Value

Value

The word value commonly refers to the worth of something: an object or event, a person or action, an idea or institution. Its value can be understood as objective, a quality or feature it possesses independently of one's experiencing it. The sunset is beautiful whether it is observed or not; honesty is the best policy even if people do not think so. A thing's value can also be understood as subjective, a positive feeling or idea that it arouses or that is imputed to it. Good art is whatever one happens to like; moral codes are social constructs. In economics, the (subjective) market value of a commodity or service is the price someone is willing to pay for it at a given time; its (objective) normal value is the price it would command in a perfectly functioning open market. By metaphorical extension, the value of a variable in mathematics is its assignable numeric worth: The value of x in 2 × x = 6 is 3.

Value is also a verb. To value something is to esteem it, to take it into account in making a choice, to assert its objective or subjective worth. The American philosopher and educator John Dewey distinguishes between prizing and apprizing: To prize something is to like it, to appreciate it, to enjoy the experience of it. There is no explanation required: People simply like what they like. Dewey calls these de facto values, which he contrasts with de jure values, values that have been judged, with respect to their causes and consequences and by comparison to other alternatives, to be genuinely worthwhile, not only desired but desirable. Just as science has an experimental method for discriminating warranted from unwarranted hypotheses, Dewey argues, so a method of criticism is needed for discriminating among values, helping people select those values most conducive to their self-realization and to the attaining of a common good.

A thing's value can be either intrinsic, itself the source of its value, or extrinsic, the source of its value lying elsewhere: in God's will, a subjective judgment, or another value upon which it is dependent. In a context of means and ends, a thing has final value (sometimes, confusingly, called its intrinsic value) if it is the goal of a purposive effort; it has instrumental value if valued as a means for achieving that goal. Dewey argued that all values are both final and instrumental: Any end one seeks is also a means toward further ends. In the eighteenth century, the philosopher Immanuel Kant argued that rational beings are ends in themselves: They have infinite worth because there is no other value for which their value could legitimately be sacrificed, made merely a means. Note that all instrumental values are extrinsic, but some extrinsic values are not instrumental: Theistic religions claim that persons are valuable not intrinsically but because they are created by God.

Value theory, or axiology, an approach in which value as a general category is made the primary object of philosophical analysis, is a nineteenth and twentieth century development in Western thought. Among the leading value theorists are Bernard Bosanquet, J. N. Findlay, Alexius Meinong, and Max Scheler in Europe; Alejandro Korn in Latin America; and C. I. Lewis, Ralph Barton Perry, John Dewey, and Stephen Pepper in the United States. Their strategy is usually to provide a generic analysis of the nature and conditions of value, then to apply these concepts to the various realms of value their theory either predicts or interprets.

Traditionally, however, thinkers have concerned themselves not with value in general but with specific values: aesthetic (beauty), ethical or religious (goodness), and scientific or philosophical (truth). Sometimes these kinds of value are thought to be distinct, for instance, claiming that the criteria for a thing's being true have nothing to do with its desirability. Others argue for a hierarchy among the kinds, usually in terms of some version of Plato's divided line, beginning with the transient values of immediate perception and imagination, rising through practical and then theoretical concerns, and arriving finally at something ultimate, the source of all lesser values: a contemplation of the Form of the Good or of Beauty, or communion with God or the Absolute. In the early nineteenth century, the philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel temporalized this hierarchy, so that the ultimate became not an eternal governing ideal but a historical culmination, not a governing rule but an achievable goal.

The notion of a "final value" for individuals to achieve is usually given an ethical slant. Aristotle, for instance, finds this achievement to be the happiness that comes from a life of appropriate actions accomplished with excellence. Confucius recommends combining principled action with energetic striving, melding Heaven and Earth into a moderate way of living. For the Stoic, one's culminating humanity is to be found in tranquility of mind; for the Christian, in selfless love; for Friedrich Nietzsche, in the effective exercise of one's will to power; for Josiah Royce, in loyalty to a cause; for Jean-Paul Sartre, in authenticity.

This notion of a value as an achievement, as a quality of something made, has been explored metaphysically by pragmatists and process philosophers. For instance, Robert Cummings Neville, influenced by Charles Sanders Pierce and Alfred North Whitehead, argues that all values are achievements of harmony. A value is an integration of diverse elements. The more they are diverse, the more complex the attained harmony; the more complete or intense their integration, the more simple the harmony. Complexity and simplicity are opposites, however. The challenge is to increase both in a harmonic contrast, making the most value possible in a given circumstance. Neville then works out the implications of this theory for the traditional realms of value, defining truth, beauty, and goodness as kinds of harmonic contrast.

One's personal values are evidenced by the things one finds valuable. Insofar as they are compatible and consistently held, they comprise one's personal value system. Emile Durkheim argues that for people to be organized into communities it is necessary that individual value systems be subordinated to a shared social value system. God, says Durkheim, is that historically fashioned cultural value system projected as an ultimate reality independent of those who hold it. Hence should the societal order break down, its members will feel alienated from God, stripped of their sense of worth: They will suffer a condition of valuelessness, the despair of anomie.

See also Aesthetics; Axiology; Beauty; Value; Value Theory; Value, Religious; Value, Scientific

Bibliography

aristotle. nicomachean ethics, trans. martin ostwald. englewood cliffs, n.j.: library of liberal arts, 1962.

confucius. the analects, trans. raymond dawson. new york: oxford university press, 1993.

dewey, john. experience and nature (1929). new york: dover publications. 1958.

durkheim, emile. suicide: a study in sociology, trans. john a. spaulding and george simpson. new york: free press, 1966.

kant, immanuel. grounding for the metaphysics of morals (1785), trans. james w. ellington. indianapolis, ind.: hackett, 1981.

neville, robert cummings. recovery of the measure: interpretation and nature. albany: state university of new york press, 1989.

perry, ralph barton. realms of value: a critique of human civilization. cambridge, mass.: harvard university press, 1954.

scheler, max. formalism in ethics and non-formal ethics of values: a new attempt toward the foundation of an ethical personalism, trans. manfred s. frings and roger l. funk. evanston, ill.: northwestern university press, 1973.

george allan