LESSON 5 : MAN IN SEARCH OF HUMAN VALUES

Man’s greatest problem is himself and he is also his greatest value.

Exploring what man is and has been, what motivates man and always will,
reveals that man is and has been, what motivates man and always will, reveals
that man - complex in his nature and relentless in his search for truth and value -
can be measured from many points of view.
Every man, at one time or another, should reflect and ask himself the all-
important question: “What am I?’ or “ What is the meaning of my existence?” On
this question hinges everything else in life. It is the duty of every man and the
reason for one’s existence without which, life becomes a sham, indeed an
absurdity.

HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES ON VALUES

Historically speaking, there has been no general theory on values. Values
were seen to be a study that was more a part of political and economic theory
than, say of philosophy. The notion of value was not a central issue for the
philosopher. Nevertheless, the solution to the value problem of antiquity was
given by the three great representatives of traditional philosophy namely, Plato,
Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas.

PLATO : AN INTOXICATION WITH VALUES

We find in Plato the most comprehensive treatment of value. For him
philosophy was primarily concerned with the meaning and value of essence; and
the process of cognition received validation in terms of values which are
objective. The very presentational immediacy of objects depends upon their
value qualifications. The intellect is oriented to value because absolute being is
nothing more than absolutely valid value.

 According to Plato, to think of reality one must think of goodness as basic

to it. Objects are real and knowable due to an ultimate axiological principle
that the subjective method of cognition is value through the objectivity of the
object known, for objects and value are not real.
 Plato believed in the “ supre form of the good” which is the basis of an ethical
realism, and the means by which a value syncretism is developed.
 For Plato, values are one. They are assimilated into the “supreme form of the
good” which is the most generic value term.
ARISTOTLE: VALUE EQUALS GOODNESS

 Aristotle viewed all things technologically. He was also interested although

from a different stance, in the supreme good. He was concerned with man’s
choice of value. He pointed out that each value relates to a series of higher
values. Eah value must have its own end in the overall view of things.Thus,
there is a hierarchy of values.
 Aristotle, when faced with the question of value, was frequently inconsistent
and even invoherent.
 Aristotle admitted of the distinction between the good per se and what is
good for but his special interest was the latter. His ethics dealt not with
goodness but with good actions. In other words, if I know the objective values
and their priority, the only question then will be: What do I do to obtain or
develop them? In some sense he recognized that goodness is an ultimate
concept whose generality transcends the categories.
 To establish the value of goodness upon a firm foundation, Aristotle reffered
to metaphysics. God as pure act exists necessarily and in so far as He exists
by necessity, His mode of being is good. The goodness of God is His
absolute being. The incidence of value is in actuality.
 For Aristotle the concept of good can be defined in terms of purposes, and
the concept of God is used to complete the two. The Good is that at which all
things aim, but “all things are ordered to one end,” that is , God.

ST. THOMAS ACQUINAS : A FUSION

 St. Thomas did the work of fusion and development of both Platonic and
Aritotelian principles through the doctrines of the trancedentals.
 The doctrine of the trancedentals is perhaps the ultimate that can be reached
in any attempt to define goodness metaphysically. It affirms that basicallyy
the notion “being” is strictly coincidental with goodness, truth, and unity which
are modes of its appearance adding nothing to being. St. Thomas affirmed
that goodness and being are the same and differ only in idea.
 The essence of goodness consists in its desirability. A thing is desirable only
as it is perfect, for each thing desires its own perfection. However a thing is
perfect in the measure in which it exists. So goodness and being are really
the same although goodness presents the additional aspect of desirability
which being does not.
 St. Thomas distinguished the summum bonum which is God, from the
relative goodness which characerizes all objects lacking his perfection.

THE MODERN PHILOSOPHERS: NEUTRALITY TO VALUES

 Among the modern philosphers, value has been considered that which
directs man to lead a good life. Values are ends or ideals which essentially
are worthy of human activity.
 The expresson “ philosphy of values” is used to describe various attempt
from 1890 onward. There was a movement for its elaboration, associated
mainly with Austran philosophers such as Franz Brentano, Alexious
Meinong and Christian Von Ehrenfels and with Americans susch as R.B
Perry and John Dewey.
 Brentano worked within an Aristotelian-Thomistic framework on the ground
of an empirical psychology.
 Meinong approached value-problems from economic science and Ehrenfels
from psychology.Both of them collborated with their teacher Brentano in
promoting the so-called Austrian School of Values.
 One of Meinong’s important contributions to contemporary thought was his
theory of obejects (Gegenstandestheorie).
 Neutrality with respect to value seems to characterize modern philosophers.
Rene Discartes’ most influential works are accordingly empty of value
considerations. Immanuel Kant also expelled value from what he
considered his scientific work or speculative studies. In order to make life
possible, he allowed “practical reality” to values. For him, the concept of duty
was central. The only thing morally valuable was “the good will”.
 Max Scheler reacted against Kants’ philosophy in order to save values. He
affirmed that in the order of sentimental perception, we receive immediately
an essence entirely different from the intelligible object. This essence is
alogical and purely valuable.Value must be distinguished from the thing
which Scheler called “depository of value. These depositories of values are
the “good”. Good is the depository of value. The value judgment is founded
on that pure value percieved in the sentiment..
 One of the modern philosophers who had added an important in-sight to the
metaphysics of value is Spinoza. He emphasized the whole of reality as
relevant to any value situation. Spinoza recognized that value is only
predictable of the world-totality. Od as total reality, power, and perfection
from whose perect nature all things flow, is the locus ofd all values.

CONTEMPORARY PHILOSPHERS: VALUE OPPOSED TO BEING

 Contemporary philosophy of value is asaid to have begun most poperly with

R.H Lotze and with F.W Nietzsche.
 Lotze was called the father of contemporary philosphy of values. With
him value appeared separated from being. His doctrine on values was
developed especially on these two bases: the neokantian philosophy and the
phenomenological philosophy of values.
 Neokantian philospohy affirms that reality is in itself with value. There is a
substantive realm of values which is valid unconditionally but without
existence and therefore unreal.
 Nietzsche is famous for his human concern and for his “transvaluation of
values”.
 They oppose value to being and do not want to recognize the relation of
axiology to metaphysics. This opposition is due to their empirical concepts
which consider being as something pertaining to obscure and dead nature.

EXISTENTIALISM : SENSITIVITY TO HUMAN VALUES

 The originality of existentialism in the investigation of values consists

primarily in their sensitivity to certain human values which nt only the ordinary
man but also the classical philosphies and religious tradition tnded to
overlook. At first sight, existentialism seems to be nihilism because it
denounces the ordinary ambitions of mankind as vain. Kiekegaard refused a
parsonage which would have brought him a steady income, abandonedd his
fiancee together with the hope of a comfortable family, life, and deliberately
used his talent to bring ridicule upon himself, all in the conviction that
comfort, money and public approval are inferior values.
 According to them, that state of happiness or well-being is not only
impossible of achievement but also, when achieved, would reduce us to the
state of unconscious brutes.
 For the existentialists, the supreme in life is intensity, as manifested in acts of
free choice, individual self-assertion, personal love, or creative work.
 Among the recent philosphers of values is Nicolai Hartmann who treated
values as essences and value experiences as characterized by an
aesthetical apriority. Whitehead defined value as the ultimate enjoyment of
being actual. Urban insisted that alll problems of metaphysics may be stated
as problems of value and believed that valuation is the recognition of or
assent to a form of objectivity.

PSYCHOANALYSIS: A SUBJECTIVE ANALYSIS OF VALUES

 With the advent of psychoanalysis, educational psychology and the whole

existentialist movement, there has been to a large extent a swing to the
subjective analysis of value.
 One particular and very major contributuion that psychoanalysis made which
affects very much the study of values is the notion of development and
formation. Until the early part of this century the idea of the formation of a
person’s values was for the most part connected to the idea of morality and
was seen as an objective reality.That is to say, in order to live the authentic
life especially in religious thought such as Christianity, one had to posess
certain values in a given hierarchy.
 In the new trend, it was pointed out that formation of human personality was
natural and developmental.
 Learning was through assimilation.

JOHN DEWEY AND JEAN PAIGET : VALUE EXPERIENCING

 The two central philosphical and psychological influences in this century are
those of John Dewey and Jean Piaget.
 For Dewey, the experiencing child discovers values in nature. He was
interested in the educational stages of growth and felt that the child’s
educational experience is not something that is given to him from the outside
but something that he has to discover. It would be from this discovery, this
relationship, that his own value system and his total personality would
develop.
 Jean Piaget is probaly the most influential developmental psychologist in the
area of eduaction today. He linked the cognitive as well as the affective
development of the child very much to the normal psychosocial development
as outlined in Freud. In the Freudian outlook on reality, there was the
development of what was called the super-ego.
- Super-ego was seen as a balancing factor between the outside
environment which imposes norms and limits on the person’s behavior.
- Id - the inner ragings of the primitive aspect of the person’s personality.
- ego - the development had very much to do with the whole aspect of the
person.
 In Piaget, the whole developmental process of the child is related to the
whole development of the slf which in turn is a valuing self, and the
development of values are parallel. At the same time, there is a very strong
implivcation that values develop, not as a purely inner matter, but only in
relationship to other people.

KARL MARX’S LABOR THEORY OF VALUE

 The Marxian philosophy has its sources the Capital and the Manifesto of the
Communist Party. One of its chief doctrines is the Labor Theory of Value.
 According to this theory, a commodity has value only because there is living
labor in it. Labor, along with either current labor or labor saved-up in
productive equipment, is the source of all value. It equates the value of good
with the labor congealed in it.
 For Marx, laborers possess intrinsic value and impute value to objects of their
laborious efforts. Commodities acquire their monetary value according to the
proportionate amount of labor expended in producing the object. As values,
all commodities are only definite masses of congealed labor-time.

Note : Please study also the presentation from prezi

https://prezi.com/xxnv3lze8r8s/man-in-search-of-human-values/
Reference : Andres Tomas D., Understanding Values ;

https://prezi.com/xxnv3lze8r8s/man-in-search-of-human-values/