VALUES, Philosophy of. - It indicates an orientation of contemporary philosophy which, in its many strands, affirms first of all: a) the opposition between being (understood as the world of nature and of experience, whether scientific or common) and ought-to-be (understood as an objective norm in the double sense of thought and action, or as a subjective exigency of affectivity and freedom); then, b) the accentuation of the moment of "emotion" (directed toward an ideal of pure knowledge) and of appreciation or esteem (as opposed to a simple representation of "what is"); and finally c) a primordial interest in the problems that concern the meaning of human existence and, consequently, the substitution of "understanding" — with the sense or ends of life — for (mechanistic) causal explanation. According to this threefold orientation — metaphysical, psychological, ethical and ethical-religious — the "axiological" doctrines or doctrines of values that enjoy the greatest credit today are subdivided.
In current philosophical language the term value indicates, subjectively, the fact that things are more or less esteemed or desired and, objectively, it emphasizes the intrinsic excellence that grounds such esteem, or else a character of utility. The mathematical or logical, aesthetic and economic meaning of value (cf. A. Lalande, Vocabulaire techn. et crit. de la philos., Paris 1926, s. v.) is habitually outside philosophical inquiry. In contemporary philosophy the term value can indicate either a rule of universal validity or a "sui generis" quality sometimes called a "tertiary quality," as the equivalent of the terms "finis" and "bonum" (one links back to the terms: quality, virtue, good, end, perfection, norm).
Seeking the historical development, one can recognize that all the great philosophies are in a certain sense philosophies of values (Lavelle), both for the ideas of order, hierarchy and finalism that they employ as (and above all) for the ethical doctrines they entail. Although it is easy to discover the Platonic influence in the axiologies of Scheler and N. Hartmann, and the Aristotelian one in Brentano's theory, it is nevertheless with the Kantian revolution that speculation on value begins. Each of the "three critiques" provided an original element of inspiration: according to Rickert (cf. Logos, 9, [1920], pp. 1-49) the "Critique of Pure Reason" brought to light a subject that is not that of the empiricists and is not even the spiritual substance of the metaphysicians, but an "unreal," a point of connection that is at once Wert and Geltung. The objective world is constituted by these "geltende Wertformen." The theses of the "Critique of Practical Reason" are found again in the distinction used above all in Protestant theology inspired by Ritschl (v.) between "Seinsurteile" and "Werturteile." It is the distinction between "reflektierende Urteilskraft" and "bestimmende Urteilskraft," used in the "Critique of the Power of Judgment," that recalls the modern opposition between explanation and understanding.
The proximate forerunner of the philosophy of values is H. Lotze with the terminology of "evaluative perceiving," "feeling," world of values, "receptivity to values" ("Wertempfindend, Gefühl, Welt der Werte, Empfänglichkeit für Werte") in the antithesis he establishes between ancient morality based, according to him, on the empirical concept of human nature and authentic morality founded on "ethischen Ideen" (valid for any spiritual being; cf. Grundzüge, cited in bibl., ch. 1, pp. 1-9), or "Wertbestimmungen der Vernunft," themselves the expression of a "Gefühl" identical in every time and place, despite the different "forms" that societies and cultures offer of it (Mikrokosmus, cited in bibl., ch. 5, p. 276 ff.). But it is above all Nietzsche (v.) who attributes importance to the notion of value (which he wants to substitute for that of truth), a fact synonymous both with biological utility and with a mysterious creative energy (whose symbol is Zarathustra) that sustains his project of an inversion of all values ("Umwertung der Werte": subtitle of the "Wille zur Macht"). It is an attempt to create a culture based on vital values, whose source is a "will to power" of biological foundation.
The development of the philosophy of values owes much in some of its most representative works (M. Scheler, N. Hartmann) to Husserl's phenomenology. To these philosophical principles one must finally add the "crisis of foundations" (Krisis der Gründe) through which Western civilization is passing. According to Scheler's realist conception (developed by N. Hartmann) value is an immediate quality of things that manifests itself on its own like sensible qualities, absolutely independent not only of the will but also of emotional perception itself, foreign both to duty (Sollen), which rests upon it, and to reality (nature, history, freedom), which can represent it rather than betray or misrecognize it. Value is endowed, N. Hartmann specifies, with an ideal being, similar to mathematical essences, but with the difference that while these necessarily impose themselves in the real, this is by no means the case for values (for ethical values in particular). The neo-Kantian conception identifies value and norm; the norm itself is defined through the relation to a universal validity ("Beziehung aus dem Zweck der Allgemeingültigkeit"). Cf. W. Windelband, Präludien, cited in bibl., II, p. 74 ff.).
Physical laws (Naturgesetze) state only constant relations among facts (causality); norms give the definition of supreme ends, which impose themselves on everyone in the order of thought and action; from this point they imply the necessary relation to a (impersonal) subject. Thus value and duty (Wert and Sollen) are identified (cf. Rickert's hesitations in Gegenstand der Erkenntnis, Tübingen 1921, p. 281 ff.). In the psychologist thesis, which takes up the Spinozian and Hobbesian conception, value is a relation to "Begehren" ("Ehrenfels" distinguished from "Fühlen"). More precisely, the value of an object consists in its "Begehrbarkeit" (for Brentano, cf. Vom Ursprung, cited in bibl., p. 17). In R. Polin's Fichtean subjectivism value is reduced to an imaginary that, in the different moments of the axiological cycle, determines itself into end, into norm and finally into action, only to be extinguished in a realized object, that is, a thing (Création des valeurs, cited in bibl., p. 45 ff.). Finally, in the sociological thesis value is a collective representation, a condensation of judgments of appreciation imposed on the individual as a norm of action and thought (cf. E. Durkheim, Jugements de valeur et jugements de réalité, in Rev. mét. et mor., 19 [1911], p. 437 ff.).
As for the foundation of values, a distinction must therefore be drawn between the reason or justifying criterion of values and their origin or appearance in history. For Scheler's axiological realism, as well as for neo-Kantianism and Brentano himself, values need no extrinsic justification: they impose themselves on everyone by right, through an evidence of their own "sui generis"; they are justified by themselves and justify everything else, giving it a meaning (Sinn). By contrast, as regards their origin or their appearing in history (or in nature), they are conditioned by a set of biological, cultural, ethnic, religious, etc. factors. In this sense an axiological relativism is compatible with the objectivist thesis. For psychological or sociologistic theses, the problems of the origin and of the foundation of values tend to become confused. Thus it follows that at a given stage of society's evolution its collective representations, like the dominant psychological tendencies (which are thought of either as relatively immutable or as in continuous becoming), are at once the source and the criterion of values. In individualist subjectivism, valuation constitutes the value and is at the same time the point of origin and the justification that this valuation brings to light for an irrational will to power (Nietzsche) or for a freedom irreducible to biology (Polin). From a theistic point of view, it is the Absolute that is at once the point of origin from which values come and their ultimate justification (Lavelle, Le Senne).
Considered in their relations, values are susceptible to a double consideration, according as one considers the relation that unites them among themselves (internal relations) or that which refers them to their different factors of realization (external relations). In the first case one speaks of relations of inclusion, of exclusion, of indifference (hence a logic of values that is not limited to a simple logic about "judgments of value"). But this presupposes a generic division of values, which varies from conception to conception. Among the best known, one recalls the division into positive values and negative values (not accepted by all; cf. R. Polin, Du Laid etc., cited in bibl., passim), analogous to the Aristotelian division of contraries understood as the extremes of one and the same genus, and which someone has compared to the division of positive quantities and negative quantities of mathematicians, whose concept was introduced into philosophy by Kant; the Schelerian division: "Höhere, niedrigere Werte" which, with the division into negative values and positive values, constitutes the hierarchical order of values; "Personwerte", "Sachwerte", "Aktwerte", "Funktionswerte", etc. (division according to the immediate subjects of values). The second point of view considers the inscribing of value in nature, in history and in the different human societies (whence a static and dynamic sociology of values), in individual freedom (hence a phenomenology of the various axiological attitudes extensively described by R. Polin, Compréhension des valeurs, Paris 1944; cf. also K. Jaspers, Psicologia delle visioni del mondo, Italian trans., Rome 1950).
Passing to the classification of values, important is the one according to their content made by Scheler, who establishes the following hierarchy: a) material values (economic); b) vital values (in which the two extremes are the noble and the base: "Ungemein-Gemein"); c) spiritual values (subdivided also into theoretical, aesthetic and ethical values); d) religious values or values of the sacred. There is also the tripartite division: value-truth; value-utility, value-beauty (G. Tarde cited by T. Ribot, Logique des sentiments, Paris 1905, p. 42 ff.), and that of Kreibig into personal values (hygiene), interpersonal values (morality) and impersonal values (ethical). Rickert, independently of any form of hierarchy, made a deduction (which is at the same time a classification) starting from human "aspiring" (Streben), considered in three different moments; A) contemplation or impersonal values; a) theoretical (science); b) aesthetic (art); c) mystical (pantheism). B) action or personal values; a) ethical or ethical-social (morality); b) erotic (marriage, friendship, family); c) religious (kingdom of God on earth through human harmony, in concrete terms; Christianity: cf. Logos, 3 [1913], p. 295 ff.). Finally L. Lavelle (Traité, cited in bibl., I, pp. xiv-xv) proposes a subdivision into three different groups i cui due termini esprimono l'aspetto soggettivo e oggettivo che ciascun tipo di valore può assumere: a) v. economici-v. affettivi; b) v. intellettuali-v. estetici; c) v. morali-v. religiosi.
Manca ancora uno studio analitico di ciascun v.