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