Modern Western subjectivity is constituted by acquisitive instrumentalism and estrangement from nature
Evidence
For Scheler, modern man lacks a unified and coherent idea of who and what he is, and even more so lacks a unified and coherent idea of what he is capable of becoming. That modern man is lost to himself and in the world represents a function of the disconnection between homo modernus and the cosmos, which, for him, is an order of existence structured according to an ethical plan. The problem with modern man is that he lost touch with his inner self, including the faculty of love and sympathy. Instead, modern man, by which Scheler meant the “modern Westerner,” has become a homo capitalisticus, a locution that transcends the meaning of an economic sphere and signifies a state of mind, a way of seeing and existing in the world. Utilitarian and instrumentalist to the core, the ethos and value structure of this man has been “marked by an insatiable drive for acquisition and a prioritization of the two lowest value-ranks: the useful and the agreeable.” The structure of the modern subject, designed by selfish interest, love for material things, and a self-centered view of the world, has resulted, according to Scheler, in ever-increasing levels of suffering and estrangement from nature, which has been dominated in systematic ways. Equally important, trenchant anthropocentrism has created a species that possesses a partial and limited view of life, reality, the world and nature at large. — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 498
Categorization
- XREF: Connects to Weber’s Protestant ethic and the instrumental rationality critique also found in Frankfurt School writers; echoes the ‘homo capitalisticus’ as a state of mind rather than economic role. — connects to: English empiricism’s theory of the subject is a pivotal Western mutation — Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at…, 1414
- DEFINE: Defines Scheler’s notion of homo capitalisticus as a mindset and worldview, not merely an economic category.