Schedule
of meetings:
GIII-10.
Max Scheler Society
7:30-10:30 p.m. Thursday, April 27
Private dining room 17
1.
Speaker:
Daniel Dahlstrom, Boston University (Boston University)
"Scheler on the Essence of
Christian Religious Consciousness" (Abstract)
Commentator: Daw-Nay Evans (DePaul University) (Paper)
2.
Speaker: John White (Franciscan University Steubenville)
"Two Idols of
Phenomenology: Idolatry in the Philosophies of Max Scheler and Jean-Luc Marion"
Commentator: Kenneth Stikkers (Southern Illinois University)
3.
Speaker: Zachary
Davis (Keene State College)
"Scheler on the Relation between
Political Idolatry and Despotism"
Commentator: Jason Rickman (Southern Illinois University)
4.
Speaker: Eugene
Kelly (New York Institute of Technology)
"In Lumine Dei: The
Phenomenology of World and God" (Abstract)
(Paper)
GV-6.
Max Scheler Society
12:15-2:15 p.m. Saturday, April 29
Private Dining Room 6
1.
Speaker: Manfred Frings (DePaul University, Emeritus)
"The
Impossibility of Proofs of the Existence of God and the Sphere of the Absolute" (Abstract)
(Paper)
2.
Speaker: John Crosby (Franciscan University Steubenville)
"From Human Beings
to Human Persons: Questions About the Radical Theocentrism in Scheler's
Anthropology" (Abstract)
(Paper)
Commentator: Philip Blosser (Lenoir Rhyne College)
3.
Speaker: Peter Spader (Marywood University)
"Scheler’s Panentheism,
Pantheism and Theism"
Commentator: Philip Cronce (Chicago State University) (Paper)
Abstracts:
“Scheler on the
Essence of Christian Religious Consciousness” By Daniel O.
Dahlstrom, Boston University
The aim
of this paper is to demonstrate the challenges that Scheler’s
thinking poses to philosophy of religion and to do so chiefly through a
critical reading of his essay, Liebe und Erkenntnis (in conjunction
with consideration of Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen, ch. 4
and “Vom Wesen der Philosophie”).
This essay is ideally suited to this aim, as I also hope to show in
the paper, for the following reasons. In
the essay Scheler outlines “the essence of Christian religious
consciousness” by way of a contrast between its conception of the relation
between love and knowledge and the conception of that relation reigning in
the Greek philosophical tradition (in common with an Indian tradition).
While rhetorically effective, the contrast is made with such broad
strokes that it begs various questions regarding the expansive meanings and
many varieties of love and knowledge, both in religion and philosophy.
One of the challenges for philosophy of religion that arises from
Scheler’s ruminations in this regard is that of determining not simply the
appropriate conception of the relation between love and knowledge but also
the kinds of love and knowledge that are appropriate to that relation. These
difficulties are illumined but also exacerbated by the reasons that Scheler
gives for the philosophical failure to come to grips with the radical
novelty of the Christian experience. Because
Christians of the first century supposedly possessed neither the training
nor the disposition of philosophers, the eventual demands of the struggle
with other sects forced them, Scheler submits, to have recourse for the most
part to the extant conceptual framework of Greek philosophy. Even Augustine, a notable exception here in some ways, is
betrayed by his profound dependence on Neo-Platonism, Scheler claims.
But if Christianity in fact makes this historical turn, that is to
say, if early Christians found it possible to articulate their religious
experience in Greek philosophical terms, on what basis can Scheler claim
that this turn is tantamount to philosophy failing Christianity --
particularly if this basis is to be construed in ways at an innocuous
distance from the Greek philosophical heritage?
“In lumine Dei:
The Phenomenology of World and God in Scheler.” By Eugene
Kelly
This paper will consider
the plausibility of several of the claims Scheler makes about the noetic and
noematic structure of the Sphere of the Absolute, upon which he founds
religious experience, and to which, he claims, we are fundamentally and
originally tied in our intellectual and emotional cognitive nature To this
end, we examine whether Scheler’s phenomenological exhibitions of these
noetic and noematic acts are evident, and if so, whether they establish, as
Scheler believes they do, the legitimacy of a religious attitude
toward the world and a religious faith in the face (1) of the
inadequacy of the effort to demonstrate God’s existence intellectually and
(2) God’s “presence” as a deus absconditus: the world seems
bereft of God, however much the human being may be a “river flowing to
God.”
“The Impossibility
of Proofs of the Existence of God and the Sphere of the Absolute.”
By Manfred S. Frings
Max Scheler’s tenet of
the impossibility of a proof of an existence of God must, according to his
analyses, be compared to “exhibiting” (Aufweis) something not yet
found, and to “detecting” (Nachweis)
something previously found but forgotten. In light of the three fundamental
types of knowledge occurring in consciousness, the sphere of the absolute in
consciousness will be focused on as a constituent for the realization (Realsetzung)
of the idea of God.
"From Human Beings to
Human Persons: Questions about the Radical Theocentrism in Scheler's
Anthropology." By John
Crosby, Franciscan University Steubenville.
In
his essay, Zur Idee des Menschen, as well as in other places, Scheler
holds that human beings need not exist as persons.
He thinks that human intelligence can be quite considerable without
giving evidence of the personhood of those who exercise the intelligence. He explains the proprium of personhood in terms of
religious transcendence, saying that human beings are bound to remain
sub-personal beings if they do not break through to some kind of aspiration
for God. In other words,
Scheler does not think that persons first exist as fully established persons
and only then turn to God; he thinks that it is their turning to God that
establishes them as persons. Their
religious existence does not just fulfill them as persons, it rather
constitutes them as persons. In
these passages Scheler’s personalism becomes radically theocentric.
I propose to try to understand this teaching as Scheler means to
present it and then to test it critically.
Papers:
(PLEASE
DO
NOT CITE PAPERS WITHOUT PERMISSION OF AUTHORS)
