Scheler held Western metaphysics rests on an a priori drive to dominate nature

Evidence

Max Scheler has effectively argued that modern man, by which he meant Western man, possesses an a priori will, an inherent “struggle for knowledge” that “grows out of an innate drive impulse.” What was seen as a disenchanted world by Weber was taken by Scheler as proof that this “innate drive” culminated in an all-inclusive “thought structure which has been the basis of all realistic thinking since the Renaissance,” one that “sprung from an underlying, a priori willand value-structure centered upon the desire to dominate the material world.” Compared with Eastern thought structures, Scheler argued (and this is rather relevant for us in light of our case study earlier), Western “metaphysics rests on an entirely different consciousness of self and entirely different interpretation of man himself, viz. as sovereign being above all of nature.” Having become “the decisive axiological element,” a “systematic,” “not only occasional,” phenomenon, and a “central value attitude,” this inhering attribute of domination was the basis “from which the study of reality was undertaken.” Put differently, this “attitude” or “innate drive impulse” became constitutive of modernity’s central domains, having been meshed with their warp and woof. — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 180

Categorization

• XREF: Scheler’s ‘innate drive impulse’ parallels Weber’s disenchantment thesis and the broader argument about Western exceptionalism; could cross-reference with other critiques of Western metaphysics as domination-oriented. — connects to: Natural science’s drive to dominate nature rests on a universally valid epistemic attitude — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2437
• SEED: Article angle: comparison of Scheler’s Eastern vs Western consciousness-of-self with Said/after-Said critiques — scheler as an early theorist of civilizational difference rooted in axiology.