Toward a Resolution of Antinomies in Max Schelers Value Theory With Reference to Herman Dooyeweerd

Abstract
Two problems in Schelers thought are (1) his reason/feeling dualism, which artificially
limits his classification of values, undermining the coherence of experience and its
rational intelligibility; and (2) his restriction of moral value to a by-product of realizing
non-moral values, which leads him to misidentify the value attaching to personal agency
exclusively with moral value. To resolve these problems, I enlist Herman Dooyeweerds
analysis of experiential aspects, analogical concepts, and subject-object relations, which
illumine both Schelers insights and his oversights.

Toward a Resolution of Antinomies in Max Schelers Value Theory With Reference to Herman Dooyeweerd1

For some time the case has been argued that Schelers thought, whatever the brilliance of
its many insights, is freighted with certain persisting problems (see esp. Blosser 1995,
1998, 2005, 2007, 2010). Given the nature of these problems, and the fact that they
appear to be irresolvable within his theoretical framework as it stands, I shall refer to
them as antinomies. In this essay I intend to map out two specific, interrelated areas in
which these antinomies occur, and then to offer suggestions as to how these might be
resolved.

The two areas of Schelers thought I have in mind are (1) his Pascalian bifurcation of
reason and feeling, which, as we shall see, artificially limits the number of values and
ranks of values in his classification, undermining his account of the coherence of
experience and of how our moral experience may be rationally understood; and (2) his
restriction of moral value to a by-product of willing and/or bringing about the existence
of bearers of non-moral values, which leads him to misidentify the value attached to
personal agency exclusively with moral value, and the perceived normativities to which
personal agency responds exclusively with moral normativity (cf. Blosser 2005).

Taking these in turn, it is important to note that each of these areas, as well as the
antinomies that occur within them, are intimately interrelated with other parts of

Schelers thought. It is not possible to adequately understand the nature of problems in

one area without seeing how these depend on problems in adjacent areas of his theory.

Schelers Pascalian dualism and its consequences

It is well known that Scheler was critical of the primacy accorded by Kant to reason over
sensibility, and willing over feeling and inclination. Scheler described this as a kind of
Puritan distrust of the given in human experience. He rejected Kants empty
formalism in favor of an ethic of material content. The ordering principle for human
experience, said Scheler, is not imposed upon it by a rational Kantian subject, but
objectively given in the phenomena of experience themselves.

Decisively important among these phenomena, according to Scheler, are values, which
are given a priori in experience according to their own objective order of ranks. These
values are grouped, in his analysis, from higher to lower, in four broad categories: (1)
religious values, such as the sacred and profane; (2) spiritual (geistige) values, such
as the beautiful, right, and true; (3) vital values, such as the noble and
common; and (4) sensory values, such as the pleasant and painful. (Scheler 1973e,
104-109; 1980, 125-140) Each of these objectively given value modalities corresponds
to its respective subjective feeling by which it is apprehended. Furthermore, since
reason is as blind to [values] as ears and hearing are to colors, according to Scheler,
values are completely inaccessible to reason. (Scheler 1973e, 255; 1980, 260) This
suggests that whatever the province of reason may be presumably intellectual

understanding, rational judgment, logical inference, etc. it must be distinct from the
realm of values apprehended by feeling.

At least two presumptions limiting the range of Schelers hierarchy of values are
embedded in his theory at this point. First, there is the limitation of ranks of values to
four, as indicated above. This limitation may seem somewhat arbitrary, but is fairly
innocuous. There is no reason to suppose that the ranks of values must be limited a
priori to four. Other listings are conceivable. Manfred Frings, for example, suggests that
a fifth modality of pragmatic values, such as the useful and useless, may be
discerned between Schelers third and fourth ranks, though he admits that Scheler did not
assign these a separate rank. (Frings 1997, 28) Second, there is a limitation of values to a
Pascalian realm of the heart, such that they are inaccessible to reason. This limitation is
more problematic. As Ronald Perrin says, at the very moment when [Scheler] seemed
on the verge of healing the rift between phenomenal and noumenal man, he reinvoked the
distinction between a realm of sensibility (now characterized in terms of Pascals order of
the heart) and a realm of thought, each unique and irreducible. (Perrin 1974, 359)

This dualism of feeling and reason with feeling seen as the faculty for apprehending
values, and reason as the faculty for making logical distinctions, judgments and
inferences leads Scheler into a tangle of antinomies. One example of how this occurs
can be seen in the way Scheler differentiates a number of subsidiary values within his
four basic ranks of values. Among the spiritual (as distinguished from religious)2 values
and corresponding feelings discussed by Scheler, one finds aesthetic, juridical, and

philosophic values (the beautiful, right, and true). Further, he refers to various
consecutive values dependent upon these, such as (a) values of science, deriving from
philosophic values of the pure cognition of truth; (b) cultural values, deriving from
values of such goods as art treasures, scientific institutions, positive legislation, etc.; and
(c) legal values, deriving from juridical values of the order of right (Rechtsordnung).
(Scheler 1973e, 103-104, 107-108; 1980, 104-105, 128-129)

First, this suggests that beyond Schelers basic ranking of four (or five) modalities of
values, there is a whole range of variously interrelated values and corresponding feelings,
including aesthetic, juridical, legal, philosophic, and scientific values, and possibly many
others.

Second, and more tellingly, Schelers discussion of this cluster of spiritual values raises
interesting questions about the way he delimits his hierarchy of values. On the one hand,
he claims that values are completely inaccessible to reason, and declares: The heart
possesses a strict analogue of logic in its own domain that it does not borrow from the
logic of the understanding. (Scheler 1973b, 117; 2000, 356) On the other hand, his
reference to philosophic and scientific values, as mentioned above, suggests a
conflation of his rigid distinction between domains of the heart and head, or feeling and
reason. One cannot help wondering what the precise relationship is between these
philosophical and scientific values and the logic of the understanding or logic of
reason to which the heart is supposed to have its own strict analogue. How, for
example, is the value of the cognition of truth related to the cognition of logical validity

or to rational understanding? Is it possible to speak of logical values? In terms of

Schelers Pascalian dualism, this would seem impossible; yet in terms of his
consecutive values, one cannot avoid the question.

The moment the question is raised, however, we see just how precarious Schelers tidy
dualism of heart vs. head, feelings vs. reason, and values vs. logic really is. What
happens to his Pascalian analogy between the logic of rational understanding and the
logic of the feeling heart? What happens to his strict division between the realm of
values, accessible to feelings alone, and the realm of logic proper to rational
understanding alonea dualism that runs back to his earliest pre-phenomenological
period in Jena? (Spiegelberg 1976, 235; Bershady 1993, 6ff.; Mancuso 2008) After
Schelers introduction of consecutive values of philosophy and science, is it still
possible to limit the number of material regions to which the notion of value can be
assigned? In addition to Schelers hierarchy of four ranks of values (religious, spiritual,
vital, and sensory), and his subset of spiritual and consecutive values (aesthetic, juridical,
and philosophical, and scientific), is it possible to avoid referencing other regions of
values, such as the economic, linguistic, social, historical, psychical, physical, spatial, or
even mathematical, or logical values? (Blosser 2010, 261)

Third, this suggests something arbitrary about the way Scheler limits the apprehension of
values exclusively to the faculty of feeling. For, if the realm of values itself extends
decidedly into the region of philosophy, science, and the pure cognition of truth, then
why should feeling be viewed as a faculty altogether exclusive of rational understanding?

In his book, Phenomenology of Feeling, Stephen Strasser acknowledges the significant

role of feeling in our apprehension of values, but questions the notion of the primacy of
the heart, as found by Scheler. He insists, rather, that at every moment, even of my
mature existence, I am engaged in development from Bios through Pathos to Logos.
(Strasser 1977, 172) In fact, he comments on Pascals famous dictum by observing:

It is indeed not a matter of knowledge being registered in the manner of doubleentry bookkeeping: once under heart and another time under head. Rational
and non-rational moments in no way stand in a relation of irreconcilable
opposition; that which distinguishes them does not divide them . Just the
opposite: knowledge that is of full value normally occurs through bringing
together rational and non-rational moments into a unified world-picture. (Strasser
1977, 177, 133f.)

Schelers key terms, values and feeling, call for a careful reexamination. The
distinction they presuppose tacitly conceals a further ancillary problem in the way it
misconstrues the relation of subjective to objective sides of experience, as we shall
presently see.

Schelers view of moral values and its consequences

In Schelers theory, moral value is yielded indirectly as a by-product of realizing (or

willing the realization of) non-moral values. This is characteristic of teleological ethical

theories generally (Frankena 1973, 17) and of Schelers ethics during his middle
phenomenological period.3 Non-moral values are realized directly by bringing about the
existence of something bearing those values. Thus the aesthetic value of beauty is
realized by bringing about the existence of something beautiful, say, the production of an
aesthetically excellent film. Moral value, by contrast, is realized indirectly as a byproduct of my willing attempt to bring about the existence of something bearing a nonmoral value, whether or not I actually succeed in my endeavor. Accordingly, Scheler
says that moral good appears on the back of acts aiming to bring about some other,
non-moral good. Moral good, he says, attaches to our acts of willing the realization of a
positive or higher (as opposed to lower) value. Moreover and this is crucially
important, as we shall see because moral good appears on the act of willing, Scheler
says, it therefore can never [itself] be the content of an act of willing. (Scheler 1973e,
27; 1980, 48) Now what is the problem with this?

First, it tends to assume that every instance of the value good may be viewed as a
moral good, although there seems little ground to support this. Some things are good in
morally indifferent ways for example, aesthetically, economically, socially, and so forth.
This does not mean that such values cannot be morally relevant, but that does not make
them moral values. As Dietrich von Hildebrand observes, all moral values are
morally relevant, but not all morally relevant values are moral values. (Hildebrand 1953,
280) When Scheler says, The existence of a positive value itself is a positive value
(Scheler 1973e, 82; 1980; 100), therefore, there seems little reason why we may not
substitute: The existence of a positive value is good. While this may turn out to be

more of a quibble over terminology than a substantive issue, some have doggedly
defended the idea that the value good should be reserved exclusively for moral value.
Peter H. Spader (2002, 285), for example, responds to the idea of non-moral good by
writing: I see no reason to add to the fact that the realization of a positive nonmoral
value is itself a positive value by positing a new value, the nonmoral good, to signal
that fact. Yet there seems little to prevent us from referring to bearers of positive
aesthetic, economic, or social value as good in some way, and, therefore, as bearing the
value of some sort non-moral (aesthetic, economic, social, etc.) good. To return to our
earlier example, if a film bears a positive aesthetic value, this is evidently a species of the
value good not, however, the value of moral good, but of aesthetic good.

Second, it assumes that all human willing and action are typologically moral, though
there is little warrant for this. (Blosser 2005, 138, passim) Not all human agency is
typologically moral, any more than all positive value is moral. On the one hand, Scheler
has ample warrant for claiming that a persons attempt to realize some sort of good or end
brings about, not only the existence of a bearer of some non-moral value, but also yet
another value as a by-product of this endeavor a positive or negative value attaching to
the personal agency itself whether willing, doing, making, etc. I call this the agents
response value, since we are always responding as agents in some way to various
material values and norms that we apprehend in some way.4 On the other hand, Scheler
seems to have little warrant for claiming that this other (response-) value is always a
moral value, any more than the positive value of a realized good that serves as its bearer
must be moral.

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Thus, if a film is an aesthetically good one, its production yields at least two values: (1) a
positive aesthetic value, attaching to the film, and (2) a positive response value attaching
to the film makers agency in producing it. While this latter value may certainly be
morally good or bad in some cases, there is little reason for supposing that it must always
be so. It seems that it could just as well be morally indifferent, even if the film produced
was technically excellent. The production of a film may be worthy of praise or blame for
many reasons, but not necessarily moral reasons. As Hildebrand (1953, 279; cf. 393)
says, Enthusiasm for a great work of art is a praiseworthy value response, but still it is
not morally good in the strict sense of the term. By the same token, some acts may be
non-morally good, yet morally bad. A film could be aesthetically exemplary but morally
repugnant if it were racist, for example. In this case, the film makers action is related
to two values a positive aesthetic value and a negative moral value. From a technical
aesthetic point of view, the film makers action is praise-worthy; from a moral point of
view, it is contemptible. From a technical point-of-view, the film maker is good; from
a moral point-of-view, bad. Hence, it is insufficient to suggest, as Scheler does, that a
positive moral value invariably attaches to the will of an agent who brings about the
existence of a bearer of a positive non-moral value.5

In light of this, it seems questionable whether any moral value, positive or negative,
invariably attaches to human agency. While everything we do may have moral
implications, not everything we do is morally specified, typologically moral, or even
morally relevant, as Hildebrand suggests. Making a film is not invariably a morally

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significant act, any more than opening a door or closing a window. Making an
aesthetically excellent film involves responding to certain technical, aesthetic norms and
principles governing film making, and to the extent that this response is successful, the
act of making the film bears a positive response value, though that value may not be in
any way typologically moral.

Third, the essential nature of moral value seems to be obfuscated in Schelers thought by
his view that it appears on the act of willing and therefore can never be the content of
an act of willing. Scheler describes moral values as

those whose bearers can never (originally) be given as objects, since they
belong in essence to the sphere of the person (and act-being). For neither the
person nor acts can ever be given to us as objects. (Scheler 1973e, 86; 1980,
105f.)
Accordingly, Scheler accepts the view that moral values are not given in our experience
as intentional objects, since neither persons nor their acts to which they attach are given
thus. This view does not seem supportable phenomenologically. (Blosser 1998, 171;
2007, 108ff.; 2010, 252ff.) Moreover, it carries implications that strike me as ethically
fatal. Commenting on Schelers view that moral values can never be given as content of
willing, Karol Wojtyla declares: We are standing here in the presence of the
phenomenologists fatal mistake. (Wojtyla 1955-1957, 113-140; 1993, 23-56) What
Scheler overlooks, says Wojtyla, is the most elementary fact that the only value that can
be called moral is one that is experienced as having the acting person as its efficient

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cause. On Schelers view, however, moral value is permitted to fall beneath the horizon
of our intentional experience, so that the very act in which moral value is realized and
arises remains outside of moral experience. The experience of actual moral agency in
Scheler thus falls into eclipse, Wojtyla suggests, as if it were a Kantian noumenon, a
thing-in-itself beyond the possibility of experience, while direct phenomenological
experience is confined to the experience of non-moral values. (Ibid.)

As we shall see, Schelers view of moral value calls for careful reexamination.

Foundations for a resolution: Schelers values and Dooyeweerds modal aspects

Value is a notoriously ambiguous term, with a semantic range of meaning embracing

ethics, religion, economics, aesthetics, law, semiotics, mathematics, and even computer
science. Value theory (Werttheorie), or axiology, as it has sometimes been called,
arose as part of a movement loosely affiliated with Neo-Kantianism under the influence
of Rudolph Hermann Lotze, who aimed to secure a domain of independent significance
for human values against the encroachment of the natural sciences, whose pervasive
positivism threatened to reduce the totality of the person to a domain of quantifiable
facts. In Germany, the development of value theory was largely carried out within the
Baden school of Neo-Kantians established by Wilhelm Windelband and elaborated by
Heinrich J. Rickert. In Austria, it was developed by the so-called Second Austrian
School of Values, under Franz Brentano and two of his followers at the University of

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Vienna, Christian von Ehrenfels and Alexius Meinong. The First Austrian School of
Values was a school of economic theorists, including Eugen Bhm-Bawerk, Friedrich
von Wieser and Karl Menger. In fact, the English term axiology was introduced into
philosophy by Wilbur M. Urban in Valuation: Its Nature and Laws (1906), in order to
translate the German Werttheorie, which the Austrian economist, J. von Neumann, had
introduced into economics. (Findlay 1970; Rescher 1982; Frondizi 1971; Frankena 1967;
Kraus 1937; Hring 1960)

Scheler was undoubtedly acquainted with these developments, particularly those of

Brentanos school. These influences, together with the use of the term value in the
writings of thinkers as diverse as Nietzsche and Edmund Husserl, would have furnished
him with a generic conception of value, along with various attempts to classify laws of
valuation and regional ontologies of values. These material conceptions of value
encompassing the value phenomena of such disciplines as ethics, religion, economics,
aesthetics, jurisprudence, linguistics and mathematics served to provide some of the
basic components in Schelers critique of Kants ethical formalism, although, like
Lotze and most subsequent value theorists, he sharply differentiated the region of values
from that of logic.

What are values, according to Scheler? First, Scheler takes a distinctly anti-realist
view of the existence of values as such.6 Values have no real existence in themselves
Der Wert ist berhaupt nicht. (Scheler 1971, 98; Frings 1997, 23) Second, he
admits that values can be realized by bringing about the existence of their bearers.

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Third, he insists that values can be apprehended apart from their bearers, just as colors
can be imagined without regarding them as covering corporeal surfaces. (Scheler 1973e
12-13; 1980, 32-33; 1955 and 1973c, sec. 4) Hence, values are not merely properties or
abstractions of things. In this sense, values could be said to have a kind of mental
existence, much as medieval philosophers described things lacking real being (like
concepts) as beings of reason. (Scheler 1976; 1973a) Accordingly, he typically refers
to values as essences, or even ideal units of meaning (Scheler 1973e, 48ff.; 1980,
68ff.; 1954, 449f.; 1973d, 219ff.), insisting that they are apprehended by means of a
distinctively emotive faculty of essential intuition (Wesenschau) or valueapprehension (Wertnehmung)7 (1973e, 197; 1980, 212). He also frequently calls them
qualities (Qualitten), value-qualities (Wert-qualitten), and non-formal qualities of
contents (materiale Qualitten), bearing in mind their independence of bearers. (Scheler
1973e, 12, 15, 17, 18, 23, 126; 1980, 35, 37, 40, 41, 45, 141)

Now, whatever values may be for Scheler, it seems to me that two things may be noted
about his value-theory: (1) it implicitly suggests a traditional hierarchical classification of
levels of being or experience, and (2) it involves an explicit dualism of feeling vs. reason.
First, Schelers ranking of values (religious, spiritual, vital, sensible) involves a ranking
that is reminiscent of other traditional hierarchies, like that in Platos Allegory of the
Cave in Book VII of The Republic (images, bodies, geometrical forms, and pure forms),
or Aristotles fourfold classification sensible, material substances into tiered groupings of
inorganic bodies, plants, animals, and rational human beings (Metaphysica, I, 1; De
Anima, I, 1, 5; II, 1-3, 5, 9; III, 3, 12; Historia Animalium, X, 1; De Generatione

15

Animalium, I, 1-9, IV, 4-6; De Partibus Animalium, I, 4-5), or his analysis of the
categories, which moves beyond the level of the physical world into the world of ideas
(Metaphysica, III, 5-6; XII, 8; XIII, 1-5; De Anima, III, 4-6). Something like these
hierarchical distinctions may be discerned in Schelers rankings of values. The lowest
two involve the inorganic and biotic physical world (sensible and vital values), while the
highest two reference values in the cultural and religious world of ideas (spiritual and
religious values).

In one sense, Schelers hierarchy discloses various irreducible dimensions of experience

a phenomenological analogue of a more traditional metaphysical hierarchy of being. In
this respect, it could be said that Schelers schema builds on the earlier ones,
distinguishing the vital (biotic) from the physical (sensible), and the religious from
various spiritual dimensions (such as the aesthetic and legal), much as Aristotle
differentiated rational human experience from sentient animal life, and biotic life from
physical inorganic matter; or as Kant echoed Platos distinction between the rational and
sensible, and also differentiated the moral from the legal dimensions of experience. In
fact, whatever may be said of the internal antinomies within Schelers theory, his
Pascalian defense of the independence of feeling from reason underscores a genuine antireductionist insight.

Second, in spite of its anti-reductionist insight, Schelers Pascalian dualism also conceals
a tacit antinomian problem involved in relating subjective and objective sides of
experience. (This is a further antinomy stemming from his dualism in addition to those

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discussed earlier under the heading of Schelers Pascalian dualism and its
consequences, which include in addition to the problem of the inherent instability of
Schelers ranks of values and arbitrary limitation of the number of ranks to four the
inherent untenability of the Pascalian dualization itself, both in terms of the bifurcation
between the objective realms of values and logic, and the bifurcation between subjective
faculties of feeling and reason.) For one thing, feeling may refer, not only as it does in
Scheler to a subjective faculty of value-apprehension, but to one among many objectively
irreducible objective dimensions of our experience: the realm of the emotive (or the
affective), the province of psychology. As such it is distinguishable not only from
reason, but from the various other objective dimensions of experience discussed
immediately above. In this respect, one might ask how the subjective faculty of valuefeeling in Scheler is related to the objective rank of sensible values (including feelings of
pleasure or pain), since the feelings (Gefhle) or feeling-states (Gefhlszustanden) to
which sensible values attach are themselves subjective faculties of value-apprehension.

Thus, on the one hand, Schelers defense of an objective order of values completely
independent logic, as well as a subjective faculty of feeling completely independent of
reason, underscores his positive insight into the irreducible distinctness of these realms of
phenomena. On the other hand, his grouping of all material values under the heading of
objects of non-logical feeling does not adequately account for the relationship between
the logical and non-logical regions of value-experience, not to mention the prospect that
logical relationships may themselves be considered a species of value-phenomena, as we
have seen. Furthermore, his unqualified grouping of all instances of value-awareness

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together under emotions or feelings, defined in opposition to rational understanding,

begins to look a bit like a species of reductionism itself, and does little to account for the
variety of subjective modalities of value-experience, including what we might want to
call a feeling for mathematical or logical values.

Perhaps no philosopher has undertaken a more attentive, detailed, nuanced and

thoroughgoing study of the interrelationships of various phenomenologically irreducible
aspects of experience than the Dutch philosopher, Herman Dooyeweerd, in his
monumental, four-volume New Critique of Theoretical Thought (1953-1958).
Provisionally, it should be noted that aspects are not individual things (entities, persons,
institutions, actions, events) existing on their own, but, like Schelers values or
Aristotles accidents, require a bearer or substratum. (Woudenberg 2003, 7) With
things, it is always a question of what; with aspects, it is always a question of how.
Aspects concern the manner of being of a thing or the mode in which it is experienced.
Accordingly, they are called modal aspects or modalities, though they are sometimes also
referred to as modal functions, or interchangeably as aspects of things, aspects of
the world, or aspects of our experience. (Clouser 2005, 67) In descending order,
Dooyeweerds list of these modal aspects includes: the religious, moral, juridical,
aesthetic, economic, social, lingual, historical, logical, sensitive (feeling), biotic, physical,
kinematic, spatial, and numerical. (Dooyeweerd 1984, II, 55-413; III, 54-156)

Ren van Woudenberg suggests that Dooyeweerd took over the term aspect, along with
much of his technical language, from the philosophical vocabulary of Neo-Kantianism

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between the two World Wars. In that vocabulary, he says, an aspect of a thing is a
point of view from which the thing can be considered. (Woudenberg 2003, 7) This
raises the question, he says, as to how modal aspects can be considered aspects of objects
(things), if they represent a point of view of thinking subjects. I dont see this as a
genuine problem. If an aspect of a thing such as a crystals physical properties of
weight, size, density, and mass can serve as the focus our experience, there seems little
reason for supposing that we cannot reasonably refer both to the physical aspect of the
crystal and to the physical (as opposed to, say, aesthetic or economic) viewpoint from
which we are considering it. Here Roy Clousers analysis of types of theories,
abstraction, and aspects of experience, with a view to Dooyeweerds thought (Clouser
2005, 61-69), may offer some illumination.

Theories, according to Clouser, are explanations that offer hypotheses and try to justify
them through arguments and evidence. As such, they range from non-technical common
sense explanations such as a detective might propose in attempting to solve a criminal
case, to highly technical, abstract explanations proposed by scientists and philosophers.
The difference seems related to the degree of abstraction from ordinary experience
involved.

Abstraction, in turn, involves extracting or removing something (mentally) from its wider
background in order to focus attention upon it, says Clouser. This might involve the
mundane attempt to find a book with a green cover by singling out (abstracting) all the
books with green covers from other books on the shelf. It might also involve the higher-

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level abstraction of isolating a property from the thing that exhibits it. Instead of
focusing on a cars color, beauty, cost, and weight as properties of the car, for example, it
might involve focusing on the properties as such including even more technical
properties such as velocity, mass, density, or volume making it possible for theories to
offer hypotheses about highly abstracted properties, functions and relations independently
of being about the things and events that have them. The most important of the relations
that can be discovered in this way, says Clouser, are the laws governing various
properties, such as (in this case): momentum = mass x velocity; density = mass volume;
U = Q+W; or E = mc2.

Aspects, finally, are related to the crucial role of abstraction in theory making that
consists in abstracting kinds of properties, as Clouser notes. This calls for a word of
clarification to forestall a possible confusion. Scheler (1973e, 12-13; 1980, 32-33) denies
that values are properties of things, since values can be intuited apart from their
bearers, as we have seen; but this would not prevent a particular value or rank of value
from being conceived as a property of being a certain kind of value. Likewise,
Woudenberg, who once described modal aspects as properties of individual things
(1995, 40-41), later retracts this view (2003, 2-3), offering as an example of a property
the proposition Iron has the property of expanding when being heated. He notes
correctly that property in this statement could not serve to identify intelligibly what
Dooyeweerd means by aspect. He does not consider, however, the possibility of yet
another level of abstraction: The property of expanding when being heated is a physical
property. Here the property of being a physical property may be identified readily with

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the Dooyeweerds physical aspect, an identification based on the distinction noted by

Clouser between a property of a thing and the property of being a kind of property.

Accordingly, in the case of more technical properties such as weight, mass, momentum,
and density we can see that these properties, as well as the laws that hold between
them, all share the common additional property of being physical. This additional
property thus involves a further abstraction from the abstracted properties and laws of
that (physical) kind. In lower-level abstractions, a property (such as a cars color, beauty,
cost, or weight) is distinguished and singled out, but it is still experienced as a property of
the thing that exhibits it. In the higher-level abstractions involved in isolating kinds of
properties, properties are isolated from whatever exhibits them so that the properties
themselves become the focus of attention. Hence, they involve abstractions from
abstractions, in order to isolate, among various properties, the additional property of
being a certain kind of property, such as a physical, mathematical, biological, or aesthetic
property. Such classifications serve theory making by specifying a distinct region or field
of inquiry and research, much as in the foregoing example it was the physical region of
experience that was isolated as a field of inquiry typically the province of theories of
physics, and its various branches.

Likewise, many other kinds of properties and laws have been abstracted and made into
distinct fields of study through history, such as arithmetic, geometry, biology, psychology,
history, linguistic, economics, ethics, etc. The major examples of kinds of properties and
laws that have been isolated as fields for theoretical research, according to Clouser,

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include at least those specified by Dooyeweerds aspects. He recognizes, however, that

not every field of research takes its subject from a particular abstracted aspect with which
it deals. Some such as entomology, paleontology, and botany take their names from
the particular class of things they investigate. Others such as cultural anthropology or
philosophy do not confine themselves to one aspect, but construct theories about how
certain data relate across various aspects. None of this diminishes role or importance of
abstracting aspects in theory making, says Clouser:

For whether a science takes its name from a particular aspect, or from a certain
range of things, or from several aspects of a certain range of things, in every case
the aspectual delimitations remain crucial. At every point a theory must make
clear the kind(s) of properties it is dealing with, and the kind(s) of laws it is using
to related and/or explain its data. (Clouser 2005, 68)

Toward a resolution: modal aspects, analogies, and subject-object relations

Aspects thus represent fundamental ways in which we experience the world. They form a
modal framework in which we grasp phenomena from different points of view. In
Clousers account, they are not direct properties of things, but rather properties
constituting abstracted kinds of properties, such as the property of being physical,
biological, etc. Dooyeweerds particular list of aspects, furthermore, need not be treated

22

as dogmatic pronouncement, since other thinkers might well offer a different list. As
Clouser writes:

Rather, it is intended, first, as a description of (not a theory about) the way we

come to experience properties of things in isolation as well as in their
connectedness. And second, it is a report of the list of aspects most thinkers have
regarded as genuine fields for investigation and theory making. (Clouser 2005,
67)

To illustrate how abstraction of aspects is involved in theory making, let us consider the
example of an alleged discovery of a long-lost Rembrandt painting. As information about
the discovery surfaces, scientists may investigate and develop theories about the physical
constitution of the canvas and linseed oil paints used in the painting. Art historians may
develop historical theories about how the painting came to be lost and rediscovered, as
well as theories about its probable authenticity. Art critics may offer critical analyses of
its aesthetic properties. Art dealers may develop profiles of its economic value.
Attorneys may investigate legal considerations concerning its rightful ownership. In each
case, the same object is considered from the perspective of a different aspect, which is
isolated for consideration. Prior to theoretical abstraction, the aspects are latently
embedded within the indissoluble coherence of mundane experience. The theoretical
abstraction of distinct aspects, however, makes it possible to identify the kinds of
properties being investigated or kinds of laws being adduced within a theory. Such
abstraction of modal aspects is indispensable to theory making.

23

Dooyeweerd offers an intricately-developed analysis of modal aspects in which he

carefully isolates the irreducible meaning-nuclei of each aspect discrete quantity as
the nucleus of the numerical aspect, continuous extension (of the spatial), motion
(kinematic), energy (physical), life (biotic), feeling (sensitive), etc. These
meaning-nuclei do not constitute definitions of the modal aspects, since each aspect is
irreducible and cannot be defined as the species of another genus. Rather,
they are descriptions of phenomenologically isolated core meanings of each aspect.
Dooyeweerd even finds heuristic value in deliberately posing hypothetical antinomies to
test whether the meaning-nucleus of a modality has been correctly located and identified.
(Dooyeweerd 1984, II, 48-49) Dooyeweerds approach here may share something in
common with Edmund Husserls phenomenological method of free imaginative
variation (e.g., Husserls Experience and Judgment, sec. 87), but its unique insights, as
well as the particular summary of it presented here, specifically rests on his theory of
modal analogies.

Analogies, or analogical concepts, form a central part of Dooyeweerds modal analysis

of decisive importance for our purposes. (Dooyeweerd 1954; N.D.) Theoretical
abstraction reveals, he says, that

... every aspect of experience expresses within its modal structure the entire
temporal order and connection of all the aspects. Only the central moment of its
modal structure, what we may call the modal nucleus of the aspect, manifests here

24

an original and univocal character. But it can express this irreducible nucleus of
meaning of the aspect only in connection with a series of analogical moments of
meaning, which, on the one hand, refer back to the nuclei of meaning of all the
earlier aspects and, on the other hand, point forward to the nuclei of meaning of
all the later ones. It is to these analogical moments in the modal structure of the
various aspects of our experience that the analogical concepts of the various
special sciences are related. They express therefore an inner interrelatedness
between the various fields of science, but cannot do away with their modal
diversity of meaning. (Dooyeweerd 1954, 172; N.D., 2)

For example, artistic feeling, moral feeling, a sense of fairness, the joy of faith, a sense
for business, a physical sensation, a feeling for languages, math, or logic are all
phenomena in the sensitive (feeling) sphere that refer for their analogical meanings to the
aesthetic, moral, juridical, religious, economic, biotic, lingual, numerical, and logical
aspects. Likewise, an historical movement, art movement, e-motion, biological or
economic growth, loss of faith, logical movement from premises to conclusion, change of
place, and quantitative change are all phenomena in the kinematic (movement) sphere
that refer analogically to meanings in the historical, aesthetic, sensitive, biological,
economical, religious, logical, spatial and mathematical aspects. Analogies, further, may
be simple or complex, depending on whether they refer directly to an adjacent modality or
indirectly to a distal modality with intervening aspects.

25

Insufficient attention to analogical concepts has frequently led, says Dooyeweerd (1954,
179; N.D., 8), to the attempt to discover in one particular aspect ... the origin of the other
aspects and, thus, to an absolutizing of particular aspects that were thereby
wrenched out of the coherence of meaning with the other aspects, thus cutting off
insight into the integral coherence of aspects in the structure of experience. This has led
inevitably to theoretical antinomies that have plagued intellectual history. For example,
Zenos famous paradoxes defend Parmenides theory that change and movement are
illusions of sensation by a theoretical analysis reducing the modality of movement to that
of mathematically quantified segments of space, thereby yielding irresolvable paradoxes.
Any number of such examples of reductionist theories could be multiplied from the
view that religion and morality are merely expressions of economic self-interest (Marx)
sexual projection (Freud), or behavioral conditioning (Skinner), to the idea that moral
judgments is explicable solely by reference to emotional sentiments (Hume, Ayer), or
personality solely by physicalist accounts of brain chemistry (La Mettrie, Feuerbach), etc.

Subject-object relations also form a complex, intricate component in Dooyeweerds

modal analysis. For our purposes we can limit ourselves to noting some basics by means
of an illustration. A man observes cow grazing in a neighbors field after a spring rain,
and the cow sees a robin alight on a tree branch. The robin, in turn sees an earthworm
crawling in the grass. The earthworm, in turn, perceives its environment in its elemental
way.

26

Several things may be noted here. First, we note the truism that every subject may be
also regarded as an object, depending on point-of-view. Second, and more importantly,
we note differences in the way each functions as a subject or an object. For the robin, the
earthworm is a potential breakfast, functioning as a biological object. The earthworm
itself, however, has a basic nervous system and functions as a sensitive (feeling) subject.
The man functions not only as a sentient, feeling subject, but one whose experience
exhibits many additional aspects: he may consider (1) aesthetic aspects of the pastoral
scene; (2) legal or (3) ethical questions about his neighbors cow; (3) historical facts
about the breed of cow; (4) religious beliefs about the natural world; etc. As such, the
man functions as a subject in these (and all other) aspects of experience. The cow,
however, is limited in the number of aspects in which it functions as a subject. It has no
aesthetic, legal, ethical or religious experience, as such. It may function as an object in
these modalities, in the mans experience; but it functions as a subject only in the
sensitive, biotic, physical, kinematic, spatial and numerical aspects.

This leads us to another meaning of subject in Dooyeweerds theory. To be a subject

is literally to be placed under the laws or principles governing particular modalities of
experience. Thus, the cow is subject to the various neurological, biological, physical, and
other laws governing its bovine functions. The man is likewise subject to these sorts of
laws, as well as other higher laws and principles governing his experience in the higher
modalities (the logical, lingual, economic, aesthetic, moral, etc.).

How can Dooyeweerds insights help us at this point?

27

Resolution

First, Dooyeweerds modal theory helps us understand how Schelers theory of values
might be expanded to allow for many more types of value than Schelers ranking permits.
Allowing for the ambiguity of the term values, one might plausibly extend Schelers
hierarchy to allow for at least as many ranks or types as aspects of experience
distinguished by Dooyeweerd. Further, as we shall see below, there is no reason why list
of ranks cannot include moral value, just as the moral aspect constitutes a distinct rank in
Dooyeweerds modal scale. Hildebrand (1953, 129), distinguishes moral values as a
specific domain or family of values, distinguished not only by their rank but
different themes. Scheler himself (1973e, 24-25; 1980, 46-48) at one point refers to
values that belong to the ethical sphere (Werte, die der ethischen Sphre angehren),
suggesting, inconsistently, that moral values constitute a distinct material region of
values! Moreover, if every modality of experience is governed by its own laws and
principles, as suggested by Clouser, then there is no more reason for believing that a
persons response to such laws must bear an exclusively moral value, than for supposing
that all good may be reduced to moral good. Good is modally dispersed in a great
variety of ways, such that good in the economic or aesthetic spheres, for example, do
not necessarily bear a typologically moral value. Hildebrand (1954, 38, 182, 184 n. 8,
279, 393) clearly states that not all good, not all obligation, and not all positive valueresponses are specifically moral.

28

Second, Dooyeweerds theory of modal analogies helps us understand both what is true
and what is false in Schelers statement that the heart possesses a strict analogue of logic
in its own domain that it does not borrow from the logic of the understanding. (Scheler
1973b, 117; 2000, 365) What is true is that there is a modal analogy within the aspect of
feeling that echoes the meaning of the logical aspect. In other words, there is a facet of
feeling that participates analogously in the distinguishing function of logical analysis.
This is what permits feeling to distinguish positive and negative values in a way that
anticipates, but is not yet strictly identical to, logical distinguishing. In this respect
Scheler is right about the primacy of feelings in a temporal sense (we may indeed feel
something before we are able to logically articulate what we feel) but not in the
reductionist sense that feeling has no logical element.

What is mistaken in Schelers view is the assumption that reason is as blind to [values]
as ears and hearing are to colors, and that feeling alone provides access to values. The
ineluctable, intricate interlacement of analogical aspects in the integral coherence of our
experience shows that it is impossible to isolate (except in thought) any single aspect
from any other. Hence, no more than the ordering principles of moral (or any kind of)
experience can be reduced to logical principles of reason, can they be reduced to
emotive principles of the heart.

Third, Dooyeweerds theory of modal subject-object relations helps us understand what is

erroneous about Schelers statement that moral value can never be the content of an act

29

of willing, since the bearers of such values (exclusively persons and their acts, in his
view) can never be given to us as objects.

In the first place, we see immediately that other things besides persons and their acts may
bear a moral value, as Blosser (1998, 170) points out not as subjects, but as objects:

Objects can also bear moral values, even if not originally and internally as in a
human subject, but rather objectively and by way of imputation. For example, a
wedding ring symbolizing moral fidelity between a husband and wife bears a
moral value not subjectively, but objectively by way of symbolic imputation.
As a subject, it is merely an inanimate band of gold, bearing only the physicalchemical values of its composition, etc. But as an object, it bears numerous
objectively imputed values (e.g., aesthetic, economic, religious, historical) one
of which is the moral value signifying fidelity. If inanimate objects can bear
imputed moral values, this is certainly also possible for persons. Persons can be
given not only as moral subjects and agents, but as objective bearers of value. For
example, the person who has been forgiven by another for a moral offense is one
who has been the object of forgiveness and who objectively bears the imputed
moral value of pardon.
Even where persons and their acts serve as subjective bearers of moral value, there is no
reason for supposing that these moral values themselves cannot be objects of our
intentional awareness. (Cf. Reiner 1983, 171-173, 238)

30

In the second place, Dooyeweerds subject-object analysis shows how the modality of
feeling may serve both as a subject-function, as it does in Schelers notion of the hearts
faculty for apprehending values, and as an object-function in his lowest-ranked sensory
values of pain and pleasure. Feeling, however, may not be absolutized as the only means
for subjectively apprehending values (one may also understand values rationally, for
example) any more than the objective modal aspect of feeling may be absolutized as the
foundation or explanans for any other aspect.

In this way, Dooyeweerds insights suggest constructive avenues by which a number of

antinomies within Schelers value theory may be resolved.

31

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Footnotes

37

1 A slightly different

Italian version of this article was published under the title, Per una soluzione

delle antinomie della teoria del valore di Max Scheler, in Discipline Filosofische, XX, 2 (2010), 7999.

Scheler also uses psychic for the non-religious spiritual level. One ranking of values (Scheler

1973e, 104-109; 1980, 125-140) includes religious, spiritual, vital and sensible. Another (Scheler
1973e, 333-343; 1980, 345-356) distinguishes spiritual, psychic, vital and sensible strata of feelings.
These discrepancies, as well as Schelers contradictory accounts of whether spiritual feelings can be
feeling-states (Gefhlszustanden), are dealt with by Blosser (1995, 122, n. 29).

In his later years, Scheler no longer held that values are realized through willing an act of spirit

(Geist) but rather through the fortuitous contingencies of impulse (Drang). This shift in Schelers
thought is thoroughly explored by Spader (1974a, 139-158; 1974b, 217-223).

Hildebrand (1953, 34-35, 39-40, 43-45), similarly distinguishes the subjectively satisfying

(response value) from the intrinsically important (objective values), and discusses what he calls
value responses.

Several conundrums that result from Schelers view of moral value are illustrated by Blosser (2005).

In his interpretation of Scheler, Manfred Frings speaks of the functional existence of values, in the

sense that values are realized only by entering into a functional relationship with something else
having real existence (Frings 1997, 23-24). Scheler (1973e, 135, n. 25; 1980, 154, n. 3) also contends
that a characteristic of reality, as opposed to essences (and a fortiori, values), is that it offers
resistance.

Frings and Funk call Wertnehmung an awkward and infelicitous neologism in the Preface to their

English translation of Schelers Formalismus (1973e, xiv-xv), and translate it by the equally awkward
neologism, value-ception. The point of the neologism is to distinguish the faculty not only from
rational con-ception but from sensible (or phenomenological) per-ception (Wahrnehmung) in order
to isolate its distinctive pathic quality of affective feeling. There is nothing preventing one from
using the more felicitous expressions value-feeling, value intuition, or value-apprehension as
long as one bears these facts in mind.