Max Scheler (1874–1928) places values in a hierarchy: at bottom, sinnliche Werte (utility and pleasure), followed by Lebenswerte, (life values, what we might call "virtues," e.g., courage), followed by geistige Werte, which are more intellectually oriented ("principally justice, beauty and truth," McGilchrist explains), and lastly, das Heilige (holiness).
McGilchrist's thesis is that our starting point in this hierarchy depends on whether our brain's right or left hemisphere is evaluating the hierarchy. He believes that the right hemisphere calls most of the shots, and it begins with das Heilige, and all other values serve it. The left hemisphere begins with sinnliche Werte and strives to reach das Heilige, because "the left hemisphere is reductionist, and accounts for higher values by reference to lower values." The left hemisphere is also crucial to us, but in a sense it is the servant of the right hemisphere. (Overall, in human life — not only in the context of values — the left hemisphere is "the emissary," and the right hemisphere is "the master," as they are referred to in the title of McGilchrist's book.)
McGilchrist further explains Scheler's position (presented here with my emphases):
Value, for Scheler, is a pre-cognitive aspect of the existing world, which is neither purely subjective (i.e., ‘whatever I take it to be’) nor purely consensual (i.e. ‘whatever we agree it to be’). It is not, he asserts, something which we derive, or put together from some other kind of information, any more than we derive a color, or come to a conclusion about it, by making a calculation. It comes to us in its own right, prior to any such calculation being made. This position is importantly related to two right-hemisphere themes which we have encountered already: the importance of context and of the whole. For example, the same act carried out by two different people may carry an entirely different value, which is why morality can never be a matter of actions or consequences taken out of context, whether that be the broader context or that of the mental world of the individual involved (the weakness of a too rigidly codified judicial system). Hence we judge some things that would out of context be considered weaknesses to be part of what is valuable or attractive in the context of a particular person's character; we do not arrive at a judgment on a person by summing the totality of their characteristics or acts, but judge their characteristics or acts by the ‘whole’ that we know to be that person.
* * *
Value is not a flavor that is added for some socially useful purpose; it is not a function or consequence of something else, but a primary fact. Scheler referred to the capacity for appreciating value as Wertnehmung, a concept which has been translated into the rather less accommodating English language as ‘value-caption’. For him this value-caption governs the type of attention that we pay to anything, and by which we learn more about it. Our value-captive knowledge of the whole governs our understanding of the parts, rather than the reverse. It is, in fact, one way of breaking into Escher's circle of hands...
This idea inspired me to write a tiny article, "Do We Choose to Be Who We Are?", followed by another tiny article, "How Do We Know Who We Are?". I offer both to you here — unpaywalled, if you use these links.
Also, please check out McGilchrist's large book:
Source: Iain McGilchrist. The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2009.
Also, a comment on values:
"Simone Weil is not in any way mistaken about the dignity and necessity of temporal values. She sees them as intermediaries — metaxu — between the soul and God."
That's Gustave Thibon in a 1947 introduction to Simone Weil's Gravity and Grace (La Pesanteur et la grâce (1947) , translated by Emma Crawford and Mario von der Ruhr. London and New York: Routledge, 2002. p. xxxv.
No comments:
Post a Comment