3. 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.
4. 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)
5. 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.
6. * There are also such things as
subjective and objective values.
7. Phenomenology of Moral Values
1. 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.
8. 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.
9. 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.
10. The Metaphysics of Moral
Values
1. 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.
11. Man has two-fold tendency:
a. Natural tendency to the good
(will as object) and
b. The moral choice of what is
reasonable (will as reason).
12. Knowledge of Values
1. A value is immediately felt or
experienced before it is known and
explained. Pre-philosophical
knowledge precedes
philosophical, reflective
knowledge.
13. Two ways of knowing value:
1. By real or experiential
knowledge.
2. By notional or conceptual
knowledge.
14. 2. What is the source of our moral
ideal, i.e., what we should do become
to be fully human?
15. 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.
16. 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.
17. 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.
18. 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.
19. C. Hierarchy of Values
1. Religious values
2. Moral Values
3. 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
20. 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.
21. 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.
22. 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.
23. Kant’s formal ethics established a
formal priori universal moral law-
the categorical imperative-
independently of man’s natural
being.
24. 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.
25. In Max Scheler’s non-formal ethics of
values, the whole of
man, emotional, voluntative, rational, soci
al, historical, cultural, evolutionary, is the
object of investigation. Questions of
philosophy ultimately reduce themselves
to the questions of “what is man?”
26. 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.
27. 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.
28. 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.
29. 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.
30. 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.
31. 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.
32. 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.
