In December 1926, writing the Preface to the third edition of Formalismus, Scheler finds it necessary to make clear that a transformation of the “metaphysics of the one and absolute being” had happened, requiring a reformulation of the “Microcosm and macrocosm and the idea of God” paragraph. Nothing else in Formalismus need be changed – Scheler specifies – since the conception of the spirit had not changed. Rather, a deepened investigation of the already expressed contents of the philosophy of nature and of anthropology had induced in his metaphysics and philosophy of religion that change of perspective, because of which “Microcosm and macrocosm and the idea of God” appear now in a different light. In fact, from the vastly-ranging description of lived experiences, sustained and carried in Scheler by his attention to the phenomenon of work that “makes being”, there arose a new and original philosophical compages. Here the spirit is genealogically “powerless” because it originates from life just by its capacity to “say no” to the power of life. Nonetheless the spirit does not lack its own autonomy, but it is able to gain it, as much as it is endowed with the indirect capacity to influence life, “inhibiting and disinhibiting” or “leading and guiding” by work, the incessant and automatical flow of life. This faculty of work, that belongs to the human spirit but is capable to affect real life and to induce here an anthropological positive becoming, must be accounted for now by the conception of the foundation of the world. This philosophical elaboration can nevertheless avail itself of “the essential ontology of the world and of the self” and draw the following transcendental conclusion: “since the being of the world itself is certainly independent from the chance existence of earthly man and from his empirical consciousness, since nonetheless rigorous connections of essence subsist between certain classes of spiritual acts and determinate regions of being, to which we find access thanks to these classes of acts, one must necessarily attribute to the foundation of all things all that which – as much for acts as for operations – offers us ephemeral beings this access”. This means that it is useless to linger among ideas, like traditional metaphysics, to find the connection between the macrocosm and the divine person, as if this nexus were already subsistent or ready and we humans only had to reproduce it and execute it. In fact, if “the one and same infinite spirit in which the essential structure of the objective world is also rooted” finds in our personal structure “an unrepeatable individual autoconcentration”, we are also at the same time, inasmuch as pulsional and vital beings, rooted “in the divine impetus of the nature of God”.
Between microcosm and macrocosm: man at work
VERDUCCI, Daniela
2006-01-01
Abstract
In December 1926, writing the Preface to the third edition of Formalismus, Scheler finds it necessary to make clear that a transformation of the “metaphysics of the one and absolute being” had happened, requiring a reformulation of the “Microcosm and macrocosm and the idea of God” paragraph. Nothing else in Formalismus need be changed – Scheler specifies – since the conception of the spirit had not changed. Rather, a deepened investigation of the already expressed contents of the philosophy of nature and of anthropology had induced in his metaphysics and philosophy of religion that change of perspective, because of which “Microcosm and macrocosm and the idea of God” appear now in a different light. In fact, from the vastly-ranging description of lived experiences, sustained and carried in Scheler by his attention to the phenomenon of work that “makes being”, there arose a new and original philosophical compages. Here the spirit is genealogically “powerless” because it originates from life just by its capacity to “say no” to the power of life. Nonetheless the spirit does not lack its own autonomy, but it is able to gain it, as much as it is endowed with the indirect capacity to influence life, “inhibiting and disinhibiting” or “leading and guiding” by work, the incessant and automatical flow of life. This faculty of work, that belongs to the human spirit but is capable to affect real life and to induce here an anthropological positive becoming, must be accounted for now by the conception of the foundation of the world. This philosophical elaboration can nevertheless avail itself of “the essential ontology of the world and of the self” and draw the following transcendental conclusion: “since the being of the world itself is certainly independent from the chance existence of earthly man and from his empirical consciousness, since nonetheless rigorous connections of essence subsist between certain classes of spiritual acts and determinate regions of being, to which we find access thanks to these classes of acts, one must necessarily attribute to the foundation of all things all that which – as much for acts as for operations – offers us ephemeral beings this access”. This means that it is useless to linger among ideas, like traditional metaphysics, to find the connection between the macrocosm and the divine person, as if this nexus were already subsistent or ready and we humans only had to reproduce it and execute it. In fact, if “the one and same infinite spirit in which the essential structure of the objective world is also rooted” finds in our personal structure “an unrepeatable individual autoconcentration”, we are also at the same time, inasmuch as pulsional and vital beings, rooted “in the divine impetus of the nature of God”.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
