Max Scheler and the Faith

THE THOMIST A SPECULATIVE QUARTERLY REVIEW OF THEOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY EDITORs: THE DoMINICAN FATHERS oF THE PROVINCE oF ST. JosEPH Publishers: The Thomist Press, Washington 17, D. C, VoL. XIII APRIL, 1950 MAX SCHELER AND THE FAITH 1 The philosopher and the poet are alike in this: both have to do with the wonderful. -St. Thomas, In I Metaph, 3, 55. No.2 ILOSOPHY must be queen or slave; she is queen over science when she is handmaid to faith, but when she has the audacity to pose as mistress to faith, she must become slave to science; this is the thesis of Max Scheler in his essay On the Nature of Philosophy. Philosophy lifts the spirit to touch the realm of being; it attempts to pierce the veil that hides the deepest in things, and leads to a loving participation in their essence by the way of knowledge. Philosophy is knowing and the philosopher a knower, Scheler writes, but to say, 1 This essay is a chapter of a book on certain aspects of the philosophical and :religious thought of some contemporary philosophers of Jewish origin, which will be published by Devin-Adair under the title of "Walls Are Crumbling." 135 186 JOHN M. OESTERREICHER as is the vogue, that its dealings are merely with the knowledge of things and that their essence is none of its concern, rests on no intellectual ground. It is pride, he asserts, which makes a philosopher maintain that philosophy can never lead into the precmcts of essence, for he fears that there he would have to recognize that the nature of the Prime Being may demand another, and a more adequate, way of participation than knowledge. Indeed, it might happen that the strict consequence of his philosophical thinking enjoins upon him a free subordination to this higher way; he may even be bidden to bring himself, with his inquiring reason, a willing sacrifice to this fuller but non-philosophical sharing which the Prime Being, by its very nature, might claim. Only pride can say that, no matter what this nature may prove to be, it will refuse this sacrifice; only prejudice can assert that all being has the character but of an object, and that knowledge alone can partake of it.2 True, for Aristotle God was the " Thought of Thought," and the philosopher therefore the perfect man, his path the highest of human existence. But Christ came, and no longer could God, the Prime Being, be seen as a mere object of thought, for He acts, He loves, His Being is creative and merciful goodness. Hence acting with Him, loving 'with Him, became the gate to participation in the Prime Being, and philosophy, loyal to logic, rejoiced to minister to faith in Christ, in whom this participation was perfect, was union. The sage had· to move to second place, below the saint, and the philosopher to subject himself to the lover of God. Over and above its ancient dignity as queen of science, philosophy gained a dignity far more excellent, that of willing handmaid to the Saviour, a blessed handmaid, for " blessed are the poor in spirit." 3 But today philosophy is no longer seated thus between faith and science, Having broken this true relationship, it has set •" Vom Wesen der Philosophie und der moralischen Bedingung des philosophischen Erkennens," Vom Ewig~m im Menschen (8rd ed.; Berlin; Der Neue Geist Verlag, 1988)' pp. 66-79. • Ibid., p. 74-77; Matt. V, 8. MAX SCHELER AND THE FAITH 137 itself above religious truth only to bow low before scientific hypotheses. This reversal, an instance of a general overturn of values, Scheler calls the "revolt of the slaves in the intellectual realm." It seems a paradox that when philosophy limited itself it was unlimited; now that it admits no confines, it has no territory of its own. When it was preamble to faith, it knew it could penetrate to the roots of being, but now that it is subservient to one or the other science-geometry, physics, psychology-there is nothing it is sure of seeing. This is as it must be, says Scheler, for truth is such that it' falls prey to the...