Back to Substance? Scheler's Later Thought

Back to Substance? Scheler’s Later Thought Patrick Gorevan In Metaphysics: Whither Now? Department of Philosophy, National University of Ireland, Maynooth, 2009 Max Scheler’s mature thought is marked by a turning, around 1923, from a phenomenology of essences, which had seen him as one of the central members of the phenomenological movement in the early years of the century, to a theory of absolute being, and from being a representative Catholic thinker to a the point where he would state that he could no longer be even termed a theist because of his panentheist views. Der Formalismus in der Ethik, foreword to the third (1926) edition, p. 17. One commentator called this ‘Scheler’s breakthrough into reality’, which brought his thought beyond the reduced essences which had been the central concern of his phenomenological writing. Cf. Rothacker, E., Schelers Durchbruch in die Wirklichkeit (Bonn 1949). In this article I suggest that it also represents a return to substance  a notion which was quite absent from his phenomenological philosophy  which now attempted to ground thought on a notion of substance which was so absolute that it contained both finite and infinite reality within itself. Scheler claimed that his later philosophy went beyond Aristotelian ‘first philosophy.’ In fact it is a bizarre and flawed return to the spirit of that philosophy, an attempt to define what is primarily meant by being. Max Scheler was born in Munich in 1874 and studied in Munich (1894-95) and Berlin (1895-96). In 1896 he moved to Jena, and chose to write his doctoral thesis there under the direction of Rudolf Eucken. In Jena Scheler completed his first major works, establishing an independence from the ruling Kantian ideas. His doctoral thesis (On the relations between Logical and Ethical principles) and his Habilitationsschrift (On Transcendental and Psychological method). These are published in volume I of Scheler’s collected works, Gesammelte Werke (G.W.), edited by Maria Scheler and Manfred Frings (Francke Verlag, Berne, 1954-79 (volumes I-XI), Bouvier, Bonn 1987- (volume XII-)). Scheler as Phenomenologist (1906-1922) Scheler’s philosophical development was given encouragement by a meeting with Husserl in 1901. Scheler recounts the meeting as follows: When the present writer made the acquaintance of Husserl ... in Halle in 1901, a philosophical discussion ensued regarding the concepts of intuition (Anschauung) and perception. The writer, dissatisfied with Kantian philosophy... had come to the conviction that what was given to intuition was originally much richer in content than what could be accounted for by sensuous elements, by their derivatives, and by logical patterns of unification. When he expressed this opinion to Husserl and remarked that this insight seemed to him a new and fruitful principle for the development of theoretical philosophy, Husserl pointed out at once that in a new book of logic, to appear presently, [i.e. Logische Untersuchungen, Volume II] he had worked out an analogous enlargement of the concept of intuition (kategoriale Anschauung). The intellectual bond between Husserl and the writer, which has become so extraordinarily fruitful for him, dates back to this moment. Max Scheler, ‘Die deutsche Philosophie der Gegenwart’ in G.W. VII, p. 308 (translation from H. Spiegelberg, The Phenomenological Movement (The Hague 1960) volume I, p. 229). The impact made on Scheler’s philosophical method and views by Husserl’s approach was both deep and thoroughgoing. He found this method very congenial and of great benefit in the development of his own work. It represented a mode of access to the objective world of essences, and as such served as an ideal vehicle for his interest in rehabilitating the objective, a priori hierarchy of values and feelings, in a criticism of Kant’s formalism. It soon became clear, however, that Scheler had his own approach to the ideal essences of phenomenology, and in particular to the central place of value in this realm: One of his students reported that when Scheler asked the rhetorical question ‘How is reality given?’ his immediate response to his own question was ‘Through feelings!’ Prior to the act of knowing or willing, the person anticipates the object to be known or willed through feelings. Quoted in Rainier Ibana, ‘The Stratification of Emotional Life’ International Philosophical Quarterly, 31 (1991), 461-471 (p. 461). For Scheler values have a central place in phenomenology, for they give nature and unity to the object, while Husserl considered that values are founded on the individual things of nature by way of having a contingent predicative relation to them. Cf. Husserl, Ideas, translated by W.R. Boyce Gibson (London 1931), sections 116, 117. For Scheler ‘all value-free or value-indifferent things are such only by means of a more or less artificial abstraction, through which we leave out of consideration values that are not only always given along with it, but also constantly pre-given’. On the Eternal in Man, translated by B. Noble (London, 1960), p. 86. There is a stage in the grasping of values wherein the value of an object is clearly and evidentially given apart from the givenness of the bearer of the value. Thus, for example, a man can be distressing or repugnant, agreeable or sympathetic to us without our being able to indicate how this comes about. Cf. Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values, translated by Manfred S. Frings and Roger Funk (Evanston, 1973), p. 17. Referred to below as Formalism. This is in marked contrast to Hussserl’s notion of the valuation as a ‘dependent phase which stratifies itself over and above a concrete presentation, or, conversely, falls away again.’ Ideas, section 95. Scheler’s personal rapport with Husserl was also difficult. He never wished to be known as a disciple or follower of Husserl, even though he took some part in the editing of the phenomenological Jahrbuch, along with Reinach, Pfänder and Geiger. Scheler was reluctant to consider phenomenology a ‘school’ of philosophy. There was no fixed body of knowledge, attributable to the founder, which could be passed on and taught. The only way of finding out how fruitful phenomenology is and of making progress in it is the ‘practice of this attitude of consciousness’ Max Scheler, ‘Die deutsche Philosophie der Gegenwart,’ G.W. VII, p. 309. . So it would not be possible for one man to lead the way in such a wide-ranging task. Consequently, Scheler remarks, it would be incorrect to ascribe to Husserl the type of guiding role played by Kant, Fichte or Hegel in regard to their followers. Cf. ibid., p. 327. Husserl, for his part, did not hold Scheler in any great esteem, indeed he resented his sparkling and ebullient personality, which, during his years in the phenomenological movement in Munich, threatened to eclipse Husserl’s own authority in the group. ‘One needs brilliant ideas,’ he is supposed to have said in regard to Scheler, ‘but one must not publish them.’ H. Spiegelberg, Doing Phenomenology (The Hague, 1975), pp. 280-1. But publish them, or publicise them Scheler did, thereby winning himself a rapid notoriety. Between 1912 and 1921 he had written almost all of his main works: Formalism, on ethics, The Nature of Sympathy on intersubjectivity, empathy and love, and On the Eternal in Man, on the philosophy of religion, as well as a plethora of minor essays and propaganda material during the war years. He was soon regarded as the ‘number two’ phenomenologist. Husserl, however, regarded the fruits of the phenomenology practised by Scheler and his devotees as ‘fool’s gold.’ H. Spiegelberg, The Phenomenological Movement, vol I, p. 230. After Scheler’s death in 1928, Husserl was to refer to Heidegger and Scheler as his ‘two "antipodes".’ E. Husserl, Letter to Ingarden, quoted in H. Spiegelberg, The Phenomenological Movement, vol I, p. 230. Scheler’s later thought (1923-28) Perhaps Husserl’s reservations were proved correct by later developments in Scheler’s thought, after his ‘turning-point’ (Wende) in 1923, until his untimely death in 1928. From Catholic theist, he became a ‘panentheist’, a believer in God-in-the-making, a powerless spirit (Ohnmacht des Geistes) sublimating the vital energy of the world. There are, roughly, three groups of explanations for this surprising development: some, including Heidegger and von Hildebrand, are convinced that personal matters and psychological factors threw Scheler into new commitments and reactions; Cf. M. Heidegger, ‘In Memory of Max Scheler’, oration pronounced in 1928 and translated by T. Sheehan in Heidegger, the Man and the Thinker (Chicago 1975), pp. 159-60; Dietrich von Hildebrand, ‘Max Scheler als Persönlichkeit’ in Hochland, 26 (1928-29), 70-80 and H. Lützeler, Der Philosoph Max Scheler (Bonn 1947), pp. 8-11. others felt that Scheler was merely responding to the inherently paradoxical nature of the real; Cf. N. Hartmann, ‘Max Scheler,’ in Kantstudien 33 (1928), ix-xvi (xv). others still, that the changes had much to do with inherently unstable elements already contained within his thought. Cf. J. Collins, ‘Roots of Scheler’s Evolutionary Pantheism,’ in Cross-roads in Philosophy (Chicago 1969), 106-31 (p. 108). One might also suggest that it also represents a rather bizarre return to substance  a notion which was quite absent from his phenomenological philosophy  which now attempted to ground thought on a notion of substance which was so absolute that it contained both finite and infinite reality within itself. Scheler claimed that his later philosophy went beyond Aristotelian ‘first philosophy.’ I suggest that it is in fact an unwitting and failed return to the spirit of that philosophy, an attempt to define what is primarily meant by being. Rejection of Substance in his phenomenological thought Scheler had strongly criticised the concept of substance in his earlier, phenomenological, writings. Scheler relegates it to the ‘natural attitude’ to reality, which tends to assume that there is such a substratum. The sphere of natural or technical knowledge, also termed the ‘knowledge of control’ (Herrschaftswissen), allows for the existence of substances and objects of manipulation. This natural knowledge does not, however, possess the ability to reach the ‘things themselves,’ the Wesen, which are given to the phenomenological attitude. These ‘things themselves’ are essences which may only be grasped once their real existence has been left totally out of account.     Cf. ‘The Theory of the Three Facts,’ in Max Scheler. Selected Philosophical Essays, ed. D Lachtermann, Evanston 1973, p. 221. Person, for instance, was a central topic of his Der Formalismus in der Ethik (subtitled: Neuer Versuch der Grundlegung eines ethischen Personalismus)     Formalism was the central work of Scheler’s phenomenological period. It was first published in the Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenologische Forschung, 1913 and 1916. It is now available as volume 2 of Scheler’s Collected Works, Bouvier, Bonn 1966 and there is an English translation by Manfred S. Frings and Roger Funk, Formalism in Ethics and NonFormal Ethics of Values, Evanston, 1973. (a laying of the ground for personalism in ethics) and it was not regarded as substance.     There is some dispute as to whether Scheler’s theory of person is actualistic. Wilfried Hartmann, in ‘Max Scheler’s Theory of Person,’ in Philosophy Today, 12 (1968) 25256, rules actualism out. He points to Scheler’s analyses of shame and repentance which necessarily involve a stable being with power and responsibility over its acts both past and present. Peter Spader in ‘Max Scheler. Phenomenology and Metaphysics,’ in Philosophical Forum, 6 (197475) leans towards the actualist interpretation. The problem of unity among acts can only be satisfactorily solved by positing the person as a centre of unity which is also act. Acts do appear to constitute the person and this is of course a cause of ‘great difficulty’ (282). Luis Munárriz in ‘Persona y sustancia en la filosofía de Max Scheler,’ Anuario filosófico 10 (1977) tries to clarify the situation by pointing out that Scheler is concerned to avoid both actualism and naturalism, and that he always safeguards the subsistere, but not the substare in his theory of person (cf. 2122). There was no enduring being ‘behind’ the acts and events which unfold before us. The material world was also to be treated in a nonsubstantial way. It was not correct to trace the phenomena of physical perception and stimuli along lines of causality, to the workings of physical substances. All that is given to the phenomenological attitude is the relationship of organism and environment, without any metaphysical weighting in favour of one or of the other, without the possibility even of separating one from the other, as its ‘counterpart.’     Formalism, p. 15455. Scheler falls into the common mistake of considering theories of substance as invoking a kind of mysterious thing which would support reality from ‘underneath’ or ‘behind’ and understandably spares no effort to avoid such a problematic hypothesis. The real existence of things which is ‘given’ in resistance to our wills does not, for Scheler, involve the perception of any underlying substantial reality. But even more: Scheler also finds little room for a more genuinely Aristotelian idea of substance as establishing the identity or selfhood of a being: when we look at his theory of man, we find that Scheler did not consider that there is a unitary human nature. Man is not a single being with his own specific identity; any unity that he does possess must be sought in his openness to God and to the values of the divine, summit of Scheler’s axiological system.     ‘There is no natural unity of man. He receives his unity only from that which he must become; that is, through the idea of God’ (‘Zur Idee des Menschen,’ (1914) G.W. III, p. 194). This does not mean that man does not exist. It appears that what he lacks is not so much existence as substance. Man does not appear to be that which can exist in itself and not in another. The true essence of man has to be sought, according to Scheler, in his transcending the world of nature and his environment. Man is simply the prayer of life beyond itself. This is the central thesis of Scheler’s anthropology, a thesis which lasted throughout all the variations and development in his thought: the problem, he says, with all the theories of man until now consisted in the fact that they tried to put in a ‘fixed stage’ (feste Station) between ‘God’ and ‘Life,’ as something that one could define essentially. This would be man. But there is no such fixed stage. Man is ‘a "between," a "frontier," an Übergang or theophany in the stream of life, and a perpetual "reaching out" (Hinaus) of life.’     Ibid., p. 186. Man is not so much a substance as a meeting place. He is termed by Scheler the ‘microcosm’ for he is the meeting point of the two features  spirit and drive  which go to make up reality. In some way he participates in the divinity, through his spirit. But he also participates in that which is below him: ‘Man is a microcosm, a God in miniature… and he also shares in the nature of dust and its laws’.     ‘Der Mensch ist ein Mikrokosmos ... ein kleiner Gott ... und er hat Teil am Staube und seinem Gesetz’, Philosophische Anthropologie, G.W. XII, p. 148. This concept of man as microcosm is a constant theme in Scheler, and one whose development reflects the larger development in his thinking. In Formalism, a ‘microcosm’ is the personal world which each individual may inhabit, as opposed to the ‘macrocosm,’ the one identical real world.     Pp. 39698. But in On the Eternal in Man, written in 1921, man himself is the microcosm, because in him ‘all the elements and forces of the world are concentrated.’     P. 235. Finally in 1925, in ‘The Forms of Knowledge and Culture,’ Scheler traces his notion of microcosm to Aristotle’s ‘homo quodammodo omnia’ but he takes the notion to lengths which far outstrip the Aristotelian vision of human knowledge and love which embraces ‘all things’. In this, Scheler’s final account, man eventually is all things.     ‘Man, as a physical, as well as a psychic and noetic being, is an instance where all known types of principles are applied  mechanical, physical, chemical, sociological and psychological and also noetic’ (p. 20fn (G.W. IX, p. 90fn)). I believe that Scheler took to heart the situation of man  the microcosm, after all  and applied it to all of reality. If there is truly nothing in this world which is capable of possessing an essence and which exercises its existence in an autonomous way, if even man is merely a reaching forward from a subhuman plethora of drives towards the absolute, and has no identity of his own, was it not inevitable that Scheler should institute a search for some kind of substantiality, being or reality, and focus the search on God, or the worldground? For it is one thing to declare oneself opposed to a reified substare; it is quite another to find that one is bereft of any truly existent reality. Substance in Scheler’s later thought Scheler’s later thought takes the contrast between spirit and life, which had been burgeoning in his phenomenological thinking, especially in regard to man, and radicalises it. Spirit becomes totally powerless (Die Ohnmacht des Geistes), the drives of life become more alien to spirit and to reason. God is (or will be) the ultimate harmony of life and spirit, achieved in the heart and mind of man, who is the point at which they intersect. God, or the worldground will somehow ‘create’ himself as man sublimates the energies of life, thus energising the powerless spirit.     This theory, which owes much to Schelling’s development in On Human Freedom, and attempted, like him, to trace the origin of evil and limitation back to the Godhead, is presented schematically in Die Stellung des Menschen im Kosmos, written in 1928. Scheler’s literary remains also contain many sketches of the theory. Volumes XI (Erkenntnislehre und Metaphysik), published in 1979 and XII (Philosophische Anthropologie), published in 1987, contain many valuable indications and further explanations of the theory. It is interesting to note that, in his earlier thinking, Scheler had harsh words for Freud’s theory of sublimation, accusing him of a shallow and crude reductionism (see for example, On the Nature of Sympathy (translated by Peter Heath - New Haven 1954, pp. 175-83). He does not, however, advert to the greater contradictions and subterfuges to be found in his own theory of sublimation, which suggests that spirit can somehow ‘create’ itself by sublimating the energies of life. Here is to be found the ens realissimum which both has an identity as substances do and which can exist. It alone exists (or will exist) in itself and not in another. So much so that Scheler begins to call the worldground ‘the substance.’     Erkenntnislehre und Metaphysik, G.W. XI, pp. 202, 204, 213. One might be justified in calling it that which is in itself and is conceived in itself, after Spinoza, for during the twenties Scheler was coming under the influence of Spinoza’s view of substance according to which both spirit and extension are immanent in the divine substance. Nothing can exist save as a facet of the absolute.     Cf. Spinoza, Ethics, I, translated by A. Boyle (London 1910), Definitions 36 (p. 1). His philosophy of the worldground does, in fact, show traces of Spinoza’s rather overwhelming notion. In 1927 Scheler travelled to Amsterdam to commemorate Spinoza’s 250th anniversary with a paper revealing his attraction to the figure of Spinoza, a lonely thinker like himself, cast out also, as Scheler now was, from orthodox circles.     The speech which he delivered there, ‘Spinoza,’ is contained in Philosophical Perspectives, pp. 5064 (G.W. IX, pp. 17182). It is also possible to show this growing attachment to Spinoza’s philosophy by a comparison between the dismissive approach to pantheism which Scheler had in On the Eternal in Man, pp. 11112, 33738, and his remarks about Spinoza in that speech and other later fragments. The religious dimensions of Spinoza were particularly compelling for him. ‘Spinoza, drunk with God’ was an assessment which he shared. Noone was further from atheism, no matter what the rabbis might have said. His ‘passion’ for the divine is barely hidden behind his geometrical methods of proceeding, he had kept only one of Descartes’ three kinds of substance  the res infinita, reducing extension and thought to attributes of this single substance. God’s existence was more certain than any other form of existence, even his own. If Spinoza had a fault, Scheler argues, it was his inability to grant the existence, the contingency and the autonomy of this world.     Cf. ‘Spinoza,’ p. 54 (G.W. IX, p. 174). This throws a surprising light on Scheler himself. He too finds growing difficulty in justifying the consistency of this world. All the natural forms of knowledge which permit us to reach it are subject to modification and do not really hold good. One cannot think of creation without thinking of God. This is a certain truth but in Scheler’s (and Spinoza’s) hands it becomes something quite different: the creature is subsumed into God, not merely as the ultimate source of its existence but also for its very substantiality. Without the divinity it does not mean anything. Scheler, therefore is both a dualist and a pantheist or, more precisely, a panentheist.     The word ‘panentheism’ (all in God) was first coined by Karl Krause (17811832) to describe his philosophical system, a compromise between pantheism and theism. He conceived God as beyond the world, but claimed that there was a mutual dependence between the two. Scheler used the term as early as the second edition (1922) of Wesen und Formen der Sympathie. He criticised Schopenhauer for suggesting that the phenomenon of ‘sympathy’ disclosed the oneness of reality (metaphysical monism). Scheler rejoined that it would much rather suggest a theistic ‘or perhaps panentheistic’ theory of the ground of the world, a sign perhaps of his own quandary at the time, also of his understanding of panentheism in the non-monistic sense given above. It was precisely his dualism that led him to leave the finite world around us devoid of any substantial principle, fragmented into two necessarily incomplete worlds, spirit and drive, and this it was that led him to seek the substantial principle in the absolute. Once this had been done, it is a short step to find oneself in the grip of a substance which is allembracing and complete in itself, autonomous and absolute. This was the harvest reaped by Scheler: his search for God led him to reduce the reality about him to a facet of the absolute. Scheler and ‘First Philosophy’ Scheler’s position on the role of substance also took Aristotle’s philosophy into account and in ‘Philosopher’s Outlook,’ a reflection written in 1928 on his philosophical method, one of the claims that Scheler makes is that what he called the metaphysics of being had managed to surpass Aristotle’s first philosophy which is the ontology of the nature of the world and the self.     Cf. pp 57. In this section we will go further into Scheler’s claim to have gone ‘beyond’ Aristotle, in particular with regard to the notion of substance. Scheler points out that the ‘knowledge of metaphysical reality’ is a science which far outstrips the results of first philosophy and ties together the results of both the experimental sciences and of first philosophy, dealing with the frontier problems which science encounters: the nature of life and of matter, for example. But it also goes even further and reaches the metaphysics of the second order, the metaphysics of the absolute.     Cf. ibid., p. 9 and Probleme einer Soziologie des Wissens, G.W. VIII, pp. 6069. The purpose of this absolute philosophy is to show that, since the world around us is composed of two fundamental attributes  spirit and life  in the same way ‘ultimate being’ must contain an ‘infinite ideating spirit ... and an irrational driving force.’     ‘Philosopher’s Outlook,’ p. 8. To what extent does Scheler actually leave Aristotle behind? To deal with this it is necessary and enlightening to look at some key points of comparison between the two thinkers’ thinking of being. Scheler’s notion of being While the Aristotelian approach to first philosophy attempts to answer the question: is it possible to have a single science which can deal with the question of being? Aristotle concedes that there are many senses in which being is predicated: it is applied to things, to qualities, to activities and many other realities, but all refer back to substance. All the kinds of being which he discovers are led back to substance, for all are qualities or acts or modifications of substance.     Cf. Metaphysics, Z, 2, 1003b 10.. Scheler rejects this. Firstly he assumes that a theory of substance will base finite being on an inert and undifferentiated substratum, which he compares to Aristotle’s materia prima since, he says, a substance is often described as that of which things are predicated, and which is predicated of nothing. In one of his later writings, for example, he asserts that it is ‘matter which grants the world substantial being outside of God.’     Erkenntnislehre und Metaphysik, G.W. XI, p. 202. Cf. also Probleme einer Soziologie des Wissens, G.W. VIII, p. 149. This, however, takes little account of Aristotle’s genuine reluctance to define substance as a substratum for the very reason that one would thus identify substance and matter. This will not do since substance is a separable ‘this’ while matter is quite undetermined and incapable of independent existence.     Cf. Metaphysics, Z, 3, 1029a 27 and 17, 1041b 25 (on the difficulties occasioned by our use of the word substance as a translation of the Greek ‘ousia’ cf. for example O’Hara, M.L., ‘Substance in Context,’ in Substances and Things, edited by M.L. O’Hara (Washington 1982), p. 3). Aristotle, in fact, moves to a more dynamic view of substance, regarding it as a cause, which enters into a working relationship with matter, causing it to be this not that, and further he sees it as a potential and open  though not indeterminate  factor, ready to be actualised by accidents.     Cf. Metaphysics, Z, 17, 1041a 9. Aristotle does not visualise substance as an inert and indeterminate ‘pincushion’ into which any accidents may be inserted.     Saint Thomas Aquinas, taking up this theory, does suggest that the subject of accidents, as well as being their efficient and final cause, can also act as material cause, with the accident actualising it as form, but the contexts make it clear both that we have to do with a potency which is already determinate ‘before’ entering into this relationship with an accident (cf. De virtutibus in communi, q. un., a. 3, and Summa theologica, Ia, q. 77, a.6, ad 2), and that the subject exercises its being in and through the accident. It is not an inert and mysterious ‘I know not what’. Bernd Brenk (Metaphysik des einen und absoluten Seins (Meisenheim am Glan 1975), p. 186) makes the point that in Scheler, as the person is immanent in his acts, so is the world ground immanent in to its earthly attributes and modes  not so much lurking behind them as living through them. If this is correct, it appears to be a readoption of this aspect at least of the traditional theory of the dynamic rapport between substance and accidents. Scheler asks the same question concerning being as Aristotle did: can it be applied to all kinds of different things? He too decides that it can, but there they part company. Scheler begins in an a priori manner, by defining being: it is that which is not nothing. This univocal definition is the fruit of the first selfevident insight: ‘there is something ... or, to put it more acutely, ... there is not nothing’ with which philosophical reflection meets, as a result of its attitude of wonder.     On the Eternal in Man, p. 98. In this and the following pages, Scheler leads us through the initial stages of philosophising, dealing with philosophy’s object and with the cognitive attitude which is needed for that object—being—to shine forth. On the basis of this definition he finds that all kinds of beings, as beings, are identical and not just related. The status that Scheler grants this general concept of being is open for discussion. It is not the ens a se, the fullness of being, or the Absolute being. It is simply ‘being in general.’ This interpretation is given weight by some statements in a posthumously published set of notes on God and the Absolute: this sort of being is ‘indifferent and formless being’ and it ‘can receive any kind of being.’ It ‘is inclusive both of God and of the world.’     ‘Absolutsphäre und Realsetzung der Gottesidee’ (G.W., X), p. 252. The concept of being doesn’t cater for the radical difference between substance and accident. Scheler insists that the selfevident insight at the root of the concept of being ‘precedes’ and is evident in all ‘...the secondary categories of being  whether it be quality or existence, noumenal or phenomenal, a real or objective nonreal entity, an object or a subject, an ideal or a resistant object, valuate or valueneutral "existential" being...’     On the Eternal in Man, p. 99. There is no hint here of the Aristotelian approach to substance as a nonexclusive but still primary meaning of being. This equalisation and univocal approach to being means that the dynamic tension which Aristotle finds at work between substance and other aspects of being is not to be found in Scheler’s thought. While Scheler indeeds returns to substance, it is a sort of substance which does not relate to any other aspect of being. As we have noted above, substance is either nothing (in his earlier thought) or everything (in his later phase). For Scheler substance, ultimately, will be all that there is. Conclusion There is a similarity between Scheler’s and Aristotle’s views of substance as primary being. The nature of the primacy is different, however. In Aristotle there is a logical primacy. Being is predicated primarily of substance, and secondarily of other things. This does not give us the right to speak of the relationship between substances and accidents as though they were individually existent things. This primacy does not deal with the relationship among existing things but with that which is found among significations (still less does it permit one to do what Scheler does, and speak of the relationship between a single substance and all other features of reality). The analogy found on the logical plane will, of course, rest on an analogy to be found in reality. Otherwise our minds would not discover the logical comparison. Aristotle uses the term ‘analogy’ for such real proportions, and reserved ‘homonuma’ for the logical analogy of names (cf. R. McInerney, The Logic of Analogy (The Hague 1961), p. 33). The primacy which Scheler ascribes to the Absolute Substance is an ontological one. Substance, in his discussion, is not so much an object of predication as a thing. What Scheler means by ultimate and primary being is something which really exists, the ‘absolute being’ of religious experience. Consequently, the ens realissimum of his metaphysics is not the same as the prior sense of being of Aristotle’s Metaphysics. Scheler looks to it as the guarantee of the existence of everything else. When speaking of metaphysics as the search for the ‘absolutely real’ in things, Scheler is looking for a thing, something which will really exist and communicate its reality to other things. Erkenntnislehre und Metaphysik, G.W XI, p. 11. As it turns out, the realness of this Substanz is so absolute that it leaves no room for any other thing. Aristotle’s more tentative and relational discovery of substance, however, does not place substance as a ‘thing’ over against other ‘things.’ One is thus brought to the conclusion that, for all his earlier cavilling about substance as an unacceptable theory, Scheler does not succeed in overcoming Aristotle’s quest for a prior sense of being. In fact he returns to the notion of substance and bases his philosophy of absolute being on an allembracing concept of substance which is far more reified than the Aristotelian one which he had rejected. PATRICK GOREVAN PAGE 4