Ernst Mach, Gestalt-Psychology, and Max Scheler as Sources of Ecological Phenomenology: Toward a Comparative Study between Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Max Scheler

Abstract

This paper aims at reconstructing Max Scheler’s conception of the ecological phenomenology of perception in his work, Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values (Der Formalismus in der Ethik und die materiale Wertethik). This paper has four sections. In the first section, I will briefly review the relationship between Ernst Mach’s phenomenalism and Gestalt-psychology, focusing on Scheler’s criticism of Mach’s sensationalistic approach. Specifically, I will show that according to Scheler’s phenomenological analysis of the perceptional process, what is originally given to us is the gestalt of a perceived object, rather than its sensational qualities. In the second section, I will point out that Scheler believes that our sensations accompanying bodily movements and changes are also given to us originally and play an important role in our recognition of the sensational qualities of the perceived object. In the third section, I will further explain how Scheler regards not only bodily sensations but also the consciousness of our whole body as originally given to us, through which we can perceive each part of our body as our ‘lived’ body. In the fourth and final section, I will discuss the ecological correlation between our body and its milieu in Scheler’s phenomenology. I will explain how Scheler thinks that our body is the recipient of stimulations from its milieu as well as the subject of impulses interacting with such stimulations, in addition to being the body consciousness.