Value Perception

Scheler argues that values are accessible for persons through two main affective mechanisms. These provide direct, intuitive access to the content of values in a manner that combines what is usually considered both reason and sentiments. Values are not accessed as empirical, physical facts, or through an a priori rational intuition of uniquely ‘moral’ properties. Rather they are accessed through intentional, affective intuition of the ‘goods’ of phenomenal experience that is then clarified through phenomenological reflection to reveal the values hidden within.

128

Ibid, p22.

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The two affective mechanisms through which we access values are ‘conation’ and ‘intentional feeling’, and through these two we are constantly in contact with material values that guide our practical cognition, our willing, our wishing, our choosing, and how we experience reality as valuable.130 They differ somewhat in terms of their relation to those values though, while neither intentional feeling nor conations are constitutive or foundational of values. They are means through which values and their respective heights are revealed to us in experience. (The ‘height’ of a value is the qualitative measure of the intensity of its value, and whether it should be preferred above or below other values. This concept will be explained in section five of this chapter and in chapter five.) Scheler takes his inspiration for these ideas from Pascal's concept of the “Ordre du Coeur” or ‘order of the heart’, defined by Pascal’s statement that "The Heart has its reasons of which Reason knows nothing"131. Scheler interprets this to mean that there is an a priori ordering in practical reason, based on feeling and striving, that is totally separate from the rational ordering of theoretical reason. Scheler criticises traditional ethics for believing that morality must be either rational and absolute, or emotional and empirical. He claims this is a false dichotomy and instead phenomenology reveals, through intentional feeling and conation, an ethics that is "emotional and absolute".132

Scheler describes values as "clearly feelable phenomena",133 but in a particular and unique sense of 'feeling' i.e. intentional feeling. Intentional feeling can best be understood by distinguishing it from non-intentional feeling-states. Such feeling-states largely follow the traditional empiricist or Kantian conception of feelings. Feeling-states, particularly sensory bodily feelings, are purely internal and have no direction outside the self, nor do they present themselves as such. They are generally spatially extended over an area of the body, like touch or taste or pain, and whether mental attention is directed at the feeling itself or not does not fundamentally alter its state, though it may lessen or increase its vividness in consciousness. They are given and accepted as subjective, restricted to a single person and often highly transitory. They form a continuous manifold of sensations that cover a huge range of types. The lack of direction outside themselves is their defining characteristic. If I have a headache and concentrate on my pain, the only thing that is given is the pain itself, if that pain disappears, then that feeling-state is just gone.134

Intentional feelings are very different to this. They are feelings that are intentionally directed, with values as their constant objects, whether of the agreeable, vital, mental or holy. In phenomenological reflection these feelings are identifiable as intrinsically relating to objects of feeling that are not identical with the feeling itself, rather these feelings are the manner in which we perceive these objects i.e. values, in the same manner that through vision physical objects

130 _{Ibid, p33 & 256.}

131_{Pascal, Blaise. Pensees. New York: E.P.Dutton & Co, 1958, §274.} 132_{Scheler, M. Formalismus, p254.}

133

Ibid, p16.

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are represented as fundamentally separate from the act of seeing that sees them. An example is the perception of beauty in a sunset or painting. Certainly the perception is carried and accompanied by unique feelings, but these feelings are not themselves beauty, rather they have as their object the value, Beauty, borne by the sunset or painting itself. Intentional feelings vary widely depending on the value they are aimed at. They are ‘least’ intentional when aimed at agreeable values, such as those relating to the body, of sensory pleasure or food. They are ‘more’ intentional135

when dealing with vital values relating to the living being, such as health or vigour, more again in mental or spiritual values and most in values of holiness. In each of these levels the feeling is given more and more as representing a value as its object that is independent of and separate to the feeling itself. Also, the revealing of that value becomes more and more responsive to, and capable of, being disrupted by the mental attention being directed at the feeling of the value rather than the value itself. For higher values any attempt to do this immediately detaches the person from the value itself. If one attends to the feelings that indicate the beauty of a sunset, one is dealing with a totally different object to that beauty itself, and hence one loses sight of it. The perception is disrupted, whereas whether or not one attends to a feeling-state it is unaffected because it entirely refers to itself.136

Feeling-states and intentional feeling are two areas of affective experience. These are highly variegated at both levels and both concepts should be distinguished from the common conception of emotions. In Scheler's view emotions, as we usually refer to them, would be a limited type of intentional feelings, as they are usually externally directed and contain an immediate representation of the value of the object. Common emotions themselves would not exhaust the range of intentional feeling though. Rather identifiable, distinct emotions would be one particular subset of the wide range of intentional feeling, much of which will not have a clear definition and common name. Another different form of affective experience would be the feelings that support empathy, sympathy and emotional identification and have as their objects not values directly, but rather the thought and feeling of other persons, living beings or communities, and through which we gain access and knowledge of other persons.

"Values are given first of all in feeling"137 and this is the primary method by which value perception occurs but not the only one. Through conation values themselves, or features of values such as their particular 'height', may be revealed, and any conative movement always has values as its logical basis. Conation is a rarely used term for the aspect of the mind directed to change and action: impulse, drive, mental striving, volition and will in the broadest sense, whether conscious or unconscious. It is contrasted with the affective, feeling based faculty of the mind and theoretical reason. Will is the most commonly referred to form of conation in

135 _{I use ‘more’ intentional here and elsewhere despite traditionally ‘intentionality’ being seen as a binary}

concept: something is either intentional or not. I hope this passage makes clear the relative sense in which I am using this in relation to value objects.

136

Ibid, pp256-260.

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general usage, but Scheler regards ‘will’ as a relatively advanced and particular form of conation whereas the entire faculty is a much broader and more basic area of human function.138 Basic examples of conations would be the subconscious impulses that drive us to choose between certain objects, whether members of a group on entering a room, food choices on a menu, or the differing goals we seek to complete at the start of a day. The subconscious impulse that drags us towards something of beauty, or which drives us away from an act that we know is wrong, reveals value even in the absence of clear feeling, or clear understanding of why we are doing it.

Scheler argues that it is an essential connection that every value accessible through conation must be accessible through feeling but no converse relationship holds: there are values accessible through feeling that could never be realised by any personal conation, for example "the sublimity of the nocturnal sky and the stars" or “the morally valuable personality of a human being”.139

Conation is still a common and important means by which values are revealed and affect human experience. Neither intentional feeling nor conation are constitutive of values, they are rather both methods by which the objective values may be brought to subjective clarity e.g. the joy we feel when someone enters the room who we weren't aware we cared for until that moment.140

Whereas 'will' always has as its object some pictorial representation as its 'purpose', conation in general only has a 'goal' that requires no such representation but must essentially have some scale of a value as its object. (By pictorial representation I mean some actual explicit theoretical objects that are represented as the object of that will.) For conation the value-goal can be implicitly given in the most basic conation, or given clearly in value terms but without any picture-content attached, or with a pictorially represented purpose as in cases of 'will', but it always still has the fundamental value-goal founding the impulse. Scheler argues that an immediate connection to a value is necessary for conation, but that picture-content is neither necessary nor sufficient for conation. The fact that picture-content is not required for conation, though it is for will, is demonstrated by the uncountable occasions when we feel conative impulses that do lack this content, and are driven towards something that can be clear in terms of its value while lacking clear pictorial image. This can be either low-value conations such as the impulse towards food, without any clear image of any particular food, or it can be a very high-value conation, such as the impulse towards union with God, and dwelling in Heaven, that is overwhelming in value terms even when no clear vision of God, or Heaven, may be at all possible in this life. The fact that even acts of will must have value-content as their fundamental driving force is shown by the fact that the driving impulse can be just as strong in instances of conation that lack any pictorial content, or have only a confused picture-content while the value

138 _{Ibid, p41.} 139

Ibid, p173.

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is entirely clear. However, pictorial content on its own overwhelmingly lacks any conative impulse except in those cases where a strong perception of value simultaneously occurs.141