From Max Schelers On the Eternal In Man, Philosophys Relationship to Faith: It can easily be shown–on the evidence--that the new basic relationship of philosophy to faith and the sciences represents the most deep-seated, far-reaching and consequential perversion of the true relationship that the European mentality has ever attained, and that even this perversion is no more than one instance of a far more all-embracing phenomenon—the internal overthrow of all order of values, that disorder of mind and heart which forms the soul of the bourgeois-capitalist age. What we are witnessing is in fact the slave-rebellion in the world of intellect, and together with closely associated similar uprisings of lower against higher in other fields it offers the symptomatic evidence of that general overthrow of values. Thus in ethics egocentric individualism has rebelled against the principle of solidarity, utilitarian criteria have asserted their supremacy over values of culture and intellect, but even these have in turn revolted against spiritual values; in institutions, State first rose against Church, then Nation against State, finally economic institutions against Nation and State; in society, class has risen against position; in history, technicalism and economics are supplanting classical theories; in the arts, engagement is preferred to form, commercialism has invaded art, the producer dominates the poetic stage; instances multiply. . . But it ought not to surprise us at all that philosophy should have become (via the Renaissance) a worldly wisdom not merely hostile to faith but even usurping its place—and simultaneously a slave and whore progressively cheapened in traffic from science to science (in the service now of geometry, now of mechanics, now psychology, and so on). The two processes are in essence one. Each illustrates in the closest way the following principle: it beseems reason, as of eternal right, to exercise autonomy, and power and authority over all instinctual life and whatever its laws apply among the myriads of sensory phenomena; but at the same time it befits reason to hold itself in a free and humble, yet self-imposed subjection to the order of divine revelation; thus reason is of such a nature that it must of necessity fall into heteronomous slavery to that extent to which it repudiates as slavery the very intrinsic condition of its right to full autonomy—that is, its vital connection with God as the source-light of life, a connection founded in humility and in capacity for sacrifice. Only as the free handmaid of faith can philosophy preserve the dignity of queen of sciences, and if it makes bold to assert a domination over faith it cannot avoid becoming the handmaid, the slave and whore of the sciences.
Posted on: Wed, 14 Jan 2015 18:38:46 +0000
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