Scheler and the Problem of Complimentarity: A Reply to
Dahlstrom
by Daw-Nay Evans, DePaul University ________________________________________________________________________
I. Introduction
Professor
Dahlstrom’s paper is clear, rigorous, and worthy of our appreciation. In
what follows I address what he views as the problem of complementarity in
Scheler’s understanding of the relationship between love and knowledge. Put
simply, how are we to reconcile the Christian conception of love with the
different forms of knowing? There are at least four different ways to approach
this problem.
Option 1: We could,
following Dr. Frings, as Professor Dahlstrom pointed out, attempt to resolve
the problem of complementarity by arguing for a direct correspondence between
the three forms of love and the three forms of knowing. According to Professor
Dahlstrom though, this still leaves us with the problem of understanding the
radicality of the revolution of Christian religious consciousness as it
pertains to the concepts of love and knowledge.
Option 2: We could argue
that to cognize the Christian conception of love and knowledge requires us to
step into a Weltanschauung that is foreign to philosophy and is itself
a form of non-cognitivism. Consequently, the exegetical work of biblical
hermeneutics will not be reducible to philosophical hermeneutics.
Option 3: Instead of
burdening Scheler with the problem of complementarity, we might concede that
this issue is an irresolvable tension in his thought and reason that he is
simply inconsistent in his analysis of love and knowledge.
Option 4: We may contend,
by means of the principle of charity, that the problem of complementarity
vanishes if we interpret Scheler’s works as self-contained pieces, rather
than searching for coherence between the concepts of love and knowledge
wherever they appear throughout his corpus.
Professor Dahlstrom has already
hinted at the possibility of option 2 when he tentatively suggests that
“Christian religious consciousness is sui generis and, hence,
understandable only on its own terms. If this sense obtains, then it is
impossible to give a philosophically adequate account of the essence of
Christian religious consciousness precisely because the Christian
understanding of the relation of love and knowing involves a commitment, a
commitment based upon faith, to the supernatural order of things.” By
following his lead here, I hope to push the boundaries of our discussion to
this radical but familiar conclusion. I will begin by discussing Scheler’s
central argument regarding the difference between the Indian-Greek and
Christian views on love and knowledge. Second, I will briefly address the
biblical view of human nature as opposed to that of Nietzsche’s, thus
identifying the tension between the two theories. Finally, I will briefly
discuss Scheler’s view of knowledge by alluding to a passage from the essay
“Love and Knowledge.” By proceeding in this manner, I will show how the
Christian conception of love and knowledge is so constituted that we can only
understand it from a place of faith and hope rather than through the lens of
scientific or philosophical analysis.
II. Indian-Greek vs. Christian Conceptions of Love
According to
Scheler, the Indian-Greek conception of love is akin to eros, while the
Christian conception of love is akin to agape. In the essay “Love and
Knowledge,” Scheler argues that love conceived as eros serves as a
“bridge” to knowledge (LE, 152). Furthermore, such love is selfish. Love
viewed as agape is unselfish and done for its own sake. As such there
are two views here about the value of love that logically follow. First, love
as eros suggests that love has instrumental value. Second, love
as agape suggests that love has intrinsic value. For instance,
in Plato’s Charmides at 155D, Socrates’ attempt to understand the
nature of temperance is made possible by means of a beautiful young man. After
hearing that Charmides has a headache, Critias and Socrates hatch an ingenious
plan to lure the beautiful young man into their midsts by claiming that
Socrates has a cure for his illness.
And when Critias said that I was the person who
knew the remedy and he turned his full gaze upon me in a manner beyond
description and seemed on the point of asking a question, and when everyone
in the palaestra surged all around us in a circle, then, my noble
friend, I saw inside his cloak and caught on fire and was quite beside
myself.
Accordingly,
Socrates demonstrates Scheler’s claim that on the Indian-Greek view, love is
simply the means through which knowledge is acquired. Hence, love is neither
equivalent nor superior to knowledge.
III. The Biblical View of Human Nature
If one
understands the two different kinds of value described above, then one can ask
what motivates these distinctions. Scheler, as Professor Dahlstrom makes
clear, criticizes Nietzsche for misunderstanding the nature of Christian love
as arising from ressentiment. Nietzsche’s theory of human nature as
the will to power can be interpreted as psychological egoism, while the
biblical view of human nature can be interpreted as psychological altruism.
For this reason, the Indian-Greek and the Christian conceptions of love and
knowledge stand diametrically opposed to each other. Since Scheler describes
erotic love as ego driven and wants to distinguish it from Christian love,
Christian love would then have to be something other than egoism. Thus,
Christian love, at its most fundamental level, is altruistic. At John 3:16, we learn: “God so loved the world,
that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not
perish, but have everlasting life." Also, at Genesis 1:26 we
learn: “God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let
them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and
over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that
creepeth upon the earth.” God’s love for human beings, then, is rooted
both in his having sacrificed his only begotten son and having created human
beings in his own image. Human beings, out of selflessness, are to devote
their lives to him for these very same reasons.
St. Paul
’s letters to the Romans and Corinthians are saturated with altruism and
agapeism. As such love is the foundation of the biblical view of human nature.
IV. Knowledge
If Christian
love has intrinsic value, has more in common with the Greek agape than eros,
and, by its very nature is altruistic, then what does Scheler claim its
relationship is to knowledge in Christian consciousness? Scheler, at least in
the essay “Love and Knowledge,” claims:
In the Christian experience, love descended from the
higher to the lower, from God to man, from the holy to the sinner who is taken
up into the essence of the “higher,” therefore also the
“highest,” which is God. Just in this reversal in direction of love lies a
new way of founding love and knowledge, value and being. LE, 156
All things considered, this
“new way of founding love and knowledge” is, as Professor Dahlstrom has
already suggested, very likely sui generis and thus beyond the purview
of a philosophical account. Revelation, which is predicated upon faith in God,
is this new kind of love and knowledge. Given that the Christian conception of
love and knowledge requires an unyielding faith in God, there is almost
nothing philosophically substantive that can be said about them. In the last
sentence of his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Wittgenstein offers
wise counsel on such matters: “What we cannot speak about we must pass over
in silence.”
________________________________________
I would like to thank Anne Prendergast for reading a draft of these comments
and offering novel ways to analyze the Christian view of love and knowledge.
DO NOT CITE THIS PAPER WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE AUTHO
Daw-Nay Evans 6/9/06 - Central APA – Chicago 2006