Abstract: Max Scheler creatively uses phenomenological methods to study the philosophy of death, dissecting the root causes of the decline of the belief in eternal life, explaining that the essence of death is a lightness to metaphysics, that the person is prescriptive and continuous, and that the individual experience is alive. The eternal life of the Person is given in the experience of life. In this way, it shows the potential spiritual crisis of modern European society, and at the same time restores the truth of death, so that people can wake up and live towards death.
Keywords: Personality Lightness Immortality Death Phenomenology
Death is with people like a shadow. It is an unavoidable problem of man, and it is also a question that philosophy contemplates. Therefore, death has always been an important proposition of philosophy, and Western philosophers have started from their respective systems of thought, and what is death? What is its essence? Can a person die and become immortal? Questions were answered accordingly.
The philosopher Max Scheler, a model of phenomenology, conducted a systematic study of death and put forward a unique view. He tried to explore the root cause of modern people's belief in immortality, with a view to proposing solutions to the problems of modern society.
"Modern man" is lost to work and profit, misunderstands the nature of death, intellectualizes death, and no longer believes in eternal life, but turns to blind faith in science and reason, so that he is far away from himself and loses his personal spirit. As a result, various problems have emerged in modern society, and the human condition is very worrying. To solve the conundrum of modernity, it is necessary to rekindle the fear of death, the faith in eternal life, and the love of the world, in which to construct a world of life full of positive meaning.
The decline of faith in eternal life
In 1916, Scheler wrote a treatise on the philosophy of death, Death and Eternal Life, which sought to answer the questions of why modern people do not believe in eternal life, the root causes of modern social problems, the nature of death, and eternal life. There is both inheritance and criticism of the philosophers, as well as development and innovation.
Western philosophy has had a metaphysics of death contemplating death as early as ancient Greek times. The philosophy of death gradually sprouted, taking shape through Plato, and by the time of the rise of Christianity, a unique doctrine of life and death was formed—people feared death, believed in immortality and the judgment of the last days, and made salvation the worldly imperative.
Heraclitus once said that death is all we see when we wake up. All things change, and man will live, grow, die, and die, as prescribed by man's natural attributes and logos. The soul is not a logos, and therefore it is dead; it comes from water, and to return to water is death, so the driest soul is the best soul.
For Pythagoras, the body was a cage for the soul, and death was nothing more than a temporary liberation of the soul. Plato not only believed that the soul is immortal, but also argued for it from multiple perspectives: origin, philosophy, and morality. Thus indicating the pre-existence and eternity of the soul and establishing its epistemology—knowledge is the memory of the soul.
To express philosophy is to say that philosophy is the practice of death. At this time, how to deal with death has become one of the central tasks of philosophy. In Plato's eyes, only those who inexhaustiblely search for death, reflect on death and calmly go to death are true philosophers.
At the time of the rise of Christianity, the texts represented by the New Testament, especially the New Testament, provided a profound response to the question of death. The soul does not die because of the Lord's redemption "I know that my Redeemer is alive and will stand on the earth at the end, and that after the extinction of my flesh, I will see God outside the flesh." (Bible 19:25-26)
The New Testament states that man can be "resurrected" after death, and this transcendent power over death comes from "the Lord Jesus Christ, who is victorious through our Lord Jesus Christ." (Bible, Ge 19:57) Eternal life is not immortality, but "resurrection" after the last judgment. At this time, the Europeans' belief in eternal life reached its peak.
However, with the development of science and reason in modern society, religious rebuttals are huge and devastating to religion. Religion has entered a trough because of its own logic of development, leaving it in a difficult predicament. Therefore, many people think that they are in the decline of the belief in eternal life, and based on the consistent method of proof, they look for various evidences in an attempt to prove that immortality does not have to be believed.
Science often criticizes the "ignorance" of religion with its own progressiveness, but in fact, science has never been divorced from religion, and they are inextricably linked. "The goals and methods of modern science, such as the idea that all phenomena are reduced to a mechanism of motion, derive from these new religious presuppositions." (Scheler, 2014, p. 2)
Although scientific progress will affect the development of religion, it will not eliminate religion. "Science is often only a gravedigger of religious belief, not a cause of death of religious belief", (Scheler, 2014, p. 4) Religion has its own laws of development, from germination, growth, prosperity to decline, all in its vein. What's more, to think that religion hinders the development of science is actually a misunderstanding.
Through a careful examination of modern science, Scheler found many misunderstandings, and people mistakenly regarded Copernicus, Galileo, and Bruno as scientific fighters, and at that time Copernicus's writings did not conflict with the church, and the church was ready to recognize Galileo's heliocentrism; as for Bruno, he was burned not because of his scientific theories, but because of his strange poetry.
It is obviously too hasty to impose accusations on religion without asking questions, and the proof is often more speculative than factual, and misunderstandings outweigh understanding. And these popular views not only cause irreparable harm to religion, but also weaken people's belief in immortality.
Others argue that the decline of immortal faith lies in the birth and development of psychology, brain anatomy, and neurobiology. These disciplines tend to lead people to believe that the brain is the center, and brain death means that everything is destroyed, and the mind is naturally unable to move.
Or dissecting the self as "a divisible, diminishing and growing compound of feelings and desires" (Scheler, 2014, p. 4) abandons the particular "self-experience" hypothesis and thus denies immortality. In Scheler's view, these proofs are irrelevant, even deadly, because "they merely prove an entrenched prejudice, i.e., a belief based on proof, destroyed by proof." (Scheler, 2014, p. 4) And faith is associated with life experience, sensory intuition, and spiritual experience.
The renunciation of eternal life is not only due to the misunderstanding of death by people (Europeans), but more importantly, the transformation of man himself, that is, into modern society, and the great change in the values of man (the person Scheler refers to mainly modern Europeans).
It is this change that has led to a clear difference between modern and ancient people. "Modern Europeans" have been used by Scheler as a proper name—a type of person who has been rising since the end of the 13th century and entering capitalist society, where work and profit have become the meaning and purpose of their actions.
Its life value is different from the ancients, wealth has become the yardstick to measure life, the spiritual structure has been abandoned, the past loyalty and trust relationship has been replaced by a paper contract, and the main body of the living community is only composed of a group of people who are good at calculating interests. In turn, even man is reduced to an intermediary in the "calculation" of various objects, the "body", becoming "part of the universal mechanism of the object world". (Scheler, 2014, p. 31)
In the midst of busy work and the conquest of interests, man is constantly "alienated", making himself an "intermediary", and the community is nothing more than a cold place of profit - various theaters. The other then becomes the object and instrument of profit —the means. "For this genre and its life emotions, the world is no longer a warm, organic 'home', but an object of design and processing." (Scheler, 2014, p. 31)
A world of life with taste, hope and meaning has also been flattened and become a cellar for fame and profit. Everything becomes a tool or object of design to achieve its own ends, and the world is thus reduced to a cruel battlefield, retreating into Hobbes's jungle state and wolf world. Modern man, on the other hand, is indulging in the impulse to work and profit without limits, so much so that he ignores God and the world, let alone contemplates and enjoys it.
In turn, modern man "no longer fears death as much as the ancients" (Scheler, 2014, p. 32) is also insensitive to death—calculating death and being convinced of death means that death is not intuitive to him, that is, he did not face death and was born. He has lacked the proper contemplation of God and the world, let alone the pleasure and spiritual enjoyment of this thought, but has expressed the meaning of life with "unlimited work and profit impulses."
As a type of "modern man", through lifestyle and professional ways, with the help of science and technology and intellectual rationality, a deep-rooted judgment has long been formed - people must die, and before death, they will do their best to grab fame and fortune and enjoy themselves. Death changes from individual experience to a definite knowledge.
I am not even "afraid" of death, what else dare I do? So break through all kinds of "finiteness" and do whatever you want. And it is this knowledge that is given that cuts back on eternal life. Modern Europeans can neither intuitively roam and save the mind and enter the state of "nirvana" like the ancient Indians, nor can they be convinced that they can perceive and experience eternal life like the Japanese.
They "no longer see vividly and intuitively the death they face, that is, they no longer 'live to die'" (Scheler, 2014, p. 31) They are constantly alienating themselves, becoming intermediates, producing the illusion of progress, losing the vivid sense and experience of death, and therefore not talking about the belief in eternal life.
Metaphysical Lightness: The Essence of Death
Since "modern man" denies death and its essence, he loses his proper faith in eternal life. In order to re-establish the belief in eternal life, what is death? What is the nature of death? And what kind of certainty of death is there? It became an indispensable part of Scheler's philosophy of death. However, when studying death, two questions arise: "First, what kind of knowledge does each of us have about our own death?" Second, in the external experience we have gained from certain phenomena of life, what is the nature of death? (Scheler, 2014, p. 13)
Before answering these two questions, Scheler criticized those who believed that death was imperceptible. The popular opinion holds that "knowledge of death is obtained from the phenomenon of death of the other, as a mere result of an external experience based on observation and induction". (Scheler, 2014, p. 9)
The individual cannot know death with his own knowledge, and therefore cannot directly obtain knowledge of death; and knowledge of death is only the indirect empirical result of observation and induction, so that the individual cannot know his own death with certainty. However, one is able to approach death through various experiences.
People are invaded by death, aware of their own lives, feelings of disease and aging, and thus able to foresee death. This consciousness of death is not only a constituent factor of human consciousness, but also a constituent factor of the consciousness of all living beings" This idea of death belongs not only to the constituent factor of our consciousness, but in fact to the constituent factor of all life consciousness itself." (Scheler, 2014, p. 11)
Death consciousness is given by the consciousness of life, and everyone can perceive his own death, can be infinitely close to his own death, and therefore death is known.
Only when death is knowable can there be a premise and condition for discussing the nature of death. Before we can explore what death is and the nature of death, we must first explore the nature of life. Because there is no birth, how to die, life is the cause of death.
Biologically, the fact of "life" takes on two forms: "one manifests itself in a unique set of formal phenomena and phenomena of motion in the external perception of man, animal, and plant; and the other as a program which is given in a particular mode of consciousness which rushes from an essentially 'present' constant, i.e., from the 'body' which is given in a particular conscious way." (Scheler, 2014, p. 31)
Scheler focuses on the deeper meaning of the second form, as it is the true state of life. Life is a passing, a constant flow in the body that is given in the particular consciousness. This is similar to Bergson's view of continuity without continuity, without living life and without movement. The successive processes of life and the phases of life constituted by consciousness have three dimensions of extension, namely, "present, past, and future; and there are three corresponding modes of behavior of different natures: direct perception, direct recall, and direct expectation." (Scheler, 2014, p. 14)
Perception and experience of the outside world are contained in these three dimensions and the corresponding behaviors. Naturally, death is also included, and the "experience of the direction of death" is inherent in life.
Life itself contains death. Death has never left the whole form and structure of life. Cruel deaths, terrifying, are happening at any time. This is an inescapable and unspeakable experience—witnessing death, especially the death of loved ones.
So what is such a heart-wrenching death? "Death belongs to the form and structure in which we are given only every life, our own life and all other kinds of life, as well as inner and outer life. Death is not an image structure that is occasionally added to individual mental or physiological processes, but a structure that belongs to the image itself, without which there is no image of life." (Scheler, 2014, p. 20)
That form and structure already harbors death. Death is a necessary condition for the perfection of life. "Death is an essential and self-evident ingredient in every possible inner experience of the life process." (Scheler, 2014, p. 22) So much so that biologist Bauer directly defined biology as something that could die.
"Just as in external experience the phenomenon of death is not dependent on the particularity of the organism at all, but manifests itself as a unique termination, so death is given to consciousness in a way that is incomparable with all empirical knowledge." (Scheler, 2014, pp. 25-26) Although death accompanies the entire process of life, death does not mean the end of life. "It is better to say that as an important component of all elements of life, death accompanies the whole of life." (Scheler, 2014, p. 26) Because the nature of death and the act of going to die will give meaning to life.
Since death is, on the one hand, a fact that man cannot escape, and on the other hand, it accompanies the whole of life and is closely related to the experience of the individual, what is the essence of death? Is death a metaphysical knowledge? Apparently, Scheler disapproved. It is precisely this epistemology of the certainty of death that obscures the nature of death.
The self-realization of death as an essential element of life leads to the intellectualization and metaphysics of death, obscuring the true emotions and experiences of the individual. Therefore, in order to get close to the true face of death, it is necessary to transcend the concept of death, that is, to escape the concept of death. "Only a general repression of the impulse of life against the self-evident idea of death makes possible the phenomenon which I suppose is man's 'metaphysical ease'—precisely the indescribable tranquility and pleasure that arises from the weight and self-evidentness of the idea of death." (Scheler, 2014, p. 29)
The so-called "self-evident conception of death" must be suppressed in order to achieve metaphysical lightness, that is, to get rid of the definite knowledge of death, to transcend the metaphysical conception of death, to be freed from the burden of death, to be able to accept the facts of death, and thus to be able to face death in peace and tranquility. Do not worry about death, calmly face, regard death as a homecoming, and do not lose the experience and understanding of death in individual experience. In this way, we can lead to eternal life.
Eternal Life: The Continuation of the Spiritual Person
Can a person survive after death? That is, does man have an immortal soul? This is a central question in the philosophy of death, and one of the important questions to which Scheler's phenomenology of death must respond. Unlike philosophers of the past, Scheler no longer uses the word "soul." So as not to fall into the dilemma of materialization. Therefore, he used the concept of "person" to explore the problem of immortality. Thus, the traditional metaphysics of death is the question of whether the soul is immortal, it is transformed into , whether the "person" is immortal after death?
But what is a "person"? Scheler conducted an in-depth analysis of it at different levels in order to outline the "person". The "bit" is not a collection of behaviors, but it exists in the behavior, but it does not disappear with the termination of the behavior. It is only "the termination of our knowledge of the Person, but not necessarily the termination of itself." (Scheler, 2014, p. 80)
It is not so much the unity of the collective as a "concrete unity, living and existing entirely in each of its acts, and containing an infinite series of acts in accordance with the essential laws." (Scheler, 2014, p. 88) Even if the organism (life) suffers an irresistible death, the mental being will survive unless it is struck by a force beyond the personality.
The "person" is neither visible nor visible in its own life itself, but the visible and perceptible are muscles, bones, hairs, limbs, etc. - physical and biological sense of the body. "Intentions and actions are in fact the essence of the person, which is not a thing, an entity that 'has' or 'exercises' some intention." (Scheler, 2014, p. 61) The essence of the "person" is independent of the being to which it belongs, and does not cease to exist due to the advent of death.
If misfortune and calamity come and the body ceases to exist, does the essence of the "person" at this time change? The essence of the "person" has not changed, and it is still the same as the person during life, that is, "the thing that has belonged to the essence of the person when man once lived, that is, there is nothing new." (Scheler, 2014, p. 60)
Whether before or after death, the nature of the person has not changed. The "person" is both intrinsic and transcendent in life, and it can "escape" and "escape" from the body. It is the prescriptiveness and continuity of man. Heidegger used the phrase "Dasein" to mean "the prescriptiveness of man as a human being." Its meaning is similar to the Buddhist "Alaya consciousness".
Only after the necessary clarifications of the Person can be initiated into the question of the immortality of the Spirit of the Person. In what way and in what spiritual experience is eternal life given? Unlike Western medieval philosophy, Scheler did not want to defend the belief in "immortality" or to prove "immortality" through philosophy.
Aquinas once proposed "five proofs of God's existence." In fact, even the necessity of defense and proof becomes a problem, because what is based on individual experience cannot be proved at all. However, in the history of philosophical theology, there are many scholars who continue to argue in vain about the immortality of the soul and the existence of God.
Through an examination of the previous philosophical theological methods of studying the question of immortality, Scheler summarizes them into five paths. The first is the metaphysical-rationalist path of construction, a proof of the immortality of the soul based on the entity of the mind. The second is the path of mysticism and spiritualism, which associates the dead with the living in some mystical experience, leading the latter to believe that the soul is immortal.
The third is the path of demands or rational assumptions with a moral basis, in which man must obey moral laws and fulfill his duties and responsibilities in order to attain well-being, just retribution, and eternal life. Kant is a typical example of this path. The fourth is to identify in faith with some path of revelation about the fate of the soul, to believe in eternal life by receiving revelation from God or something superior.
Christians' faith in eternal life is achieved by the revelation of God. In Scheler's view, this is a reasonable and inevitable path, but he himself did not choose this path. Because this method also has drawbacks, because it is based on faith, it is far from the source of experience. And this is precisely the connection hub between man and the "personality", and it is also an indispensable part of man. And the content of the revelation is self-contained, with a strong closedness and exclusivity, making it impossible for philosophy to criticize it and to defend it.
So Scheler took a different path and looked for a new way to study it. That is, the fifth way, analogy constitutes a method of inference with analogy. Scheler cites Fechner as a confidant and uses his analogy for himself. Fichner's method is extremely advantageous for the exploration of the invisible "person" "by virtue of the fact that we can empirically gain insight into the nature of this and this being of things, and in our understanding it is possible to extend this realm of this and this to a wider range of other realms of this and this which are not in any indirect or direct relation to us." (Scheler, 2014, p. 79)
As Fechner put it: We must rely on experience to cross experience, not through the transcendental principle of rationality in the Kantian sense. Because the content of experience hides various signs, it can provide us with clues and point out the direction across experience.
Thus, the removal of eternal life is far less complicated than theologians and philosophers think, and the tedious arguments not only do not help to show the continuity of the "person", but instead bring about the "burden of proof" - the old problems are not solved, and new chaos is added. How is it better to entrust the "burden of proof" to the actual person to obtain the given sex? However, many limitations make it impossible for one to traverse all these realms and experience one's own death, but this does not mean that the person does not exist.
In fact, there is no need to traverse this form of the person in the realm and others, but to generate experiences of other persons in this field by analogy based on self-consciousness or unification, combined with the experience of one's own person, and through analogical inference. In this way, each field is continuously revealed, and the eternal life of the personality is also highlighted. "The question of eternal life after death depends entirely on a series of inquiries about our experience of life (Er-leben)." (Scheler, 2014, pp. 83-84)
By looking, grasping, and contemplating one's kind, one can comprehend the person hidden behind the fragment of meaning. In the midst of that vivid experience of laying the foundation for the immortal person, by analogy, the person is immortal and naturally arising, just as a flower is pregnant with fruit. The reality of the person and the understanding of its experience are given directly, as are the existence of the physical world.
Conclusion: Born to Die
In dissecting the immortality of the spiritual person, Scheler consciously distinguishes between "spiritual eternity" and "continuation of the personality", and there is a difference between the two that cannot be ignored. The former is a concept in a dualistic field of view, corresponding to matter, independent of life and death—only related to the total meaning of individual life, and independent of living organisms and the empirical world—as an independent superior "insulator."
The latter, although given directly, is a "conductor" closely related to this being, experience, and the world in which it lives. The relationship of the person, the bodily program or life, and the mental processes of the internal perception that accompanies it, the three "are like the relationship between the pianist and the piano, and the meaningful connection of the person's behavior is like the music being played." (Scheler, 2014, p. 52)
They are present together and interconnected, thus constituting a lively and vivid world of meaning. Scheler's view of the continuity of the person is different from Plato's view of spiritual eternity, the solipsistic view of immortality, the bodyless particle theory of the soul, and the Christian view of resurrection. They are either mysterious, separating spirit from flesh, or ignoring the "ethereal experience"—the "overflow" of life by the person, the transcendence of metaphysics.
Because of Scheler's preoccupation with Buddhist thought, his idea of "continuity of the person" is characterized by both Eastern and Western conceptions of immortality. The "personality" is not only immortal, but also dominates the individual like a "pianist" - "piano". But all this is not absolutely certain, it can be changed. That is to say, through the thoughts and actions of this life, the "person" can add many vivid experiences. And these experiences will be integrated with the "person" and will be with them forever.
This is very similar to the Buddhist concept of "karma", where the eternal Rulai tibet is the foundation, cause and effect are not vain, and karma follows the long side. What is done in this life becomes the new "karma" and becomes the "cause" of the next life. Only when all the evils in this world are not done, and all the good is practiced, and the self-purification is self-purifying, can we reduce the karma of sin and transcend it. If you can be brave and diligent, see through and let go, "Dun Lun do your best, idle evil and sincerity, make a wish to hold your name, and survive in the Pure Land", you can live and die, get rid of samsara, and obtain true "eternal life".
Scheler uses phenomenological methods to meticulously and vividly depict how various sensations and intuitions transcend individual life, not only making the content of feelings related to the body, but also making the person relate to the other, and a vast field of meaning is generated.
Now that the eternal life of the spiritual person has been revealed, how can man survive? How is this in the world? This was also the problem that Heidegger later faced. For this existence precedes essence, "this presence is always its possibility in essence", and even death cannot be completely prescribed by metaphysics.
Death is not a definite knowledge, but a matter of each person's own, "man in love and in the midst of death, alone and alone, alone, suffering and self-righteousness, without a substitute." (The Sutra of Immeasurable Life, 2013, Thirty-Three Pins) Death is this in the "most intrinsic possibility." (Heidegger, 1987, p. 315)
Man can only live truly, sincerely and cleanly if he truly understands the true meaning of death, and "a being, if he has noticed the profoundly experienced self-evidentness of death in every moment of his presence, he will live and act completely differently from ordinary people." (Scheler, 2014, p. 29) Understand the way of heaven and earth, know the great righteousness of life, not afraid of death, live vividly and interestingly, have a different taste, a life worth remembering, nostalgic and remembering.
Through a phenomenological analysis of death, Scheler criticized the deviance of modern Europeans—unbridled utilitarianism would bring immeasurable disasters, and later Western societies largely confirmed his predictions. And this alienation continues, and man is still degenerating.
Because the knowledge of death is determined by metaphysics that man will eventually die and does not believe in eternal life. In order to resist the fear of death, people indulge in work and profit, indulge in pleasure, but this does not solve the problem, but generalizes the disaster. Both death and eternal life are given, and man should "live to death." Although we know that "man must die once", he is not "afraid" of death, that is, he is not afraid or anxious in his heart, and he does not resist death with absurd and unnatural behavior and depravity--he does not deceive himself, nor deceives others, and is sincere to himself and to man and to God.
Sincerely - respectfully live your own life, do not complain about the sky, do not be special, and go along the way. The ancient type of life was to live carefree, to live in accordance with the heavens, without constant busyness, without calculation, without anxiety or fear. In the face of death, you can be calm and fearless, enrich the experience of the person during life, and build a flexible field of meaning. In it, the individual is able to find his own dwelling—full of vivid experiences, in which the person is spiritualized—and is free to escape and live his own life, a world of meaning that cannot be copied without copying others.
Scheler's phenomenology of death not only opened the door to existential death, laying the foundation for Heidegger's philosophy of death, but also pointed out the path of modern society and pointed out a way for modern man to survive. Although he knows death, he is not afraid of death, and he is not depraved, and he keeps the way in life, and he is sincere and respectful, and his personality can live forever. It's a prophet!
bibliography:
1. The Bible, 2007, Christian Council of China.
2. Max Scheler, 2014: The Order of Love, translated by Sun Zhouxing et al., Beijing Normal University Press.
3. The Sutra of Immeasurable Life, 2013, edited by Xia Lianju, Tibetan Ancient Books Publishing House.
4. Heidegger, 1987: Existence and Time, translated by Chen Jiaying et al., Beijing Sanlian Bookstore.
Source: Philosophical Studies, No. 5, 2016
Author: Wang Haidong
Lightness and Immortality: On Scheler's Phenomenology of Death
Editor: Aero
Typography: Nanshan
Audit: Yongfang
Artist/VI: Little Week
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