Stratification of Emotional Life (Scheler) - The Connection Between Emotive Life and Value Modalities

The Connection Between Emotive Life and Value Modalities

The structure of Scheler's stratification model of emotive life correlates to the inherent spectral type structure of value rankings, or what Scheler termed the apriori hierarchy of value modalities. Our earlier analogy to color perception illustrates this point. Just as all colors we intuit (see) are derivative of the pure spectrum or hues as when pure ("white") light is refracted through a prism, so too all intuited (felt) values are derivative of the apriori hierarchy of value modalities as when Divine love is apprehended through a purely ordered heart (Ordo Amoris).

Scheler's claim is that these value modalities are constant and unchanging throughout history, forming a basis for objective non-formal ethics. From lowest to highest these modalities (with their respective positive and corresponding negative dis-value forms) are as follows: sensual values of the agreeable and the disagreeable; vital values of the noble and vulgar; mental (psychic) values of the beautiful and ugly, right and wrong and truth and falsehood; and finally values of the Holy and Unholy of the Divine and Idols.

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The logical implication of all the above is that human beings will naturally prefer a positive value (i.e., value situation) over a negative value (or dis-value), such as when life seems to tragically descend in a self-perpetuating spiral of negative emotions (envy, anger, jealousy, spite, hate, revenge)--a psycho-philosophical problematic termed Ressentiment. Furthermore, human beings will naturally prefer values of a higher ranking over those of a lower to the extent that they will invest time, work and sacrifice to order to attain them: for example, people will routinely defer a measure of immediate gratification in order to secure a child's education, their own retirement, etc.

Hence, the relativity of value experience transitions to the beginnings of an objective morality which ensures personal fulfillment and transcendence. Since all ethics must ultimately advise our decisions in some way, Scheler’s non-formal value-based ethics promises to potentially achieve this end through our cognitive understanding and channeling of the advance information offered through our emotive life.