Max Scheler: On the Ground of Christian Thought

Abstract

Max Scheler, one of the major contemporary European philosophers, was born in Munich in 1874 of a Protestant father and a Jewish mother. Early in life he became a convert to Catholicism. In the writings of the first two periods of his scholarly life, from 1900 1922, Scheler was influenced by Catholicism. On the Eternal in Man , the fifth volume of the collected works, is a representative production of these first two periods. However, Scheler found himself in growing disagreement with the Church and its doctrine during the third period of his scholarly life, which dates approximately from 1922 1928. It is not surprising, therefore, that many Catholic writers have emphasized Scheler's ' 'Catholic period, and have tended to ignore his last period of philosophical inquiry. Yet Scheler's writings from all periods of his life have had great impact on contemporary thought. Indeed because of this influence, we wish to examine in this paper some of the basic ideas which have contributed to his understanding of Christianity and the nature of Christian thought. Initially we should note that Scheler agrees with nearly every representative of the phenomenological and existential movement in Europe, that a Christian philosophy as such does not exist and never has existed. Like his close friend, Martin Heidegger, who compares the notion of Christian philosophy to a square circle because reason (philosophy) and genuine faith (religion) are different in essence1, Scheler argues similarly, namely, that an act of thinking and an act of faith are phenomenologically (i. e. in consciousness-of) different. For whereas an act of philosophical reasoning does not imply divine response, acts of faith (e. g. praying, living, petitioning, worshiping, thanking) must always imply the experience of a divine response. A religious act is, therefore, a receiving act, awaiting the response of the divine. This is true not only in the Christian religion, but also in any religion. Indeed if divine response as a correlate of the religious act is not experienced, Scheler argues, there is not a religious act present.