The Gesture of Agape: Max Scheler’s Downward Movement of Love as a Basis for Interhuman Relations

In this research work, I have argued that Scheler’s concept of the movement of love [Bewegung der Liebe], specifically its downward movement, provides a crucial insight into ongoing philosophical discussions on what constitutes the basis of interhuman relations and our common humanity. I further argued that this movement of love permeates Scheler’s thinking and that it forms the basis of his non-formal value ethics and philosophical anthropology. I did this by first documenting how Scheler’s views on love, humility, feelings and feeling-states, values, etc. could be understood only in terms of the movement of love. Consequently, I suggest that the movement of love constitutes the “golden thread” in Scheler’s thought. To show how this movement of love could constitute the basis of contemporary philosophical discussions, I argued that this movement exposes but also avoids the complexities in the dominant hermeneutics of the Being-in-the-world approach to discussions on interhuman relations. These complexities include questions regarding embodied-subjectivism, inter-subjectivism, solipsism, empiricism, the primordiality of language, and the dualism of reason and sense experience, which overrates the importance of the human intellect. A fundamental problem with dominant contemporary approaches is the fact that they are structured by ideologies of the human being as homo sapiens and as the Fallen Man of the Judeo-Christian tradition, but also as homo faber and according to the Nietzschean Übermenschenidee. These ideologies overlook the crucial spiritual dimension of the human being, that is, the spiritual person, the center of acts, the loving being (ens amans) that can only be felt in the downward movement of love as agape. Viewing the 21st century conversation on interhuman relations from the perspective of Scheler’s movement of love, the gradations of value ranks, and the influence of personal exemplars on our mores and social structures, reveals that this conversation has overly focused on the realm of practical life and ignored the realm of the spiritual person. The problem is that, while concentrating on the realm of life provides insights into improving human material welfare, practical living conditions, and human flourishing, it can also leave human beings with a feeling-state of emptiness, anxiety, uneasiness, guilt, and fear. The wars, the violence, the aggression, the humiliation, the struggles, the greed, the divisions, the exclusions, the bullying, the competition, and the socio-economical imbalance in the world, call into question the nature of humanity. I argue that contemporary views on humanity are stuck in upward direction of the movement of love as eros. Therefore, Scheler’s movement of love is relevant and important for ongoing philosophical discussions on interhuman relations and explorations into what constitutes our common humanity. Scheler’s positive view of the human being as in-becoming, as a meeting place of the primordial movements of impulsion and spirit, and as a loving being, provide insight into the nature of the humanity we are capable of realizing. It is crucial to note that defining the human being essentially as a loving being entails that the human being is in the process of becoming what it is. That is, the human being is not something already completed and given that needs to be retrieved or unconcealed. Humanity is a process of discovery. The personal values felt in the downward movement of love as agape, I have argued, guide us in the direction of a humanity that is formed by a solidarity of love. This, I argue, was Scheler’s vision.