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The insufficiency of‘values’ and the necessityof ‘sense’Jean‐Luc Nancy a

a Director of the Faculté de Philosophie,Linguistique, Informatique, Sciences deL'Education , Université des SciencesHumaines , StrasbourgPublished online: 17 Mar 2009.

To cite this article: Jean‐Luc Nancy (1997) The insufficiency of ‘values’and the necessity of ‘sense’, Cultural Values, 1:1, 127-131, DOI:10.1080/14797589709367138

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14797589709367138

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Cultural Values ISSN 1362-5179Volume 1 Number 11997 pp. 127-131

The Insufficiency of 'Values' and the Necessity of'Sense'

Jean-Luc Nancy1

Strasbourg

A moral doctrine consists of values and the norms which attach to them.If one asks for a moral doctrine, one therefore asks for values and thedictate that they be respected. For example — and in no particular order— the 'person', 'right', 'freedom', 'life', and the 'community' canrepresent 'values'. Certain people, perhaps, expect nothing else from thephilosopher other than a discourse which recalls, and which pounds out,similar 'values', exhorting that they be put into practice. We areconsequently swamped from all sides with complaints about the 'crisisof values', together with calls for their 'restoration'. Such value discourseis produced and reproduced countless times. The discourse of valueshas, however, had no positive effect on all the great collapses, on all thedramas, nor on all the mutations of this century. It has even been anaccomplice in their worst excesses. One knows, for example, that thequasi-totality of the corporate body of the German philosophers of the1930s, of which a majority were 'philosophers of values', eitherbelonged, unfalteringly, to Nazism, or failed to oppose it.

Reproduction of the discourse of value is precisely the role which Icannot and do not wish to play. For it is never the role of thephilosopher. The philosopher attempts instead to reflect upon what ishappening; and what is happening is not so much a 'crisis of values' asthe consciousness of the resounding failure of the ideology of values ingeneral. It is important, therefore, to ask oneself, what is value and what,in this discourse of 'values', must be called into question.

Value consists in a relation. It is the price of something, measured byanother thing. There can, therefore, be no absolute value. That which isgood for everything, or the general equivalent (currency), is worthnothing of and for itself. It is worth only what it represents in givenconditions. That which is reputed to be of value in itself — freedom,equality, happiness, existence, art, God, or the diamond — only hasvalue under the condition of being defined by something else (or by itsrarity, which amounts to the same thing). Price is thus always aninterpretation. To speak of 'values' as absolutes thus makes no sense.

©Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 1997,108 Cowley Koad, Oxford 0X41JF, UK and 350 Main Street, Maiden,MA 02148, USA

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128 Jean-Luc Nancy

Values are therefore recognized signs, appreciated and exchangeablein a context or in a given system. They have worth, currency and price.This is value in the proper sense of the term. Hence, a value isconvertible and valuation is convertibility. Moral values — the dignity ofthe person, for example — are thus placed on the same plane as othervalues, goods, or techniques, and can be exchanged with them. Whenone says that one sacrifices values for interests, one says in sum that oneis exchanging some evaluations for other evaluations.

Value also consists, however, in a certain power. Valere is to bestrong, capable, in good health. This power is not measured against another. It is not to be stronger than another force, nor the strongest of all.Health (the 'great', as Nietzsche said) does not consist in being less ill,nor to not be so at all, but to affirm an existence, unconcerned withcomparisons; and, therefore, also, to affirm, if the case arises, an illexistence. Value here is thus a power to be, or a power to be a power.Power is not evaluated, it is itself the power to evaluate.

When we speak of an absolute value — existence or freedom, justice,beauty or eternity — we are consequently evaluating the relationbetween an incommensurable affirmation and everything which can bemeasured, evaluated or appreciated. For example, freedom is worthmore ('infinitely more') than any dependence, but also more than anyindependence, autonomy, self-determination or licence. This 'relation' isthus itself incommensurable, and it is not a relation. We are measuringthe without-measure.

The sense of our affirmation is not, then, an interpretable sense. It isin this sense (with this value) that dignity (Wurde) must be understoodas beyond all value (Wert); that which is worth more than any surplus-value. Sense here is affirmation itself, as an affirmation which values byitself, as a power to affirm. This sense is not valued in terms of price orsignification. It is, on the contrary, only of value as the origin of senseand desire.

What is under question in the discourse of values is therefore thatwhich has no price; that which is not evaluated. Dignity, for example,would be something of this sort. Kant, the thinker of great moral rigourat the dawn of the current period, opposes dignity (die Wurde) to anynotion of value or price established on a comparative scale.

There is a 'without price' and that is my point of departure. But whatcan the 'without price' be? One replies: the person, man, woman, lifeand so on. The problem is that in thus replying one thinks that oneknows what the person, man, life, etc. is. One would perhaps havedifficulty defining them clearly, if one had to do it: and rightly.Moralising exhortations about values do not do this. Such exhortationsrest, instead, on a tacit and unquestioned consensus according to whichone knows very well what 'the person' is; and that, while one mustcelebrate its value and demand respect for it, one does not have to

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The Insufficiency of 'Values' and the Necessity of 'Sense' 129

question its standing further. I must make clear, here, that such appealsdo not lack some pertinence and a certain efficacy as instruments ofstruggle in battles where the ideological weapon can be useful. But suchbattles do not always allow that kind of appeal. The whole recent historyof the former Yugoslavia, or of Rwanda, are a striking illustration ofwhat I have just said.

For that which one calls value presupposes a knowledge which is notitself questioned. Values thus contain the risk of being extremely vague.Very quickly, outside of the urgency and immediacy of living, one nolonger knows what the 'person' or even 'life' is all about. (So manyquestions of bioethics show this.) Alternatively, values may also be fartoo narrow in the way in which they construe and address fundamentalquestions. For example, a 'person' is not only 'man' in general, andeverything which raises questions about 'minorities' of every type, butalso that which touches upon the 'living' in general. Thus posed, valuesmultiply indefinitely.

I would merely like, then, to propose the following germ ofreflection. What can be said today without price? What can be saidoutside of any evaluation? Or, if you desire the object of an absolutevalue, without a comparative term? What can it be if we can no longerdesignate, determine, what used to be called a 'Good Sovereign'?

Now, I am posing the question of what is to be called into question inthe discourse of value: but not on the basis of a consciousness of 'loss', orof the occultation of this Good Sovereign. I pose it without an a prioriturned to the past, but, on the contrary, as a new question which springsfrom our history like the index of a new situation and task. I pose it,therefore, as one which constitutes the risk, one of the many risks, of ourepoch.

What then can be said 'without price' if we presuppose nothing of it?Let us say: 'it is existence itself which is without price.' Not life, devotedto the reproduction and succession of the living, not a destiny, accordingto a history or a Providence, not the production of this or mat, nor theself-production of man, but existence alone, stark. One can also say: 'tohold oneself in being'. 'To be here', if you like, to be here for as long asone is here, as one is here, and only in order to be here.

It will be said in reply to me: 'all "value", then, all your"unevaluatable value", is that which is like it is and without anythingelse. It is everything which happens, without changing anything.'Precisely not. For everything which happens, such as we perceive it, isprecisely only that which we perceive it to be in the ordinary, theeveryday, and under the weight or the effect of a number of alreadyexistent representations: including the 'values' of our democratic-occidental-modern society. But that which is, what it is to exist, isperhaps also just as easily that which is furthest from our familiar

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130 Jean-Luc Nancy

perception. We are here, or are of here, but at the same time this shiesaway from our immediate way of being.

This is not to say that there is a hidden 'meaning' which particularmeans of revelation could bring to light. That model is still a part of ourrepresentations, and our history has worn them to a thread. We alsoknow all too well what terror can be concealed by the announcement ofa 'meaning', and always of a unique meaning, to which, brusquely, onemust conform. Neither, however, is it to say, 'to each his own meaning'.First, because that amounts to saying — whether it be mad or idiotic —'to each his small revelation'. And, second, because that would meanthat we cannot do anything for one another, with each other.

Instead, if there is indeed something which constitutes this 'being' orthis 'existence' in which, or according to which, we are — or thisexistence which we are, if you prefer — it is that we are with oneanother. We are with (someone, others and the rest of the world) just asmuch and exactly as much as we are tout court. Even 'to be alone' is alsoa way of being-with; to be with in the lack or in the absence. Withoutbeing-with I would not be alone. I would be, purely and simply,absolutely. I would be all (or nothing!), but neither 'alone' nor with.

What does it signify that we are someone with others? It signifies, atleast, that we are not someone in others. We are not dissolved in someprior unity, ideal or abstraction (humanity, or mystical body). Nor arewe someone by others; in the sense of a simple product of generationsand conditions, where there are, accordingly, only mutual effects andnot 'existence' at all. But this means that everyone is an absolute origin:an absolute origin of the world. The world begins — and ends — foreveryone. It recommences and 'ends anew' each time. It makes anabsolutely new, original meaning each time. With is what gathers ustogether, in so far as we are all origins; and separates us, in so far as theorigins are inevitably incommensurable with each other.

Here I can return to the theme of that which has no price. For thatwhich has no price is just this: that one cannot appropriate for oneselfthis singular origin which everyone is. And one cannot appropriate foroneself this mode of being origin-al; this mode of being-with. Moreexactly, what is without price is that which one cannot determine apriori. That is to say, one cannot know — and even less with a consensualknowledge — what being or existence is for each person, every time, foreveryone and at each moment. For neither is everyone sole, unique andidentical from the start to the finish of their lives. One cannot know whatbeing or existence is for each person, every time. One has to invent it.One must consequently act according to this obligation to invent, or toallow to be invented, each person's meaning of being.

But this does not mean any thing, in accordance with the torrent ofsubjectivities. For subjectivity is precisely that which eludes being-with.Not any thing, then, but on the contrary that which respects being-with

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The Insufficiency of 'Values' and the Necessity of 'Sense' 131

for what it is, and which respects the irreducible singularity of eachperson — as the origin which s\he is. Respect for being-with does notrespect it as a 'property' which might be possessed (this would bring usback to subjectivity once more). Each — self and other — has to respectit as that portion of themselves which is the most essential of all; theportion of being or existence which 'possesses', if one wants to use thisword, rather than that which is possessed.

I will be told that this is no answer, and that no reply to what I havesaid is possible because it sets out no values onto which one can hold, orto which one could respond. But, it is precisely this which is important,whatever the signs to which we must refer. We must have in sight thatwhich escapes any sign. Of necessity we have to invent the direction totake, and to invent it knowing that this invention can never claim to'know' for everybody in that together-with-one-another which has noprice because it is existence itself.

To bring into view that which we cannot 'see' — that which concealsitself as the origin of the other, in the other — and to bring 'into view'the fact that we cannot 'see' it: that is what today makes an 'ethical'demand, without which any moral standpoint, any normative orprescriptive assurance, is only the application of a recipe, with eyesclosed, sleepwalking...

Translation by Steve Bastow

Jean-Luc Nancy is Director of the Faculté de Philosophie, Linguistique,Informatique, Sciences de L'Education at the Université des SciencesHumaines de Strasbourg. He has also held visiting Professorships in theUnited States. His books in English include Birth to Presence (1993), TheExperience of Freedom (1993), and Inoperative Community (1991). He hasco-edited Who Comes after the Subject (1991).

Note

1. This Cultural Note has been compiled and edited by Michael Dillon from thetranscript of two of Jean-Luc Nancy's lectures.

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