VALUE THEORY Phenomenological theories

of value ha ve been based very largely on the work of

EDMUND HUSSERL and, through him, FRANZ BRENTANO,

despite the fact that Husserl did not publish in these

fields during his lifetime and despite very important

divergences between his work and that of subsequent

phenomenologists. The path they have tended toward,

differentiating the subject matter of ethics from that of

value theory, was predelineated by Husserl's departure

from Brentano 's classification of mental phenomena.

Brentano had conceived volition as a form ofEMOTION

and subsumed both under a genus he called "feelings."

Instead, Husserl orders mental phenomena under three

mutually exclusive basic classes: the doxic (cognitive),

the affective (emotional), and the conative (volitional).

In the Prolegomena zur reinen Logik (1900)-the first

volume ofhis Logische Untersuchungen (1900--1901)

- Husserl proposed a corresponding classification of

theoretical, normative, and practica! disciplines.

The general theory ofvolition would include a sub­

discipline establishing norms for correct and for veridi­

cal (evidently correct) volitions, and a practica! one

establishing procedures for promoting correct striv­

ing (volition). The general theory of affects would

include subdisciplines establishing norms for correct

and veridical emotions and establishing procedures for

promoting correct emotions. Since Husserl's consid­

ered opinion was that ali emotional mental processes

are valuings at Jeast implicitly, the general theory of

affects would coincide with the general theory of val­

uations and would include the theory of what can be

correctly valued, disvalued, preferred, etc. (axiology).

Subdisciplines ofthe general theory of cognition would

differentiate correct or veridical cognitions from their

opposites and establish norms for cognitions and pro­

cedures for promoting correct cognitions. What might

be called ETHrcs would unite the severa! practica! sub­

disciplines.

Although Husserl published no works on value the-

ory or ethics, he lectured repeatedly on these topics.

Very extensive notes on the earlier lecture courses -

Vorlesungen iiber Ethik und Wertlehre (1908-1914)

- ha ve been published ( 1988) and another volume

of lectures from the Nachlass has been announced for

the near future. The earlier Jectures present a view

of axiology and ethics that remains remarkably close

to Brentano's strict ideal consequentialism. The vol­

ume's editor reports that the !ater lectures (1915-23)

present a quite different approach largely under the in­

fluence ofJOHANN GOTTLIEB FICHTE, perhaps the most ex­

treme of deontological theorists. Subsequently, pheno­

menological axiologies (such as those of DIETRICH voN

HILDEBRAND, MAX SCHELER, NlCOLAl HARTMANN, and HANS

REINER) have tended to acknowledge that strivings do

indeed have distinctively moral value characteristics

that are independent oftheir factual consequences, but

few would go so far as Fichte to declare it morally

wrong, sinful, and blasphemous to weigh the utility of

morally good strivings.

Ways of using the crucial word value vary widely

even within the phenomenological literature. Husserl

used "value" for the goodness belonging solely to some

particular bearer ofvalue, and in his use, what the word

denotes could only be an individual object (never an

eidetic object) when the bearer is itself an individual

object. Although Max Scheler uses it with the same

denotation, he conceives what it denotes to be both

a quality and a specific material axiologica] universal

(hen ce an ei dos accessible through EIDETIC METHOD ).

Although Hartmann, on the other hand, agrees with

Husserl about what the word connotes when it denotes

a property, he often applies it to the axiologica] laws

that objects must satisfy in order to have a given kind

of axiologica! property. Thus it sometimes does and

sometimes does not denote, in his use, something uni­

versal and eidetic. When such ambiguities threaten,

the more awkward terms value-characteristic, axiotic

trait, axiologica! predicate, or value-predicate can be

employed. Phenomenological literature on value and

valuing tends, following Husserl, to insist that original

acquaintance with values and disvalues is acquired.

Axiologica! predicates of objects - their goodness,

their badness, or their lack of either- can be given,

but can only be given through affective, that is, emo­

tional mental processes. The severa! figures mentioned

could agree with most ofwhat follows.

Lester Embree, Elizabeth A. Behnke, David Carr, J. Claude Evans, Jose Huertas-Jourda, Joseph J. Kockelmans, William R. McKenna, 724 Algis Mickunas, Jitendra Nath Mohanty, Thomas M. Seebohm, Richard M. Zaner ( eds.), Encyclopedia of Phenomenology. © 1997 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

VALUE THEORY 725

Phenomenological value theories are both antina­

tivist and intuitionist. Affective consciousness as such

is receptive to axiologica! predicates so that "impres­

sions" of valuecharacteristics such as goodness, bad­

ness, indifference, etc., are strictly affective. This is

a major deviation from Brentano 's position that only

experiences that are perceptual- and so cognitive or,

in Husserl 's terms, doxic - and not affective could

be receptive and that only the interna! perception of

itse(( that is implicit in every veridical emotion can

give rise to the concept that the object of the emo­

tion is good or bad and so is worthy of love or of

hate, respectively. Thus Brentano's view had held that

the impressional consciousness of value is necessar­

ily a direct consciousness of something mental and

only indirectly a consciousness of something about the

emotion's object. Instead, Husserl maintains that an evidently correct

positive emotion, for example, is implicitly an intuition

that what it approves of ought tobe, much as an evident

belief is evidence for the being of what is believed in

(since perceiving is an intuition that the object is actual

and clearly imagined perceiving is an intuition that its

object is possible). The ontic states of affairs toward

which affects or feelings are directed are always coin­

tended in some cognitive ( doxic) manner-perceived,

remembered, imagined, anticipated,judged, etc. How­

ever, an approving of something can be EVIDENCE that

what is approved ought tobe regardless ofwhether the

founding doxic consciousness is evident with regard

to the existence or possibility of the object as doxi­

cally intended. This suggests strongly that valuings as

such are infallible and that disagreements injudgments

about values and axiotic traits are reducible to disagree­

ments regarding the founding ontic characeristics for

which the relevant objects are valued - a thesis in

which phenomenological axiology would concur with

noncognitivist theories. Even if valuing as such is in­

fallible, incorrect valuings would still occur when the

beliefs through which the valuing is founded are them­

selves incorrect. That their founding doxa be correct is

a necessary condition for fully correct valuing, whether

simple or preferential.

As a valuing, an atTective process may be intentive

to its object either positively (loving, approving, liking,

etc.) as something that ought tobe, negatively (hating,

disapproving, disliking, etc.) as something that ought

not to be, or in an affectively neutra! way (indiffer­

ence, which is a feeling) as something that is neither

good nor bad. Thus affects or feelings and their noe­

matic correlates have "qualities" analogous to those of

judging and other doxic phenomena.

Besides simple affects such as loving, hating, ap­

proving, disapproving, liking, and disliking there are

comparative affects that are intentive to something not

just as being of value, disvalue, or indifferent but also

as better than, worse than, or neither better than nor

worse than something else. Preferential affects are ba­

sic to the conative phenomena that are a principle theme

of ethics as the theory of correct striving, sin ce striving­

for or, in any event, any veridical striving-for would

be founded on a preferring of the existence of what

is striven for to its nonexistence, as striving-against

would be founded on preferring the nonexistence of

what is striven against to its existence.

There is a foundedness of the intentiona! object of

valuing as such that parallels - in many respects,

though not in all - the foundedness of valuing on

doxic or cognitive consciousness. Feelings, as intu­

itions of value-predicates, cannot occur except insofar

as they entail doxa intentive to non-axiotic, ontic pred­

icates, and these are there for consciousness through

non-affective, doxic mental processes intentive to the

valued entity as having characteristics whose manner

of original givenness is not affective and whose be­

ing or nonbeing might be truly affirmed or denied or

might be questioned, doubted, etc. As it is emotionally

intuited, any axiologica! characteristic of an object­

that this particular object ought to be, for example

- is founded upon and conditioned by certain ontic

properties intended by doxa implicit in the emotional

intuition. The utility and perhaps the aesthetic value of

a certain stuff as a food might, for example, be founded

on properties involving its chemical composition and

involving in turn some organism's digestive organs,

metabolic processes, and sensory organs.

However, the distinction between axiotic and ontic

characteristics is a distinction among the constituents

of the bearer's objective meaning. Thus an object as

valued is a synthetic unity intended to in at least two

ways: doxically and affectively. Mental processes of

both sorts are here intentive to the selfsame noematic

object, but to entirely distinct features of the object.

What each discloses about the object is different from

726 ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHENOMENOLOGY

what the other discloses, yet the object is synthetically identified, is a single polar unity to which both sets of features are intended as belonging. That what pos­sesses the doxically intended characteristics possesses

the affectively intended characteristics is not formally

or analytically true. Each valuing is founded on a definite set of doxic

mental processes, and each member of that set be­

longs to one or more particular doxic species. Other

mental processes of the selfsame doxic species could occur without founding any mental process ofthe same

affective species as the one that this set of doxic men­tal processes has made possible. The occurrence of a doxic mental process of the relevant species is only a

necessary, not a sufficient condition for the occurrence of feelings of the relevant type. The thesis of noetic­noematic foundedness seems quite defensible so long as it is not misunderstood as if the logica! priority

of the founding ( conditioning) doxic-ontic predicates entailed temporal priority as well. Husserl does not al­ways pronounce the separati an emphatically and seems at least once to have proclaimed the mesalliance.

Properly understood, however, the thesis does not in the least imply that any objects could occur that

would ha ve doxically intuitable features of the same species as those that found the goodness of a correctly valued abject X and yet Iack a value-predicate of the type correlative to correct valuing of X. Having ontic properties of the kind that found the relevant value­predicate is a sufficient condition for having the same type of value predicate even though doxic conscious­ness of the object's having the relevant kind of ontic predicate is only a necessary condition for feelings of the appropriate kind. The theory of noetic-noematic foundedness is entirely compatible with that ofthe ob­

jectivity of value. The foundedness of valuing on doxic phenomena

and the corresponding grounding of correctly valued axiologica! characters in the ontic characteristics in­

tended by the founding doxa entails an implicit abstrac­tion. If an object X is correctly approved simply on the

basis of a set of ontic predicates that X is correctly believed to have and through which X exemplifies a certain set of antic universals, then ali examples ofthe same set of ontic universals must have the selfsame

type of goodness for which this particular thing is ap­proved. If, nevertheless, anything be correctly loved

simply for having a doxically intuitable trait of a cer­tain sort, then everything having a trait ofthe same sort can be correctly loved and is good.

The distinction between antic and axiologica! pred­

icates is misconceived ifthe antic properties are repre­sented as objective while the axiologica! ones are repre­sented as being in some sense subjective. It would be no less a misrepresentation if axiologica! characteristics were represented noncognitivistically as if they could

not be truly predicated of the abject. The distinction may be the genuine one that is misrepresented in tra­ditional fact-value distinctions, but it has otherwise no clear relation to them. Nevertheless, it is far from obvi­ous to what category value-predicates such as good. il!,

better, and worse belong. Metaethical issues ofthis sort are important themes for further thinking, and thinking

about them seems most likely to occur among phe­nomenologically oriented thinkers, if at ali. The very great dangers involved in misinterpreting them seem to have been involved in MARTJN HEIDEGGER's effort to

discuss them without using the traditional vocabulary of ethics and value theory.

Even Scheler's conception of material values may carry, as Heidegger points out, very questionable ele­

ments of the fact-value differentiation. Scheler argues against the dependence of value-characteristics upon ontic properties. As eidetic objects, values would be qualities that are entirely independent of and indif­

ferent to the antic characteristics of what is valued; its antic traits would be valueless, absolutely without value. His conception thus completely separates the antic properties ofx from what, in Heidegger's terms, would make x worthy of care, concern, etc. In "Brief iiber den Humanismus" ( 194 7), Heidegger condemns this way of thinking in terms of values as the grea test conceivable blasphemy against Being. In the same pas­sage, he repeatedly asserts that to think against "val­ues" in Scheler's sense is not to champion nihilism

regarding values. Scheler's thesis was based on the fact that something may be pleasant or agreeable to us without our being able to say what makes it so. Hei­

degger would surely counter that failure successfully to explicate what makes X agreeable has no relevance to the question whether what makes X agreeable has

or has not been understood. According to Hartmann's Ethik ( 1926), explicating which things are indeed val­

ued and for which antic traits they are correctly val-

VALUE THEORY 727

ued is a complex hermeneutica! undertaking. There seems little doubt that Heidegger considered affective

being-in-the-world (Befindlichkeit) to be grounded in the being of what is understood through affects. If his position on this point is indeed closer to that of Husserl and Hartmann, then what he calls dread (Angst) shows that the potentialities that are threatened by death are worth caring about, since that whose nonbeing is tobe

dreaded ought to be: the appropriate affective attitude toward the nonbeing ofwhat ought tobe is necessarily negative.

As belief-phenomena underlie and are implicit in ali valuings, so valuings underlie and are implicit in ali strivings. And as there are norms for correct believing,

so there are norms for correct feeling and for correct volition. As correctness of its implicit beliefs would be

a necessary condition for correctness of a valuation, so correctness ofits implicit valuations would bea neces­sary condition for correctness of a volition. Norms for

correct volition are a theme for ethics. The position of JEAN-PAUL SARTRE regarding the relation between val­ues and ethics illustrates quite well the differentiation

between axiology and ethics. In L 'etre et le neant (1943) Sartre holds that actions

ha ve meaning only by reference to a hierarchy of ideal values. Such a hierarchy entails laws regarding kinds of entities that are related as better and worse. Thus there would be eidetic laws to the effect that entities of one kind are better than entities of some other particular kind(s) so that entities ofthe one kind are, other things

being equal, to be preferred to entities of those other specific kind(s). Yet Sartre insists in L'existentialisme

est un humanisme ( 1946) that an aprioristic ethics is out ofthe question. The two theses are altogether com­patible if axiology and ethics are entirely distinct dis­ciplines, especially so ifthe theory of correct volitions

must take into account necessarily a posteriori beliefs concern ing the likely results of actions.

Not until Scheler's Der Formalismus in der Ethik

und die materiale Wertethik (Formalism in ethics and

nonformal ethics of value, 1913/1916) were strivings

and the personal and character traits that condition strivings acknowledged in phenomenological writings

to have primary or intrinsic moral value that is -as KANT insisted - altogether independent of their real utitility (real instrumental value). The utility of a striving is a function of the axiologica! characteris-

tics of whatever factual outcomes are conditioned by that striving. Every volition necessarily is intentive, however vaguely, to itself, through its founding affects and doxa, as having utility. Following Kant, Scheler calls the occurrences that the agent anticipates may be affected by the action its material or content. Whatever axiologica! characteristics the agent intends this con­tent as bearing are the action's material value. Kant's formalistic ethics asserts that the moral value of any striving must be entirely independent of its material value. Against this formalism, Scheler insists that a striving's moral value cannot be entirely independent ofits material value, although the latter is certainly not a sufficient condition for the former. The end of every

correct action must be some anticipated utility or ben­efit that is the material value ofthe striving. Moreover,

Scheler adds, no correct striving could have its own moral goodness (its own conformity to the morallaw)

as its intended end (subjective end in Kant's sense).

Thus Scheler rejects the most basic thesis ofKant's formalism. But the same thesis about value-predicates leads him to reject as well Kant's cosmopolitan concep­tion ofmorality and ofthe teleology ofhuman history, the very conception that was assimilated -much more

than any thesis from HEGEL 's conception ofmorality­into the anthropology of Feuerbach and MARX. Since no morally right action can have its own moral good­ness as an end, and since Scheler is convinced that the moral value-predicate of an action is the eidos moral

goodness, he concludes that moral goodness cannot be the end of any correct striving at ali, that moral good­ness can never bea material value. Striving to promote moral goodness in the world could in that case never be morally correct. The alternative conception of value­predicates that is shared by Husserl and Hartmann (and

seemingly Heidegger) allows for the preservation of Kant's view ofteleology and ofthe highest good.

Moreover, Hartmann also rejects Scheler's inter­pretation of the hierarchy of values and its relation to

moral goodness. Scheler proposed to determine moral

rightness just by the rightness of the action's under­

lying preference, which must give priority, if it is to be correct, to the highest of the values accessible to

the agent that can be realized in the given situation. Hartmann maintains that values in the hierarchy have what he calls "strength" as well as "height," and their

strength is inversely related to their height. There is

728 ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHENOMENOLOGY

indeed higher moral goodness in striving to.fu!fill the requirements of superior material values. To violate

lower order values is, however, a more grievous of fense than to violate the higher ones. Right preference

must involve the greater weight ofthe lower values. It is not enough to consider only that the fine arts are much

greater in height when deciding how to allocate public

resources between them and public health if choices

must be made that will promote one at the expense of

the other. Such issues are topics in the theory of correct

preference and conation, even ifthey also differentiate

a Husserlian "left" from a Husserlian "right."

FOR FURTHER STUDY

Brentano, Franz. Grundlegung und Aufbau der Ethik. Ed. Franziska Mayer-Hillebrand [from the lectures on "Prac­tica! Philosophy" in the literary remains]. Bem: Francke, 1952; The Foundation and Construction of Ethics. Ed. and trans. Elizabeth H. Schneewind. New York: Humani­ties Press, 1973.

~. Vom Ursprung sittlicher Erkenntnis. Ed. Oskar Kraus. Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1969; The Origin ofour Knowl­edge of Right and Wrong. Trans. Roderick M. Chisholm and E1izabeth H. Schneewind. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969.

Hartmann, Nicolai. Ethik. 4th ed. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1962; Ethics. Trans. Stanton Coit. London: George Allen & Unwin and New York: Humanities Press, 1932.

Heidegger, Martin. "Brief iiber den Humanismus." In Gesamtausgabe 9. Ed. Friedrich-Wilhelm von Hermann. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1976, 313-64; "Letter on Humanism." Trans. Frank A. Cappuzzi. In his Basic Writings. Eds. David Farrell Krell and J. Glenn Gray. New York: Harper & Row, 1977, 193-242.

Hildebrand, Dietrich von. Christian Ethics. New York: D. McKay, 1953.

~. "Sittlichkeit und ethische Werterkenntnis." In Jahrbuch fur Philosophie und phănomenologische Forschung 5 ( 1922), 462--602.

Husserl, Edmund. Vorlesungen uber Ethik und Wertlehre (1908-1914). Ed. Ullrich Melle Husserliana 28. Dor­drecht: K1uwer Academic Publishers, 1988.

Ingarden, Roman. Man and Value. Munich: Philosophia, 1983.

Jordan, Robert We1sh. "Review of Edmund Husserl's Vor­lesungen uber Ethik and Wertlehre 1908---1914." Husserl Studies 8 (1992), 221-32.

~. "Das transzendentale Ich a1s Seiendes in der Welt." Per­spektiven der Philosophie 5. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1979, 189-205.

~. "Unnatural Kinds: Beyond Dignity and Price." Man and World 20 (1987), 283-303.

Kocke1mans, Joseph J. "Phenomenology." In Encyclopedia of Ethics. Ed. Lawrence C. Becker. Voi. 2. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1992, 960--3.

Reiner, Hans. Pflicht und Neigung. Die Grundlagen der Sit­tlichkeit erărtert und neu bestimmt mit besonderem Bezug auf Kant und Schiller. Meisenheim am Glan: A. Hain, 1951; Duty and Inclination: The Fundamental~ of Moral­ity Discussed and Redefined with Special Regard to Kant and Schiller. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1983.

~. Grundlagen. Grundsătze und Einzelnormen des Natur­rechts. Freiburg: Karl Alber, 1964.

Scheler, Max. Der Formalismus in der Ethik und die materi­ale Wertethik. Neuer Versuch der Grundlegungeines ethis­chen Personalismus. 4th ed. Ed. Maria Scheler. Gesam­melte Werke 2. Bem: Francke, 1954; Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values: A New Attempt toward the Foundation of an Ethical Personalism. Trans. Manfred S. Frings and Roger L. Funk. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1973.

ROBERT WELSH JORDAN Colorado State University