Axiology

Value Theory

Value theory is concerned with the nature of value itself as well as with the various forms that value can take, such as the aesthetic value of beauty, the ethical values of good/bad and right/wrong, and the epistemic values of truth, rationality, and justification.

The central issue of the nature of value is somewhat contentious and has a long history. For example, Plato saw values as essences that are known through intuition, whereas Aristotle saw values as defined simply by human interest. Philosophers in the neo-Kantian tradition have proposed that values are objective and universally valid, whereas existentialists such as Nietzsche and Sartre regard values as constructions, that is, the mere products of human invention. More recently, in the cult novel Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig equated value with “quality,” a sort of meeting point between the human mind and the material world that resists any reduction to either subjectivity or objectivity but represents a subjective–objective reality. Whatever perspective is taken, it would seem that value is clearly not a property of the thing-in-itself, it cannot be perceived by the senses, and it cannot be measured scientifically, but somehow it arises out of our relationship with things.

The study of values often leads to the identification of what amounts to a core value or a hierarchy of values that leads toward a final value. For example, Aristotle proposed “happiness,” the Stoics stressed “tranquility of mind,” Schopenhauer offered “renunciation,” Sartre proposed “authenticity,” and Taoist philosophy positions “flexibility” and “adaptability to context” as the final value. Furthermore, it is useful to distinguish intrinsic values from instrumental values. Something has intrinsic value if it is worthy, or desirable, in and for itself, whereas something is of instrumental value if it offers a means or contributes directly to something else in turn that is intrinsically of value. Nevertheless, the recurrent problem throughout much of the study of value is that although many philosophers offer systematic accounts of what is of value, they do this without offering any proper justification or without any appeal to some claim to validity.

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