Self-Sacrificial Behavior and its Explanation in Terms of Max Scheler’s Concept of Spirit

Abstract

One of the key concepts of the German philosopher Max Scheler (1874-1928) is his concept of spirit. He understands spirit as one of several naturally functioning human mental agencies, such as consciousness, will, memory, etc. That is, he treats the mental agency of spirit in a scientific way and avoids any esoteric or religious connotations that this peculiar term may involve. The nature of human spirit, according to Scheler, is the ability to withstand and deliberately redirect biological imperatives and instinctive drives, up to the point of purposefully throwing away one's own life. The presence of spirit constitutes the essence of the human being that differentiates him qualitatively from all animals. In this article, I argue that it is human spirit that plays the determinative role in causing heroic and self-sacrificial behavior. I also argue that the individual human spirit experiences its inherent development, thus having several rather dissimilar stages and manifestations. I discuss the meaning that the term 'spirit' has in the English and the American philosophical and psychological traditions and the meaning of the corresponding term 'der Geist' in the German traditions. The specific English-language understanding of the term 'spirit', compared to its German counterpart 'der Geist', namely, less scientific and more religious and esoteric and metaphorical for the former, makes it alien and almost unusable in the English and American traditions. The linguistic difference leads to the misunderstanding of some very important ideas brought by the concept of spirit as introduced by Scheler. My purpose is to overcome this discrepancy and omission and to introduce the notion and the concept of spirit, in their scientific understanding, into the arsenal of modern English-language cognitive science, psychology, and philosophy in order to provide for the full explanatory force of the hitherto neglected concept of spirit.