The Essence and Nature of Values

The Essence of Values*VALUES comes from the Latin

word “valere” which means to measure the worth of something.

*Values are the elements of life prevailing in any society.

Max Scheler (1874-1928) is the foremost exponent of Axiology. Axiology is defined as the philosophical science of values.

“Acts reveal the person’s value preferences. Like a prism that reflects the invisible spectrum of colors, a person’s acts manifest his invisible order of values.” (Philosophy Today, 1989)

The following are true of values:1. There are positive and negative values;2. Values create an atmosphere, hence, we say a sense of values;3.Values are of diverse types;4. Values transcend facts;5. Values cannot clamor for existence or realization;6. Man experiences a certain order of values.

* There are also such things as subjective and objective values.

Phenomenology of Moral Values1. A description of moral insights into a moral experience shows the following:

* there is awareness of the difference between right and wrong;

* moral experience cannot be reduced to other human experiences;

* there is a “must” quality;*we experience an “ought” in doing

good and avoiding evil;* yet we are free to do good or evil.

2. From the phenomenon of dialogue, when we speak of and judge others, we distinguish between the hero and the villain in myths, history, in everyday experience; we praise some and blame others. We contrast the hero and the rascal; the faithful and the unfaithful husband.

Characteristics of Moral Values

1. A value becomes moral because it is recognized as reasonable and freely chosen by a human person.2. moral values are pre-eminent over other human values.3. Moral values are absolute. Independent of other values and preferred for their own sake.4. Moral values are universal and necessary for everyone.5. Moral values are obligatory.

The Metaphysics of Moral Values1. In our experience the good appears as an analogous concept to the various grades of beings.2. The good as perfective of a subject is object of desire (thing-to-person relationship).3. Dynamism of the Good.

Man has two-fold tendency:

a. Natural tendency to the good (will as object) andb. The moral choice of what is reasonable (will as reason).

Knowledge of Values

1. A value is immediately felt or experienced before it is known and explained. Pre-philosophical knowledge precedes philosophical, reflective knowledge.

Two ways of knowing value:

1. By real or experiential knowledge.2. By notional or conceptual knowledge.

2. What is the source of our moral ideal, i.e., what we should do become to be fully human?

The moral ideal in us is both present (we are human) and absent (the fullness of human life is still to be realized).

Hence, the moral ideal is a task of a lifetime. It is our vocation to exist as fully as possible as human persons.

The World of Values

A. Relation of natural values to moral values.

1. Mediation of reason.2. Subjective and Objective

Relationship.3. Sanction and Merit.

B. Mixed or Intermediate Values

1. These are values which are morally relevant natural values which are a potential for moral values.

2. Moral education is required to habitually subordinate lower to higher values and thus to acquire a proper sense of values.

3. Mixed values are ambiguous in the sense that:

a. they can be a help or a hindrance to moral values.b. they are intermediate between infra-moral values and religious values.c. they can lead to a loss of proper sense of values.

C. Hierarchy of Values

1. Religious values2. Moral Values3. Infra-moral values

-Economic values and values of well-being

-Social and aesthetic values-Intellectual values-Personality values

4. Infra-human values-Biological or vital values-Sensible values

Value is not simply the good but it is an added aspect of the good. Moral value makes a man, through his human actions, good simply as a human person.

Max Scheler’s Non-Formal Ethics of Values

Throughout history there have existed many different moralities in different peoples, races, nations, cultures, and religious. This has led to the assumption that moral values and norms are relative.

Max Scheler’s ethics of values presupposes Kant’s refutation of an ethics of goods and purpose (such as Aristotle’s) or an ethics of happiness ( such as utilitarianism). Kant criticized all non-formal ethics which placed the basis of morality o man’s egoism as a natural drive.

Kant’s formal ethics established a formal priori universal moral law- the categorical imperative-independently of man’s natural being.

Scheler hold’s that Kant’s formal ethics as a refutation of an ethics of good and purpose is overcome by the possibility of a non-formal, nevertheless absolute ethics of values.

In Max Scheler’s non-formal ethics of values, the whole of man, emotional, voluntative, rational, social, historical, cultural, evolutionary, is the object of investigation. Questions of philosophy ultimately reduce themselves to the questions of “what is man?”

Phenomenological Givenness in Intentional Feeling

1. A value is immediately felt in experience before its object is known. Values are given to the intentional feeling immediately, as colors are to sight or sounds are to listening.

Value feelings must be strictly distinguished from feelings which are not intentional. Since values like lovely, charming, noble, courageous, are felt, we can speak of them as the first messengers of the special nature of all objects.

A value can be very clear to us while the object to which a value refers is still obscure. Value feeling is prior to a given thing.

The prior givenness of values pertains both to the psychic and the physical. Values are not qualities of things, nor do all good and noble things have common properties, for one single act or one individual can comprehend a real value.

2. Values are always exhibit a specific content. Their content and the ordered ranks (higher and lower values) among them posses a priority of givenness in the order of experience because value-feeling is prior to a given thing.

In the order of reality, values and things form an insoluble interconnection. And finally, in the order of essence, values are independent of being.

Values do not change with changing objects.

All kinds of values form an absolute order and they are immutable.

3. In this order of values, there arise also a priori formal laws.

Values are either positive or negative. One value cannot be at the same time both positive and negative. Every non-negative value is positive and vice-versa.

The order of ranks of values (higher or lower) is absolute.

Therefore, it is possible to relate all historical moralities ad forms of ethos to a universal system of reference; however, only one of the order of value- modalities and qualities, not of goods and norms. It also gives a negative domain in which each positive historical age and each specific group has to find its own, always only relative system of goods and norms.

Presented by:Jhunisa Ann P. AgustinBSED 4-E