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The Emergence of Max Scheler: Understanding Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik's Philosophical Anthropology*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 April 2016

Alex S. Ozar
Alex S. Ozar*
Affiliation:
Yale University
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Extract

An idea's genealogy is not the idea itself, and still less does an idea's historical context exhaust its potentialities for meaning. The excavation of sources and influences is then for the historian of ideas not an end in itself; it is more properly the inauguration, not the consummation, of efforts in intellectual history. But genealogical investigation does matter, because its vertical depth can illuminate the contours requisite for horizontal discernment, and because exploring its temporal register can free an idea from artificially inert stasis back into the stream of living reflective activity.

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Articles
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 109 , Issue 2 , April 2016 , pp. 178 - 206
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 2016 

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Footnotes

*

This paper was produced with the generous support and rich intellectual fraternity of the Tikvah Fund in New York. Further thanks go, in an order unreflective of rank or comparative valuation, to Alan Mittleman, Mark Gottlieb, David Shatz, Shalom Carmy, Lauren Steinberg, the philosophy of religion colloquium at Yale, an anonymous referee, and the journal's editorial staff for insightful comments and guidance.

References

1 For a helpful dissection of these questions, see Gordon, Peter E., “Contextualism and Criticism in the History of Ideas,” in Rethinking Modern European Intellectual History (ed. McMahon, Darrin M. and Moyn, Samuel; New York: Oxford University Press, 2014) 32–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Hazony, Yoram, “The Rav's Bombshell,” Commentary Magazine 133 (2012) 48–55Google Scholar. Cf. the various reactions along with Hazony's rejoinder printed in “An Exchange on ‘The Rav's Bombshell,’” Commentary Magazine 134 (2012) 69–78 and Sztuden, Alex, “Naturalism and the Rav: A Reply to Yoram Hazony,” Meorot 12 (2012) 29–40Google Scholar.

3 Rynhold, Daniel and Harris, Michael J., “Modernity and Jewish Orthodoxy: Nietzsche and Soloveitchik on Life-Affirmation, Asceticism, and Repentance,” HTR 101 (2008) 253–84, at 284CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Soloveitchik, Joseph B., The Emergence of Ethical Man (ed. Berger, Michael; series, Meotzar Horav; Jersey City, NJ: Ktav, 2005) 6Google Scholar.

5 Rynhold, Daniel, review of The Emergence of Ethical Man, by Soloveitchik, Joseph B., RelS 42 (2006) 264–368, at 367Google Scholar.

6 Ibid.

7 Scheler's influence on Soloveitchik has been noted by scholars in other contexts. See for example Schwartz, Dov, Religion or Halakha: The Philosophy of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik (trans. Stein, Batya; Leiden: Brill, 2007) 43–48CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Blau, Yitzchak, “Creative Repentance,” Tradition 28 (1994) 11–18Google Scholar. See also Soloveitchik, Joseph B., Halakhic Mind: An Essay on Jewish Tradition and Modern Thought (New York: Macmillan, 1986) 120 n. 52Google Scholar, where Soloveitchik acknowledges his work's substantial indebtedness to Scheler while also sharply criticizing what he sees as Scheler's methodological inadequacies—a conjunction of sentiments very much in line with this paper's evaluation of the Soloveitchik-Scheler relationship exhibited in Emergence.

8 See Michael Berger, introduction to The Emergence of Ethical Man, by Soloveitchik, xx.

9 Scheler, Max, Man's Place in Nature (trans. Hans Meyerhoff; Boston: Beacon, 1961) 5Google Scholar.

10 Soloveitchik, Emergence of Ethical Man, 3.

11 See Berger, introduction, xii.

12 This is not an anomalous phenomenon. Within Emergence itself, it would appear that significant sections are directly paraphrased from Martin Buber's Moses to a degree well beyond what the text's citations would suggest. See for example Soloveitchik, Emergence of Ethical Man, 187–89 and Buber, Martin, Moses: The Revelation and the Covenant (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1958) 75–79Google Scholar. It should of course be noted that authors are surely not to be held responsible for inadequate citation in works prepared for publication subsequent to their deaths. I would speculate that had he prepared the work for publication he would have acknowledged Scheler here as he did elsewhere, and one would reasonably hope for improvement in this regard in any future editions.

13 Though “man” and related gender-specific terms are used at times in deference to the source material, effort has been made to incorporate mixed-gender and gender-neutral language where possible.

14 Scheler, Man's Place in Nature, 4.

15 Ibid., 6.

16 Ibid.

17 Ibid., 7.

18 Ibid.

19 See Descartes, René, Discourse on the Method and the Meditations (trans. Veitch, John; New York: Cosimo, 1998) 44–45Google Scholar.

20 Scheler, Man's Place in Nature, 72.

21 Ibid., 8.

22 Ibid., 9. Gustav Fechner is singled out as representative of the view falsely identifying psyche with consciousness and sensation.

23 Ibid., 8.

24 Ibid., 9. That the religiously inflected term “soul” can appropriately express the kind of autonomous, psychic interiority described here is for Scheler an important rhetorical point. Embracing the comprehensive naturality of the human, Scheler insists, does not enjoin forfeiture of the kind of robust sense of personhood connoted by a word like “soul.”

25 Ibid.

26 Ibid.

27 Ibid., 12 [italics in original].

28 Ibid.

29 Ibid., 16.

30 Ibid., 27.

31 Ibid., 30.

32 Ibid., 31.

33 Ibid., 33.

34 Ibid., 34.

35 Ibid.

36 Ibid., 13.

37 Ibid., 14.

38 Ibid., 13.

39 Ibid., 14.

40 Ibid., 13.

41 Ibid., 78.

42 Soloveitchik, Emergence of Ethical Man, 5.

43 Ibid., 14.

44 Scheler, Man's Place in Nature, 14.

45 Soloveitchik, Emergence of Ethical Man, 16.

46 The similar “telekinesis” of course commonly refers to the process by which physical objects are moved by an unaided mind.

47 Scheler, Man's Place in Nature, 15.

48 Soloveitchik, Emergence of Ethical Man, 66.

49 Ibid., 72.

50 Ibid., 44.

51 Ibid., 6.

52 Ibid., 12.

53 Ibid., 5.

54 Gen 1:26.

55 Soloveitchik, Emergence of Ethical Man, 9.

56 Ibid., 9.

57 Ibid., 10.

58 Ibid., 11.

59 Ibid., 29.

60 Ibid., 5.

61 Ibid. [italics in original].

62 Ibid., 6. On the claim that excessive spiritual emphasis can undermine worldly ethical concern, see Soloveitchik, Joseph B., Halakhic Man (trans. Kaplan, Lawrence; Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1983) 41Google Scholar; Soloveitchik, Halakhic Mind, 74–81.

63 Soloveitchik, Emergence of Ethical Man, 16.

64 Ibid., 49.

65 Ibid., 17 n 11. It is important to note that decisions as to which material would appear in the text and which in the footnotes was made by the volume's editor, not Soloveitchik. In the original manuscripts there is no differentiation. See Berger, introduction, xxi.

66 See for example Soloveitchik, Emergence of Ethical Man, 17, 23, 49, 51, 50, 52, 59, 61, and 62.

67 Ibid., 17 n. 11.

68 Ibid., 62.

69 Ibid., 56.

70 For more on the contributions of Emergence to our understanding of Soloveitchik's thinking on Zionism, see my “Zionism as Organic Rootedness: A Revisionist Account of Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik's Religious-Zionism,” forthcoming in Tradition.

71 See Scheler, Man's Place In Nature, 59–60. The reference is to Sigmund Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle (trans. C. J. M. Hubback; The International Psychoanalytic Library 4; London: International Psychoanalytical Press, 1922) 52.

72 Scheler, Man's Place in Nature, 36.

73 Ibid., 36.

74 Ibid.

75 Ibid.

76 Ibid.

77 Ibid., 80.

78 Ibid., 37.

79 Ibid., 39.

80 Ibid.

81 For a presentation of relevant intellectual currents in 1920s Europe and particularly the debate over humanity's (in)capacity for meaningful transcendence, see Gordon, Peter Eli, Continental Divide: Heidegger, Cassirer, Davos (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010) 114–24Google Scholar. On the history and merits of sociobiology and related trends, see Kitcher, Philip, Vaulting Ambition: Sociobiology and the Quest for Human Nature (Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 1987)Google Scholar.

82 Scheler, Man's Place in Nature, 55.

83 Ibid., 37.

84 The distinctive existential notion of “world” employed here by Scheler was brought into wide currency in the preceding decade by the German biologist Jacob von Uxkell. See Gordon, Continental Divide, 72.

85 Scheler, Man's Place In Nature, 49.

86 Ibid., 51.

87 Ibid., 49.

88 Ibid., 57.

89 Ibid.

90 Ibid., 62.

91 Ibid., 66.

92 Ibid., 63.

93 Ibid., 65.

94 Ibid., 69.

95 Soloveitchik, Emergence of Ethical Man, 4.

96 Ibid., 5.

97 Ibid., 76.

98 Ibid., 74.

99 Ibid., 87.

100 Ibid.

101 Ibid., 88. Identifying the moral as essentially extra-natural has a recognizably Kantian ring. See Kant's own conceptual retelling of the Genesis story: Kant, Immanuel, “Conjectures on the Beginning of Human History,” in Immanuel Kant, Political Writings (ed. Reiss, Hans; trans. Nisbet, H. B.; 2nd ed.; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991) 221Google Scholar.

102 See also Soloveitchik, Joseph B., Family Redeemed (ed. Shatz, David and Wolowelsky, Joel B.; Meotzar Horav Series; Jersey City, NJ: Ktav, 2000) 11–15Google Scholar; Soloveitchik, Joseph B., Lonely Man of Faith (New York: Three Leaves, 2006) 34–40Google Scholar. For discussion, see my “Yeridah L-tsorekh Aliyah: Autonomy and Submission in the Thought of R. Joseph Soloveitchik,” forthcoming in Torah U-Madda Journal.

103 Soloveitchik, Emergence of Ethical Man, 90.

104 Ibid.

105 Ibid., 106.

106 Ibid., 107.

107 Ibid., 105 n 5.

108 Buber, Martin, “What is Man?” in Between Man and Man (trans. Smith, Ronald Gregor; Boston: Beacon, 1955) 118–205, at 199Google Scholar.

109 Scheler, Man's Place in Nature, 55.

110 The point is treated by Weiss, Dennis, “Max Scheler and Philosophical Anthropology,” Philosophy Today 42 (1998) 235–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Ernst Cassirer's critique of Scheler in Ernst Cassirer, “Spirit and Life in Contemporary Philosophy,” in The Philosophy of Ernst Cassirer (ed. Paul Arthur Schilpp; trans. R. W. Bretall and Paul Arthur Schilpp; Library of Living Philosophers 6; Lasalle, IL: Open Court, 1958) 857–80.

111 Scheler, Man's Place in Nature, 42.

112 See Werner Stark, introduction to The Nature of Sympathy, by Max Scheler (trans. Peter Heath; New Brunswick: Transaction, 2008) ix–xlii, at xxvii; and Kelly, Eugene, Structure and Diversity: Studies in the Phenomenological Philosophy of Max Scheler (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic, 2010) 182Google Scholar.

113 Scheler, Man's Place in Nature, 81.

114 Soloveitchik, Emergence of Ethical Man, 75 [emphasis added].

115 Ibid., 13.

116 Ibid., 78.

117 Ibid., 12.

118 Ibid.

119 Ibid., 99.

120 Ibid., 136.

121 McDowell, John, Mind and World (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996) 78Google Scholar.

122 See Soloveitchik, Halakhic Man, 8.

123 For Soloveitchik's conception of nature more broadly, see Soloveitchik, Joseph B., Worship of the Heart: Essays on Jewish Prayer (ed. Carmy, Shalom; Meotzar Horav Series; Jersey City. NJ: Ktav, 2003) 122–25Google Scholar; Soloveitchik, Joseph B., And from There Shall You Seek (trans. Goldblum, Naomi; Meotzar Horav Series; Jersey City, NJ: Ktav, 2008) 20–21Google Scholar; and Soloveitchik, Halakhic Man, 5–8.

124 Buber, Between Man and Man, 183.

125 Scheler, Man's Place in Nature, 70.

126 Ibid.

127 Ibid., 71.

128 Ibid., 13.

129 Ibid., 67.

130 Ibid., 47.

131 Ibid.

132 Ibid., 43.

133 Ibid., 69.

134 Ibid., 28.

135 Ibid.

136 The point is argued by Spader, Peter in Scheler's Ethical Personality: Its Logic, Development, and Promise (New York: Fordham University Press, 2002) 196CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

137 Scheler, Man's Place in Nature, 68.

138 Ibid., 71.

139 Ibid., 84.

140 Ibid., 70.

141 Ibid., 55.

142 Soloveitchik, Emergence of Ethical Man, 111.

143 Ibid., 69.

144 Ibid.

145 Ibid., 109 [italics in original].

146 See ibid., 121.

147 Ibid., 101.

148 Ibid., 179.

149 Ibid.

150 Ibid., 181.

151 Ibid., 180.

152 Ibid., 185.

153 Ibid., 184.

154 Ibid., 185.

155 Scheler, Man's Place in Nature, 70.

156 Soloveitchik, Emergence of Ethical Man, 159. See also Exod 6:3.

157 Berkovits, Eliezer, Fossil or Ferment (New York: Philosophical Library, 1956) 164Google Scholar n. 26.

158 Soloveitchik, Emergence of Ethical Man, 43.

159 Ibid., 50.

160 Soloveitchik, Family Redeemed, 68.

161 MacIntyre, Alasdair, Dependent Rational Animals (Chicago: Open Court, 1999) ixGoogle Scholar.

162 Ibid., 4.

163 Ibid., 5.

164 Clough, David, “Not a Not-Animal: The Vocation to Be a Human Animal Creature,” Studies in Christian Ethics 26 (2013) 4–17, at 4CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

165 de Waal, Franz, Primates and Philosophers: How Morality Evolved (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006) 65Google Scholar.

166 Ibid., 6.

167 Wrestling, Louise, “Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty and the Question of Biological Continuism,” New Formations 76.6 (2012) 38–52, at 38CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

168 Kass, Leon, Life and Liberty and the Defense of Dignity: The Challenge for Bioethics (San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2002) 20Google Scholar.

169 A notable recent exception is Mittleman, Alan L., Human Nature and Jewish Thought: Judaism's Case for Why Persons Matter (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.