Max Scheler's Ethics of Love and Solidarity

MANUEL B. DY, JR. ATENEO DE MANILA UNIVERSITY PHILIPPINES

The heart, for Max Scheler, is the most important sphere in the human being's life, for "where his 'heart' is attached,
there, for him is the 'core' of the so-called essence of things."1 And "our heart is primarily destined to love."2 Love is the
most fundamental act of the human person, more original than knowing and willing. All our knowledge of being and willing
of anything are based on this primordial act of loving, for "man, before he is an ens cogitans or an ens valens, is an ens
amans."3 In fact, all morality, ethics, judgmental acts, norms, rules of actions, units of goods, mores and customs have
their foundation in love.
In contrast to Kant's formal ethics of the categorical imperative, Scheler argues for a non-formal or material ethics of
values. A non-formal or material ethics based on the content of the act does not have to be relativistic or subjectivistic. One
can have a material ethics that is objective, though not necessarily universal. For Scheler, this is the ethics of values, which
ultimately is founded on love. As for the universality of such an ethics, Scheler attempts to provide content to this
requirement with his notion of solidarity.
My intent here shall be to elucidate Scheler's ethics of love and solidarity, first by clarifying his phenomenology of love,
then by showing its correspondence to an objective hierarchy of values, and, finally, by relating this to his notion of solidarity.

I
Max Scheler, "Ordo Amoris," Selected Philosophical Essays (Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press,
1973), p. I I l.
2
1bid. ,P. 126.
3
1bid.,p. 111.
Phenomenology ofLove

What Love is Not

At the outset, Scheler distinguishes love from benevolence and fellowfeeling. Love is not the same as benevolence because
it is not necessary in love that we seek the material benefit of its object. When we love God, for instance, it would be
ridiculous to be benevolent to him. The same applies to love of beauty, art, knowledge and career. With regard to other
persons, benevolence implies a certain distance and condescension on the part of the well-wisher. Moreover, benevolence

makes an effort towards the well-being of the other, to realize something in the other, Love exerts no such effort to do

something in the object loved. Does a mother have to realize something when she lovingly gazes at her child? What are
we supposed to realize when we love God? Or works of art? Love certainly promotes the well-being of the beloved person,
but only insofar as it contributes to the positive values of personality.1
Love differs from fellow-feeling in that fellow-feeling is value blind. We can have fellow-feeling for someone we do not
love. 2 In fellow-feeling, we can rejoice over A's pleasure over B's misfortune, but in love we would evaluate this as not in
accordance with A's higher possibilities of being.3 Love is not a feeling because feeling is passive or receptive and reactive,
whereas love is a spontaneous act and a movement. 4 Fellowfeeling, however, is founded on love and varies in the measure
and depth of one's love. Thus, it is not possible to love someone and not fellowfeel with him.
Love is not to be confused with feeling-states. Feeling-states change whereas love endures. Despite the pain and grief
that the beloved brings, love does not alter. The suffering may in fact be borne by the lover with joy. Even in the case of
unrequited love, the act itself is still accompanied by a feeling of happiness. Love is the cause of feeling states, rather than
the other way around. 5 For Scheler then, there is no such thing as "falling out of love" or "before I love him/her, but now no
more." In many such cases, we have deluded ourselves in thinking we were in love when there was none in the first place.

1
Max Scheler, The Nature ofSympathy, trans. by Peter Heath (Connecticut: Archon Books), pp. 140-141.
2
1bid., p. 142.

3
Michael D. Barber, Guardian of Dialogue, Max Scheler's Phenomenology, Sociology ofKnowledge, and Philosophy ofLove (Associated University Press, 1993),
p. 1 17.
4
Max Scheler, op. cit., p. 141. "It therefore makes sense to describe love and hatred as emotions, but not as 'feelings,' and certainly not as 'affects'." (Scheler's
footnote)
5
Ibid., p. 148.
76 MANUEL DY, JR.

Of course, we can cease to love, but we never love for a limited period of time, and when we stop loving, love would no
longer be a movement.
Neither is love equated with preference and rejection of values, and therefore with value apprehension or judgements.
We can feel something of positive value without our loving it. Respect, for instance, is directed towards a value in the person
we respect, but respect implies a value-judgment that in turn entails a certain detachment, which is absent in love. Thus,
we can respect a person without loving him. Love is not directed to values but to objects possessing value. Still, love is not
a matter of choosing between two or more objects. We can love an object with or without preferring one value to another. 6
On the other hand, preference and rejection as value-apprehension are founded on our love for the object exhibiting these
values. Inasmuch as love is a movement, higher values can flash forth and be preferred. Love is more original than
preference or rejection; it is a primitive and immediate mode of emotional response to the core of value of things and
persons. We do not first envisage a value and then love it (as in the case of respect). We first love and only later give
reasons for our love. And still other persons or objects may also have the same values that we judge as valuable and y
et we do not love them. The valuations we give are never enough for justifying our love. In fact, we find it profane and
an offense to apply conceptual categories of valuations to the values of objects we love, like judging the letter of a loved
one in terms of its grammar or style. 7
Because of this primitiveness of love and the inadequacy of reasons, love is often mistakenly said to be blind. For
Scheler, however, love is not blind but affords an evidence of its own, which is not to be judged in terms of reason. Love
sees "something other in values, high or low, than that which the 'eye' of reason can discern. I The beloved is reason enough
for the lover. Following Blaise Pascal, "the heart has its own reasons which reason itself does not know."
Finally, love is not "relative to the polar co-ordinates of'myself' and 'the other"'12 It is not intrinsically a social disposition
like altruism. Altruism may on the contrary be based on self-aversion, the inability to endure one's company, and ultimately
founded on hatred for oneself. One can love oneself genuinely, which is different from egoism. The object of egoism is not
my individual self, behaving as if I were alone in the world, but myself in competition with others. So the egoist is taken up
with his social self and concerns himself with all values but only insofar as they have something to do with him or can be
his. 13 We can also love a group or members belonging to a group, or individuals in their individual capacity, even in
opposition to a group. The point to consider here is that the primary orientation of love is towards values and the objects to
which these values inhere, regardless ofwhether these values belong tothe self or to others or to a group.14

The Essence ofLove

Scheler begins his positive delineation of love by saying that as acts, the ultimate essence of love and hatred cannot be
defined but only exhibited. 15 This inclusion of hatred as an act makes hatred something positive and not simply the absence
of love or more accurately, "simply love for the non-existence of a thing."16 The opposite of love is not hatred but
indifference, because hatred. like love, is also an act and a movement, albeit in the opposite direction. Hatred is a disorder
of the heart. While love is a movement passing from a lower value to a higher one, hatred moves from the higher to a lower
one. Where our heart orders us to the higher value of the object or person loved and to its maintenance, "hatred looks for
the existence of a lower value .... and to the removal of the very possibility of a higher value." 17

HI 2 2
121bid., p. 150.
131bid., P. 151.
14
1bid., p. 150.
15
1bid., p. 152.
161bid., P. 152.
17
1bid., pp. 152-153.
Although 8Scheler always includes hatred in his phenomenological description of love, we will limit our focus to love.
Scheler's main idea of love, simply put, is that it is an act, not a reaction, and a "movement ofintention" whereby, from a
given value A in an object, its higher value is visualized. Moreover, it is just this vision of a higher value that is the essence
of love."18 Love is not a reaction to a value already felt, nor a search for the value already given in an object or person; but
upon acknowledging the value as real in the object or person, love moves in intention towards the higher values. In this
sense, love is creative. It sets up an "idealized paradigm ofvalue'; for the object or person loved, but this idealized structure
of value is implicit in the object or person loved and therefore seen as an embodiment of the true and real nature of the
beloved. We do not impose or import our own values when we love another. This creativity of love does not mean that the
lover first creates the values or enhances them, but rather than in love, the lover brings into appearance the higher
possibilities ofvalue inherent in the beloved. Scheler quotes in a footnote the words of Karl Jaspers, "In love, we do not
discover values, we discover that everything is more valuable." 9

6
Scheler makes a distinction between preference and choice. Choice is a volition, whereas preference is an emotional cognition. Preference always involves two
values A and B, and I can prefer A to B without actually choosing anything.
Illbid.,p. 150.
1bid., p. 148-149.
7

8
bid.,P. 153.
9
1bid., pp. 153-154.

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MAX SCHELER'S ETHICS OF LOVE AND SOLIDARITY 77

Explicating this main idea, Scheler describes the essential link of love to value by emphasizing that love relates to what
has value rather than to value itself. Love is not limited to human beings, but to anything that bears value, like love of nature,
love of art and love of God. When we love nature, we do not love the human projections we bestow on her, but for what
she is. Likewise, love of art is not the "gushing" feelings we have for a work of art but the concern for the extra -human
element in it that elevates man. And our love of God is of a Wholly Other, Holy, Infinite, and Good, transcending man and
all finite things, and not simply a projection of our human consciousness and lack to the universe as a whole or to its ultimate
principle (Feurbach).10
Love is an intentional movement from a lower to a higher value of the object loved. Love is basically a movement.What
we call "love at first sight" is not yet love until it begins to move to the higher potentialities of value in the beloved object.
"Intentional" here does not mean "purposeful," "motivational," or "striving towards a goal." "Intentional," in

the phenomenological sense, means "directionality," for "consciousness is essentially consciousness of something other
than consciousness itself." Loving is loving something or someone.
Now, as movement from lower to higher value, love is wholly unconcerned about the existence or non-existence of this
higher value. Love is indifferent as to whether this higher value already exists or does not exist but ought to exist. This
indifference to the existence or nonexistence of a higher value is an essential characteristic of love as a movement. 21
Without this indifference, love can become "an attitude of constantly prospecting, as it were, for new and higher values in
the object," and "this could only be due to unsatisfied love."22 Without this indifference, love can be mistakenly construed
as wishing or attempting to raise the value of the object loved, to improve the beloved or help him/ her to acquire a higher
value. Although love "sets up an ideal paradigm of value," this does not mean a desire or striving to improve the person.
Such a desire for improvement would imply first of all a pedagogic attitude, "I love you because I want to make you a better
person." With such an attitude, whatever love present would disappear. Secondly, such a desire for improvement would
imply that there is a distinction between what the person already is and what he is not yet but ought to become, "I love you
because you ought to be this and that." Love does not make such a distinction, for "love itself, in the course ofits own
movement, is what brings about the continuous emergence of ever-higher value in the object — just as if it was streaming
out from the object of its own accord, without any sort of exertion (even of wishing) on the part of the lover.
Scheler clarifies this point further in three misunderstandings of love.
First, in love we do not seek for new values in the object loved. 24 It is true that love opens our eyes to higher values in
the beloved, and thus love is not blind, but this "wide-awakeness" is just a consequence of love that varies in degrees
depending on our interest or attention. Such a search in fact would indicate an absence of love and an illusion, and

211bid.,pp. 156-157.
221bid.,P. 157. 231bid., p. 157. 241bid.,p. 158.

2 8(3 ,—-,
would lead to disillusionment. Genuine love is loving a person for all that s/he is, including the weaknesses, and love does
not cease even if, granting that a value is sought and is not found, disillusionment sets in. When we speak of love as
directed towards the enhancement ofvalue, we do not mean being directed towards a higher value. The higher value is not
given beforehand as an ideal to be looked for in the object loved; rather it is disclosed in the very movement of love. 25
Secondly, love is not an occasion for the promotion of higher values like educating a person. Love does not desire to
change the beloved, otherwise love becomes conditional. The love in the Gospels is unconditional love, illustrated in Mary
Magdalene and the Prodigal Son. Jesus did not make Mary Magdalene promise first not to sin before loving and forgiving
her. The Father did not make the Prodigal Son's repentance the condition of his receiving him back in his love; rather the
realization of the Father's love was what made repentance and change possible. We love beings as they are, but "as they
are" in love as a movement means "become what thou art," the ideal being which is neither empirical nor an "ought' but "a
third thing, which is as yet indifferent with regard to this distinction."26
Thirdly, love does not "create" higher values in the beloved. To do so would be to project values in the other drawn from
oneself, which is an illusion due to the failure to free oneself from being partial to one's own ideas, feelings, interests, in
short from an egoism. Such idealization does exist, not because we love a person but because of certain delusions. Some
of these delusive forms include the following: "loving" a person because I have done so much for him/her, because I have
worked so hard for him/her; "loving" out of habit; because I have become so attached to the object or person; "loving"
because I cannot endure solitude, "loving because we have common interests, "loving" someone because I am reminded
of a past love. "loving becuase we think alike, and "loving" because of a common cause or identity.27
Stripped of these delusions and trappings, " love is that movement wherein every concrete individual object that
possesses value achieves the

25
1bid., p. 158.
261bid.,P. 158.

10
1bid., pp. 154-156.
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78 MANUEL DY, JR.

271bid., PP. 160-161.

3
highest value compatible with its nature and ideal vocation; or wherein it attains the ideal state ofvalue intrinsic to its nature.

Love and Moral Goodness

Since love applies to all objects within the domain of value, it can be said to include the moral value of goodness. This may
not be very obvious in the love of beauty, knowledge, nature or art, but Scheler affirms that these have moral value insofar
as they are personal acts.29 These acts do not possess an immediate moral value, although as spiritual acts they contribute
to the moral perfection of the persons who practise them.30 Love as a personal act, "of all acts, possesses the 'moral
goodness' in the most eminent and ultimate sense of the term.
If love extends to all values, to all objects because of their value, would there be such a thing then as love of goodness?
Scheler rejects vehemently such a thing. Love of goodness is Pharisaism, is itself evil, for then we only love people insofar
as they are good, or we help people, not really out of concern for them, but in order to appear and be judged good.
Furthermore, we have already seen that love is not desiring to make others good. In genuine morality, there is no such
thing as willing the good for its own sake.32
It is the same case when applied to God. We do not love God for He is Good, All-Merciful, etc. Because God's inmost
essence is love, Infinite Love, our love of God in effect is a participation of His love for the world and for Himself. 33
Love itself for Scheler "has the value of 'goodness' in its most fundamental sense," 34 and "a person's moral 'goodness'
(in the ultimate sense of the term), is determined according to the measure of his love. Love, however, "has a specifically
moral value insofar as it represents a

28
1bid., p. 161.
29
Ibid., p. 162.
30
1bid., p. 165. 311bid., p. 163.
"Ibid., pp. 162-163.
"Ibid., p. 164. 34 162.
163.

relationship 11between persons,"36 and "it is in its very movement from lower to higher value that 'goodness' first appears
as a value "37

Hierarchy of Values
What are values? For Scheler, they are the intentional objects of our feelings, qualities given originally in the "feeling of
something." This is not to say, however, that values consist in any relation to feeling-states, for values precede the
experience of feeling-states and are the foundation of these states and their completion. 12 The feeling of value also does
not mean that "values exist only insofar as they are felt. For it is a phenomenological fact that in feeling a value, the value
is given as distinct from its being felt. 39
Scheler constantly stresses the objectivity, immutability, and eternal characteristics of values, in short, their a prioristic
character. Values are to be distinguished from goods, because goods, though carriers of values, change whereas values
as qualities do not. The value of friendship, for example, remains a value even if a friend is unfaithful or betrays me. 13
Values are likewise independent of our acts of striving.14Health, for instance, is a value regardless of our striving or neglect
to be healthy.
This a priori character of values extends to its ordered rank. The hierarchy of values, value height, is independent of the
presence of goods and their movement and change in history.15 The ordered rank of values is absolutely invariable even
as the rules of preferring vary throughout history.43

11
1bid., p. 165. "Ibid., p. 163.
12
Max Scheler, Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values, trans. by Manfred S. Frings and Roger L. Funk (Evanston: Northwestern University
Press, 1973),
p. 246.
"Ibid., p. 244.
13
1bid., pp. 18-19.
14
1bid., p. 36.
15
1bid., p. 15.
"Ibid., pp. 99-100.
BUDHI 1999
MAX SCHELER'S ETHICS OF LOVE AND SOLIDARITY 79

In this ordered realm, values fall into two groups: positive and negative values. The existence of a positive value is itself
a positive values,

while its non-existence is a negative value. The existence of a negative value is itself a negative value, while its non-
existence is a positive value. A value cannot be both positive and negative at the same time.16
The following then is the a priori hierarchy of values, starting from the lowest to the highest17:

(1) Sensory Values: agreeable or pleasant and its negative, disagreeable or unpleasant. These are values that are objects
of sensory feelings, and their corresponding subjective states are pleasure and pain. Essentially, the pleasant is always
preferred to the unpleasant, although their carriers may vary. Sometimes, a person prefers the unpleasant as a
sacrifice for another higher value. Under this realm also are technical values, values of civilization and luxury values.

(2) Vital Values: the noble and the vulgar. Under this heading are values connected with the general well-being. The
corresponding states of feeling of vital values are feelings of health and sickness, aging, exhausting, energy,
vigorousness, etc. The feeling-toned responses of this realm are being pleased or distressed, courage, anxiety, urge
to revenge, anger, etc. Vital values are completely independent and irreducible to the pleasant or unpleasant values.

(3) Spiritual Values are peculiar and distinct in the way they are given: they are independent of the body and the
environment. They are again irreducible to vital and sensory values. Spiritual values correspond to spiritual feelings,
more appropriately, to the spiritual acts of love and hatred. The main kinds of spiritual values are the following:
a. The values of the beautiful and the ugly, the whole realm of aesthetic values.
b. The values of the "just' and the "unjust".
c. The values of pure knowledge for its own sake. Scientific knowledge and all values of culture are derivative values
of this value.

The corresponding feeling-states of spiritual values are spiritual joy and sorrow (in contrast to vital feeling-states
ofbeing glad and not being-glad). These states change independently of any vital states but vary dependently on
values of the respective objects themselves. Some responses of spiritual values are delight and dislike, approval and
disapproval, reverence and contempt, striving for retaliation, and spiritual apathy.

(4) Holy and Unholy. These are values that appear only on objects given intentionally as "absolute objects." By "absolute
objects," Scheler means every object in the "absolute sphere." The values ofthe holy and unholy are totally
independent ofthings and powers, persons held to be holy at different times. Derivative values of this realm are those
of things of value in sacraments, cults, and other forms of worship. The subjective states of these values are bliss and
despair, and their responses are faith, lack of faith, awe, adoration, etc.
Values of the holy are higher than spiritual values, and the vital are higher than the sensory ones. Both values of the holy
and the spiritual are values of the person, while vital and sensible values are values pertaining to life. Thus, it follows that
the movement of love commences on the level of spiritual values, but below this level, one has only liked or disliked.
What are the essential characteristics by which a value is higher than another? Scheler lists five characteristics:

(1) A value is higher if it contains in its essence (not in its carrier or goods) the ability to endure through time, qualitatively
and not quantitatively of the objective time of the carrier. In the case of love, for example, when I love someone, I do
not love him/her only for today but for eternity.

(2) Higher values are less divisible. Sensory values are considered lowest because their goods are extensive. For
example, the value of a loaf of bread is measured by the number of people who can partake in it, whereas the value
of a work of art can be appreciated by countless number of people.

16
81-82.
105-110.
17

BUDHI 2 & 1999

80 MANUEL DY, JR.

3 —0
(3) A value is higher if it generates other values and founds them. For example, the vital value of health is necessary for
the value of the pleasant to be comprehended and forms the basis for the feeling of the pleasant. Life itself has a
value, apart from the vital values, only insofar as there are spiritual values. "If values were relative to life alone, life
itself would have no value.""

(4) Depth of contentment or fulfillment accompanies higher values. This explains why the value of the sensory is lower
or lowest: its feeling is always accompanied by a search for other values of enjoyment.

(5) A value is higher the less it is relative to the organism experiencing it. For example, the spiritual love between two
persons does not depend on their physical characteristics or disabilities. Sensoryvalues of the pleasant and
unpleasant are relative to sensibly feeling-being.

Where are the moral values of good and evil to be found in accordance with this ranking of values? Good and evil are not
included in the four value modalities because they refer to the bringing of the other values in existence. The realization of
a positive or higher value in place of a negative or lower value is good, while the bringing into actuality of a lower or negative
value instead of higher or positive one is evil.18 The moral values of good and evil, so to say, "ride on the back of the deed
"48 A deed presupposes a doer. The bearer of the moral values of good and evil is for Scheler the person. "Only persons
can (originally) be morally good or evil; everything else can be good or evil by reference to persons."49 This is so because
only person can truly act, prefer, will. The person in his acting, in his act of preferring, realizes values. It is in this context
that Scheler talks of the moral tenor of the person. The basic moral tenor of a person is the directness of willing toward a
higher (or lower) value and its content which delineates the non-formal a priori field for the formation of possible intentions,
deliberations, acts done

"Ibid, 96.
as purposes, and deeds. 19 It is so to say the ordo amoris in the person, the system of actual valuations and value-
preferences operative in his life 20 The act of preferring, as we have said, is founded on love, to which our hearts are
originally and genuinely directed. When we prefer the higher values of the spiritual and the holy, we are following the
movement oflove, and we are doing good. Thus it can be said that love brings out the moral goodness of the person.
Nevertheless, we need to reiterate an earlier point that love has a specifically moral value insofar as it represents a
relationship between persons. We bring this point to highlight a possible inconsistency in Scheler's ethics between the a
priori material value ranking and the person's being a bearer of moral value. 52 Taking the example of human sacrifice in
primitive religions, Scheler would consider this as good because the value preferred is the holy. What happens now to the
value of the human person, who can only be the bearer of the values of the spiritual and the holy? A modern example
would be the issue of capital punishment. Can we justify the killing of a human person for the value of justice, a spiritual
value? There seems to be then a dual value system in Scheler's ethics, the material value ranking and the value-
bearer, the person.53 A possible solution to this contradiction is Scheler's notion of solidarity.

3
Solidarity
As a moral subject, every person for Scheler "is also given as a 'person acting with others,' as a 'man with others,' and as
'co-responsible' for everything morally relevant in this totality."21 Every finite person is both an individual person and a
collective person.55 The collective person is not a sum or collection of individual persons. The collective person is

18
25-26.
27.
212.
19
1bid., pp. 115-116.
20
1bid., p. 134.

"Michael D. Barber, Guardian ofDialogue, Max Scheler's Phenomenology, Sociol ogy ofKnowledge and Philosophy of Love (London & Toronto: Associated
University Press, 1993), p. 162.
p. 163.
21
Max Scheler, On Feeling, Knowing and Valuing, ed. by Harold J. Bershady (Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 1992), p. 236. 55 237.
1bid., pp. 1bid., pp.

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MAX SCHELER'S ETHICS OF LOVE AND SOLIDARITY 81

the center of experiencing in the endless totality of living with one another called the social unit. 22 The person as a person
acts, is the unity of diverse acts. The social person acts social acts, "acts that find their fulfillment only in a possible
community."57 Among these acts are acts of loving, commanding, obeying, promising, vowing. Social acts are different
from singularizing acts such as self-esteem, self-love, self-examination, and from acts that are indifferent to these two
directions such as judging. The world of the collective person is the collective world, while the world of the individual person
is the singular world. Every concrete finite person experiences these two differentiated but mutually related collective and
individual persons and their respective worlds.23
The relationship between the collective person and the individual person is not that of the universal and the individual
such that one can be subordinated to the other. The collective person is as much a spiritual individual as the individual
person, and, therefore, both are equal from an ethical point of view. Both collective person and individual person, however,
are subordinated to an Infinite Person where the division between the individual and the collective person, necessary for
finite persons, ceases to be.59
Because, from an ethical point of view, the collective person and individual person are equal, it follows that "not all kinds
of social units are unities that may be called collective persons (insofar as we use 'social' to designate the most general
and undifferentiated combinations of men)." 24 Scheler then gives us the different essential types of posSible social units
that can be applied to the understanding of factual social units (marriage, family, people, nation, etc.) based on two
principles: the kinds of being with one another, and the kinds and rank of values"in whose direction the member persons
of a social unit see 'with one another'..."61 It is from these types of social unit that the notion of solidarity stands out.

61
(1) The herd (for animals) or the mass (for men) is a social unit characterized by "contagion and involuntary imitation
devoid of understanding."62 There is no solidarity at all in the mass or herd.

(2) The life community is a social unit constituted by co-experiencing or reliving that has some understanding that does
not precede the co-experiencing but takes place in co-experiencing itself. As such there is no division between the
experience of the self and that of the other or between their bodily expressions. A representable solidarity is present
in the life community, where each individual is representable by other individuals according to law, structure of forms
according to the different tasks of the community such as caste, occupation, etc. 63 As such, the life community is a
suprasingular unit of life and body. Boundless trust and coresponsibility characterize life community. But "it is far from
being a personal unit, i.e., a collective person"64 because even if there is here an involuntary, subconscious preferring
of values in the form of traditional mores and customs, there is no purposeful will that would characterize a person.
The values experienced in the life community belong to thing values, not personal values. 65

(3) Society is a social unit that is "an artificial unit of individuals having no original 'living-with-one-another" as in the case

of life community. 66 Relations here are specific conscious acts originating from mature and self-conscious individual
persons. The experience of the other in society presupposes a distinction between the self-experienced and the
understood, and "any common cognition, enjoyment, etc. presuppose some criteria of the true and the false, the
beautiful and the ugly, which have been agreed upon beforehand."67 Willing together and doing together presuppose
the act of promising and the phenomenon of contract. Still, there

62
1bid., p. 240. 63Ibid.,p. 241.
64
65

67

is really no true solidarity here but only the similarity or dissimilarity of individuals' interests, and the responsibility for
others is based on self-responsibility. Distrust characterizes society, so the common will can only be done by fiction or
by force. A personal form of unity appears throughout society (which does not exist in the life community), expressed
in conventions and fashions, but this appears exclusively as the individual person who is related to the values of the
agreeable (society as sociability) and the useful (society as the bearer of civilization), values that are not unifying but

22
Ibid.,p. 236. "Ibid., p. 237.
23
237-238. 239.
24
239-240.
1bid., p.

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82 MANUEL DY, JR.

divisive.68 In contrast to life community where the individual being is only co-responsible for the doings of the whole, in
society exclusive self-responsibility of each for his actions is realized.69

(4) The highest type of social unit is the " unity of independent, spiritual, and individual singlepersons 'in' an independent,
spiritual, and individual collective person."70 This is the Christian idea of community. Here, the being and immortal self-
value of the individual soul is united with the person by means of the salvational solidarity of all in the corpus
christianum founded on love. Here, "any finite person is an individual person and at the same time a member of a
collective person. This means that responsibility-for someone and responsibility-to someone have different
orientations. With regards to responsibility-for, "in the collective person every individual andthe collective person are
self-responsible (= responSible for oneself), and at the same time every individual is also coresponsible for the
collective person (and for every individual 'in' it), just as the collective person is co-responsible for each of its members.
Hence, co-responsiblity between the individual person and the collective person is mutual and does not preclude self-
responsibility on the part of both."71 As regards to responsibilty-to, there is no ultimate responsibility of the individual
to the collective person (life community), nor of the collective to the individual

68

70

71

(society), but both the collective person and the individual person are ultimately responsible to God, the Person.25
It is in here that genuine solidarity is present. The representable solidarity of the life community disappears in society
but reappears in the Christian community as unrepresentable solidarity. "the individual person is coresponsible for all other
individual persons 'in' the collective person not only as the representative of an office, a rank, or any other positional value
in the social structure, but also, indeed, first of all, as a unique personal individual and as a bearer of an individual
conscience..."73 Here, I would have to ask myself, "what positive value would have occurred in the world and what negative
value would have been avoided if I, not only as a representative of a social structure but also as a spiritual individual, had
grasped, willed, and realized the "good-initself-for-me?" Solidarity reaches its highest level because in addition to the
universally valid good-in-itself, there is an individually valid goodin-itself.
"The total moral world... becomes one encompassing whole through the validity of this principle."74 Every person, both
individual and collective, participates in it in his own unique membership. "This whole rises and falls as a whole whenever
this principle suffers the slightest change. And as a whole it possesses at every moment of its existence a unique moral
totality value."75
Genuine solidarity rests on two propositions. The first is that a community of persons belongs to the essence of a
possible person and that the possible unities of sense and value of such a community possesses an a priori structure. For
Scheler, "this is the foundation that makes moral solidarity possible."76 But what makes moral solidarity necessary is the
essential reciprocity and reciprocal valueness of all moral and social acts, especially love. Social acts are by their nature

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reciprocal. In the case oflove, love requires a response of love. I may refuse to respond to love but I cannot comfort myself
as if nothing had happened. Of

74

75

76

course this demand for the response to love is never the condition for loving but belongs to the very sense of love as love,
as a social act. This grounds the coresponsibility of every bearer of this act for the moral values of the acts of the bearers
of the responding acts. I who love not only realize a value in myself but also a value in the beloved, and I am therefore
coresponsible for the response or refusal of the beloved to my love. On the part of the beloved, his response of love also
bears a positive value, and his refusal is not only a self-responsibility but also a 'coresponsability for the negative value
lying in the nonbeing of the positive value of responding love.
The second proposition is that which gives the principle of solidarity its complete fullness of extension: there is no act of
the person that does not change the content of the person's being or value. "In every moral individual act of positive value
the ability for acts of the kind increases.. .there is an increase in. . .the virtue of the person.. .the experienced power to

25
1bid, pp. 246-247.
"Ibid.,
1bid., p. 243.
"Ibid., p. 244.
1bid., p. 246. 1bid., p. 246.

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MAX SCHELER'S ETHICS OF LOVE AND SOLIDARITY 83

realize the good that ought to be "78 In love, this means that my love for the other increases my capacity to love all others,
and the other's response of love effects not only the value of myself but of all possible others.79

Conclusion
The foregoing discussion on Scheler's notion of solidarity leads us to the following insights: First, with respect to the seeming
inconsistency in Scheler's emphasis on the moral value of the person in love and the material ranking of values, solidarity
provides the bridge of the dual system. Solidarity unites the values of the spiritual and the holy with the value of the person
as both the individual person and collective person in mutual coresponsibility. Going back to the moral problem of the
sacrificing virgins and youth in primitive religion, Scheler holds no protest against this practice in view of the absence of
genuine solidarity in the life community of primitive religion. There is no murder in this act because the person is not willfully
annihilated. In the case of capital punishment, however, Scheler would consider this immoral. In the

77
p. 249.
78
p. 249-250.
79

context of the Christian community where solidarity ought to be present, for the state to take the life of a human being on
account of justice and for the well-being of society is to commit murder,80 to negate the value of the person, both the
individual person and the collective person in the finite person. In the context of solidarity, the whole community is
coresponsible for the crime of the criminal, and imposing the death penalty is a refusal to admit this coresponsibility.
Secondly, solidarity is the fulfillment of the movement of love. Love as the reaching out to the other to participate in the
highest possibilities of value inherent in the other finds its fulfillment in solidarity. Solidarity unites in the act of loving the
lover and the beloved and yet maintaining and enhancing their otherness, their self-responsibility. It is in solidarity that the
reciprocity of loving as a social act finds a home, where giving is also receiving, and an extension to all other possible
others. Thus, the compassionate and loving Buddha is in solidarity with the poor, the sick, the dejected. And St. Francis of
Assisi in his love for the Lord is at home not only with St. Claire and the whole human community but also with Nature, the
birds and bees, the sun and the moon. Finally, solidarity in Scheler's ethics takes the place of universality in Kantian
formalistic ethics. Universality in the name of rationality can easily be used as a will to power, to dominate. Formal ethics
can make universal humanity the measure of value. Solidarity, on the other hand, measures humanity against values, the
higher values of love. In our age of globalization, solidarity may be our answer to the disappearance of the face of the

80
Max Scheler, Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values, p. 313.

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