objects” of these acts are founded on the world that the existentialia disclose
[2] In fact Scheler's theory was first published in 1913, in Part One of Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values, trans. Frings and Funk (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973), which was the very same year in which Husserl's full theory was first published. Cf. Edmund Husserl, Ideas, trans. Boyce Gibson (London: Collier Books, 1962). However Husserl's theory was at the very least implied in his earlier (1900-1901) Logical Investigations, trans. Findlay, (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970), as we pointed out in our paper "On Husserl's Theory Of Consciousness In The Fifth Logical Investigation," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, June, 1977.
[3] This sense of foundation is never explicitly set forth or defined by Husserl or Scheler, although it is implicit in their theories of objects.
[4] Husserl, Logical Investigations, p. 463.
[5] Scheler, Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values, p. 94.
[6] Husserl, Ideas, sec. 27, p. 91. 7 Ibid., p. 93.
[7] Ibid., p. 93.
[8] Edmund Husserl, Experience and Judgment, trans. Churchill and Ameriks (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973), sec. 12, p. 54. Also see Ideas, sec. 39, pp. 114-15, and sec. 152, p. 389.
[9] Husserl, Ideas, sec. 39, p. 114.
[10] Ibid., p. 115.
[11] Edmund Husserl, "Philosophy and the Crisis of European Man," in Phenomenology and the Crisis of Philosophy, trans, Lauer (New York: Bar. per and Row, 1965), p. 182.
[12] Husserl, Ideas, sec. 116 and 117.
[13] Ibid., sec. 130, p. 336.
[14] Ibid., sec. 95.
[15] Scheler, Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values, p. 148, n. 37.
[16] Max Scheler, On the Eternal in Man, trans. Noble ((London: SCM Press Ltd., 1960), p. 93.
[17] Scheler, Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values, p. 148, n. 37
[18] This is our term, not Scheler’s.
[19] “Affair” is one of Frings’ and Funk’s many translations of Sach. “Thing,” “something,” and “complex” are also used. “Value-state-of-affairs” [Wertverhalte] are usually called value-complexes of states of affairs. The phrase "value-state-of-affairs'. appears on p. 310.
[20] Scheler. Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values, p. 22.
[21] Ibid.. p. 20.
[22] Scheler gives these examples on pp. 126-27 of Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values. Their formalization into "activities," "events," and "arrangement of objects" is our own.
[23] Ibid., p. 316. n. 100.
[24] Ibid., p. 20.
[25] Ibid.
[26] Ibid., p. 22.
[27] Ibid., p. 20.
[28] These examples are mentioned on pages 9, 93, 94 and 108 of Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values.
[29] Husserl, Ideas, sec. 95, p. 256.
[30] Ibid., p. 255.
[31] Ibid.
[32] Ibid., sec. 37, p. 110.
[33] Ibid.
[34] However there is one exception to this in that the imagined features of an object may be its felt features (which for Scheler include its value- qualities) as well as its presented features. We argued this in sec 4 of our "Sartre and the Matter of Mental Images," Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, Vol, 8, No.2, 1977.
[35] Max Scheler, The Nature of Sympathy, trans. Heath (Hamden: Archon Books, 1970), pp. 57-58.
[36] Scheler, Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values, p, 17 Husserl, probably under the influence of Scheler, later came to a partial recognition of this. Cf. Experience and Judgement, sec. 20.
[37] Scheler, Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values, p. 18.
[38] This holds for all four of the value-strata: the sensible, vital, spiritual and religious. We have examined the emotional correlates of these strata in our" An Analysis of Scheler's Stratification of Emotional Life and Strawson's Person," Philosophical Studies, Vol. 25, 1977.
[39] Scheler, Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values, p. 18.
[40] This would also shed doubt on Husserl's thesis that the "hyletic sensations" of perception form the basis for the intentional constitution of the world. However it is even doubtful if the problem of hyle should arise at all; we have argued elsewhere that hyletic data cannot be given to a phenomenological intuition, and hence that the very existence of this data is a matter of empty speculation. Cf " A Phenomenological Examination of Husserl's Theory of Hyletic Data: Philosophy Today, Winter 1977.
[41] Max Scheler, M Ordo Amoris," in Selected Philosophical Essays, trans. Lachterman (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973), p. 100. Scheler's "inversion" of Husserl's theory of the foundational order of the objects of the environment also pertains to its social units and psychic realities. For Husserl, social units and psychic realities are founded in material nature (Ideas, sec. 152, and Experience and Judgement, sec. 12). Whereas for Scheler social units are themselves the foundation of their material components (Formalism in Ethics and Non Formal Ethics of Values p. 557), and psychic realities (egos and personalities) are founded on both values anc! on their participation in certain social units (cf. ibid., Chapter 6B, esp. pp 578, 585, et al.).
[42] Scheler, On the Eternal in Man p. 86.
[43] Max Scheler, "The Theory of the Three Facts," in Selected Philosophical Essays, p. 221.
[44] Scheler, "Ordo Amoris," p. 118.

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