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Value and existence
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D DDD1 DStL^lB 2
VALUE AND EXISTENCE
VALUE AND EXISTENCE
N. O. LOSSKY
Professor of Philosophy in the
Russian University of Prague
and
JOHN S. MARSHALL
Professor of Philosophy
in Albion College
PART ONE TRANSLATED FROM
THE RUSSIAN
by
SERGEI S. VINOKOOROFF
LONDON
GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD
MUSEUM STREET
FIRST PUBLISHED IN 1935
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PREFACE
THE problem of value is primarily the problem of the
concrete in contemporary philosophy. But paradoxical
as it may seem the search for values by most of our
philosophers has been a quest in terms of formal essences
or abstract criteria. This is due to the fact that our
philosophy is usually rooted in the formal side of Aris-
totle's logic, and so it has largely developed in the form
of abstract concepts, notions of the mind, and formal
essences. Hence by very necessity it has given itself over
to the problems of formal logic and subjective episte-
mology rather than to the sphere of metaphysics.
But the Russian mind is primarily metaphysical, and
has a tradition that is rooted in the concrete. Its episte-
mology leads it to the recognition of the possibility of
knowing the concrete and thus makes an ontology
possible. Both in epistemology and metaphysics this
tradition is essentially Christian Neo-Platonism. Of
course it is true that Schelling inspired Solovyof and
thus caused the rise of a truly native Russian philosophy.
But that does not mean that Russian philosophy was
ever essentially committed to the thought of Schelling.
It has a tradition of its own which was stimulated and
brought to life by a similar impulse in Germany. Due
to the tradition of the Church Russia had an implicit
philosophy, a philosophy that was born of the Neo-
Platonism of the Church Fathers.
This implicit Neo-Platonism is the true heritage of
Russian thinking. It emerges when the Russian begins
9
Value and Existence
to reflect on the problem of reality. That is the reason
it is so baffling. When we begin to read Solovyof, Kar-
savin 5 or Bulgakov^ we expect a type of thought that is
identical with that known to us in Romantic German
philosophy. We have an analogous situation in the revival
of Neo-Platonism in England during the nineteenth
century. That revival is also very difficult for most
readers to understand. Many historians of philosophy
find the thought of Coleridge and F. D. Maurice singu-
larly difficult. That is because the thinking stimulated
by ScheUing gradually assumed the form of the long
tradition of Neo-Platonism found in the seventeenth-
century poets and the Cambridge Platonists. So the
Russian tradition, although stimulated by German
thought^ has gradually become more and more Neo-
Platonic.
The philosophical reader who first approaches the
present work may be prone to suffer from an illusion: he
may tend to think of the system as Hegelian. It is the same
sort of illusion as the reader of Coleridge suffers from
when he thinks that Coleridge is a follower of ScheUing.
In reality Coleridge uses the terminology of the Post-
Kantian school, but actually follows the tradition of
Cudworth and the seventeenth-century Platonic poets.
So the present book uses German terminology and
method, but its theory is essentially Christian Neo-Plato-
nism. It is not a new development of the Hegelian theory
of metaphysics and value.
The theory is not Hegelian. From its point of view
Hegel suffers from a false type of concreteness. Hegel's
thought is embodied in the concept of the world as a
10
Preface
concrete universal. The concrete universal is the whole
of reality as concretely interpenetrated. The world is
already concrete. Seen as a whole in the full context of
its environment every person or every event has a com-
pletely satisfactory place within the totality. The whole
is already perfect. The individual is that which has
value. However, the only true individual is the whole.
Everything has a positive value when seen as an in-
evitable part of the perfect whole of things which we call
the Absolute.
It may help us to contrast the general thought of
the present volume with the Hegelian conception of
the world. Both types of metaphysics believe in the
concrete. Both of them consider the perfect, that which
has value, to be the concrete whole. Both believe in the
Absolute. But the Absolute and the concrete whole are
differently conceived in the two systems. For Hegel
the Absolute is the whole, the all-inclusive totality of
reality. For the Christian Neo-Platonist the Absolute
transcends the world. He considers the Absolute to be
that which is autonomous aU-sufficient existence. The
Absolute is not the all-inclusive. He does consider the
Absolute as the necessary complement to the contingent
existence of the individual; but the individual is not in-
cluded in Him. Rather, the Absolute stands over against
the world. The world in a sense depends on God* but
God does not depend on the world.
But even this distinction is not enough. Even the
transcendence of the God of Plotinus is not sufficient;
there is a hiatus between God and the world. God is
the creator and sustainer of the world. He made the
ii
Value and Existence
world out of nothing^ ex nihilo. God Is not that from
which the world emanated; He is not the fulness of
which the world is merely a derivation. God made the
world out of nothing and projected it from His own
being. Yet the world is sustained by Him and derives
such value as it has from Him.
Now we can clearly see the difference between this
theory and that of Hegel. For both of them the Absolute
is that which has complete value. For both of them the
Absolute alone has final autonomous value. But for
Hegel every individual necessarily shares in this value
because by necessity he is a part of the whole. From
the higher point of view, from the standpoint of the
whole, the cruelties of nature, the struggle for existence,
war, famine, and crushing hate are all a part of that
concrete perfection which can only be understood if
seen in true perspective. Everything that exists has
positive value when seen as an inevitable part of that
perfect whole which we call the Absolute.
For Christian Neo-Platonism, on the other hand, not
everything is good or beautiful. Only the Absolute has
autonomous value; but It is beyond our world. There is
evil in the world, and ugliness. The criterion of perfection
is the same as that of Hegel: the complete interpenetra-
tion of all elements within a concrete whole. But our
world is not completely interpenetrated. It is a maze
of winding paths; it is illuminated by broken lights.
There is order in our world, but the order is not com-
plete. There is beauty in our world, but our world is
not completely beautiful. We live in a world that is
partly good and partly bad. From no higher point can the
12
Preface
evil be seen as a necessary aspect of good. The higher
the point of view the more distressing evil becomes. It is
the sensitive soul that has found slavery and war horrible,
and drunkenness ugly.
Even our limitations are an indication of the fact
that our world is evil. The world lies in evil; this evil is
rooted in the very character of material existence. Our
Western thinking follows the thought of Aristotle which
so easily blended with some of the implicit presuppo-
sitions of the Book of Genesis. For Augustine as for
Aristotle every creature is an example of an eternal
type. For Augustine as for the Book of Genesis God made
every plant and animal that we now know and found
them all "very good."
God did not create the cat, the wolf, and the tiger, or
even man as he now is. God did not create the species
of animals as we know them at all. The cat, the lion, and
man were not created by God. Rather the present forms
of life are the product of evolution. God created selves
with a freedom of choice and created them with the
possibility of entering the cooperative life of the Kingdom
or of choosing an independent course of life.
This Kingdom of Heaven by participation in the Life
of God has a derivative absolute value. Due to its love
for God the Kingdom of Heaven entered into the fulness
of the life of God Himself. But due to their power of
choice the substantival agents could, after their creation,
either enter the Kingdom of Heaven or else choose the
path of independent life and reject the concrete fulness
of the Kingdom of Heaven. When they so chose, as
some of the selves did, they began a life of very abstract
Value and Existence
existence. They no longer had a concrete experience
because they did not participate in a cooperative life
with God. This cooperative life may be termed a con-
cretely consubstantial life. The life that is lived as much
as possible apart from God is called a life in which there
is only abstract consubstantiality. No soul can wander
completely away from God. There must be some of
the forms of the Kingdom left in the experience of
every ego if there is to be any experience at all.
Thus even evil involves some of the good, but it is
a good that has been distorted into wickedness because
it is lived in a spirit that is contrary to the life of the
Kingdom of God. Hence all evil is self-contradictory
and self-refuting. Even if it seems to aid the one who
does it, as in the case of Napoleon, or Byron, yet it
destroys the unity of the world and is hence wicked.
Now we are in a position to understand the theory
of our present existence. The soul that did not enter the
Kingdom of God fell into a state of isolation. Its con-
nection with other beings was very slender. It did not
live a life of the concrete fulness of being. Such a state
is that of an electron whose relation to other electrons is
highly mechanical and external. Our world of plants
and animals has evolved due to the efforts of very
elementary beings to codperate with each other in a
way to produce a concrete life.
But even the high degree of cooperation we have in
plant and animal life is far from perfect. An animal
body is a highly concrete whole as far as our world
is concerned. But an animal body is not perfectly united
and is foil of imperfections. Helmholtz shocked his genera-
14
Preface
tion by telling it that the eye was not perfect. Christian
Neo-Platonism recognizes this same fact by telling us
that cooperation is far from perfect even in animal
organisms. But when we come to the organization which
we term the State and the World we find that the
cooperation is even more imperfect. Our age is attempt-
ing to achieve a deeper type of concrete consubstanti-
ality, a politically united world; but due to hatred,
ignorance, and fear, the world is filled with disruption
and opposition and thus complete concreteness is not
achieved.
The task that this book sets before itself is the task
of showing where true absolute concrete consub-
stantiality lies, and how it is related to this world of
ours. The book very frankly acknowledges the place of
relative values in our world. In this sense it is critical
of that extreme form of asceticism which would fail
to realize the necessity of a normal evolution in the
development of human experience.
Two streams of philosophy flowed from the spring
of Plato's thought. The first was developed in part by
Plato himself. The Ideas were really abstract although
they probably had a polytheistic origin in the thought
of Plato and thus did not seem so abstract to him. This
abstract way of looking at the ultimate nature of reality
was accentuated by the mathematical developments of
the Platonic school and in Western Thought by the
conception that morals were really commands of God.
Thus some of the medieval thinkers even made the
forms creations of God, thin, abstract rules of life and
conduct.
Value and Existence
The other stream of thought was really a develop-
ment from Aristotle's criticism of Plato. The work of
Philo, Plotinus, and the Greek Fathers was an attempt
to achieve a doctrine of concreteness. Plato's Demiurge
was really the recognition by him of the need of con-
creteness. Following a hint in the Republic, Plotinus
and the others made the Absolute the absolute fulness
of being and then related all lesser categories to the one
supreme ineffable Good.
The Christian thinker achieved a still richer con-
creteness in his living theory of the Trinity and the
Incarnation. The Greek Fathers and all the followers
of their tradition have made their special problem the
nature of concreteness in relation to the Trinity and
the Incarnation. Thus the problem of categories is a
very different one for such a thinker than for a follower
of the abstract tradition. Most philosophers tend to
make the abstract categories ultimate. They are the true
absolutes of our tiiinking. We see this in Newton's
absolutes of space, time, and motion. For the Christian
Neo-Platonist the real problem is rather the relation of
abstract categories to that concrete fulness of being
which he is convinced does exist and has been seen by the
eye of the mystic. He believes in mathematics and logic,
but he also believes that there are higher categories
than these; he believes there are categories or forms of
concrete existence. Our thin forms of life are merely the
abstractions, the vestigia of a fuller life which is only
found in the Kingdom of Heaven.
Thus our book presents us with a philosophy of value
that rests on the rich tradition of a line of reflection which
16
Preface
has made the problem of the concrete particularly its
own in every field of human living. It is uniquely in-
terested in the concrete within the sphere of ethics and
aesthetics^ for it is a philosophy whose central interest
lies in the field of values.
PUBLISHER'S NOTE
THE authors wish to record their very great obligation
to Mr. Sergei Vinokooroff for his untiring efforts in
translating Part I of this volume into English.
It is especially the authors* desire to explain that
the dual authorship of the book is not strictly a collabora-
tion. Part I was written alone by Professor Lossky and
is a translation of his book on value, Tsennost i bytiye,
published by the Y.M.CA Press of Paris in 1931, The
Preface and Part II were written by Professor Marshall
as an explanation or commentary to make clear certain
basic conceptions presented in Part I.
CONTENTS
PAGE
PREFACE 9
PUBLISHER'S NOTE 19
PART ONE
Value as the Fulness of Being:
God and the Kingdom of God as
the Foundation of Values
CHAPTER
I. INTRODUCTION 27
II. CRITICAL CONSIDERATIONS PREPARING
THE WAY FOR THE THEORY OF VALUE
OF IDEAL REALISM 38
1 . Psychologism. The Theory of Heyde 38
2. Scheler's Theory 50
3 . The Dispute of Leibniz and Arnold Eckhart
about the Concept of Value 53
4. Value and the Absolute Fulness of Life 56
III. THE CONDITIONS THAT MAKE VALUE
POSSIBLE 62
1. The Existence of the Substantival Agent
for Himself 62
2. Immanence of Everything in Everything 67
3. God and the Kingdonl of God 70
4. Love and Freedom 75
5. Individual Existence 79
6. Personality. The Spiritual Foundations of
Existence 94
21
Value and Existence
CHAPTER PAGE
IV. THE FUNDAMENTAL CHARACTERISTICS
OF VALUES 99
1. The Definition of Value 99
2. Absolute and Relative^ Objective and Sub-
jective Values 103
3. All-Embracing and Partial Absolute In-
trinsic Values 109
4. Relative Values 114
5. Negative Values 123
6. Instrumental Values 131
7. The Tragic Character of Normal Evolution 132
8. False Arguments in Favour of Relativism 140
9. The Order of Rank in Values 141
V. SUBJECTIVE-PSYCHIC EXPERIENCE OF
VALUES 144
1. Value and the Feeling of Value 144
2. Value and Will 147
PART TWO
Characteristic Features of Value
as the Fulness of Being
VI. THE NATURE OF CONSCIOUSNESS 161
VII. MEANING VALUE AS MEANING 171
1. The Person and the "Image of God" 171
2. The Significance of Meaning 174
3. God and the World 178
4. Value as Meaning 182
VIII. TRUTH, BEAUTY, AND GOODNESS 185
1. God as Complete Meaning 185
2. Truth as Theory and Truth as Value 189
3. God as the Good 192
4. Beauty Transient and Eternal 193
22
Contents
CHAPTER PAGE
IX. PHYSICAL RELATIVITY AND ABSOLUTE
VALUES 197
X. THE FULNESS OF LIFE 213
INDEX 22O
NOTE: Chapter I in the present edition is the Introduction of the
Russian edition. Thus Chapters I, II 3 HI, and IV of the Russian
edition become Chapters II> IH y IV, and V of this edition.
PART I
Value as the Absolute Fulness of Being:
God and the Kingdom of God as
the Foundation of Values
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
VALUE is something which pervades everything. It
determines the meaning of the world as a whole, as well
as the meaning of every person, every event, and every
action. Even the smallest change introduced into the
world by any agent has a value and is undertaken only
on the ground and for the sake of some value moments.
Everything that exists, and even everything that may
exist or in any way belong to the composition of the
world, is of such nature that it not only exists, but also
contains within itself either the justification or condem-
nation of its being. It can be said of everything that it
is either good or bad; it can be said whether it must or
must not be, or that it ought or ought not to exist, that its
existence is right or wrong (not in the judicial sense).
The omnipresence of the value moment does not help
us, but rather makes it much more difficult to recog-
nize it and to work out an abstract concept of value.
When we meet the value moment in actual life, it is
connected with existence; and it is difficult to differentiate
them from each other in such a way as to perceive them
as distinct concepts: existence purified from value, and
value abstracted from existence. Moreover, it is possible
that we can only come to recognize these two sides of
the world even in the abstract form by the way not of
mental differentiation as when, for example, we mentally
separate colour from length but only by thinking of
27
Value and Existence
existence from a certain angle, an angle that opens out
a definite aspect of it, an aspect which can be under-
stood only on the ground of a peculiar combination of
different sides of the world.
If this supposition is true., then we can expect that
quite a number of philosophical theories will simplify
the problem and will work out a concept of value by taking
into consideration only one element of value, or by taking
into consideration not even value itself, but some of the
conditions that make value possible,, or the consequences
produced by it. Therefore we should expect the existence
of a large number of theories of value that would neces-
sarily be very different one from another, and often
even partially contradictory. And this is actually the
case. We will prove it by citing a number of well-known
influential theories that are mutually contradictory.
Psychological theories of value are very widespread.
They make value subjective and renounce the existence
of absolute values. Ehrenfels* theory furnishes a good
example in the field of axiology, or the theory of value,
of psychologism followed by subjectivism and relativism.
According to Ehrenfels the value of an object lies in a
subject's desire for the object (Begehrbarkeif). But as far
as the possibility of the rise of a desire is concerned, such
a possibility exists when the vivid and clear imagina-
tion of the existence of an object promises a state of
pleasure that lies higher on the scale of pleasure-dis-
pleasure than the portrayal of the object as not existing. 1
Desire and the intensity of pleasure are thus coordinated
1 Chr. V. Ehrenfels 3 System der Wert-theorie 3 two volumes, see
i, p. 65.
28
Introduction
and connected by a rule, and this connection is the value
of an object.
Kreibig's theory of value is very similar to Ehrenfels*.
Kreibig says that value is that meaning which a sensory
or thought content has for a subject, a meaning caused
by feelings directly, or by association connected with
the content. These feelings may be real or they may
exist only in the form of a disposition; they aid the
psychic activity or else depress it. 1 The rejection of abso-
lute values, the recognition of the relativity of values,
and also the assertion of the subjectivity of values follow
from this definition. Kreibig will, however, allow the
use of the term "objective value" if we define it as the
value of an object as judged correctly by an ideal subject,
all of whose empirically possible reactions of feeling are
consummated with a complete knowledge of the proper-
ties of the object.
The development of Meinong's theory is very interest-
ing. This clever and careful analyst began with the
development of a psychological, subjective theory of
value (Psychologich-ethische Untersuchungen zur Wert-
theorie, 1894), but twenty-five years later, after excellent
works had appeared in German upholding anti-psycho-
logism, objectivism, and absolutism in the theory of
value, in his last work (Zur Grundlegung der allgemeinen
Wert-theorie, 1923) he took as he expresses it, "a ream-
ciliatory position" between the two hostile camps. Even
in his first work he objected to Ehrenfels, and pointed
out that value cannot be deduced from desire, because
1 I. C. Kreibig, Psychologische Grundlegung eines Systems der Wert-
theorie, p. 12.
2$
Value and Existence
the relation between these two moments is the very
opposite: desire is founded on the feeling of value, and
not the other way around (p. 15). Similarly, we cannot
reduce value to usefulness, because usefulness depends
on value: the useful is that which causes something
valuable to exist (p. 13). We cannot refer to the labour,
the investment costs, and sacrifices as the primal sources
of value, because labour, sacrifice, and costs are directed
to that which is already valuable; but they do not create
the value (Zur GrundL, p. 25). Finally, we cannot trace
value to the satisfaction of a desire, i.e. the removal of
dissatisfaction caused by the absence of some object,
because many things are valuable whose absence produces
no dissatisfaction. If we broaden the concept of desire,
or more specifically, if we substitute for it the concept
of interest, then, says Meinong, the connection between
interest and value always will be present. However, this
will not render us any help in our study because these
two words are practically synonymous (Zur GrundL, p. 19).
Rejecting the theories enumerated, Meinong finds,
however, that in all of them there is a moment which
actually enters into the concept of value. That moment
is relation to the subject. Any object can be valuable,
says Meinong, and even though remaining unchanged
can produce different experiences of value in different
subjects and even in the same subject. From this it
follows that not the object, but our relation to the object,
is that which is important. 1
But what kind of a relation is this? The only thing
1 Meinong, Psychologich-ethische Untersuchungen zur Wert-theorie 9
p. 14; Zur Grundlegung der allgemeinen Wert-tbeorie s p. 33,
30
Introduction
in common in the most different cases of value, says
Meinong, is the experiencing by the subject of the
feeling of value, or to be exact, the possibility of such
an experience: "an object is valuable in so far as it can
serve as the real ground of the feeling of value in a
normal and sufficiently oriented person" (Untersuch.,
p. 25). The feeling of value, he adds,, is the only pheno-
menal aspect of value., i.e. that aspect accessible to
experience (p. 30).
From this formulation Meinong draws the con-
clusion that value is relative in two senses. In the first
place it is relative in so far as value has the capacity
to serve as the real ground of the feeling of value, and in
the second place in so far as it is necessary to have the
presence of the subject in whom the experience of the
feeling of value is realized. He explains the attempts
to find absolute value in an object as the search for that
quality, immanent in the object producing the feeling of
value, which belongs to that object even when there is
no subject present. However, he says, such a concept
of value is not the same as the one commonly admitted; in
the usual sense value is attributed to an object only when
there is somebody present for whomvzlue. is value (p. 29).
Meinong's definition of value, given above, astonishes
us with its barrenness. In the end it can be reduced, as
Meinong himself points out, to this : the valuable is that
which I value (p. 14). If we take this theory as an asser-
tion that the quality of an object which produces a feeling
of value in the subject is valuable only because it produces
a feeling of value, then Meinong's theory will prove to
be a quite radical and rather poor psychologism. Nobody,
Value and Existence
of course, denies that the feeling of value is valuable,
but it is still more obvious that these feelings are a
symptom of a still greater and more fundamental value of
the content of existence itself which awakens such feelings.
In Meinong's definition "the value of an object lies
in the capacity of the object to serve as the foundation
for the feeling of value in a normal person who is rightly
oriented." If we put the accent on the word capacity, and
also recall his statement that the feeling of value alone is
accessible to the experience, we have the right to interpret
this theory as an agnosticism, which stresses the feeling
of value only because a deeper content of this aspect of
the world is not given in experience. Because he pursues
a tangible fact, Meinong does not penetrate into the dark
depths of objective value. In the further development of
his theory, Meinong gives only a hint of the fundamental
meaning of value, saying that the primal source of the
feeling of value is the evil or the good of that existing
(p. 55). Further development of this thought must reveal
that the feeling of value is only a symptom of value, and
must lead to the theory of objectivism, or at least to a
subjective-objective theory of value. Ehrenfels, who
argues passionately against the transfer of value to the
object, understood this possibility in Meinong's reflec-
tions, and consequently insists on the omission of the
words "capacity [Faehigkeit] of the object" from the
definition given by Meinong. 1
Twenty-five years later Meinong wrote a book, Zur
Grundlegung der allgemdnen Wert-theorie, in which
"personal values" (personliche Werte\ i.e. values for
1 Ehrenfels, i, p. 65.
32
Introduction
somebody, now serve only as the starting-point of the
investigation. Speaking even of these values, he speaks
of his position as reconciliatory in the dispute of the
subjectivists and the objectivists and gives the following
definition: "personal value is the qualification [Eignung]
of the object to serve, because of its qualities and position,
as the object of the experience of value" (p. 143). In
other words, personal value is the significance of the
existence of the object for the subject (Seinsbedeutung filr
ein Subjekt) p. 145). Moreover, he now admits that
besides personal values, impersonal (unfersonliche) values
also exist for example, truth, beauty, and the moral
good (p. 145). To accept them as values we need not have
the experience of the feeling of value. These are absolute
values, although of course even here relative values are
added to the absolute ones: we can speak not only of
the "impersonal value of o," but also of the "legitimate
meaning of o" for a particular subject (p. 163). An
absolute impersonal value "rightfully [berechtigterweise]
must be value for any subject" (p. 165).
The theory of Heyde, a follower of Remke, is very
close to Meinong's theory in this last stage of its develop-
ment. According to Heyde "value is a certain relation,
specifically a 'mutual complementing' [Zugeordnetheit]"
existing between the object of value and the feeling of
value (a special state of the subject of value). And since
value is a 1 relation, the members of that relation the
object of value or the subject of value, and the state of
the subject are considered only as data, and this inde-
pendent of the fact whether they are real or not. 1
1 I. E. Heyde, Wen, p. 153.
c 33
Value and Existence
From this definition it is clear that the existence of
value presupposes a combination of the subject and the
object. However, the properties of the object are not
values, but only the ground on which value is raised, and
similarly, the feeling of value experienced by the subject
is not value; strictly and definitely Heyde defines the
thought that value is a relation of an object to the state
of the subject (p. 106). Having stressed this position of
value as if "between" the object and the subject, Heyde
says that his theory is neither subjectivism nor objec-
tivism, that it does not fall into relativism and psycho-
logism. Heyde says that although value is a relation
one member of which is the subject, still value is not
subjective:, it is not a psychic experience of the subject;
it is a relation (pp. 50, 63, 76, 83). Moreover, the con-
nection with the subject does not prevent some values
from being absolute. There are values that do not depend
on the personal characteristics of the subject (Subjekt-
besonderheit}i they are absolute.
In strict opposition to Heyde stands the theory of
Scheler. Scheler says that values for example, "pleasant,
charming, delightful, noble," etc. are not relations, but
peculiar qualities forming a special kingdom of objects
with certain relations and ranks. 1 They cannot be deduced
from or understood by the earmarks and properties
which themselves do not belong to the realm of values
(p. 9). The bearers of these qualities which are perceived
through the theoretic functions of the intellect are things
(Dinge); and the bearers of valuable qualities are
goods (Outer). A good is "a unity of valuable qualities
1 M. Scheler^ Der Formalismus in der Ethik, pp. io y 248.
34
Introduction
similar to a thing" (dinghafte Einheit von Wertqualitaten,
p. 15). Goods and things are equally primal data: we
cannot assert that a good is the foundation of a thing
(as, for example, Mach or Bergson does), or that a thing
is the foundation of a good (p. 16).
Scheler determines the self-sufficiency of the content
of values by stressing the fact that values can be given
in consciousness apart from their bearers. Thus a sensory
quality, for example a red colour, may be perceived
without the object to which it belongs; similarly, such
values as "noble, dreadful, terrible" sometimes enter our
consciousness separated from those goods which are their
bearers, and are perceived even before the goods them-
selves (p. 12). A child, for example, perceives "kindness"
or "animosity" in the face bent over his crib when he
does not differentiate the faces themselves.
Values are perceived not by theoretic but by emotional
-intentional functions, by the activities of feeling (FiMen).
Analysing these experiences, Scheler distinguishes in
them, as in the theoretic activities, the intentional func-
tion and the content or "appearance." It is Erscheinung
in a sense similar to that given to this term by Stumpf in
his treatise Erscheinungen und Furiktionen. In the function
of feeling (Fuhleri) the value "appears" before me in a
similar manner to that in which the object or thing in
the function of perception appears before me. Here we
must distinguish the "feeling of something" (Fuhlen von
Etwas) and the state itself that serves as the content of
feeling (Gefuhlsgegenstand} for example, the feeling of
pain and the pain itself which I "bear" or "experience"
or "suffer" or "relish" (p. 263), This theory that values
55
Value and Existence
are perceived by means of feeling, as a special function
directed upon them, Scheler calls "emotional intuitivism."
From all that has been said it becomes clear that
Scheler is a determined defender of the objectivity of
values. It is true some special form of perceiving is needed
by which values may be discovered (p. 272), but the exist-
ence of the many values there are is not at all connected
with the psycho-physical organization of man, and does
not even presuppose the age or subject: values exist in all
nature (p. 273). By asserting the objectivity of values,
Scheler also defends the existence of absolute values.
N. Hartmann in many essential points agrees with
Scheler. Values, he says, are not laws, but objective
formations possessing material content. 1 They are ideal,
they belong to the an sich seiende ideale Sphare (i, p. 165),
their being possesses no "existence" (Existenz\ but their
matter can be realized (i, pp. 175, 220). Values are
essences (Wesenheiteri); they represent a specific quality
of things, relations, or persons. They are those essences
which cause everything that is connected with them to
be valuable. They are accessible not to thought but to
emotional, intuitive "Schau" (i, p. 177). However, the
knowledge of them, as any other knowledge, has a
theoretic character (i, p. 219). By defending the objec-
tivity of values, N. Hartmann, as Scheler, asserts the
existence of absolute values.
I will also indicate the definition of value given by
G. D. Gurvitch in his Fichtes System der konkreten Ethik.
It differs materially from all preceding theories in that
it connects value with the highest limit of existence.
1 N. Hartmaim, Ethik (English trans . a i, pp. 169, 170).
36
Introduction
Gurvitch says that value is a moment of quantitative-
qualitative positive infinity which is a priori. It is con-
tinuously passing over into a positive qualitative infinity
due to the ideal which determines and anticipates it
(p. 278). This a priori ideal moment may also permeate
the empirically real (p. 274).
The theories we have given are enough to confuse a
person inexperienced in philosophic investigation. If
individuals who are highly gifted and meditative, and who
have given all their lives to the solving of philosophic
problems, come to such a difference of opinion, then,
probably, the truth is hidden at a depth unattainable
by the human mind. Some deduce the valuable aspect
of the world from individually psychic experiences, others
from non-psychic factors; some say that values are sub-
jective, others say that they are objective:, some assert the
relativity of all values, others also insist on the existence
of absolute values; some say that value is a relation, others
that it is quality; some think that values are ideal, others
that they are real, still others say that they are neither
ideal nor real (for example, Heyde). However, let us not
fall into despair; different as these theories are, each
one takes into consideration some aspect of value, and
the problem of our investigation is to find the place for
each element of value in a complete theory, which will
not only answer the question as to what value is, but
will also explain how such a multitude of different theories
is possible. Spinoza rightly says veritas norma sui et
falsi est.
Let us begin with psychologism in the theory of value.
37
CHAPTER II
Critical Considerations Preparing the Way
for the Theory of Value of Ideal Realism
I. PSYCHOLOGISM. THE THEORY OF HEYDE
The psychological theory of value asserts that any
object, even an object of the outside world, has a value
only in so far as it produces in the mental life of a sub-
ject certain psychic experiences peculiar to the individual.
According to some theories this experience is the feeling
of pleasure (or displeasure); according to others, desire;
according to others, the feeling of value.
Let us begin with the theory that asserts that pleasure
is the only intrinsic value (Selbstwert y Eigenwerf)^ that is,
primary and fundamental value. From ancient times up
to the present the theory in ethics that pleasure is the only
motive and the final aim of all human deeds has been
very popular. According to this theory all the objective
content of our strivings, desires, and aspirations, realized
by our acts, is only a means of reaching our real aim, the
experience of pleasure. This hedonism, as well as other
tendencies in ethics closely related to it (Eudaemonism
and Utilitarianism), represents in its totality the hedonistic
theory of value. Mill, for example, basing his theory
on hedonism, says, "that which is in itself valuable is in
itself desirable"; "such are only pleasure and freedom
from pain." 1 And so according to Mill only pleasure
1 Utilitarianism, loth ed., p. 10.
38
Critical Considerations
and the absence of pain are intrinsic values. All other
values are derivative from this value, they serve as means
to its attainment. 1
For our critique of the hedonistic theory of value let
us take a few examples of the act of will and analyse
them in order to see their eidetical structure (i.e. to gain
a WesensschaUy or "intuition of essence/* of the act of
will, to use the terminology of Husserl's school). Suppose
a hunter takes aim at a flying bird, shoots, and the bird
falls to the ground. Or again, suppose a father explains
to his child what an eclipse of the sun is, and from the
animated, meaningful expression of the child's face sees
that the explanation is understood. According to the
hedonistic theory the objective content of an act (the
good shot, the child's understanding) is only a means,
while the real aim is the subjective feeling of pleasure
for the agent acting. The "means" is only a subordinate
aspect of the value; it is an element of an act and is not
valuable in itself. For example, when I climb up a ladder
to get an apple off a tree, the means, the climbing up
the ladder, has no value in itself and may be experienced
by me as a burden and tedious.
Let us turn to the facts and in a rapid survey find
out for ourselves what the real aim is and what is valuable
for the agent acting. Is it true that a good shot, or a
child's understanding, is only the instrument for producing
my pleasure? If this question be put to a man who is merely
observing concentratively and who has no preconceived
1 Later it will often be necessary to distinguish primary and
secondary values. Let us call the former intrinsic values and the latter
instrumental values (Dienstwert, to use Stern's term).
39
Value and Existence
theories full of wrong assumptions, the question itself will
produce an unpleasant impression of some perversion. It
is all too evident that the objective content of the act is
itself the valuable aim, and that it is not a means or
instrument at all. The animated face of the child, full
of understanding, this embodied spiritual and material
understanding reached by him is the valuable aim, is
that on which my interest is concentrated. But as to my
own satisfaction, having reached my aim I do not care
at all; I do not concentrate on that, do not live in it. If
I make a series of movements, one following rapidly
after another as, for example, in tennis I have no time
to experience my feeling of pleasure due to the good
shots, and do not care about the pleasure. It is more
interesting to continue to play the game than to enjoy
the satisfaction. If in some magic way the objective
contents of the act were removed and the feeling of
satisfaction remained and continued, how weary and
empty our life would be! We would be extremely dis-
satisfied with our feeling of satisfaction, and would be
constantly looking for other contents of the activities of
life.
The objective content of the striving is clearly the
real aim. (This content in some cases belongs to the
system of the outer world, e.g. a good shot; in other
cases, however, to the inner life of the agent, e.g. learning
a language.) The objective content is that which attracts
and is valued, whereas the feeling of satisfaction is only
an indicator, a sign of reaching our aim. It is the final,
self-evident stage of the act of the will. When we strive for
something, we desire that it should finally be reached, we
40
Critical Considerations
seek success which is expressed in the feeling of satisfaction^
but we do not want unsuccess which is marked by a feel-
ing of dissatisfaction. However, success means possession
of the objective content, not possession of the feeling of
success. Such a structure of the act of will is its essence
(Wesen\ its ados. The kw expressing this structure of
the act of will is not established by induction, but by the
analysis of at least one example of the act of the will, and
by the intuition of the ideal structure of its essence
coordinated in a law. 1
Thus the theory of hedonistic motivation (Eudae-
monism, etc.) contains an undisputed truth. But this
truth is not rich in significance. It reduces itself almost
to a tautology and does not include what hedonism
asserts. Our striving for anything is certainly likewise
a striving for the successful solution of the problem.
The sign of success is the feeling of satisfaction, but this
feeling of satisfaction is a mere sign of reaching our aim
and is not the aim itself. Spencer, in discussing the
theories which assert that the aim of an act is not the feel-
ing of satisfaction but the objective content of the deed,
says that these theories take the means for the end. How-
ever, these theories are right, whereas Spencer made a
mistake from the opposite direction, so to speak. He
took the sign of reaching the aim for the aim itself. This
mistake may be compared to that of a man who, when
he is watching soldiers shoot at a target and sees the
1 According to Scheler and N. Hartmann, such an insight is
knowledge a priori. According to the system of logic developed in
my book, Handbuch der Logik ("Die unmittelbare Verifizierung der
Urteile/' 73~7 8 .)> & is a ^ st of i ntuition ***&*&& establishing
the common situation.
4*
Value and Existence
waving of a flag that shows that the marksman has hit
the target, decides that the reason for the shooting is
not the hitting of the mark but the waving of the flag.
" Certainly the feeling of pleasure at reaching the aim
is also a positive value. When it is experienced, it raises
the value of reaching the objective content,, but still
its value is something which is secondary and comple-
mentary to the value of the success itself.
The theory of the significance of pleasure given
above is expressed by many philosophers and is given
sometimes in almost identical words. So, for example,
V. Solovyof develops it in his Justification of the Good
(English trans., pp. 117-19) and his Critique of Abstract
Principles, F. Paulsen in his A System of Ethics (p. 251),
Miinsterberg in his The Eternal Values (pp. 65 ff.). 1
G. E. Moore reminds us in his Principia Ethica of Plato's
dialogue, The Philebus, in which it is persuasively proved
that pleasure is not the only good. Plato shows that
pleasure without memory for example, without con-
clusions of reasoning about the future is not a good.
Pleasure, he says, is desirable, but the consciousness of
pleasure is still more desirable; therefore pleasure is not
the only good. Further, by the same method Plato shows
that even the consciousness of pleasure is not the only
good, since, for example, the pleasure experienced in the
presence of other people is higher than pleasure experi-
enced in solitude.
Moore makes some very fine observations about the
combination of the value of pleasure and pain with
1 See also my Die Grundhhren der Psychologic vom Standpunkte
des Voluntarismus, chap. vi.
42
Critical Considerations
other values. He says that the beauty which we see
and which gives pleasure is a higher value than the iso-
lated pleasure of beauty. We would not want to live a
life filled with the feeling of pleasure if there were no
objective content to the pleasure. The mere increase of
the intensity of pleasure without the objective content
is not a great good; but the increase of suffering, even
without objective content, is a great evil. On the other
hand, pleasure in combination with an objective content
considerably increases the positive value of the whole,
whereas pain added to a negative objective content
increases the negative character of the whole only to
the extent of its own pleasure. If the feeling of pleasure
is directed to some disgusting, unbecoming content, then
from this there arises a whole which is a greater evil
than the unbecoming content in itself, and the increase
of pleasure in this case is an increase of evil. And con-
versely, the addition of suffering sometimes does not
increase, but rather lessens the negative value of the
whole. For example, if a disgusting deed is accompanied
by the suffering of punishment, then the negative value
becomes less than if the deed had remained unpunished. 1
All that has been said about the feeling of pleasure
following a deed may be repeated in a slightly changed
form about the feeling of pleasure preceding a deed, and
included in the preliminary judgment of the aim of the
deed. This feeling of pleasure is not the aim of the deed
and it is not it that first creates the value of the objective
content of the striving; it is only a subjective way of
experiencing the objective value; it is its sign. The
1 Principia Ethica, ist ed pp. 94, 213.
43
Value and Existence
same should be said also of the feeling of value which;,
as Meinong rightly pointed out, should be distinguished
from the feeling of pleasure caused by the object. The
feeling of value is the subjective clothing in which the
objective values appear in our mind.
If the theory of Meinong given in his first work on
value is understood as the theory that the property of
an object coordinated with the feeling of value has value
only because it is connected with this feeling, then his
theory is not adequate; it takes a subjective sign of
value for the value itself. Besides the feeling of pleasure
(pain) and the feeling of value, there are many other
feelings which have the character of subjective experi-
ences of positive and negative objective values. Such,
for example, are the feelings of trust, of triumphant
exultation, of serene quiet, and so on; or the feelings
of dread, anxious restlessness, gloomy irritableness, and
so on. Each of these feelings has a value in itself; but
more than that it is a sign of a value that lies deeper, a
value of the object of the feeling itself.
Feeling is the clothing in which objective values
appear in consciousness. As far as desires are concerned,
they are a consequence of value. Striving, inclination, want,
and desire are conditioned by the value of an object, and
are not the source of the value, as Ehrenfels wrongly
asserts. 1 Duty (obligation) stands in the same relation to
value. There is no obligation in the value itself. Accord-
1 See the objections to Ehrenfels' theory and to the deduction of
values from desire given by Meinong in his Psych.-eth. Untersu-
chungen, pp. 15^ 70. Also his Zur Grundhgung der allgemeinen Wert-
theorie, pp. 37-42. Also Heyde 3 Wen., p. 109. As to desires and value,
see M. Scheler, Der Formalismus in der Ethik 3 p. 364.
44
Critical Considerations
ing to Miinsterberg, obligation is only a possible conse-
quence of value in those cases where in our behaviour
we have to choose between several contradictory values. 1
In the same way Heyde also objects to the theory of
Rickert. Rickert's theory is that value is validity (Geltung).
Heyde shows that validity (Geltung) is not a characteristic
of value in general at all., because it, like obligation,
exists only where there is value to be realized for
example., a moral request not yet fulfilled. 2
All the theories of value mentioned in this chapter,
except the theory of Rickert, are psychological. All of
them take the solving of the problem of value as a
problem of psychology, and all of them make a mistake
analogous to that which is so often made in gnoseology
in solving the problem of truth. True knowledge can be
reached by the subject only by the help of the individu-
ally subjective psychic acts of attention, differentiation,
representation, reminiscence, discussion, etc., and also
only in connection with the non-intellectual functions
of will and feeling. Investigation of all of these psychic
acts involved in the discovery of truth belongs to the
psychology of knowledge^ but the psychology of knowledge
does not answer the question as to the properties of
truth itself. The study of truth itself, especially its
structure, is taken up by gnoseology and logic, sciences
which investigate not the subjective psychic side of
consciousness but its objective side. They have nothing
in common with psychology because, for example, the
logical structure of the judgment or syllogism is some-
1 Milnsterberg 3 The Eternal Values^ pp. 51-7.
2 Heyde, Wert 3 p. 71.
45
Value and Existence
thing toto genere different from psychic acts, experiences,
etc. It is the greatest error to mix gnoseological and
logical problems and the logical subject-matter of research
with the psychological. By hard work for over half a
century at the hands of very many great scholars modern
philosophy has reached a clear separation of these two
spheres. Hence, when we meet the same mistake in the
theory of value, we can afford not to lose too much time
in the task of proving that the psychological theories of
value are wrong. The psychology of valuation and will
is a science of the psychic processes connected with
values, but does not extend as far as a science of the
values themselves.
As is true in the case of gnoseological and logical
problems the followers of the intuitional theory e.g.
Scheler, the followers of Remke, and also the author
of this book can escape falling into psychologism
especially well. Indeed, those who believe in the in-
tuitional theory say that besides the psycho-individual
experiences of the subject there may be also present in
consciousness many parts of the outside world and
different kinds of existence material existence, the
psychic existence of others, ideal being, etc. Under-
standing the structure of consciousness in this way, it
is natural to look for values not in a subjective feeling
caused by them but deeper, and moving in the direction
of the objects of the feelings. This is exactly what Heyde
has done. For him value is found neither in the subject
nor in the object; it is the relation between the subject
and the object, or better, it is the relation between the
subject and that property of an object which serves as
46
Critical Considerations
one part of the relation. Value has its foundation in
these absolute properties of an object, but only in so
far as they are connected with a subject. However, value
is not composed of any properties of the object itself,
but rather of the relation in which the object stands
to "special states of the subject" (p. 172), specifically to
the feeling of pleasure and the organic sensations
(Innenempfindungen) out of which the feeling of value
is built. It follows from this definition that if there
were no feeling of value, then no object would have a
value that is, it would have no such relation to a subject
as is value, according to Heyde. In other words, the
theory of Heyde, materially, is the same as the early
theory of Meinong. Although it is not psychological, it
falls under the same criticism as the psychological theory,
only it is stated in a different way. Indeed, the whole
structure of valuable existence Heyde outlines in the
same way as Meinong does personal values. The dis-
tinction and originality of Heyde consist only in that
seeing the whole as consisting of three parts, the object,
the relation, and the feeling of value on the part of the
subject, he gave the name "value" to the middle part of
the whole, the relation, and developed a corresponding
concept of value, quite consistently working it out and
showing that the theory removing value from both the
subject and the object frees us from the extremes of both
subjectivism and objectivism. Nevertheless, the objections
which were urged against the theory of Meinong remain
in force against Heyde also, only with the following
difference: Meinong took the sign of value (the feeling of
value) for the value, whereas Heyde took the relation of
47
Value and Existence
the valuable existence to the sign of value for the
value.
As will be seen farther on, I do not deny that value
is only possible where there is a relation to a subject,
or better a person, but this relation is much deeper; it
penetrates the whole structure of personality and of the
world much more than does a relation to the feeling of
value.
Moreover, no matter how much we agree with Heyde
that the concept of value is very closely connected with
the concept of relation (actually following Stern I think
that the concept of value is connected with the concept
of meaning (Bedeutung) and relation is included here
only in so far as every meaning contains a relation in
itself), 'still we cannot accept as true the basic assertion
of Heyde that "value is a relation." Illustrating his theory
by the case of a beautiful vase which awakens in the
subject who sees it the feeling of value, Heyde reasons
in the following manner. Before us is : (i) a complicated
part of the world, a valuable object (Wertobjekf), a
beautiful vase; (2) a subject experiencing the feeling of
value; and (3) the relation between the subject and the
object. Which of the elements of this whole is value?
Only the relation of the object to the subject, or precisely
the connection with the feeling of value is value, says
Heyde. But as far as the valuable object is concerned, it
is not the value; it only contains in itself the basis of value,
the value ground (Wertgrund) that is, qualities, or in
general such particularities as due to which it is connected
with the feeling of value of the subject. True enough,
we often say, "The vase is a value," but this is only a vague
4*
Critical Considerations
expression which means, "The vase has value.," i.e. it is
the source of the relation to the subject pointed out
above.
Heyde further points out that there are two types of
relational concepts: one type, such as position and like-
ness, shows relation (etwas das Beziehung ist\ the other
type, such as father, teacher, indicates something that
includes the relation in itself (etwas das Beziehung hat).
Value according to his theory belongs to the first type,
it is a relation, and the valuable object belongs to the
second type, it stands in relation. Hence, according to
Heyde, value has no content We can say of a content that
it is valuable, but only in the sense that it has a relation
called value. This depriving value of substance (de-
materialization) is doubtful. It can only be done by taking
value out of the object in the way Heyde does when he
says that a valuable object has value because of its
relation to that which is foreign to it and outside of its
sphere; the object has value because of its relation to the
feeling experienced by a subject. Later, when we sub-
stitute for Heyde's relation the concept of meaning (and
not simply for the feeling of value alone), it will be
proved that the content of existence itself is in a certain
sense a value also. With this understanding value is
to a certain extent made substantial. It becomes onto-
logical. The concept of value becomes analogous, if not
to the concept of father (or teacher, etc.), then at least
to the concept of fatherhood understood in a certain
particular way. Indeed, the word fatherhood can express
two different concepts: first, the concept of relation
between the person A and his child B, and second, the
Value and Existence
ontological content itself of the person A Including in
itself the relation to B. We think of the concept of value
as similar to this second concept of fatherhood. Thought
of in this way it represents a particular category that
cannot be brought under any other category, and there-
fore cannot be defined in the usual way, i.e. by indicating
the proximate genus and the differentiae. In this lies an
indirect indication of the correctness of the method
chosen by us, whereas Heyde's theory undoubtedly
involves a falsity. Indeed., in the beginning of his work
Heyde agrees that value as something elementary and
primal cannot be defined in the usual way, but can be
defined by showing its relation to the other elements
of the world (p. 31), but he finishes his work by giving
the definition of value through the proximate genus and the
differentiae, i.e. he includes the concept of value under
the concept of relation. Later, when I shall try to give the
definition of the concept of value, it will be shown that it
cannot be decomposed into genus and the differentiae.
2. SCHELER'S THEORY
The thought that value is ontological and substantial
leads us to the question as to whether we should agree
without any reservations with the assertion of Scheler
that value is not a relation but a quality, that value is
fully objective. Of course, according to Scheler value is
a quality in a very unusual sense of the word. It is a
quality not of an object (as, for example, blue is a quality
of the sky), but a quality of the Good (Guf). "The Good
is the substantial unity of the value qualities." Examples
of such value qualities are expressed in the words
So
Critical Considerations
"pleasing, delightful, tender, charming, noble, pure,
exalted, kind, evil, shy/' etc. The value qualities repre-
sent a special kingdom of objects which are given by
intuition (anschaulich\ or may be reduced to a special
datum. Scheler says that they cannot be defined or
reasoned out from earmarks and properties which them-
selves do not belong to the realm of values. As blue things
are blue, and their blueness cannot be reduced to some-
thing that is not blue, so kind deeds are kind. 1 Value,
according to Scheler, is to such an extent a special datum
that sometimes it is perceived even before the perception
of the bearer of the value takes place (p. 12).
The "material" data possessing content, described
by Scheler, certainly are values; however, his theory that
values are a kingdom of such qualities, that, after we
subtract them the remainder is not a value, cannot be
accepted. The first reason for not accepting this theory
is that if values were only such a content as the qualities
"delightful," "tender," etc., then there would be no
reason for emphasizing them as ideal. But Scheler stresses
them as ideal, and indeed, experience reveals to a person
with long practice in examining such problems that value
is something ideal or else at least includes in itself an ideal
moment as something substantial. Our second objection
may be examined in this way: just imagine that we are
living in a kingdom of "delightfulness, tenderness,
exaltedness," etc., without anything being delightful,
tender, exalted, etc.; such severed values would depre-
1 Max Scheler 3 Der Formalismus in der Ethik, p. 15^ 1. 9. In exactly
the same way Moore writes about the good as an intrinsic value.
Good is a simple and indefinable quality. Good is good in the same
way as yellow is yellow (Principia Ethica> ist ed. ; pp. 6-9).
51
Value and Existence
date, and would even become disgusting shadows. From
this it becomes clear that the values pointed out by
Scheler are only values which are complementary and
symptomatic to the values of their bearers, so that the
bearers themselves are also values and basic values
besides. And indeed., literally any content of existence is
a positive or negative value not because of some one of its
own separate qualities^ but because of its whole existing
content For example, the wonderful pure blue colour
in the spectrum is a value not only for its wonderfulness,
but also for the blue colour alone. This observation leads
us to the thought that existence itself, esse itself, is not
only existence but also a value. Such a theory has been
held by philosophers of great importance in the history
of philosophy.
St. Augustine, on the basis of God having created
every existence and existence only existing by the will
of God, asserts : "in so far as anything exists, it is good"
(in quantum est quidquid est, bonum est. De vera
religione, chap, xi, 21). Evil can be brought into the
goodness of existence by spoiling existence. In such a
case the good in the object lessens, but it cannot be
entirely removed from any existing thing because the
existence itself would then cease. 1
According to Dionysius the Areopagite (Pseudo-
Dionysius), existence is only possible on the basis of it
participating in goodness to some extent (see, for example,
in his Concerning the Divine Names, chap, iv, 4). Albertus
Magnus and St. Thomas Aquinas assert that the terms
1 Si autem omni bono privdbuntur> omnino non erunt. Confess.,
bk. vii 3 chap. xii 3 8 j De natura boni contra Manichaeos 3 bk. i 3 chap, xvii,
52
Critical Considerations
ens and bonum relate to the same thing only used in
different relations. 1
According to Erigena., who in this question refers to
Dionysius the Areopagite^ everything exists in so far as
it participates in goodness ("in quantum participant
bonitatem" De divisione naturae, bk. iii, 3).
In modern philosophy Spinoza with sharp discrimina-
tion identifies existence and perfection. According to
this theory the concepts of "reality" and "perfection"
are coincident. "By reality and perfection I understand
the same thing" ("Per realitatem et perfectionem idem
intelligo" Ethica ii. Definition vi). In his letter to I.
Hudde he says that "perfection consists in existence and
imperfection in the shortage of existence" ("Perfectionem
in rw esse et imperfectionem in privatione rov esse
consistere"}.*
I will examine this theory of the identification of
being and value in the form it took in the correspondence
of Leibniz and Arnold Eckhart, the Professor of
Mathematics.
3. THE DISPUTE OF LEIBNIZ AND ARNOLD ECKHART ABOUT
THE CONCEPT OF VALUE
The exchange of opinions between Leibniz and Eckhart
began April 5, 1677, with a discussion as to the concept
of perfection. There was a difference of opinion on this
1 Albertus Magnus, Summa theologica, pt. i, tr. vi, qu. xxviii;
St. Thomas Aquinas: "existence in so far as it is existence, exists
'in aciUy but any actuality is 'perfectio quaedam* "; "perfectum vero
habet rationem appetibilis y et boni" (Summa theologica^ pt. i, qu. v,
art. u"i; pt. i, qu. xlix, art. iii.
2 Epistola xxxvi, Opera, iv, ed. C. Gebhardt.
53
Value and Existence
question. Moreover, a correspondence started which
ended with the admission by Leibniz that most of his
objections had disappeared. Leibniz's final opinion is
not given in the correspondence, but Eckharfs theory is
given quite clearly and this I shall examine for the most
part. 1
Eckhart asserts that perfection is any kind of reality.
Ens (being that exists) and perfectio are differentiated
by the intellect alone (sola ratione). The difference between
ens and perfectum is only a distinction of reason (distinctio
rationis). In other words., existence and perfection are
the same thing, only examined by the mind from different
points of view. Leibniz objects to this, for if this is true
even pain would be perfection. In his opinion perfection
is not only esse, but bene esse that is, perfection is not
simply an existence, but a positively valuable existence.
He explains that bene esse is "the quantity or grade of
reality or existence" ("Quantitas seu gradus realitatis sen
essentiae" p. 225). Formulated in this way the thought
of Leibniz certainly is not satisfactory: the degree of
reality can be a positive value only in the case that reality
itself is a positive value. Hence farther on in the dispute
Eckhart easily forces Leibniz to approach his own
position. Eckhart further develops his identification of
existence and perfection, pointing out that the difference
between these two concepts is simply the following:
both ens and perfectum presuppose something in objects,
but if I think of something as ens I have in mind an
attribute without relation to its opposite, that is non-
1 Die philosophischen Schriften von G. W. Leibniz^ edited by
Gerhardt, i a pp. 214-18, 221.
54
Critical Considerations
existence; the same ens I think of as perfectum, if I
examine it in its relation to non-existence and prefer
it to non-existence (p. 228). From this it follows that
the comparative degree "better/' "more perfect" can be
used where there is more reality, while the superlative
degree "the best," "the most perfect" is that which
contains within itself the whole of reality (p. 229").
Leibniz takes up this thought and says that in this
metaphysical sense even in a suffering person there is
really more perfection than in a person who is not suffer-
ing, and also not enjoying anything, but is dull and
indifferent (p. 230). Eckhart develops this thought in
detail, and says that suffering contains in itself feeling
(sensus) which except for its "sharpness" or "bitterness"
has a positive content, and hence in this its own aspect
is perfection. But in addition to this positive content
suffering contains within itself the presence of some-
thing we do not want, or the absence of something
wanted. This negative moment is imperfection; it is the
insufficiency of the power of our will (p. 232). The dis-
cussion was not finished. In his last letter Leibniz
remarks that existence itself is not valuable, but that it
is the sense-experience of existence that is valuable, i.e.
in our day we would say conscious existence.
The general result of the discussion is that any con-
tent of existence is a positive value in comparison with
non-existence. However, we cannot speak of a perfect
identity of existence and value, because existence as a
value is looked upon in a different correlation from that
of simple existence. Moreover, the difference between
existence and positive value comes out more clearly if
55
Value and Existence
we pass over from the examination of the isolated
abstract contents of existence to the same contents., but
taken in the complex concrete system of existence.
To be sure, every content of existent A taken abstractly
is a positive value in so far as it represents something
moving away from non-existence 5 or reversely^ in so far
as its content is approaching full reality,, i.e. the absolute
fulness of being. But let us take this same content of
existence no longer isolated and abstracted from the
world 5 but in a system. We must make such an examina-
tion because every existent in reality exists only in the
system of the world. Taken as a part of the world> existent
A may happen to be leading other kinds of existence to
destruction, and thus leading to the lowering of the
existing contents of the world system. In such a case A
is bringing an "approachment" to non-existence into
the world, a departure from the fulness of being. If
positive value is existence in its significance of departing
from non-existence., and approaching the fulness of being,
then A whom we are examining is not a positive but a
negative value. Hence Leibniz is right: bene esse and
male esse must be differentiated.
4. VALUE AND THE ABSOLUTE FULNESS OF LIFE
After this, when we speak of perfection that is, of
positive value we will take existence not in its relation
to non-existence but in relation to the absolute fulness of
being. Perfect non-existence is really only a problem of
thought; it is an ideally established limit. Perfect non-
existence cannot be given; only a greater or less approach
to perfect destruction is possible.
56
Critical Considerations
There is another even more essential consideration
that induces us to discuss existence in its correlation
with the absolute fulness of being. In religious experience
the absolute fulness of being is given as God. Hence
the theory of perfection explained can be formulated
thus: positive value is existence in its significance for
approaching God and the Divine fulness of being. 1 From
this formulation it is clear that the study of existence in
its correlation with the highest limit gives us an absolutely
obvious truth in regard to values and serves us as a basis
for more diverse and more significant inferences than in
correlation with non-existence.
Indeed;, a communion with the absolute fulness of
being, even though most distant, a vision of the Divine
Being as "through a glass darkly," is accompanied by
an undoubtedly obvious discovery that God is the
absolute perfection. His existence contains within itself
an absolute self-justification, an unquestionable right to
be preferred above everything else; God is that which is
unquestionably worth existing. The symptom of the
absolute character of this value is "rejoicing in the Lord/'
the highest satisfaction that comes simply from the
thought that such beauty and such goodness exist, even
if I do not belong to His Kingdom. Out of the infinite
number of cases of such a religious experience we shall
give one of the visions of the German mystic, Seuse.
Once on St. Agnes Day he was in a condition of extreme
depression, when he saw and heard something inde-
scribable. It was "something without form or species,
1 As to God and His relation to the world, see my books : The
World as an Organic Whole, and Freedom of the Will.
57
Value and Existence
but it contained within itself the joyous charm of all
forms and species" ; "it was sweetness flowing out of the
ever-existing life in quiet feeling"; "if this is not the
Kingdom of Heaven, what can be called by this name?
No suffering that can be expressed in words is worthy of
such joy, a joy that is destined for permanent possession." 1
An experience of the directly opposite type., an
approach to absolute destruction and extreme suffering,
was experienced in a dream by Father P. Florensky.
"There were no images, only purely inward experiences.
A darkness without a ray of light, almost palpably dense,
surrounded me. Some force was dragging me to the
brink; I felt that this was the limit of God's being, and
that beyond it was absolute nothingness. I wanted to
cry out and could not. I knew that in another moment I
should be thrust into outer darkness. Darkness began
to fill my whole being. I almost lost consciousness of
myself, and I knew that this was absolute, metaphysical
annihilation. In utter despair I cried out in a voice unlike
my own: 'Out of the deep have I cried unto Thee; O
Lord, hear my prayer.' My whole soul was poured out
in these words. Some powerful hands seized me just
as I was sinking and threw me far away from the abyss.
The shock was sudden and violent. All at once I found
myself in my usual surroundings, in my own room; it
was as though from mystical non-being I was transferred
to ordinary everyday existence. Then I suddenly felt
that I was before the face of God and woke up, bathed in
a cold sweat. Almost four years have passed since then,
but I still shudder at the mention of the words second
1 H. $euse 3 Deutsche Schriften 3 i 3 p. 9 (ed. E. Dicderichs).
5*
Critical Considerations
death, of outer darkness, and of casting out of the kingdom.
Even now I tremble all over when I read., 'Let me not
be alone except in Thee who hast given me my breath,
my life, my gladness, my salvation,' that is, let me not
be in the darkness which is outside of Life, Breath, and
Gladness. And even now with sorrow and excitement I
hear the words of the Psalmist, 'Cast me not away from
thy presence, and take not thy holy spirit from me. 3 "*
If we bring together the opposite extremes of the
absolute fulness of being, and the infernal nearness to
absolute destruction, there is exhibited with particular
brightness the essence of positive and negative values.
The Absolute fulness of the Divine Being is absolute
perfection, worthy of unconditional approval something
of such a character that it not only exists, but is worth
existing. It is Goodness itself, not only in the sense of
morality, but in the all-embracing sense of the word, the
First Principle which Plato called TO ayaOov. It stands
"on the other side of Being," not because It does not
exist, but because there is no distinction between being
and value in It. It is existence as Existing Meaning,
Existing Significance itself. 2 It is impossible to seek any
other definition of the good except that of pointing
to the Good Itself; it is impossible because the Good is
1 P. Florensky, The Pillar and Foundation of Truth (in Russian).
From a translation by Natalie A. Duddington in the Slavonic Review,
iiij No. j y pp. 99, 100. By permission of the Editors.
2 W. Stern defines any intrinsic value (Selbstwert) as "in sich
ruhende Bedeutung, der in sich Erfullung suchende und findende Sinn"
("Meaning that rests in itself; purpose, seeking realization and
finding it in itself," Wert-philosophze, p. 43). He adds that here we
have to use imperfect descriptions to tell about that which is really
*' already indefinable"
59
Value and Existence
primal. It Is the absolute positive value, an intrinsic value
(self-value). Even the smallest derivative good becomes
good only by communing with the Good Itself. Therefore,
our further investigation of values will consist of an
examination of the different moments, ways, and means
of the communion of the world with It. Everything that
is connected in any degree with the Good, that is with
God, as the Absolute Fulness of Being, contains within
itself the justification and worthiness of its existence.
This positive value of that which is connected in any
degree with the Good has, as the symptom of its depen-
dence upon this participation in various ways, an infinite
number of diverse positive feelings the feelings of
pleasure, delight, exaltedness, quietness, belief, hope,
and so on. These feelings make us foretaste the fulness
of bliss of the Divine Being. On the other hand, everything
that is an obstacle to the realization of the Absolute
Fulness of Existence is not worth existing. Such negative
values are expressed symptomatically in the negative
feelings of suffering, repulsion, lowness, insipidness,
dread, restlessness, forsakenness, and so on. These
feelings make us foretaste the extreme sufferings of the
hellish disintegration of being.
In addition to the divine fulness of being as the Good
Itself with positive and negative values thought of as
depending on It, we can also try to imagine a system of
existence in which nothing would have positive or negative
value. Such an imagined indifferent existence we shall
now examine particularly. Its examination will reveal to
us the essential conditions of the possibility of value
in general, and at the same time will deepen our under-
go
Critical Considerations
standing of the nature of value. In making this examina-
tion we shall also find out whether being can really exist
without value a or whether being without value is only
built up in imagination as a subjective project, the product
of a mental experiment. If being cannot exist without
value, then this will mean that the condition of existence
and the conditions of value either correspond or else
are necessarily connected with each other in such a way
that existence must be either of good quality or the
opposite; but it cannot be indifferent.
CHAPTER III
The Conditions that Make Value Possible
I. THE EXISTENCE OF THE SUBSTANTIVAL AGENT
FOR HIMSELF
Let us imagine a world in which everything that exists
should be deprived of existence for itself and existence
for others, i.e. the kind of a world in which there
would be no experience of self and experience of other s^ in
which consciousness would be impossible. Let us imagine a
world consisting of the atoms of Democritus without the
existence in it of living, feeling, and conscious beings.
In such a world there would be nothing except hard
particles that move in space, strike each other by chance,
and rebound. This changes their velocity and direction
of movement, but all these changes occur accidentally,
without sense and without reason. We would have to say
of such existence that it does not exist for itself or for
anybody else. It has no meaning for itself or for anybody
else. It is also clear that it has no value.
Now let us ask ourselves if a world can exist in which
nothing that exists lives for itself and experiences the
existence of others, a world in which nothing has any
meaning for itself or for others. Such a world, as we
find it in the multitude of Democritus' atoms, fails to
possess that particular form of unity by which parts of
the whole, its aspects or elements, are not imprisoned
within the space and time interval which they occupy,
or are not locked in general in their content as separate
62
The Conditions that Make Value Possible
particles, but rather transcend the limits of the space
and time which they occupy as well as their own content
of existence, so that they can exist for themselves and for
others in the form of personal experience and of being
experienced by other beings. Such a world contains
within itself only limited and particular contents of
existence, i.e. contents subordinated to the law of identity,
contradiction, and the excluded middle; such contents
cannot of themselves transcend their own limits. Examin-
ing such contents of existence separately, it is impossible
to understand the transcendence by them of their own
limits, such a transcendence as the experience of them-
selves and experience of them by other beings. We cannot
even understand such a transcendence as the forming of
any kind of relations among them, such as the relations
of proximity, distance, before, after, identity, similarity,
difference, causality, etc. However, apart from these rela-
tions, especially such relations as identity and contra-
diction, these definite, limited contents cannot exist;
they cannot exist on their own account. Hence it follows
that they are not self-sufficient; they presuppose some
other more fundamental being which forms their founda-
tion as definite contents, in accordance with the relation
of identity and contradiction, and realizes them with all
their interrelations in accordance with the forms of
space and time. To avoid a regressus in infinitum, the
ground of these definite contents and their relations,
the ground which lies on a higher level than they, may
be thought of only as a principle that is super-temporal)
super* spatial, and super-logical, i.e. not subordinated to
formal logical definitions, but metalogical. This principle
63
Value and Existence
Is not only ideal, but also concretely-ideal existence. It is
the creative source of real existence, i.e. of events that
have temporal and spatio-temporal existence. 1
In themselves events occupy only a particular interval
of time and a position in space. They can transcend the
limits of a given space and a given time interval (e.g. the
motion of a mass, or the sense of danger) only in so far
as they are so closely connected with a concretely-ideal
existent that they form with it one whole, and existing
in it they are not isolated but are related to each other
and have a meaning for each other. This is possible only
if the concretely-ideal existent creates real processes as
its own manifestations. This concretely-ideal existent is
not only the cause of events, but also their possessor
and bearer.
The concretely-ideal existent as the creative source
and the bearer of its own manifestations may be termed
substance or subject. To make it more concrete and com-
prehensible I will call it the substantival agent.
An example of the substantival agent familiar to each
one of us through direct observation, a subject that
creates real being, is our own "self" or "ego." Each of
my feelings, desires, and actions belongs to the sphere
of the real, i.e. temporal existence, and therefore differs
radically from my ego, which is super-temporal and
super-spatial that is, is concretely-ideal. Indeed, my
feelings appear and later disappear; they have a definite
flow in time. Repulsions that I perform have, besides a
1 By the term ideal existence we indicate everything that has no
spatial and temporal form, by concretely-ideal existence we mean an
ideal existence which produces events and processes, i.e. real
existence.
The Conditions that Make Value Possible
time interval, a particular spatial form as well. But my
ego itself, the cause of these events, has no spatial form;
it is not linear, not a surface, not cubic, etc. Likewise,
my ego has no temporal form; it does not flow in time
as do sensations and desires. It does not appear and
disappear; it is super-temporal; it is a deep-lying inner
existence, while sensations, desires, and actions are only
temporal existence. Nevertheless, feelings, desires, and
actions are most closely connected with the ego. They
are Its manifestations, its experiences. When the ego
creates them, they not only exist, but they exist for that
ego, as that in which the ego lives, and in which the ego
has existence for itself. The ego's experience of itself in
its own manifestations Is something simpler than con-
sciousness in which subject and object are separated and
distinguished through the act of attention. It may be
termed pre-consciousness., because it is a condition which
makes consciousness possible, inasmuch as it already
contains the most important elements of the structure
of consciousness. In particular, pre-consciousness involves
the presence of the ego and the ego's manifestations
characterized by the ego's immanence in all of them.
Hence, every manifestation transcends the limits of its
own being, is immanent in every other, and is a meaning
for the ego.
The structure of existence which consists of the ego
being immanent in all its manifestations, and of them
existing for the ego, is not only pre-consciousness, on the
basis of which consciousness and also purely theoretical
activity may later develop, but it is also pre-feeling.
Indeed, each element of existence is also a value in so
E 65
Value and Existence
far as it Is a factor In the approach or movement away
from the fulness of being. Included in the content of
the life of a subject., each element of existence, together
with its valuable aspect, exists for the subject as some-
thing satisfying or dissatisfying him. In the developed
conscious life of a subject this side of his manifestations
is expressed in more or less complex and diverse feel-
ings > positive or negative, whereas on the lower levels of
life they are expressed in the elementary experience
of accepting or rejecting^ which we termed pre-feeling,
because due to Its simplicity pre-feeling stands lower on
the scale than the conscious feelings of pleasure or dis-
pleasure. Such elementary pre-conscious experiences may
be termed psychoidal to distinguish them from conscious
psychic states.
Thus the existence of manifestations for the subject,
which we called his experiences, is not simply theoretical
but also practical existence for him. This practical
existence is expressed in his feelings, or at least by
something analogous to feelings. 1
In the structure of real existence as we have described
it, created as it is by the substantival agent, there are
included the most important conditions of value, as
the meaningful aspect of existence. These conditions are
the connection between events by means of relation, the
transcendence by events of their own limits, and their
1 In S. Frank's book, The Soul of Man, this moment of experience
is beautifully described; but it is observed as a symptom of the life
of the soul y i.e. as belonging to the psychic sphere. According to my
point of viewj only those responses belong to the psychic or psychoidal
sphere which involve time but possess no spatial form. (Published in
Russian.)
66
The Conditions that Make Value Possible
existence for the agent-subject as his manifestations and
experiences. It is by virtue of tins last condition that
we may speak of the existence of a subject for itself in its
own manifestations.
2. IMMANENCE OF EVERYTHING IN EVERYTHING
We must, however, immediately remind ourselves that
in the world there is not only one, but a multitude of
substantival agents, each one with his own peculiar sphere
of manifestations and experiences. This contention is
established by immediate observation, which shows that
the different events represent manifestations of different
agents. For example, if I am holding up a heavy book
of music for an artist and listen to his singing,, I imme-
diately observe that attention is my manifestation, that
singing is the manifestation of the artist, and that the
pressure on my hand comes from the book.
The fact that many manifestations are directed against
one another,, that they possess a character of conflicting
opposition and mutual oppression, serves as an indirect
confirmation of the presence of many substantival agents.
Such, for example, are the manifestations of hatred
among people; such are the phenomena of physical
mutual repulsion in space, etc.
Manifestations of different substantival agents are not
isolated one from another. The real existence which an
agent creates is correlated not only with other manifesta-
tions of the same agent, but with all the manifestations
of other agents, forming one cosmos. The common
framework of this cosmos is space, time, number, etc.,
forms in accordance with which each agent realizes his
Value and Existence
manifestations. The principles of these forms are non-
temporal and non-spatial; consequently they are ideal
principles. These principles are the subject-matter of
the study of logic and mathematics. They differ from
concretely-ideal principles, i.e. from substantival agents,
by their limited definiteness, passiveness, and depen-
dence. Indeed, these principles cannot form events by
themselves, but only in so far as substantival agents
create their manifestations in accordance with these
principles. Therefore we can designate them as abstractly-
ideal principles. They are numerically the same for all sub-
stantival agents. Consequently, agents in their existence
are not isolated from each other. Each agent possesses
his own creative power of action; but all agents together,
as bearers of the same abstractly-ideal principles, are
welded into a unit. This welding together of them may
be called their consubstantiality.
The welding together of the agents of our kingdom
of existence is profoundly different from that concrete
unity which is thought of in the Christian dogma of the
consubstantiality of the three Persons of the Holy Trinity,
who lovingly accept and adopt all of each other's content,
and therefore live unanimously. The consubstantiality
which we discovered in the world creates only abstract
forms of unity, or the general framework of the cosmos.
This general framework might contain the unanimity of
love, inimical conflicting opposition, or unions egoistically
based on the common advantage. Therefore such con-
substantiality may be called abstract consubstantiality. 1
1 As to the meaning of the concept of consubstantiality in the
metaphysics that deals with the existence of the world 3 see The Pillar
68
The Conditions that Make Value Possible
Because of this welding together of the substantival
agents in the form of abstract consubstantiality, the
manifestations of each agent are correlated not only
among themselves, but also with the manifestations of
all other agents. Moreover, they are coordinated in such
a manner that they exist not only for that agent who
creates them as his own experience, but also for all other
agents: in the world everything is immanent in every-
thing else.
Each agent's transcendence of the limits of his own
manifestations and his embracing of all other agents
and their manifestations is still not consciousness of
the outer world, but it is an important condition for
the development of such consciousness. Therefore it
maybe called pre-consciousness (supra, p. 65). Due to this
structure of existence the origination of consciousness
and knowledge is possible on the higher levels of the
development of life. Also in theoretical activity there is
the possibility of intuition, the act of immediate con-
templation and knowledge of the being of others ; and in
the practical life of feeling and will we have the possi-
bility of sympathy and love that is, taking to heart the
experiences of others and struggling for them as if they
were our own. But from the same source there also
arises a possibility of that deep antipathy and hatred
which are turned directly against the very roots of the
life of some other being. On the lower levels of life this
and Foundation of Truth of Father P. Florensky (in Russian). Father
Florensky's book is translated in part in Hans Ehrenberg's Ostliches
Christentum, ii, pp. 28 if. For the differentiation of the two kinds
of consubstantiality and application of these concepts to the cosmos^
see my book The World as an Organic Whole.
69
Value and Existence
practical relation manifests itself as a lamentable psychoidal
acceptance or rejection of another being, an acceptance
or rejection which may be called pre-feeling.
3. GOD AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD
The world cannot contain the cause of its own being
within itself, even though it consists of agents self-
sufficient in so far as they create their manifestations in
space and time., because these agents are connected by
the relative consubstantiality which conditions a single
form of space, time, etc. It presupposes a single creative
source of its origin which causes agents to be members
of one system of relations. This source of the world can
be thought of only as a Super-Systemic, Super-Cosmic
Principle, incommensurate with the world. Indeed, if It
were connected with the world simply by the relation
of partial identity and contradiction. It would be a
member of the system, and again the question would arise
as to a higher principle conditioning this system. 1
The Super-Cosmic Principle is given in religious
experience as a Living Personal God. However, this
produces no contradiction between reflective thought
and religious experience. The principle which is incom-
mensurate with the world certainly must be super-
personal, but this does not prevent it from assuming also
the character of personal being, especially in relation to
the world. Its difference from the existence of the world
still remains indubitable: a personal existent of the world
cannot become higher than its personal form; it is a
personality. On the contrary, the Super-Cosmic Principle
1 See my book The World as an Organic Whole, chap. v.
70
The Conditions that Make Value Possible
possesses personal existence, but is not limited to it. And
if in Revelation it is described as Three Persons, our
thought can accept this assertion, not trying, of course,
to prove it, but trying only to comprehend it within the
idea of a Super-personal Principle, to whom Personal
existence is also accessible.
The super-philosophic idea of the personal life of the
Trinity in the absolute fulness of Divine existence is of
the utmost importance for all fundamental philosophical
problems, and also for the problem of value. Indeed, the
life of the Holy Trinity, the life of God the Father,
God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost is a "unity
without fusion, a difference without discrepancy," as
N. F. Fyodoroff put it. 1 The individual uniqueness of
each of these three Persons is the source of Their mutual
enrichment, and not of Their oppression and impoverish-
ment, because in Their intercourse concrete consubstan-
tiality is fully realized. The Three Persons of the Holy
Trinity, due to their perfect mutual love, full mutual
acceptance, and complete mutual self-surrender, realize
a perfect unanimity of spirit which creates the richness
and fulness of their common life. The Divine life in its
composition and content is a prototype of all the aspects
of good in our earthly being. Theologians comprehend
this profound significance of the Trinity for life by cold
philosophical meditation, but the saints immediately
experience the life-giving significance of the dogma in
their religious experience. St. Sergius of Radonega, on
the site of the future monastery, built the first Church
1 N. F. FyodorofE, Philosophy of the Common Task) 2nd ed. (in
Russian).
Value and Existence
of the Holy Name of the Life-Giving Trinity as a symbol
of unity in love, so that the people looking at this symbol
would conquer in themselves the division of the world
due to hate. The Trinity, as Love, and as the expression
of the corporate unity of the Absolute Subject, was the
object of immediate contemplation of the saint. 1
The abstract consuhtantiality of substantival agents
makes possible the voluntary realization by them of
concrete consubstantiality . Due to abstract consubstantiality
everything is immanent in everything else. All the mani-
festations of every substantival agent possess meaning
not only for him, but also for all other agents as well.
All that exists in the world complements the sphere of
life of each being, enriches or impoverishes it, helps or
counteracts it. Everything that enters the sphere of the
life of a subject is not received indifferently, but produces
in him a reaction of feeling, or at least something analogous
to feeling in the form of acceptance or rejection. The
creative activity of the substantival agent which is realized
on the ground of the structure of the existence that has
been discovered has a purposive character, and one that
works towards some end. Being super-temporal, the agent
is able to foretaste the valuable future as a possibility.
He is able to develop conscious desire and feeling, or at
least a psychoidal striving for it, and in accordance with
this striving to perform actions in the present, for the
sake of the future and on the basis of past experience
("the historical basis of reaction," to use the terminology
of Driesch).
1 See Father S. BulgakofFs "The Beneficent Covenants of St.
Sergius to Russian Theology/' Puti> 1926, No. 5 (in Russian).
72
The Conditions that Make Value Possible
Desire, and the activity which works toward some end,
can be directed only to the realization of the positive
value foretasted. The strivings for relative, derivative,
or instrumental values are caused in the end by some
deeper longing, by the final fundamental attraction for
absolute intrinsic value. Such final intrinsic value, which
contains all positive values and in which there is no
separation of value and existence is the absolute fulness
of being. Its symptom is a feeling of complete satis-
faction, bliss. This absolute fulness of being is the real
and final goal of every activity of every being. But it is
given in God, and is God; consequently every being
strives to participate in the divine fulness of existence; it
strives for deification.
The theory of the striving of the world to God, as
the absolutely valuable principle, is very common in
philosophy. According to Aristotle, the world as a whole
strives in love toward God as its final goal (see, for
example, Metaph., xii (L) 7, 1072). Dionysius the Areo-
pagite (Pseudo-Dionysius) asserts that everything aspires
to the Absolute which is the basis of perfection of every
being (Concerning the Divine Names, i, 6, 7). A similar
theory is developed by St. Maximus the Confessor (for
example, De ambiguis, chap, xxxvii). St. Augustine says:
"Res igitur, quibus fruendum e$t> Pater et Filius et Spiritus
Sanctus, eademque Trinitas, una quaedam summa res,
communisque omnibus fruentibus ea" (De doctrina chris-
tiana, bk. i, chap, v, 5)- By the word Jrui he under-
stands: "amore alicui rd inhaerere propter seipsam" ("to
seek something for its own sake"; see also chap, iv, 4).
Albertus Magnus, referring to Aristotle and Dionysius
73
Value and Existence
the Areopagite 3 says that God Is "the final goal desired
by everybody." "The Divine good is the goal of every-
body"; even a stone "strives to be one; in the unity of
its parts lies its preservation, and this unity is a shadow
of the first principle which preserves and which in itself
preserves and unites." All common cases of good are
derivative from the fundamental. Thus,, the goals nearer
us are different, but the final goal is the same (Summa
theologica, pt. i, tr. xiii, qu. 55,, memb. 3). According to
the teachings of St. Thomas Aquinas^ God is the final
goal of men and of all conscious beings; so far as uncon-
scious beings are concerned. He is their final goal only
in so far as they "have something in common with God"
(similitude, but not imago Dei, Summa theologica, pt. ii, i,
qu. i, art. viii). Johannes Scotus Erigena sees the end
of history in the state where "every being will reunite
with the Creator and will be one in Him and with Him"
without destruction and mixture of matter and substance
(De divisione naturae, bk. v, 20),
In modern philosophy we find numerous examples of
similar theories. I will only mention Vladimir Solovyof,
who in his Justification of the Good indicates the theory
that the fundamental stages of evolution are steps as the
means of ascent to the Kingdom of God (chap, ix, 4). 1
As far as man is concerned, the theory that the true
and final goal is deification (6ea)ais) is accepted by
almost all the Fathers of the Church who touched upon
this question, especially by the Eastern Fathers.
1 See my article, "V. Solovyofs Theory of Evolution/' Journal
of the Russian People's University > Prague, 1931. (In Russian. This
article appears in German in Festschrift Th. G. Masaryk zum 80
Gebunstage> Erster Teil.)
74
The Conditions that Make Value Possible
4. LOVE AND FREEDOM
An agent who stands in a relation of conflicting
opposition to other agents,, exhibiting strivings that by
their very nature disagree with the strivings of other
agents, i.e. egoistically exclusive strivings, actualizes a
very poor content of existence, for he must rely upon
his own isolated power alone. Instead of the absolute
fulness, there appears an extreme scantiness of being.
An extreme degree of this scantiness, known to modern
science, is the existence of the isolated electron. A way
of escape from the condition of isolation and scantiness
may be achieved in so far as two or more substantival
agents accept and adopt at least a few of each other's
strivings; at least in a few relations cease conflicting
opposition against each other, and combine their powers
of action together. The unity and the integral character
of the mutual action can be understood only as the
acquisition by several agents of strivings more complex
and rich in content than their own. These are the strivings
of an agent who exceeds them in his creative and inventive
abilities, and with him they form a union for a more or
less long period of time. Each agent then becomes similar
to an organ for the carrying out of some side of the
mutual activity. An example of such unions would be:
the unification of electrons and protons which makes the
atom, next the molecule, then the cell, the multi-celled
organism, society, etc., and finally the universe as a
whole. Due to the coordination of their powers, each
new level of unification shows a higher, more complex,
and more diverse activity than that of the preceding
75
Value and Existence
stages. On the ground of abstract consubstantiality higher
and higher levels of concrete consubstantiality are thus
gradually realized.
The highest level of concrete consubstantiality is
attained by means of uniting with God, and God uniting
with the whole world. This union may become perfect
in no other way than on the ground of love for God and
for all the beings of the world., because love alone is the
perfect acceptance and adoption of the existence of
others. Agents, impregnated with perfect love for God
and for all the world;, form the Kingdom of God, in
which they reach the absolute fulness of being and the
utmost limit of perfection.
Love is possible only as the voluntary manifestation
of an agent. Any constrained acceptance of the existence
of others arises either from prudential motives, or from
fear, or due to some egoistical striving in general. Hence,
such acceptance can be only partial^ since any egoistical
manifestation is a partial existence, one not embracing
the whole fulness of being.
Therefore freedom, together with love, is also a neces-
sary condition of the absolute fulness of being and the
finality of perfection. Only a free being may be perfect.
So there arises an important question for ontology as
to whether the substantival agents possess freedom or
not. This most difficult problem in philosophy requires
a special investigation; this I have made in my book
Freedom of the Will. In it I prove the freedom of the
substantival agent by developing the dynamic theory of
causality according to which the origination of any event
is a creative act of an agent and is in no way forced by
76
The Conditions that Make Value Possible
the external conditions. Everything that exists or happens
outside the agent is only a stimulus for the manifestation
of his creative activity, but cannot be the cause of changes
in him. As far as the agent himself is concerned, all the
qualitative distinctions which pertain to him, e.g. his
character, are something derivative from his own activity.
Beyond them stands the super-qualitative creative power
of the agent creating qualitatively definite events. Thus,
an agent determines events, but is not determined by them.
The freedom of agents, as an essential condition of the
possibility of love, and hence of the perfection of the
divine fulness of being, is at the same time the condition
that makes possible evil in the world. The fundamental
primary choice of the way of life by substantival agents
lies in the fact that in striving towards the absolute
fulness of life some of them manifest an unselfish love
for this perfection in God, and becoming members of
the Kingdom of God, commune with the fulness of His
being through harmonious activity with Him and with
all the members of His Kingdom; they become worthy
of deification. Other agents set out to reach the absolute
fulness of being, fully or partly outside of God, by way
of activity in accordance with their own plan and choice.
On this path are realized extremely variable and different
levels of apostacy from God, and of egoistical exclusion.
Investigating the conditions that make values possible,
we have arrived at several of the fundamental contentions
of the metaphysical system developed in my book, The
World as an Organic Whole. There I call the Kingdom
of God or the kingdom of love also the Kingdom of the
Spirit, while the realm of beings who exist in a condition
77
Value and Existence
of apostacy from God I term the kingdom of enmity,
or kingdom of psycho-physical being. Holding the
dynamic theory of matter, I defended in that book the
theory that the physical processes of repulsion which
create impenetrable extended bodies come into being on
the ground of psychic and psychoidal strivings, strivings
that contain at least in part an egoistical moment. Thus,
impenetrable (relatively impenetrable) matter is the con-
sequence of falling away from God and from the kingdom
of perfect love. The members of the Kingdom of God
are far from any manifestations of egoism; they do not
commit acts of repulsion and therefore do not possess
impenetrable bodies. Their transfigured spirit-bearing
bodies consist of only such aesthetic spatial contents as
light, sound, warmth, odour, etc., which are inter-
penetrative. In the Kingdom of God, therefore, there is
realized not only a perfect unanimity of spirit, but also a
perfect intercourse of bodies. 1
By the words "spirit" and "spiritual" I indicate here
all those ideal foundations of the world, concrete and
abstract, which serve as the condition of the possibility
of the Kingdom of God, and also all those processes
having special form which contain no egoistical exclusion
and hence, even though building a spatial, spirit-bearing
1 See my article, "The Resurrection of the Body/' Puti, 1931.
The theory that the impenetrable body is the consequence of falling
away from God is often met in philosophy in different forms. It is
developed, for example, by Origen, Erigena (De divisions naturae*
bk. ii, 9); in modern philosophy by Renouvier and V. Solovyof. In
the form of a psychological and subjective theory of matter it is
found in Christian Science, which particularly stresses that matter
is an illusionary concept conditioned by our egoism. In Russian
literature it is found in the philosophy of P. N. Nikolaieff, Research
as to the Nature of our Consciousness.
78
The Conditions that Make Value Possible
body, form a unity possessing an aspect of highly organic
wholeness. In the Kingdom of the Spirit: (i) every part
exists for the whole, (2) the whole exists for every part,
and (3) each part is the whole in some particular aspect
of it.
This structure of the Kingdom of God necessarily
leads us to the concept of individual existence as the
most important condition, as well as a very essential
moment of perfection. So now we will turn to the
examination of the nature of individual existence.
5. INDIVIDUAL EXISTENCE
The individual is that which possesses uniqueness in
being and in value. This uniqueness cannot be re-
duplicated in the world. That which is individual is
singular and irreplaceable*
Two types of individual must be distinguished: the
individual event and the individual being or individual.
The first belongs to the realm of the real; the second to
the realm of ideal being. Besides the characteristics of
singularity and irreplaceableness, the concept of indi-
vidual includes also the characteristic of indivisibility.
The indivisibility which we here have in mind is not
relative indivisibility (for example, the relative indivisi-
bility which Rickert has in mind when he says that the
Koh-i-noor diamond can, of course, be split into a
multitude of pieces, but that individual which bears the
proper name Koh-i-noor then will be no more), but
1 The valuable aspect of the individual^ precisely its irreplaceable-
ness, is presented by Rickert. See also some considerations concerning
it in G. D. Gurvitch's Fichtes System der konkreten Ethik.
79
Value and Existence
we have in mind absolute indivisibility. It belongs to that
existence which cannot be split into pieces by any power
or by any means. Such is the absolute indivisibility that
is thought of, for example, in Leibniz's concept of the
monad;, or Democritus' atom.
The contentions stated contain only a hypothetical
definition of the individual In the traditional logic such
a definition is called nominal. In the nominal definition
we have in mind an object not as it is discovered to be,
but only as it is supposed to be. Now we must decide
whether we can transform this definition into a categoric
(real) definition, i.e. show that objects fitting this defini-
tion really exist in the world. 1
We will try to obtain a solution of this problem by
using as our starting-point the concept of value; although,
since this is a fundamental problem, it may also be
solved in many other ways. Values exist only in correla-
tion with the absolute fulness of being, which we have
already decided is the absolute intrinsic value, containing
within itself the coincidence of value and existence. The
absolute fulness of being is something singular and
irreplaceable by any other value, i.e. it is individual.
We have only to decide whether this individual principle
belongs to the composition of being only as a possibility,
or whether it is already a realized actuality.
The values of the world's existence, as well as the
world's existence itself, exist only on the ground of a
Super-Cosmic principle, and this Principle, in so far as
it is God, is the absolute fulness of being. Thus, at least
1 As to nominal (hypothetical) and real (categoric) defimtions> see
my Logik> 51.
80
The Conditions that Make Value Possible
one individual principle, that is, God, exists not only as
a possibility, but as an actuality.
According to the Christian Revelation this absolute
fulness of being is not one but three individual prin-
ciples : God the Father, God the Son (Logos), and God
the Holy Spirit. This, however, does not mean that
there are three specimens of the absolute fulness of
being. The three individual principles in the Christian
dogma are thought of as impregnated with perfect love
for each other and consequently as participating fully in
each other's life, so that the absolute fulness of their
existence is something that is united and is singular. It
cannot be expressed adequately in the categories of the
world orders the words existence, individual, etc., are
used in application to it in an impersonal sense only by
analogy. The forms of space and time are likewise
unnecessary for this sphere: the Divine fulness of being
is also fulness without action in time.
In the composition of the world, substantival agents,
bearers of super-qualitative creative power in themselves,
do not constitute the absolute fulness of being. Meaning-
ful existence is reached by them only by way of creative
activity in time, i.e. by way of realizing the real being
that possesses qualities. This activity cannot be reduced
merely to an act of contemplation directed on God, and
upon the manifestations of other agents as alien existences.
Such a communion of the agent with the life of others
from outside, only by way of contemplation, would not
be in him a personal experience of the absolute fulness
of being as his own being. Meaningful existence may be
reached only by way of personal creative activity which
F 81
Value and Existence
is meaningful. This creative activity, however., must not
be isolated., but must be a combination of the creative
power of the agent with the power of the Lord God
and all other agents in so far as they follow the course
of perfect union with God, i.e. in so far as they have
love for God. Such a creative activity on the part of
many agents on the ground of the loving acceptance of
the existence of each other is a collective building of the
single whole. In it the fulness of being as the personal
experience of each of the participants in the building of
the whole is realized. This is not a second specimen
of the absolute fulness of being, standing beside the
Divine fulness of being: this is the fulness of Divine
being with the active collective participation of all God's
creatures within it.
The falling away of many agents from God does not
lead to diminution of the fulness of being of the Kingdom
of God. Where the Divine eternity of life lies at the base,
the joining to it or separation from it of single units
does not produce increase or diminution. This joining
or separation is an infinite gain or an infinite loss to the
created agent, but not to God and the Kingdom of God.
The fulness of being in the Kingdom of God is not
a super-temporal repose. On the contrary, the members
of this Eongdom manifest the highest degree of creative
activity, building infinitely complex new contents of
existence all the time, however, without the oblivion of
the absolutely valuable creations already made by them,
and with the potential presence of the future in the
present. In virtue of this immanence of the past and the
future in the present the fulness of existence in the
82
The Conditions that Make Value Possible
Kingdom of God suffers no diminution from the temporal
form of its real aspect. 1
Every creative act in the Kingdom of God contributes
to the composition of the Kingdom an infinitely complex
new individual content, i.e. it represents something
original that cannot be duplicated and has irreplaceable
value within the limits of the world's existence. Indeed,
every manifestation of the agent in the Kingdom of God
possesses a character of active co-participation with the
collective creative activity of all other agents, which is
possible only by the contributing of a unique new action,
correlated with all other contents in such a way as to
form together with them one whole. In the Kingdom
of the Spirit where there is complete interpenetration
and where there is no oblivion, the repetition of what is
already accomplished or is being accomplished would
have no meaning for others or for the agent who is
acting. Repetitions would have meaning only under the
condition of a greater or less isolation of agents, i.e. in
the kingdom of psycho-physical being. Thus, real pro-
cesses can be fully individual only in the Kingdom of
the Spirit. Since they are in the state of harmonious
correlation with all other events, each of them possesses
its peculiar destination and meaning in the whole, irre-
placeable by any other events of the world. According
to the definition of Frank, "the individual or unique
being is something that is wholly or completely definite,
1 As to the purposiveness of oblivion, i.e. partial death in the
kingdom of psycho-physical being, and as to the impossibility of
oblivion in the Kingdom of God, where every act is a realization of
an absolute value, and as to the peculiar typ e of time in tiie King dom
of God, see my book, The World as an Organic Whole, chap. vi.
83
Value and Existence
precisely in the sense that it is defined (in contrast to
the logical, i.e. common definitiveness) not only by the
super-temporal aspect of the all-embracing totality, but
also by the concrete all-embracing totality in all its
wholeness." 1
All actions of the members of the Kingdom of God
are individual, and, consequently, the agents of this
Kingdom themselves are individuals. Each one of them
has, because of his activity, a particular meaning for the
whole; and also each one of them, being super-temporal,
is absolutely indivisible.
The character of the individuality of the substantival
agent is due not only to his activities, but also to his
ideal essence. As a matter of fact every action in time
and space represents the realization of a corresponding
idea. 2 Thus the particular participation of the agent in
the collective creative building of the Kingdom of God
is expressed in his individual idea. This idea determines
the place of the agent in the Kingdom of God; it deter-
mines his destiny in the world; his destiny the reaching
of which is accompanied by his deification. Consequently
such an individual idea is an "image of God" inherent
in the individual. As an individual aspect of the collective
union of the individual with all other individuals which
are independent of him, it can be only the protoplastic
"thought" of the Creator concerning the individual
whom He creates. The individual's freedom of action is
not trammelled by this ideal of his essence: the individual
1 S. Frank, Predmet Znania (The Object of Knowledge), p. 415.
2 As to the ideal bases of real existence, see my book, Sensory,
Intellectual) and Mystic Intuition (soon to appear in print).
84
The Conditions that Make Value Possible
Idea is not the natural, but is the normative essence of
the agent. He may voluntarily accept it for his guidance
and work to realize it, but he may also reject the ideal
of its realization. 1
An agent who has fallen away from the Kingdom of
God does not lose his individual idea and his formal
freedom: he remains a potential member of the Kingdom
of God. Thus the whole world consists of individual
substantival agents. Now we have only to discover the
nature of their activities in the psycho-physical kingdom
of being; we have only to find out whether their activities
possess an individual character.
In our kingdom of being many actions are repeated
many times over and with depressing monotony. They
contain within themselves not only a moment of positive,
but also a moment of negative value, and one may be
replaced by another due to their impoverished positive
value. Even if we do speak of the individual character
of actions in this world, still it will prove to be a
uniqueness which is profoundly different from the indi-
viduality of actions in the Kingdom of God. In most of
the processes of a psycho-physical being a content which
becomes predominant is not an individual content, but
one that can be replaced or repeated many times over.
And this is not surprising. Agents of the psycho-physical
kingdom realize strivings which are more or less egoisti-
cally exclusive. They are in a relation of isolation and
conflicting opposition to the great majority of other
agents. Their actions do not at all represent the infinitely
1 See Freedom of the Will, chap, vi, 4, "Man's Freedom from
His Own Character."
Value and Existence
meaningful aspect of the collective fulness of being.
Being correlated with only a part of the content of
other agents., excluded as they are from the whole, their
actions are abstracted and possess an impoverished,
diminished character* In this sense even a concrete
event in the psycho-physical kingdom is a mere abstrac-
tion in comparison with the fulness of being in the
Kingdom of God. Because of its egoistic character and
conflicting opposition to its medium, such an action
cannot and should not be the object of complete co-
participation, i.e. an object of full experience for other
agents who are outside of the union of agents who per-
formed it (outside of the given atom, molecule, organism,
society, etc.). But because of its simplified character (due
to its separation from the universal whole) such an action
may be repeated by other agents for their own sake, and
partly in opposition to other agents through imitation
or by Independent invention. Thus the more an indivi-
dual agent withdraws from the collective combination
of powers^ and the more he relies only upon his own
creative power alone, the less he is able to realize his
irreplaceable individuality, and to manifest himself as a
unique, creatively original being. The greater his exclu-
sive self-containment is, the greater then the impoverish-
ment of his activities becomes, and the nearer will be
his approach to the state where his actions can be expressed
in an aggregate of general abstract concepts. The most
extreme level of isolation known to us, that of the isolated
electron, leads to the very elementary actions of repulsion
and attraction which can be repeated a multitude of times
in the same form. Instead of fulness there appears
86
The Conditions that Make Value Possible
poverty; instead of complete independence and freedom
there is an extreme dependence upon the external stimuli
for action and the downfall of positive material freedom^
i.e. the downfall of creative activity?-
The way of escape from this impoverished state of life
is achieved by way of evolution: agents, at least partially,
cease conflicting opposition to each other and enter into
unions which gradually become more and more complex.
In these unions agents of the lower levels of development
adopt the strivings of a more highly developed agent and
combine their powers for the realization of his strivings
under his direction. They become organs of a united
and more or less complex whole. Thus an atom comes
into being, then a molecule, a unicellular organism, a
multi-cellular organism, society, etc. Each successive
level represents the invention of a new and higher type
of existence, making possible more meaningful and
diverse life, richer in creative activities.
In the kingdom of psycho-physical being, compara-
tively poor in creative inventiveness, almost every such
new form of life becomes an object of imitation and
becomes a more or less common type of life: first there
is existence in the form of oxygen, hydrogen, carbon,
etc., then existence in the form of molecules of water,
molecules of carbonic acid, etc., then existence in the
form of the particular species of plants, animals, etc.
Each new level we have enumerated in the succession
of life produces manifestations which are less and less
definable by bringing them under a general concept: the
1 As to the concept of positive material freedom in distinction
from the freedom which is only formal^ see Freedom of the Will.
87
Value and Existence
individual character of the manifestations becomes more
and more prominent. We can look upon such a process
of evolution as a gradual re-acquiring by the agent of
the ability to realize his individuality. Evolution is a
series of steps in the individuation of life. However, not
every line of evolution has the character of a true ascent
to the fulness of being. Substantival agents create new
forms of life by means of voluntary creative acts : they
may also enter upon paths that lead into blind alleys
or lead to the substitution of quantitative richness for
qualitative diversity. Such, for example, is one of the
temptations of parasitism. Or after a series of pseudo-
enrichments of personal life the paths may lead to
especially grave forms of disruption, due to their inner
contradictions. 1
However, no matter how high the attained level of
individuation may be, still as long as there remains some
form of disruption, some form of isolation of agents and
their actions, with it there remains also the possibility
of the repetition of essential aspects of the action. There-
fore everything that belongs to the kingdom of psycho-
physical being may be classified^ can be brought under
general concepts and distributed into species, genera,
and families. It is only in the Kingdom of God that
such classification under general concepts loses all mean-
ing, because classification does not express the essence
of its different aspects.
Actions are repeated not only by different agents, but
1 See my articles, "The Limits of Evolution," in the Journal of
Philosophical Studies, London, October 1927, and "The Nature of
Satan According to Dostoevsky," in Dostoevsky, i, Red. Doleenin,
Petrograd, 1922 (in Russian).
88
The Conditions that Make Value Possible
also by the same agent. The first class of repetitions is
due to the disruption of the collective unity of agents,
and the second class to the disruptions in the life of
each separate agent.
Indeed^, actions containing in themselves even the very
least moment of egoistic exclusiveness and, consequently,
the very least moment of conflicting opposition to other
agents., do not give the fulness of existence; they are one-
sided in their content and in their value. Therefore they
lead only in part to satisfaction and in part they lead to
disappointment. Their complementation by a simple
simultaneous combination with other reciprocal one-
sided contents is impossible. Since they are connected
with conflicting opposition these one-sided contents
stand not only in the relation of ideal opposition to each
other, but also in the relation of real mutual exclusion.
Moreover, even different compatible contents, i.e. those
which are in the relation of only an ideal opposition to
each other and not of real mutual exclusion, frequently
cannot be realized simultaneously by the agent because
his creative powers are limited, in so far as he is isolated
from other agents. 1 Therefore, having experienced a
one-sided satisfaction, the agent removes the experience
to the realm of the past by oblivion and by changing
not infrequently to an opposite one-sided content, e.g.
from busy life in society to concentrated solitude. Later
he again returns to the first type of activity, etc. Not
only the separate actions of the agent, but whole systems
1 As to the differentiation of ideal opposition from real opposition^
connected as it is with self-exclusion 3 see The World as an Organic
Whole s chap. iv.
Value and Existence
of life., and whole types, e.g. types of plants, animals,
societies, and historical epochs, may possess the character
of such one-sided opposition.
Returning periodically to his former activities, an
individual does not simply repeat them, but sometimes
he perfects them in accordance with his creative inven-
tive ability in the sense of attaining a somewhat greater
fulness of content. Usually, however, these changes are
insignificant, so that the type of action remains the same.
Any considerable step forward in the achieving of the
fulness of content usually requires the removal of certain
forms of egoistic exclusiveness and the transition to a
new type of life, to a higher level of it.
Actions and types of life that can be repeated do not
contain within themselves the fulness of being, and,
consequently, always contain in themselves, beside posi-
tive, also negative values. Therefore not their whole
concrete content but only some moments of their content
serve as the object of striving, the purpose of action.
If the totality of their value moments is the content of
a general concept under which we may bring the given
object (action, or a being with a certain type of life, etc.),,
then, from the point of view of a given purpose, one
particular object may be replaced by another object of
the same class, one loaf of white bread by another, one
soldier by another in the constructing of a pontoon
bridge, one professor of mathematics by another, etc.
In relation to a definite purpose, comparatively poor in
content, separate objects are viewed not as individual
existences but as specimens of the class which may be
replaced by each other. Sometimes an individual prefers
90
The Conditions that Make Value Possible
to value even himself by his general qualities. Thus there
are people who even in personal unofficial intercourse
prefer to be called not by their name but by indication
of their title,, rank, or office. The weakening of the
realization of individual personal being, due for instance
to timidness, may reach the pathological form of the
appearance of a double, which really or imaginarily
crowds the individual himself out of life. 1
May we say of objects that can be substituted for each
other that they still are individual, if we take them as
singular concrete wholes? The fall of the rain-drop, or,
still simpler, the movement of this electron the distance
of one centimetre is a particular event. But does it fit
into the concept of an individual event? The whole
content of such a simple event may be expressed in a
general concept, and therefore clearly does not contain
in itself anything singular or unrepeatably unique. How-
ever, if we add to the content of its existence its relation
to other objects, then it will appear that every event has
a singular, unrepeatable place in the universe. This
means we add its exact position in time and space, and
also its possession by this or that particular agent, who,
as was already said, even in the state of apostacy is still
an individual, due to its normative idea. Moreover, since
the whole stream of life in the universe forms a single
1 See B. Visheslavtsey's "The Meaning of the Heart in Religion/'
Puti> 1925, No. i. As to the problem of a double and its connection
with problems of concrete ethics 3 see investigation by D. I.
Tschizevsky, "On the Problem of the Double/* in the book About
Dostoevsky" i, the collection of articles under the redaction of
A. Bern. See also the article by S. Hessen, "The Tragedy of the
Good in the Brothers Karamasoff by Dostoevsky/* Contemporary
Annals, 1928 (in Russian).
Value and Existence
whole, then every event in connection with the setting
in which it happens (the place of the happening) possesses
a particular meaning, i.e. an irreplaceable value for the
whole stream of universal life. Thus any particular
concrete event, even in the psycho-physical kingdom, is
individual. However, there exists a profound difference
between the character of individuality in the Kingdom
of God and the character of individuality in the psycho-
physical kingdom. In the Kingdom of God the individual
character of the event is determined from within by its
whole content, a content that has a character of embracing
the whole world, whereas in the kingdom of psycho-
physical being the individual character of an event is
conditioned ultimately from the outside, by its form, or,
to put it precisely by its position within the whole. Let
us call the first type of individuality absolutely individual^
and the second type relatively individual. In the com-
position of the first there are no moments of negative
value; in the composition of the second there is always
a combination of positive and negative values.
The profound difference between concrete ideal-
realism and the rational systems of philosophy is con-
tained in the theory of the principle of individuation
which we have expounded. According to the rational
systems, the highest primordial bases of existence are
the general essences, the genera and the species. From
the essence of the species individuals are derived as
something wholly derivative, by a multiplication of the
essence, due to the irrational principle of the lower order,
e.g. because of matter that adopts repeatedly one and
the same essence of the species (species-foxm) and realizes
92
The Conditions that Make Value Possible
it in different parts of space and the different periods of
time. Thus the individual is reduced to the level of being
a representative specimen of the species.
According to concrete ideal-realism, on the contrary,
first-created being is composed of individual substantival
agents. Each of them possesses an inherent individual
normative idea of God as its first-created and world-
embracing haecceitas (this-ness). Only in the state of
apostacy from God and isolation from other agents does
the individual lose the ability to manifest his individuality
in all its fulness and reduce his life to the level of the
realization of a general idea, temporarily transmuting
himself into a specimen of some species, genus, etc.
Absolutely individual creative activity, original in
content, unrepeatable and irreplaceable by any other
existence of the world, is a realization of the image of
God, inherent in the substantival agent, building in him
the likeness of God, accompanied by deification by grace;
this is active co-participation in the absolute fulness of
being of God and the Kingdom of God.
This highest level of creative activity is reached by
the path of love for God and for all His creatures, but
not by egoistic self-containment. Thus absolutely indi-
vidual being is not evil but good it is the highest positive
value. The identification of personal individual unique-
ness with evil, as, e.g., in Buddhism, is the consequence
of a misunderstanding; it is the consequence of con-
fusing individual originality with egoistic exclusiveness,
self-containment, and conflicting opposition to other
beings. To avoid such confusion we should accurately
distinguish ideal differentiating opposition from real
93
Value and Existence
opposition. Ideal differentiating opposition, not being
complicated by real opposition, gives us contents of
being, compatible with each other and interpenetrating
each other like the different tones of a musical chord;
it is a condition of the perfect fulness of being.
6. PERSONALITY. THE SPIRITUAL FOUNDATIONS
OF EXISTENCE
The most important condition of the possibility of
values in the world we have found to be the existence of
substantival agents, each one of which is an individual
possessing a unique idea of God as a normative essence.
Each agent possesses a super-qualitative creative power
which he can voluntarily exercise for the realization of
his normative idea, and in so doing can become
worthy of being a member of the Kingdom of God. An
agent who has comprehended absolute values and the
duty of realizing them in his behaviour is a personality.
Even in the condition of the fall, even on the level of
the electron, the atom, the molecule, the substantival
agent still preserves all those data, the correct utilization
of which may elevate him to the level of personal existence.
Therefore even in such a low state an agent, although
not a personality, still is a potential personality. Indeed,
even on the lowest levels of existence an agent is an
individual being, capable by means of purposive creative
activity of rising gradually to higher levels, up to the
level of actual personal existence.
Thus personality is the central ontological element
of the world: the fundamental existence is the substan-
tival agent, i.e. a potential personality or an actual
94
The Conditions that Make Value Possible
personality. Everything else, that is, the abstract ideas
and real processes, exists either as belonging to or else
as something derivative from the activity of potentially-
personal and actually-personal agents. Indeed, non-
substantial entities, such as e.g. a dead branch of a
plant, or such as a machine, utensil, etc., are derivative
from the activity of potentially-personal and actually-
personal agents : the dead branch was originally an organ
of a living plant, the machine was built by man. More-
over, each one of these non-substantial entities, even a
machine, consists of a multitude of substantival agents,
molecules, atoms, which are potentially-personal beings.
A philosophical system that asserts the basic and
central position of personal existence in the composition
of the world may be called personalism. The acceptance
of hierarchical grades of substantival agents, appearing
in the process of their development, may be indicated
by the expression hierarchical personalism. Such a theory
may also be called panvitalism, at least in the sense that
it takes every existence to be a living being. When I
make this assertion I mean by the word "life" a pur-
posive, creative activity which possesses the character of
existihg for itself.
The greatest representative of personalism in the
history of philosophy is Leibniz. In the philosophy of
the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, among the
personalists we should mention the followers of Leibniz;
for example, Teichmiiller, Bostrom, Lopatin, Kozlov,
Askoldov, and others. Different forms of personalism are
represented in the systems of Renouvier, Lotze, Fechner,
Wundt, W. Stem, the English philosopher F. C. S.
95
Value and Existence
Schiller, and many others. Personalism is very wide-
spread in American philosophy. It is found, for example,,
in the theories of G. H. Howison, G. T. Ladd, B. P.
Bowne, J. Royce, and others.
Personalism may be established in different ways. In
this book we have approached it by investigating the
conditions that make value possible., or more exactly, by
investigating such conditions as existence for oneself,
and the meaning of every being for other beings. But
personalism may be established also by investigating the
basic ontological problem the conditions of existence
in general. Personalism is developed in this way in my
book, The World as an Organic Whole. In the systems
of Leibniz, Renouvier, Teichmuller, Kozlov, Askoldov,
and Stern we may find the fundamental metaphysical
contentions which establish the fact that existence in the
true sense of the word belongs only to the personal
or potentially-personal subject; and that everything
that is not a subject exists due to the subject as its
basis.
Thus if Scheler says that values may also exist without
the subject, since they exist everywhere in nature, we
shall agree with him in the last part only of his conten-
tion. It is true, values do exist everywhere in nature, but
it does not follow from this that they exist apart from
the subject. In nature everything is permeated with
subjective being. Everywhere, wherever there is some-
thing, necessarily there is also somebody present. This
thesis of the necessity of the subject for the existence of
everything else, I assert, of course, not in the sense of
gnoseological idealism, e.g. not in the sense of the
96
The Conditions that Make Value Possible
Kantian theory of knowledge, but in the sense of meta-
physical personalism.
The conditions that make values possible may be
expressed even more generally still. Values are possible
only if the bases of existence are ideal and also spiritual.
Indeed, there belong to the realm of the spiritually-ideal
all those ideal elements and aspects of existence which
serve as the condition of the possibility of the Kingdom
of God. Such are, first, the substantival agents them-
selves, in so far as they are super-temporal and super-
spatial beings, and secondly, their abstract consubstan-
tiality, or all the abstract-Ideal forms of the unity of the
cosmos, the coordination of agents, etc. These spiritual
foundations of existence condition the ideal, i.e. the non-
spatial and non-temporal mutual immanence even of such
sides of existence as real processes and events taking
place in different parts of space and at different times.
This ideal mutual immanence is the condition of the
possibility of purposes, meanings, and aims. This imma-
nence consists in the being A and the being B existing
for each other, not by means of the mechanical inter-
action of push and pressure upon each other, not by
spatial or temporal proximity and sequence, but by
means of a unity which is independent of spatio-temporal
connections or disruptions and mechanical relations. This
mutual immanence conditions the ideal orientation of the
being A to the being B, so that A becomes meaningful,
and B becomes its meaning. Such connection exists, for
example, between the intentionally-psychic and physio-
logical processes of speech on one side, and the objects
spoken of on the other side. Such a connection exists in
G 97
Value and Existence
a purposive act between a movement directed by an
intentionally-psychic or psychoidal process and the
purpose of the movement. Such a connection exists in
every valuable meaning of one being for another, despite
their spatial and temporal separation or the fact that they
belong to different substantival agents. There is such a
meaning when the pure blue colour of a light ray, or an
aria sung by Chaliapin, is not indifferent to me, because
although they are realized in reality outside of me, they
are still ideally present also in the composition of my
life, enriching or impoverishing it.
98
CHAPTER IV
The Fundamental Characteristics of Values
I. THE DEFINITION OF VALUE
The concept of derivative value can be defined easily:
it is any existence in its significance for the realization
of the absolute fulness of being or for moving away from
it. The whole difficulty lies in the definition of primary,
super-cosmic, absolute positive value. It is God as
Goodness itself, the absolute fulness of being. It possesses
within itself the meaning that justifies it, makes it an
object of approval, gives it the absolute right to be realized
and preferred above everything else. In this definition
there is no decomposition into elements; there is only an
indication of the basic source and a prolific, though still
not complete, enumeration of consequences that flow
from it for the mind and will that in any degree commune
with it (e.g. vindication, approbation, the acknowledg-
ment of right, preference, etc.).
Likewise the definition of derivative value does not
contain an analysis into genus and differentiae. Although
its grammatical form appears the same as that in the
definition "A square is a rectangle with equal sides," we
should not be deceived by this seeming similarity. In the
definition of the square the concept of rectangle is the
genus which contains the square as a species. That is the
reason that the proposition "a square is a rectangle,"
taken out of the whole definition expresses truth. The
structure of the meaning of our definition of derivative
99
Value and Existence
value Is quite different: in it "existence" is not a genus
which includes the concept of value. This may be seen
from the fact that the proposition "value is existence"
is false. The superficial similarity of this definition of
value to the definition by means of genus and differentiae
results from the greater discursiveness of language than
thought. However, that we must not detach the concept
"existence" from this definition and reduce it to a pre-
dicate of the concept "value" is also indicated in the
linguistic expression of the thought by means of the
preposition "in," in the phrase "existence in its signi-
ficance." This combination of words indicates that value
is an organic unity, including in itself as elements existence
and significance. But although it is based on these ele-
ments, it represents a new aspect of the world, different
from its elements.
Experience which forms a part of the composition of
value always contains within itself a moment which in
developed consciousness is given as feeling and may be
expressed in such words as pleasant, noble, sweet,
delightful, tender, sublime, or in such words as dis-
agreeable, trivial, rude, hideous, and so on. Disagreeing
with Scheler, I have already pointed out that value
cannot be reduced simply to these moments. These
moments are the symptomatic moments of value, which
at the same time are values in themselves as existences
which are experienced.
Significance and meaning represent the ideal aspect of
value. Hence, every value is either wholly ideal, or at
least contains an ideal aspect within itself. If valuable
existence is itself ideal existence, then value is wholly
100
The Fundamental Characteristics of Values
ideal. Thus, for example, the substantival agent, as a
super-temporal and super-spatial source of actions, is a
fully ideal value. If the valuable existence is real existence,
then the corresponding value is ideal-real value. Such,
for example, is an aria performed by a singer. The idea
of the aria, the idea of a shrine, the idea of an act, and
so on, is wholly an ideal value that can be actualized.
The aria as being performed, the completed shrine, or
the act as being committed, are ideal-real values.
Derivative values in thek meaning have in general two
possible directions of orientation towards the realization
of the absolute fulness of being, or away from it. Thus,
they have a different polarity, or they may be positive or
negative. The former are good, and the latter are evil
good and evil in the broad sense of the words, i.e. not
meaning by them simply moral good and moral evil.
In order to follow the subsequent exposition it is
important to keep in mind that from now on I shall
frequently use the word good instead of the long ex-
pression "positive value," and the word evil instead of
"negative value."
According to the ontological theory of values which I
am developing, existence itself is not only a carrier of
values, but is itself a value, if taken in its significance. It
is itself either good or evil. That is why the differentiation
of Outer (good things) from Werte (values), used in
modern German literature to express existence as some-
thing that is not a value, but is only a bearer of value
and the values themselves, has no essential significance
for the theory that I am developing.
The polarity of values is necessarily connected likewise
101
Value and Existence
with the polarity of their symptomatic expression in
feeling primarily in the feelings of pleasure and pain.
Similarly., the reaction of will to values, expressed as
attraction or repulsion., is also polar.
The fact that possibly there is a relation of feeling
and will to values gives us no right to build a psychological
theory of value. Value conditions certain feelings and
desires, but is not a consequence of them.
The fact that there is a necessary connection between
values and the subject since every value is a value for
some subject gives us no right to say that values are
subjective. Just as knowledge of the world presupposes
consciousness, but from this it does not follow that the
truth discovered is wholly conditioned by consciousness,
so likewise, the valuable character of the world pre-
supposes the existence of subjects, but from this it does
not follow that values are wholly conditioned by the
existence of subjects. Value is something that transcends
the opposition of subject and object, because it is con-
ditioned by the relation of a subject to that which is
higher than all subjective existence, that is to the Absolute
Fulness of Being. 1
Value is always connected not only with the subject,
but, specifically, with the life of the subject. This may
be shown in the very definition of the concept of deri-
vative value by putting it thus : value is existence in its
significance experienced by the existence itself or
experienced by others for the realization of the absolute
1 See, for example, Heyde's reference to the fact that connection
with the subject does not transform value into something subjective,
Wen, p. 50.
I 02
The Fundamental Characteristics of Values
fulness of life., or for moving away from it. By the word
life I mean here purposive activity existing expressly for
each substantival agent. From this it becomes clear that
such an interpretation of value is not liokgism. The
physical-bodily life of vegetable and animal organisms
is only one of the forms of life in general. The absolute
life of the Kingdom of God requires the ascent from the
biological-physical-bodily life and the acquiring of a
spirit-bearing body.
2. ABSOLUTE AND RELATIVE, OBJECTIVE AND
SUBJECTIVE VALUES
An absolute positive value is a value unquestionably
justified in itself, and, consequently, possessing the
character of goodness from any standpoint, in any rela-
tion, and for any subject. Not only is it itself always good,
but also the consequences that necessarily issue from it
never contain evil in themselves. Such good is, for
example, the Divine absolute fulness of being.
A relative positive value is a value possessing the
character of goodness only in a certain relation or for
certain specific subjects. In any other relation or for
certain other subjects such a value is in itself evil, or at
least is necessarily connected with evil. Values in which
good is necessarily connected with evil are possible only
in the psycho-physical kingdom of existence, where
agents are relatively isolated from each other by their
greater or less egoistical self-containment.
We shall use the term subjectiveness to indicate that
a value has significance for only one particular subject;
the significance of value for everybody, that is, its signi-
103
Value and Existence
ficance for every subject we shall call objectiveness. Abso-
lute value, as follows from Its definition, is at the same
time a value that is significant for everybody, i.e. it
constitutes an objective intrinsic value.
The most important problem of axiology consists in
establishing the existence of absolute values and the over-
coming of axiological relativism^ i.e. the theory holding
that all values are relative and subjective. At first sight
axiological relativism seems to be a firmly established
induction from the observation of reality. Everywhere
we look we see relative values. The rapid dash of a grey-
hound after a rabbit is good for the hound., but evil for
the rabbit; in a besieged fort where the garrison is
suffering from a shortage of food, the eating of a piece
of bread by one of the soldiers is a blessing for him, but
suffering for some other soldier; the loving of Vronsky
by Anna Karenina is happiness for Vronsky, but unhappi-
ness for the husband of- Karenina (from the novel by
Count Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina); the overcoming of
Carthage by Rome is fortunate for Rome, but unfortunate
for Carthage.
The assertion of the relativity and subjectivity of all
values arises not only from such observations of reality
as were mentioned above, but also on the ground of
certain theories about the structure of the world, theories
that establish this assertion, for example, as a deduction
from an inorganic theory of the world. Indeed, according
to the inorganic conception of the world, it consists only
of elements separated from each other, self-contained in
their existence, and capable of uniting into temporary
wholes only on the basis of the external relations of
104
The Fundamental Characteristics of Values
spatial proximity and external actions., such as push or
pressure. In such a world there are no common ex-
periences; intuition as an immediate insight into some-
body else's existence is impossible; sympathy and love
as the immediate practical acceptance of somebody else's
existence are also impossible. An identical common good
with which all could be identically and commonly con-
nected is impossible there. Every good in such a world is
torn into many pieces and is consumed and destroyed
by separate beings, each in himself and for himself, with
a loss to the others. Communal life and action are impossible
there. Impossible likewise is the absolute fulness of
being.
In such a world., thought of as an aggregate of self-
contained bits of existence., there is nothing that pos-
sesses the character of self-justification, nothing that
would be of common value. Each self-contained subject
accepts as a positive value his own limited life, or even
some separate manifestation of it, and all that he meets in
the world he evaluates as positive or negative only in
accordance with the meaning it has for his own life or its
manifestations. But this personal life itself, taken in its
limitedness and a self-containment which are irremovable,
according to such a conception of the world, lacks abso-
lute worth. A subject understands that he places it as the
supreme value not because it is intrinsically justified,
but only because it is his life., and thus he has a reason to
accept it as the supreme value only for himself. And every
other subject accepts something else as the supreme value;
namely his own self-contained and limited life or some
manifestation of it. Certainly in such a world there would
105
Value and Existence
be no absolute values significant for all. Every value
would be subjective and relative, that is 5 it would exist
only from the standpoint of a given subject and only in
relation to him.
With consistent development such an inorganic con-
ception of the world rejects the ideal aspect of the world,
consequently it rejects also world-embracing meaning and
partial meanings as a special aspect of the world. It
admits only the existence of facts (events in space and
time) which are subjectively pleasant or unpleasant.
With such a structure of the world it would be impossible
to find an intelligent basis for the preference of one
course of behaviour over another, to set norms of behaviour
of which we could say that they contain within them-
selves an inner justification which is significant for all.
Such a contention may be explained by the following
imaginary argument between some vicious man 3 say a
morphinism and a moralist who stands on the ground of
an inorganic, naturalistic conception of the world., and is
thus unable to lay down the foundations for the super-
iority of right conduct.
The moralist: Your ruinous habit is destroying your
mental abilities and you will no longer be a useful member
of society.
The morphinist: Society is the sum of beings who are
similar to me; each one is enveloped in the sphere of his
own pleasant or unpleasant experiences. I don't see why
I should sacrifice my own pleasant experiences in favour
of another being or beings.
The moralist: Even from the point of view that takes
into consideration only your own personal experiences^
106
The Fundamental Characteristics of Values
your behaviour is wrong: you will ruin your health and
shorten your life.
The morphinist: I don't care for the ordinary life of a
healthy man and the long, weary life of a turtle. One
minute of a fuller life is more precious to me than years
of normal living.
In this dispute the morphinist with his super-biological
ideal of the fulness of experience, an experience which is
not normal but still is superior to ordinary life, is defend-
ing a higher value than those ordinary blessings which
biological naturalism can consistently promise. That is
why all the arguments of biological-naturalistic morality
will not induce him to give up his position.
Fortunately, however, the inorganic conception of the
world is false, the view of the world that leads to axio-
logical relativism and subjectivism., admitting in the
world, as it does, only self-contained particles of irre-
formable, imperfect existence. God and the Kingdom of
God actually exist as beings that are absolutely worthy
and justified. And even our kingdom of psycho-physical
being, although imperfect, still is an organic whole. No
being is self-contained; intuition exists; true sympathy
and love are possible; self-sacrifice and true heroism are
possible. Every being can truly and immediately commune
with the life of beings equal to himself, and also with the
life of beings of a higher order, with the life of the nation,
humanity, the universe. Moreover, each agent can become
a participant in the Kingdom of God with its creative
activity and the absolute fulness of being. In comparison
with this fulness of being intoxication with narcotics is a
piteous poverty of life.
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Value and Existence
Each aspect of the Kingdom of God is filled with
such grandeur, dignity, and nobleness, that having once
admitted its actual existence in the Divine World and its
possibility for ourselves it would be a shame to reject it.
The only way to evade the norms fixing the behaviour
that leads to this Kingdom would be to find sophistical
arguments that would prove beyond any doubt that
science has shown the existence of such fixed and irre-
vocable laws of the structure of being which exclude the
possibility of such a Kingdom. In reality, however, the
content of existence is not subjected to irrevocable laws :
it is highly plastic, it is created voluntarily by the sub-
stantival agents themselves, and no science has ever
proved the non-existence of God and the impossibility
of the Kingdom of God. 1
Freedom is the greatest intrinsic worth of personal
agents, indispensable for the realization of absolute
positive values, but possessing hidden in it also the possi-
bility of the negative course of life. Different degrees of
loving harmony are voluntarily realized in the world, but
likewise different degrees of separation, of conflicting
opposition, and hostility. There exists united action in
the Kingdom of God, where concrete consubstantiality,
the complete organic integration^ and deification are
realized deification that gives the absolute fulness of
being. On the other hand the psycho-physical kingdom
of being also exists, with different degrees of disruption
in the organic integration and diminution of mutual
immanence. However, even on the most extreme levels of
egoistical self-containment there are still preserved at
1 See Freedom of the Will> chap. iv 3 6.
108
The Fundamental Characteristics of Values
least abstract consttbstantiality and some remnants of
participation in the common life of the world, and also
the possibility of regeneration and of becoming worthy
to enter the Kingdom of God. Therefore, absolute values
exist even for the agents of the psycho-physical kingdom,
and constitute the final goal of their activity. Any attempt
to reject absolute values leads to self-contradiction,
because the absolute value of God and the Kingdom of
God is the basic necessary condition of all relative values
and even of existence itself.
The fact that absolute value is always a value ex-
perienced by some subject does not contradict its absolute-
ness, that is, its self-justification. The concept "absolute/*
when it has the meaning of a predicate or definition, is
applicable to such objects as are in a system of relations.
For example, if we assert the absolute movement of
body A in its approach to body B, we do not deny that
this movement is in relation to body B, we deny only
those theories according to which the approach of two
bodies, taken in its concrete fulness, could be expressed
with equal right as "A moves toward B," or "B moves
toward A."
3. ALL-EMBRACING AND PARTIAL ABSOLUTE
INTRINSIC VALUES
God is the Good itself, in the all-embracing sense of
the word: He is the True, the Beautiful, the Moral Good,
the Life, etc. So God, and specifically, each Person of the
Holy Trinity, is the Ail-Embracing Absolute Intrinsic
Value. The full mutual inter-participation of God the
Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit in each
Value and Existence
other's life gives us the right to assert that the All-
Embracing Absolute Intrinsic Value is not divided into
three parts and does not exist in three exemplars It is
one in three Persons. More than that, each created
member of the Kingdom of God is a personality worthy
to commune with the Divine fulness of being because of
the course of goodness chosen by it. It is a personality
that has actually received by God's grace the ability to
fit itself into God's eternal life and to actively participate
in it. That means it is a personality that has reached
deification by God's grace, a personality which despite
its created character still possesses all-embracing absolute
intrinsic value. Each one of these personalities is a created
son of God.
And even each agent of the psycho-physical kingdom
of being, in spite of the state of his apostacy from God
and sojourn in the poverty of a relatively isolated existence,
is still an individual, i.e. a being possessed of a unique
normative idea, due to which he is a potential member of
the Kingdom of God. Therefore, each substantival agent,
each actual and even each potential personality, is an
absolute intrinsic value, a value potentially all-embracing.
Thus, the whole protoplastic (first-created) world created
by God is composed of beings who are not instruments
to aims and values, but are absolute intrinsic values in
themselves, and values that are even potentially all-
embracing. It depends on their own endeavour to become
worthy of the benevolent help of God and to elevate
their absolute intrinsic value from the potentially all-
embracing to the level of the actually all-embracing,
i.e. to become worthy of deification.
no
The Fundamental Characteristics of Values
Only a personality can be an actually all-embracing
absolute intrinsic value: only a personality can possess
the absolute fulness of being. All other types of existence,
derivative from the existence of the personality, that is
the different aspects of the personality, the activities of
personalities, the product of their activities constitute
derivative values, values that exist only under the con-
ditions of the all-embracing absolute good. Above we
gave the following definition of derivative value: it is
existence in its significance for the realization of the
absolute fulness of being, or for moving away from it.
It seems that it then follows that any derivative value
is brought down to the level of only a means. In such a
case we would have to think that, for example, the love
of man for God, or the love of a man for other people is
not a good in itself, but is good only as a means of reaching
the absolute fulness of being. Similarly, beauty and truth
would not be good in themselves, but only good as
means.
The very apprehension of this thesis and the exact
understanding of it necessarily produces a feeling of
repulsion for its meaning, and this feeling is a good
indication of the falseness of the thesis. Indeed, love for
any being, if deprived of intrinsic value and brought
down to the level of only a means, is not a true love, but
a falsification of love hiding in itself hypocrisy or treachery.
The falseness of this thesis is also brought to light by
the fact that it makes the goodness of the Absolute Ail-
Embracing Good itself incomprehensible. If love, beauty,
truth, which are undoubtedly present in the Absolute
Mi-Embracing Good, are only means, then what is the
in
Value and Existence
true good in the Absolute Good itself? Fortunately,
however, our thought does not need to oscillate simply
between these two alternatives of the all-embracing
absolute value and instrumental value (the value of the
means). The problem can be solved by using the concept
of Strahlwert developed by W. Stern. We will express
it for the purpose of our system as "partial value." In
order to establish this concept let us say a few words
about its meaning in Stern's system.
According to Stern, we should distinguish intrinsic
values (Selbstwerte) from derivative values (abgeleitete
Werte)', these last in turn are either Strahlwerte (radiated
values, or values of radiation), or Dienstwerte (instru-
mental values, means). Stern arrives at the concept of
the radiated value in the following way. According to
his personalistic system of philosophy, only personalities
are intrinsic values; but personality is a unitas multiplex
(a composite whole, a unity consisting of many parts).
Personality is a whole containing within itself a multitude
of moments whether they be real parts, symptoms,
phases of existence, ways of expression, spheres of action;
each moment communes with the intrinsic value of the
whole and so becomes a bearer of value, although not
in itself an intrinsic value. An intrinsically valuable
whole radiates its value into everything that belongs to
it: therefore we can designate such a variety of derivative
values by the term Strahlwert.' 1 According to Stern
morality, religion, art, law, health, etc., for example,
belong to these "radiated values." "These are not primal
values. On the other hand, however, they are valuable
1 W. Stem, Wert-pMosophie, p. 44.
112
The Fundamental Characteristics of Values
not only because they are useful 'for something/ but in
them flow and are expressed basic values" (p. 127).
Adopting the concept of "radiated value" developed
by Stern., we will, however, have to modify it in accor-
dance with the system of philosophy we are developing.
We will also change the term and will call that which we
mean by it, in distinction from absolute all-embracing
intrinsic values absolute "partial intrinsic values. 55 In
spite of their derivative character, in the sense that
they cannot exist apart from a whole, they still remain
intrinsic values. Indeed at the fountain-head of axiology
we put the all-embracing fulness of existence, as the
absolute perfection. That indefinable goodness and the
character of self-justification with which the fulness of
existence is thoroughly permeated also belongs to every
moment of it because of its organic integrity. Therefore,
each necessary aspect of the fulness of being is perceived
and experienced as something which is good in itself,
which is justified in its content as that which should be.
Such are love, truth, freedom, beauty. All these aspects of
the Kingdom of God with the Lord God as the head are
impressed by the lineaments that are inherent in the
Absolute Good. Such are the characteristics of not
abiding solely within Himself, of not communing with
any inimical conflicting opposition, of compatibility, of
communicability, of existence for itself and for every-
body, of self-surrender.
Thus, in God and in the Kingdom of God, as well
as in the protoplastic (first-created) world, there are only
intrinsic values; there is nothing that is merely a means.
Intrinsic values are all absolute and objective, i.e. they
H JJJ
Value and Existence
possess significance for everybody, since here there is
no isolated, excluded existence. The classification and
correlation of these values are expressed in the following
table:
Absolute Intrinsic Values
All-embracing Partial
Primordial Created
Actually Potentially
all-embracing all-embracing
4* RELATIVE VALUES
Those values are relative which in some relations are
good, and in other relations evil; they are evil because
they are at least necessarily connected with evil.
Such double-faced values are possible only in the
psycho-physical kingdom of existence, a kingdom con-
sisting of agents that are in the state of apostacy from
God and of greater or lesser separation from one another.
To understand the nature of relative values and to
establish their fundamental forms, we should distinguish
the possible kinds of relations of creatures to God and to
the Kingdom of God.
All beings strive for the absolute fulness of being. To
attain this goal two diametrically opposite courses may
be selected. One way is the all-surmounting love for God
as the primordial Absolute Good, and love for all created
114
The Fundamental Characteristics of Values
agents as the potentially all-embracing good. This results
in voluntary subordination to God, and the voluntary
unanimity of spirit in the communal activity of all those
beings who follow God. Agents who were guided in their
behaviour primordially by this ideal become worthy of
deification and entered into the composition of the
Kingdom of God from the very beginning. They escaped
the necessity of following the course of evolution that
leads gradually to the highest level of good. Another
course, of a character opposite to the first, is a proud
aspiration personally to become a God and to reach the
absolute fulness of being by subjecting all other beings
to oneself. This is the ideal of Satan. It leads to rivalry
with God; it meets unsurmountable obstacles in its
attempts at realization, and in the case of impenitence it
gives rise to a burning hatred for God and for every true
good. By this course a progressive perfection in evil is
possible and a movement further and further away from
God and the Kingdom of God; this is Satanic evolution.
However, a less determined falling away from God
and the Kingdom of God is possible. One's striving to
attain the absolute fulness of being may be connected
with a love for one's own self greater than one's love for
God and for other beings. It is not the proud desire to
put oneself in place of God it is only a preferential
interest for one's own self, in the sense of concentration
on one's own experiences and disrespect and lack of
interest for the life of others. This is egoism not Satanic,
but earthly. It results in a separation of agents from each
other and a state of being where each one is left to him-
self. This separation can reach such extremes of the
Value and Existence
poverty of isolated existence as is known to modern
science, for example, in the state of a single, isolated
electron.
"Everybody nowadays/' says the starets Zosima (in
Brothers Karamazoff by Dostoevsky), "strives to dis-
tinguish himself the most, wants to experience within
himself the fulness of life, but from all his efforts there
comes, instead of the fulness of life, nothing but complete
suicide. For instead of the fulness of development of his
essence he falls into complete isolation."
The poverty of the isolated life, as was said above,
can be overcome only by means of the evolutionary pro-
cess. It is the process by which the agent gradually learns
to leave his self-containment at least partially, and to
enter into union with other agents. He forms with them
organically united wholes in which it is possible mutually
to attain a greater complexity and variety of life than in
isolated existence. However, the increase of power and
the creative activity of life, acquired in such organic
unions, is used in a great measure egoistically. It is used
for the energetic struggle for existence against everybody
who is not included in this particular union, so that the
good of the elevation of life in one group of beings is
accompanied by the evil of the oppression of the life of
other beings. This unfortunate relativity of the good in
the evolutionary process is full of significance: the moral
evil of apostacy from God, that is, the evil of separation
of agents, brings as its natural consequence various other
kinds of evil, the sufferings due to the poverty of existence
and of the mutual restriction of life of those beings who
find themselves outside of the Kingdom of God in the
116
The Fundamental Characteristics of Values
kingdom of psycho-physical being. This lower type of
existence arose because of the incorrect, although
voluntary, act of choice. Likewise, as it follows from the
theory about the nature of the Kingdom of God, the
rational perfection of this existence and, finally, the
leaving of the lower type of existence by acquiring holi-
ness and by communion with the Kingdom of God, are
possible only by the free search for the right course by
means of voluntary creative acts. Therefore, the whole
of evolution in nature, from the agent who stands on the
level of existence of an electron, up to man and even
beyond man, should be thought of as a free creative
process, but not as a process that is necessary and con-
strained by law. All the qualities necessary for the possi-
bility of the creative process of the regeneration of fallen
agents are preserved, as was shown above, even on the
lowest levels of natural existence. There is present in
each substantival agent a super-qualitative creative power;
also there exists a connection between the agents in the
form of abstract consubstantiality, and the ability of
purposive creative activity, etc. 1
Even those agents which do not possess consciousness
retain that relation to themselves and to the world which
we named pre-consciousness, and thus their evolution
is directed by a striving, perhaps only in the form of an
instinctive tendency, to higher levels, to the absolute
fulness of being. However, this movement toward the
higher life is a free creative search; that is why the
evolving beings of the psycho-physical kingdom can-
1 Refer above; also to my article^ "The Limits of Evolution/'
Journal of Philosophical Studies, London, October 1927.
Jl/
Value and Existence
not be graded and arranged into a series as beings pro-
gressively approaching one and the same goal. In the
first place, there are many different paths that lead to the
same goal. In the second place, there are possible detours
from the right course of ascent, detours that lead to
blind alleys in which further evolution cannot be realized.
The only way out of such blind alleys is to leap over to
a new path of progress. In the third place, Satanic tempta-
tions are also possible, and yielding to them leads to
interruptions, to the temporary or final turning to a road
of development that does not ascend toward God, but
leads away from Him. However numerous the ways of
progress are, it is possible mentally to lay out an ideal
type of evolution., which is realized along the lines that
lead, in spite of the different concrete content of the
process, straight up to the threshold of the Kingdom of
God. Such an evolution may be called normal. It is
directed by norms that emerge due to the problem of
growing in relative goodness up to the point of acquiring
the ability to comprehend absolute values, of beginning
to place them as the purpose of behaviour, and of reaching
the limit of the psycho-physical kingdom, of reaching
holiness which is rewarded by becoming worthy of
deification, that is, entering the Kingdom of God.
Each step of this normal evolution represents a release
from some aspect of egoistical self-exclusion. It repre-
sents a broadening of the life of the agent by the adoption
of a group of alien personal or even super-personal
interests into his own life as if they were his own interests
(such assimilation Stern calls "introception"). Each step
of normal evolution also represents the development of
118
The Fundamental Characteristics of Values
abilities that are necessary for the ascent to the all-
embracing life,, for example, the development of psychic
activity from the psychoidal, the acquiring of new forms
of perception (of sound, light, etc.), the development of
consciousness from the elements of pre~consciousness, the
transition from instinct to conscious will, the development
of the capacity for intellectual intuition (mind); etc.
Each gain in normal evolution, each activity in its
course, is a positive value in so far as it is existence in its
significance for the ascent to the absolute fulness of being.
Each manifestation of life in this normal process is not
only a means of ascent, but also an intrinsic value for the
subject who is creating and experiencing it. It is a moment
of the subjective fulness of being. The number and
variety of such intrinsic values is very great in such a
relatively highly developed agent as the human ego,
which has gone relatively far along the way of freeing
itself from egoistical self-containment. Man lives a life
common in part with the life of a multitude of lower
agents subordinated to him, agents that enter into the
composition of his body. Likewise, he lives a life common
in part with the nearest higher agents to whom he is
subordinated : with his family, with his nation, his church,
etc. A great many activities in each of these spheres
possess a character of intrinsic value for the subject. All
the following activities are moments of the subjective
creation of life: the biological functions of a healthy
organism, for example, the partaking of food with a
normal appetite and the digesting of it, physical work,
rest after normal work, etc.; activities that exceed the
limits of purely biological processes, for example, the
119
Value and Existence
acquiring of property, the managing and building of
property (the building of a house, growing a garden, etc.);
activities that are in the stream of life of the higher
hierarchical union, for example, bringing up of children,
intercourse with the members of one's family, partici-
pation in political struggle, defending of one's country,
etc. Each one of these activities., as well as the Objective
contents themselves that such activities create (a healthy
body, a weE-made chair, a good snapshot, the physical
alertness of his son acquired by a proper physical training,
the growth of his political party, etc.)* may be intrinsic
values for a man. But, on the other hand, each one of
these activities and each object created by them may
also be lowered to the level of simply a means. Some
ascetic may admit the biological function of eating only
as a necessary means for spiritual activity, until the human
body is transfigured. Ignatius Loyola, for example,
developed a set of rules that teach us how to reduce the
amount of food taken to a minimum., but without lowering
the body to such exhaustion that spiritual life loses its
freshness and energy. 1 More than that, each of the
activities and the objects of these activities enumerated
might be brought down to the level of simply a means,
not only in relation to the absolute values, but also in
relation to values which are likewise relative. An artisan
may think of his professional activity and the products
produced by it furniture, shoes, clothing, etc. only
as a means for making a living, and not put sincere interest
in his work. Similarly, a teacher of physical education
might look upon his teaching and upon the physical
1 St. Ignatius Loyola, Das Exerzitienbuch; 2nd ed., i, p. 245.
120
The Fundamental Characteristics of Values
development of the children that were entrusted to him
only as a means of getting his salary and advancement,,
in case he is very successful. It is very doubtful, however,
whether children could be safely trusted to such a teacher.
Moreover, the interrelation of activities, their objects
and their values, is so complicated that each of the
enumerated activities and each of their objects might be
at the same time and for the same agent an intrinsic
value and also a means of reaching some other value.
All those activities in the kingdom of psycho-physical
being which we have enumerated require more or less
struggle with the beings who are outside of the agent or
outside of that union in the interests of which he acts.
Nourishment requires the violent breaking up of the
whole of an alien vegetable or animal organism. The"
professional activity of man is accompanied by the
destruction of the life of plants and animals, or by an
interference through force with the flow of the processes
of inorganic nature. The seizing of the psycho-physical
goods for one's own nation leads directly or indirectly
to infringement of the interests of other peoples, etc.
In greater or less degree all these activities are connected
with the struggle for existence, and even within each
union harmony between its members exists only in some
relations, but in other relations the members contest with
each other. Such contesting relations are, for example,
certain diseases of the organism, competition in trade
and industry, exploitation of labour by capital, etc.
There is no loving interrelation of all beings, no complete
harmony of interests, no communal activity. Therefore,
the experiences of some one agent or a group of agents
121
Value and Existence
could not be the object of the full active co-participation
of all the rest. Even though these experiences and their
objects are intrinsic values for some individual, they
still belong to the sphere of relative, not absolute values.
The proof is twofold. In the first place, they are justified
only from the point of view of the psycho-physical
kingdom of existence which consists of beings who
themselves have brought about the splitting up of life
into separate, relatively isolated streams. In the second
place, inasmuch as their conditions or their consequences
are connected with conflicting opposition to the lives of
others, they are negative values good in them is con-
nected with evil. However, taken by themselves, isolated
from their conditions and consequences, they are mani-
festations of preservation of life and of its growth, mani-
festations that prepare for the comprehension of absolute
values and adoption of them. As steps in the growth of
solidarity and harmony if not yet love as an increase
of order and other similar values which might be called
weak reflections of the absolute values of the Kingdom
of God, they leap up to the threshold of this Kingdom
and awaken a longing to give up the lower world and
become worthy to commune with the higher world. In
this sense, inasmuch as the final goal of all beings is
the absolute fulness of being which alone can be the
common goal, the manifestations of the normal evolution
of each being are positive values also from the stand-
point of all other agents. They are objective values
significant for all, even though relative. Indeed, if he
gains freedom from the subjective partialities that distort
valuations, every agent is forced to accept the positive
122
The Fundamental Characteristics of Values
value of the health of all other agents, their prosperity,
the weE-being of their families, countries, etc., although
these types of good, belonging as they do to the psycho-
physical kingdom are only relative, that is, are also con-
nected with evil. On account of this, their universally
valid significance is different from the universally valid
significance of absolute values. Perfect love, beauty,
truth, the moral good, are universally valid intrinsic
values, whereas the relative good is universally valid., not
as an intrinsic value, but as something instrumental, as a
necessary moment of evolution that leads to the threshold
of the exit from the realm of evil. The different forms of
the relative good may possess a character of intrinsic
value only for their bearers and those agents of the
psycho-physical kingdom who are near to them and who
fight together with them for the preservation of life and
the raising of its level. These are subjective intrinsic values.
5. NEGATIVE VALUES
Everything that is an obstacle to the attainment of the
absolute fulness of life possesses negative value, or, in
other words, the character of evil (in the broad, not in the
ethical sense). However, it does not follow that evils,
such as illness, aesthetic ugliness, hatred, treachery, etc.,
are in themselves indifferent, and are evil only in so
far as they result in a failure to attain the fulness of being.
As good is justified in itself, so evil is something unworthy
in itself, something deserving condemnation; it is in
itself the opposite of the absolute fulness of life, as the
Absolute Good.
But in contrast with the Absolute Good, evil is not
123
Value and Existence
primordial and not self-subsistent. In the first place, it
exists only in the created world and even there not in
its protoplastic (first-created) essence. Rather, it ori-
ginates as a free act of the will of substantival agents, and
derivatively as a consequence of this act. In the second
place, evil acts of will are committed under the appear-
ance of good, because they are always directed toward a
true positive value, but in such correlation with other
values and means of accomplishing it that evil is sub-
stituted for good. Thus, to be God is the highest positive
value, but the usurping of this merit by a creature is
the greatest evil. In the third place, the realization of a
negative value is only possible by using the powers of
the good. This dependence on the good and contra-
dictory character of negative values is especially noticeable
in the sphere of Satanic evil. So, we shall begin with the
discussion of Satanic evil.
Satanic evil is the pride of an agent who cannot bear
the supremacy of God and other agents over himself,
and who strives to put himself in God's place and to
occupy a preferential position in the world, a position
higher than that of other creatures. This fundamental
aspect of the Satanic will is expressed in different varia-
tions, for example, in Satanic ambition, in the Satanic
love of power, in manifestations of hatred, envy, cruelty,
etc. Such acts and conditions which, not only by their
conditions or consequences, but in themselves, cause
damage to other beings, possess the character of intrinsic
value for the Satanic will. For example, for an ambitious
person with the Satanic tendency, who is competing
with other agents, the final goal is not simply perfec-
124
The Fundamental Characteristics of Valties
tion of action,, but supremacy, a victory over other
agents. Similarly, for a cruel being, for a cat, playing
with a mouse it has caught, or for a Sadist, the
sufferings of a victim represent just that aspect in
which he claims his superiority and domination of the
world.
The evil brought into the world by earthly selfishness
has an entirely different character: it is not in the act or
condition itself which is the goal, but in the consequences
of the act and in the means of achieving it. These conse-
quences are considered by the agent himself, if he notices
them (which happens rarely) as undesirable, and the evil
means for achieving a goal in themselves are disliked by
him. Thus a great majority of the people would gladly
abandon the use of animal food if a satisfactory system
of nourishment without slaughter could be developed
and a state economy was adopted for the supply
of such food. In taking a competitive examination for
admission into an institution of higher learning a
young man, if he is mentally normal, feels sorry
for his classmates who fail and does not rejoice at
their failure.
The difference between the Satanic evil will and the
evil will of earthly selfishness in brief is this: from the
point of view of the Satanic will, evil acts are themselves
positive values, inasmuch as they satisfy his pride; whereas
for earthly selfishness evil acts possess only instrumental
value, remaining in themselves undesirable. In both
cases the evil caused other beings is not the primary goal,
but only the consequence of selfishness. In this sense even
Satan himself is not a being who strives for the suffering
Value and Existence
of other beings just for the sake of that suffering. 1 How-
ever, the nature of Satanic selfishness is such that his
aims include oppression of other beings by analytic
necessity, whereas the aims of earthly selfishness are
connected with acts and conditions that oppress the
existence of others by synthetic necessity. The first is
absolute evil, and the second relative evil.
The difference between these two kinds of will can
also be shown by the difference between Satanic and
earthly ambition. For Satanic ambition supremacy as
victory over other agents is the intrinsic aim; for earthly
ambition the acquiring of supremacy is not an intrinsic
aim, but a means. More specifically, it is either an indi-
cation of the perfection of an act performed, or a source
of securing for oneself some other blessing (for example,
a good position in society, favourable for untrammelled
development of all activities of life, etc.).
Theoretically it is easy to separate Satanic and earthly
ambition. But in practice frequently it is almost impos-
sible to decide with which of the two we have to deal
when we meet with the concrete manifestations of a man.
By almost an imperceptible gradation competition leads
quickly to the appearance of jealousy and hatred, which,
as Scheler says, rejoice in the faults of the one hated and
grieve when they notice any merit in him. Having adopted
this course, a man proceeds to move along the edge of a
precipice and he is ominously illuminated by reflections
from the Satanic evil. The lives of great men and out-
1 See my article, "The Nature of Satan According to Dostoevsky,"
in a collection of articles F. M. Dostoevsky, under the redaction of
Doleenin, i. Scheler has a different opinion, see p. 3693 N. Hartmarm 3
ii 3 pp. 176 ff.
126
The Fundamental Characteristics of Values
standing individuals in history give us many examples of
such a dangerous position. Just recall the rivalry between
Fichte and Schelling, 1 the hidden jealousy in the rela-
tions of L. Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, 2 the devilish pranks
Byron played on his wife, caused probably by the fact
that she did not at once respond to his love before their
marriage, and the bad treatment of Sushkova by Ler-
montov. We shall find the same phenomena in all spheres
of our own life. In each university there are two or three
pairs of professors who work in the same subject and
hate each other from the bottom of their hearts. The
same happens in the life of actors, politicians, church
workers,, etc.
Selfishness, Satanic as well as earthly, is the funda-
mental evil. It is a moral evil, actualized in different
variations. As a consequence of it, inasmuch as it leads
to the relative isolation of agents from each other, there
arise numerous other kinds of evil that may be called
derivative evils: such are physical suffering, illness, death,
mental suffering and mental disease, aesthetic ugliness,
a lack of complete truth, errors, etc.
If the world is the creation of a benevolent Creator, a
world rational in all its details, then the question arises
why evil does exist in the world, and what is the purpose
of the different kinds of evil. The answer to this question
I have given in my book, Freedom of the Will) and have
briefly indicated it in this book also. The highest worth
of the world, for the sake of which alone it should exist
1 Kuno Fischer, "Schelling," Geschichte der neueren Philosophic vli.
3 A. L. Bern, "Tolstoy in Dostoevsky's Estimation/' Scientific
Works of the Russian People** University s ii (in Russian).
127
Value and Existence
that is, its capacity to create the Kingdom of God is
possible only under the condition that agents have
freedom. But freedom is connected not only with the
possibility of good, but also of evil. An agent who uses
his freedom wrongly, who has adopted the course of
selfishness, brings evil into the world. The good of the
love for God and for the creatures of God presupposes
the possibility of the evil of selfishness, not requiring,
however, its actual existence. Hence the actual existence
of selfishness is a free and independent manifestation of
the agent. It is a wrong which nobody forced him to
commit, a sin that brings with it as a natural and due
consequence the isolation of the agent, and with the iso-
lation all the evils derivative from it: scantiness of life,
disease, death, aesthetic ugliness, etc.
The fundamental evil, the evil of egoistic selfishness is
a voluntary act of the agent, leading him to an "anti-
transfiguration"; consequently evil is not a simple
shortage of good, not merely a non-fulness of it, i.e. it is
not non-existence. Evil is a certain kind of content of
existence^ it is an esse of which we have to say that it is
male esse in distinction from bene esse. However, it does
not appear in the world except by a wrong use of a great
good of free creative power. Moreover, it does not
appear except in the pursuit of the greatest positive value,
namely deification, however, along a wrong course.
Consequently this male esse never can be evil throughout:
it always contains in itself at least some remnants of
positive value. St. Augustine was quite correct in his
assertion that good could not be removed entirely from
anything that exists, because then the existence itself
128
The Fundamental Characteristics of Values
would cease. A good being can be good throughout, but
an evil being cannot be evil throughout.
The high rationality of the world is revealed in the
fact that those agents only who are themselves guilty of
selfishness and have doomed themselves to life in the
psycho-physical kingdom of being are immediately
touched by every kind of evil. Indeed, agents of the
Kingdom of God are immune even from Satan: their
unanimity of spirit excludes the possibility of a break
in their bond, that is, it excludes the possibility of death.
Their transfigured body produces no forces of repulsion
and could not, therefore, be subjected to any violence
by a push; the spiritual sufferings of humiliated pride,
ambition, love of power, etc., do not exist for them, for
they are free from these passions. Even a loving partici-
pation in our life cannot bring earthly grief and sorrow
to the kingdom of the Spirit. The position of the members
of the kingdom of the Spirit is similar to that of a physician
helping his patient & physician who knows the power
of his art and science and has a miraculous insight into
God's ways which reveals to him the meaning of human
suffering and the certainty of the final conquest of the Good. 1
The unearthly calmness of the Sistine Madonna of
Raphael is not "the ultra-aristocratic indifference to the
sufferings and wants of our world/ 5 as it seemed to
Belinsky, 2 but rather the perfect purity of a nurse who
depends on God, who does not contract the contagion
of fears and feverish deliriums of the patien^ and who
1 The World as an Organic Whole, p. 161.
2 P. V. Annenkofik Literary Recollections, ed. "Academia/' 1928,
P- 563-
I 129
Value and Existence
just by a touch of her cool and tender hand on his fore-
head brings peace and calmness to his mind and body.
The correlation of all beings and all events forming a
single world can be explained by the fact that at the head
of the world stands the Universal Spirit., a substantival
agent that coordinates all the activities of all beings. He
does not separate Himself from anybody; consequently,
He belongs to the composition of the Kingdom of God.
The Spirit only can be the source of such a whole, or the
kind of a system all of whose parts lead to the realiza-
tion of a truly all-embracing, unchangeable., eternal, and
absolute purpose. In accordance with the nature of the
Spirit, that purpose can be no other than to make the
whole structure of the world and every event in it sub-
servient to the development of spirituality in the entities
of the psycho-physical realm and thus educate them for
reunion with the Kingdom of God. The inclusion of every
event in an all-embracing cosmic bond resulting, from
the point of view of the individual entity, in the most
capricious and unexpected combinations far from being
the work of blind accident, contains a most profound
meaning and has the character of moral necessity. 1 This
gives rise to a world in which "every great cosmic event
is adapted to the fate of many thousands of beings, to
each in its own way"; "the cross-currents of all human
lives in their interconnection must have as much concord
and harmony with each other as the composer gives in a
symphony to a number of voices which apparently
interrupt one another." 2
1 The World as an Organic Whole> p. 166.
2 Schopenhauer, Parerga und Paralipomena, i.
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The Fundamental Characteristics of Values
In this rational whole every evil painfully touching
those beings who themselves bring evil into the world,
serves them as a punishment, or warning, or inducement
to repentance, etc. In this sense even evil possesses
instrumental positive value: in the kingdom of evil
beings it is used as a means of curing them from evil.
6. INSTRUMENTAL VALUES
In our psycho-physical kingdom of being there is an
infinite number of activities, events, and contents of Hfe,
that possess only the character of a means for the realiza-
tion of some positive value. Sweeping a room, the re-
moving of a spot of grease from a dress with a cleaning
fluid, the daily ride on the tram to the place of employ-
ment, the filling out of a questionnaire for the purpose of
receiving a passport, etc., these are all instrumental
values. They are possible only in a kingdom of being
where there is separation and scantiness of life: they are
activities and contents of existence that have no inner
connection with the complex system of life as a whole,
but only with some one limited element of it. They can
be repeated and replaced, and they are valued not for
their relatively-individual content, but only for their
connection with the purpose that is apprehended as an
abstract conception. The more actions there are in the
behaviour of a being that have the character of simply a
means and the more often they are repeated, the more
the tone of such a being's life falls: there are more
ordinary, uninteresting events.
As culture develops, a man more often sets up goals
the attainment of which requires the realization" of a
13*
Value and Existence
long series of means before the goal itself may be realized.
From this, however, we should not draw the conclusion
that the development of culture must necessarily be
accompanied by the lowering of the tone of life. The art
of life lies in the ability to complicate the interests of life
and to deepen its organic aspect so that means cease to
be simply means and at least in some aspects contain
intrinsic aims, or at least are permeated and attractively
lighted by reflections from that intrinsic aim for the sake
of which they are being realized. Thus, a scientist spend-
ing several years in preparation for a difficult scientific
expedition, or a far-sighted politician like Bismarck, an
active reformer like Peter the Great, could with en-
thusiasm be effecting the instruments for a distant purpose,
seeing in each instrument some intrinsic aim, or at least
a reflection of that far-removed intrinsic aim.
7. THE TRAGIC CHARACTER OF NORMAL EVOLUTION
In the psycho-physical kingdom even in the process of
normal evolution the greater part of the activities is
directed toward the realization of the relative good: my
self-preservation and the preservation of my family., my
country, of humanity as psycho-physical (not spiritual)
wholes, are a good for these particular beings, but this
good is connected in some way with evil for other beings.
This is the reason that the higher the degree of freedom
from egoistic self-containment the agent has reached, the
more sensitive he is to the bringing of any evil into the
world, the more often his position becomes tragic.
Even absolute values, under the conditions of psycho-
physical life, frequently require, in order to guarantee
132
The Fundamental Characteristics of Valises
access to them and to preserve the conditions that make
it possible to use them, the kind of actions which destroy
those relative values which have intrinsic value for some
subjects. The conspirators who assassinated Paul I, the
highly gifted reformers,, such as Peter the Great, who
destroy the old forms of life, the participants in civil
wars, at times of great revolutions people who fight for
absolute values, are living a painful tragedy because they
are bringing evil into the world in their struggle for the
good.
Becoming a monk in a monastery does not give com-
plete freedom from the evil which is inevitable in the
kingdom of psycho-physical being. The life of a quiet
cloister, even of seclusion, only decreases the number
and variety of the manifestations of evil, but does not
remove them completely.
One might try to calm his conscience by denying the
Christian ideal of the absolute good by means of a dogma
which asserts that absolutely irrevocable laws of existence
condition the forms of life in which the relativity of good
is inevitable, i.e. the connection of good with evil cannot
be removed. Such self-justification is a Satanic temptation.
In reality the absolute good can be realized, and in the
Kingdom of God it is realized, but we have fallen away
from it and have created a sphere of life which "lies in
evil" and without transfiguration cannot be in its content
a pure good. To face this truth bravely, without trying
to conceal from myself the admixture of evil and the
imperfections which even the greatest heroic actions pos-
sess in the psycho-physical kingdom, is possible only on
the ground of the Christian conception of the world.
133
Value and Existence
Only the Christian conception of the world points the
way to the ideal kingdom of being where complete free-
dom from evil is reached not by the quenching of life,
as Buddhism holds, but on the contrary, by acquiring
the fulness of life; and not through the annihilation of
individual peculiarities, but through the all-embracing
unveiling of them.
The sight of evil penetrating all the manifestations of
life within the psycho-physical kingdom will not lead us
to despondency and disbelief in the benevolence of the
Creator of the world; it will not lead us to the "revolt"
of Ivan Karamasoff and to the return of our "ticket" if
we only realize that absolute values cannot be destroyed
by any external power. The Kingdom of God, as we have
seen, is inaccessible even to the blows of Satanic wrath.
And even in our own psycho-physical kingdom only
imperfect aspects and manifestations of existence, not
the absolutely valuable existence itself, are destroyed,
die out, and fall into the past. These imperfect aspects
must perish sooner or later, so as not to interfere with the
more perfect realization of the absolutely valuable nucleus
that lies at their base. The love of Agnes, in Ibsen's Brand,
for her child Alf does not terminate with his death. A
true personal love is an ontological knitting together by
growth of one super-temporal and super-spatial being
with another, a union that is not destroyed by that pro-
found change of body which is called death. The death
of one of those who love may even elevate the quality
of the communion with him: communion begins to take
place as if immediately in the heart of the one who
remains alive. This is what I. V. Kireevsky says about a
134
The Fundamental Characteristics of Values
deceased friend who was spiritually close to one of us:
"tie heart becomes a place where he dwells not only in
thought, but he substantially permeates it." 1 And this is
not surprising: our crude impenetrable bodies do make
possible, it is true, external communion, but they are an
obstacle to the establishment of the deeper inner connec-
tions. The conjoining of lovers, especially in the organic
union of the family, determines their further destiny
without interruption until they commune with the
Kingdom of God where personal love receives for the
first time its full realization. There the absolute love for
one being, because of the ideal connection of all indi-
vidual characteristics into a bond, potentially includes
in itself love for all other beings. This is the reason that
only in the Kingdom of God can love be realized in all
its purity and without any egoistical partialities to dimin-
ish it.
Like love, beauty and the true experience of beauty,
even in the form accessible to us in the psycho-physical
kingdom, are also indestructible. Let us recall how
Olyenin, in Tolstoy's Cossacks, as he was nearing the
Caucasus Mountains, saw for the first time in all its
grandeur the range of mountains covered with snow.
But the next day, early in the morning he was waked up
by the coolness in his post-carriage, and looked out indiffer-
ently toward the right. The morning was perfectly clear.
Suddenly he saw, twenty paces distant from Mm, as it
seemed at the first moment, the pure white mountain masses,
with their tender outlines, and the fantastic, marvellous,
perfect aerial contours of their summits and the far-off sky.
1 Works, ii, p. 290.
135
Value and Existence
And when he comprehended all the distance between him
and the mountains and the sky, all the majesty of the moun-
tains, and when he realized all the endlessness of that beauty,
he was alarmed lest it were an illusion, a dream. He shook
himself so as to wake up.
But the mountains were still the same.
"What is that? Tell me what that is!" he asked of the
postilion.
"Oh! the mountains!" replied the Nogayets, indifferently.
"And so I have been looking at them for a long time!
Aren't they splendid ! They won't believe me at home !" said
Vanyusha.
As the three-span flew swiftly over the level road, it seemed
as if the mountains ran along the horizon, shining in the
sunrise with their rosy summits.
At first the mountains only surprised Olyenin, then they
delighted him; but afterwards, as he gazed at this ever-
increasing, constantly changing, chain of snow-capped moun-
tains, not piled upon other dark mountains, but rising straight
out of the steppe, little by little he began to get into the spkit
of their beauty, and he felt the mountains.
From that moment all that he had seen, all that he had
thought, all that he had felt, assumed for him the new, sternly
majestic character of the mountains. All his recollections of
Moscow, his shame and his repentance, all his former fancies
about the Caucasus all disappeared and never returned
again.
"Now life begins," seemed to be sounded into his ear by
some solemn voice. And the road, the distant outline of the
Terek, now coming into sight, and the post-stations, and the
people all seemed to him no longer insignificant.
He looks at the sky and remembers the mountains, he looks
at himself, at Vanyusha, and again at the mountains !
Here two Cossacks appear on horseback, their muskets
balanced over their backs, and rhythmically swinging as their
horses gallop along with brown and grey legs intermingling;
but the mountains ! . . .
The Fundamental Characteristics of Values
Beyond the Terek., smoke seems to be rising from some
aul> or native village; but the mountains ! . . .
The sun stands high and gleams on the river winding
among the reeds; but the mountains ! . . .
From a Cossack station comes an aria, or native cart
pretty women are riding in it, young women; but the moun-
tains! . . .
Abreks 1 gallop across the steppe, and I am coming, I fear
them not, I have weapons and strength and youth; but the
mountains ! . . . 2
The beauty of the snow-capped mountains, their
grandeur, harmony, and virgin purity, is only a symbol
of the absolute beauty, of the absolute greatness and
pureness. Therefore, the mountains themselves are not
eternal and should not be eternal, but the beauty that
they express is eternal, and the experience of this beauty
remains in the soul forever, not in its psycho-physical
concreteness, of course, which really is not concreteness,
but is only a broken abstractness; however, it does
remain in its meaning. This meaning like an overtone
continues to sing in the soul, giving to everything a new
character of solemnity and greatness and invariably
keeping up, perhaps only in the sub-conscious or super-
conscious sphere, the eros for beauty.
The indelible trace remaining in the mind due to the
experience of absolute values will never let the agent
who has deviated from the normal course of develop-
ment be satisfied with his position. He will always be
tormented with the contradiction between his conduct,
1 The hostile mountaineer who crosses over to the Russian side
of the Terek for the purpose of theft or rapine is called abrek.
2 From Tolstoy's Cossacks (translated by N. H. Dole). By per-
mission of the Thomas Y. Crowell Company.
Value and Existence
full of evil, and the "eros" of the pure good, dimly
revealed to him in the earthly experiences of absolute
values. Sooner or later this contradiction will lead those
who have lost their way out of the blind alley,, will induce
them to leave the "sad songs of earth"; and even Satan
himself, exhausted by the suffering due to his duplicity
and deceptiveness, will perhaps become disappointed in
the gloomy vastness of hell. 1
Evil in the psycho-physical kingdom comes into being
not only in connection with the realization of relative
values, but even with the attempts to actualize the
absolute values. There is, however, a profound difference
between these two cases of the appearance of evil. The
relative good, because of its very nature, is connected
with evil for some beings. On the contrary, the absolute
good by its very nature is a good for everybody, and if
under the conditions of psycho-physical existence it is
connected with evil for some agents, such evil really
arises from the imperfect nature of these agents them-
selves, or from the imperfect actualization of the absolute
value. Indeed, even such an activity as the performing
of one of the greatest symphonies of Beethoven might
mean suffering for a scientist in the adjacent apartment
if it interfered with his concentration on some important
1 Johannes Scotus Erigena says 5 referring to St. Gregory Theologus,
that wrattUs limited^ so that after he has experienced it to the end
a sinner will sooner or kter turn to the course of good^ so that in
the^end no evil will be left in anybody (De divisione naturae, v, p. 26).
This hope of salvation for everybody can be founded not on the
theory of evolution in accordance with law, but by the expectation
of a voluntary conversion to the good on the part of all beings who
have experienced the hideousness of evil and who have condemned
their past conduct.
The Fundamental Characteristics of Values
and difficult scientific work. It also may be disagreeable
to a person who is not engaged in any activity, if he has
no ability to perceive music and hears only disorderly
combinations of sounds, without comprehending the
beautiful whole. In both cases evil arises not from the
nature of the beautiful music itself, but from the limited
character of the afflicted persons themselves who are the
ones responsible for their limitations. However, there
may be a third possibility: the performance of even a
beautiful composition by the best artists cannot be
absolutely perfect in the psycho-physical kingdom of
being. Disagreeable squeaks, rattles, and noises are
invariably mixed with the music, and torment a
sensitive ear. In this case evil arises not from the
nature of the absolute value itself, and also not from
the limited nature of the afflicted beings, but from the
imperfection of the performer and of the means of
performance.
The doctrine that absolute values are indestructible
and that the nature of absolute value itself is such that
it will of itself never bring evil, might lead some uninvited
"benefactors" of the human race, people with a revolu-
tionary character, to the belief that they have a right to
destroy all obstacles in their way for the sake of the
absolute values for which they are fighting. (In reality
their struggle is usually not for absolute values, but only
for relative values, which they mistake for absolute values.)
Certainly, such a thought is a Satanic temptation. Although
only relative positive values are destroyed, and the
process of normal evolution is impossible without such
destruction, still a sensitive conscience forbids many such
139
Value and Existence
types of destruction, or, if it does permit some of them,
it experiences the destruction as tragic. We will not go
into this question any further, since it belongs in the
sphere of ethics, and not in the general theory of
value. 1
8. FALSE ARGUMENTS IN FAVOUR OF RELATIVISM
There are many factors which help to make the rela-
tivistic theory of values, i.e. the theory according to which
all values are relative, the more common. In the first
place, we should keep in mind, as was already pointed
out, that the inorganic conception of the world neces-
sarily leads to a relativistic axiology. Moreover, experience
obligingly presents us with a multitude of facts which
appear as a very convincing confirmation of this deduction
firom the inorganic conception of the world. Indeed, in
the kingdom of psycho-physical being actually the
greater part of the activities and contents of existence
belong to the realm of the relative good, i.e. they are
necessarily connected with evil. Moreover, for the agents
of the psycho-physical kingdom the absolute values
themselves are not objects of striving (also of contem-
plation and faith) without the possibility of their realiza-
tion. The realization of the absolute values may be
attained only in the Kingdom of God. The attempts at
the realization of absolute values in the psycho-physical
kingdom are connected with evil. Those who do not see
that this evil does not arise from the nature of absolute
value itself, but from its imperfect realization, or from
1 As to the inevitable tragedy of the sinful life^ see B. Visheslavtsev^
The Heart in Christian and Indian Mysticism (in Russian).
140
The Fundamental Characteristics of Values
the imperfect use of it, come to the erroneous conclusion
that absolute values do not exist at all.
Finally, there is one more important circumstance that
furnishes a motive for relativism. We should distinguish,
as Scheler has pointed out, between the norms of be-
haviour and the values corresponding to them, and keep
in mind that one and the same value under different
conditions can be the source of different, sometimes of
even reciprocal norms. So, for example, the contention
that "the personal value of one person is equal to that of
another person" under different conditions can give
rise to two reciprocal norms : "take care of others" and
"take care of yourself." 1
9. THE ORDER OF RANK IN VALUES
From the definitions given above, and the doctrines
expounded in connection with them, it follows that
positive values are not equal; there are differences between
them: differences of rank, differences of merit. First of
all, it is obvious that instrumental values are lower than
intrinsic values; then among intrinsic values absolute
intrinsic values stand higher than relative intrinsic
values. Then, in each one of these groups there are
peculiar differences in rank: among the absolute intrinsic
values all-embracing stand higher than partial; among
the all-embracing values the primordial values, i.e.
God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit,
stand higher than the created values.
1 M. Scheler, Der Formalismus in der Ethik 3 p. 219; also other
considerations of Scheler against relativism and scepticism in ethics,
pp. 306-20.
141
Value and Existence
Among relative values the ranks are determined in
part by the steps of normal evolution. Thus, for instance,
on the earth the biological values are on the whole higher
than the values of inorganic nature, the values of the
social process are higher than the biological values. To
classify values into groups according to their rank would
be possible only by having a thoroughly developed theory
of the system of values and such a complete table of
them as was given by Miinsterberg in his The Eternal
Values.
Having no intention of developing such a system, it
will suffice also in the doctrine of rank if I simply defend
this theory. Many phases of the question have been
determined by M. Scheler in his Der Formalismus in der
Ethiky also by N. Hartmann in his Ethik, and by W.
Stern in his Wert-philosophie.
Heyde rejects altogether the difference of rank in
values. He says that every value can possess different
degrees: I may prefer a restful vacation trip to a small
moral act; I may prefer the pleasure of a walk to the
negligible aesthetic value of a theatrical performance, etc. 1
The examples cited by Heyde do not, in reality, compel
us at all to give up the doctrine of rank in values, i.e. the
doctrine of the difference in their inner merit. These
examples only indicate that in selecting between several
values under the conditions of psycho-physical being we
have to be guided not only by the rank, but also by other
qualities of values, for example, by the fact that the non-
realization of some inferior positive value (say nutrition)
leads to the appearance of different destructive negative
1 Heyde, Wert, p. 186.
142
The Fundamental Characteristics of Values
values (illness^ death, etc.)- 1 From this it follows that the
preference of a value must be determined by its rank
only when the other bases are equal.
TABLE OF VALUES A GRADATION OF RANK
I. Intrinsic Values.
1. Absolute Intrinsic Values.
A. All-embracing absolute intrinsic values.
(a) Primordial all-embracing absolute intrinsic
values (God the Father^ God the Son, and
God the Holy Spirit).
(&) Created all-embracing absolute intrinsic
values (actual and potential members of the
Kingdom of God).
B. Partial all-embracing absolute intrinsic values (acts
and characteristics of God and of members of
the Kingdom of God).
2. Relative Intrinsic Values,
A. Social relative intrinsic values.
B. Biological relative intrinsic values.
C. Inorganic relative intrinsic values.
II. Instrumental Values.
1 See N. Hartmann's theory of the existence of two kws of
preference: the preference of value because of its height, and the
preference of value because of its strength, meaning by the expression
"strength of value" the onerous character of the disvalue (Umoert)
that becomes effective if the value is not realized (Ethik 9 English
trans. 3 ii> p. 455).
143
CHAPTER V
Subjective-Psychic Experience of Values
I. VALUE AND THE FEELING OF VALUE
Values make their appearance in the subject's con-
sciousness only by way of the subject's feelings being
intentionally directed upon them. When associated with
the subject's feelings the values become values experienced
by him. Even in the subject's pre-consciousness values
are already connected with positive or negative pre-
feelings. Thus, in our relations with other people, the
moral purity of a young man, the tenderness of a girl,
the courage,, the dependability, the strength of a man, the
quarrelsome character of a duellist, the sombreness of a
melancholic, or the sternness of an "inquisitor" are
usually given to us not only theoretically as existence
which is the object of observation; but they are also
experienced as values, as something worthy of existence
or not, or something acceptable or not, by an infinite
variety of feelings. We usually have no special words for
the expression of these feelings, so that we have to name
them descriptively by pointing out their object; for
example, the feeling of purity, the feeling of tenderness,
etc. Sometimes the feelings of an observer are like the
feelings by which the observed person himself experiences
his own manifestations and qualities. Such, for example,
is the feeling of tenderness. Sometimes they are different
from the feelings of the person observed; for example,
the feeling of trust in a person who depends on his
144
Subjective-Psychic Experience of Values
friend for something; and the feeling of the preservation
of mood and will in the friend himself.
A similar richness of feeling also gives us a relation
to nature. The perception of a landscape as a whole, the
perception of each colour separately., of each sound;, each
smell, each taste, and the perception of them in different
combinations in consciousness all of these are clothed
with the experience of various feelings. Likewise, all the
mental and spiritual activities of man, as well as Ms
biological functions, are saturated with positive or nega-
tive feelings. Pleasure and displeasure are the most
common, but likewise the most elementary feelings. The
beauty and fulness of life are, however, experienced not
so much in the simple feeling of pleasure, as in the
infinitely diverse and complex feelings mentioned above.
We cannot but agree with Scheler that feeling is a
special kind of awareness in which values are given.
Scheler calls his theory "emotional intuitionalism," indi-
cating by this term the immediate givenness of trans-
subjective values in the feelings of the subject. 1 In
distinction from Scheler, however, from the standpoint
of our own ontological ideal-realistic axiology, according
to which existence itself in its significance for the fulness
of life is a value, we assume that the words "delightful, "
"exalted," "beautiful," or the words "noble," "trivial,"
"courageous," "cowardly," when we express by them our
experience of an object, indicate the following complex
fact of consciousness which has a subjective and a trans-
subjective aspect: the subjective side consists in the fact
that the observer experiences his own subjective "feeling
1 Der Formalismus in der Ethik s pp. xi, 64* 261-9.
K 145
Value and Existence
of delight," "feeling of exaltedness," "feeling of beauty/'
"feeling of nobleness/' etc.., while the trans-subjective
side is the perceived object of the outer world with its
colours, sounds, and actions in that wholeness which
gives it its specific merit and specific significance for the
fulness of being, the significance which is experienced
by the observer in the "feeling of deUghtfulness," the
"feeling of nobleness," etc.
The awareness and the experiences thus far mentioned
are not as yet knowledge. They have a primary practical
importance as possible directors of our behaviour. But
in order for them to gain theoretical importance, i.e. to
become knowledge, intentional acts of cognition are
necessary on the part of the observer. These intentional
acts must be directed both upon the outer object and
upon the feelings with which the object is clothed in
consciousness. These acts are differentiation, abstraction,
inference, etc., and they result in the judgment of value,
the knowledge of value.
For most of our acts of behaviour it is sufficient to
have a consciousness of values, or even a pre-conscious
experience of them, and a cognition of values is not
necessary. But at a certain level of development per-
ceptual activity directed upon values is useful for the
working out of a rational system of behaviour. Now, if
we distinguish in this way the practical experience of
values by means of the feelings, from the theoretical
identification of them by means of knowledge, we may
accept the emotional intuitionalism of Scheler for the
practical sphere of action, and at the same time, in
speaking of the cognition of values, we may assert that
146
Subjective-Psychic Experience of Values
it may be gained by a theoretical intuition similar to that
by which all other knowledge is gained. 1
Therefore we may say with Heyde that valuation is
not a special kind of knowledge^ but knowledge about a
certain object (op. tit., p. I55). 2
2. VALUE AND WILL
A value situation, positive or negative, experienced as
an actuality, or foretasted in imagination or judgment.,
etc if it is in our power to control is accompanied by
a striving to cause it to remain, or to remove it; to make
it real or to avert its realization. Values in themselves
contain no force which could cause or create the strivings
and actions of the subject. The dynamic moment of
striving and action belongs to the subject himself, to the
substantival agent, and to nobody else. (It would be
better to say "nothing else" because the words "who"
and "nobody" can be used only in application to sub-
stantival agents.) The illusion that value is itself a force 3
springs up because the substantival agent is not an
abstract bearer of power, torn away from his experiences,
but a concrete individual whole, permeated with the
fundamental striving for the absolute fulness of being.
Therefore, everything that relates to the absolute fulness
1 For the intuitional theory in gnoseology, see the "Introduction"
to my Logic (translated into German as Handbuch der Logik).
2 See also N. Hartmann's theory in his EtJnk that value-knowledge
is a theoretical activity in no less a degree than our knowledge about
space (English trans., i, p. 219).
3 N. Hartmann, for example, says that value is power which causes
existence to lose its balance and to strive beyond itself, tendiert fiber
Jnnaus (English trans., i, pp. 272, 273). However, in Hi, p. 219, he
says that values have no power, that power belongs to the human will.
Value and Existence
of being, as its moment, as a means, or as something in
counter-opposition to it, does not leave the agent in-
different, but becomes his experience, charged with force.
However, if we mentally differentiate the experiences of
the agent in time from the super-temporal agent himself,
it is easy to see that the power necessary for the action
is forthcoming not from the experience of value, but
from the ego itself. Therefore the ego remains, or may
remain, the ruler of the action.
It is true, in the psycho-physical kingdom the ego in
the great majority of cases lowers itself into a condition
of slavery, in so far as it is satisfied with the most common
type of behaviour, the satisfaction of its passions, laziness,
etc. A close scrutiny, however, reveals that this is only
a relative slavery, for formal freedom (although not
positive material freedom) is still preserved. This means
that the source of actions is in the sovereign super-
temporal ego itself, and that the actions are not deter-
mined at all with necessity by its temporal experiences. 1
The realization of a striving is an act of will. We are
giving to the term "act of will" an exceedingly wide
meaning. We use this term to designate every action
which has a purposive character, independent of the fact
as to whether the striving which lies at its base has a
psychic or a psychoidal character. Therefore, we may
assert that not only the whole life of man, but also the
life of all the substantival agents of the universe, can be
divided up into sections consisting of acts of will, or, at
any rate, of the first few links of these acts. Thus
voluntarism is a theory that is useful not only for the
1 See Freedom of the Will
I 4 8
Subjective-Psychic Experience of Values
working out of a psychological system, but also for the
understanding of all the processes in the universe. 1
According to this theory the whole world in its activity
has a teleological character., not, of course, in the sense
of teleological determinism, i.e. rational predetermination
but in the sense of voluntary purposive activity. N. Hart-
mann's objections to world-teleology, in particular his
assertion that world-teleology would take away from
man the power of determining anything, because in such
a case everything would be predetermined for Mm, are
rather weak. The weakness lies in the fact that in dis-
cussing this question he has in mind only two possi-
bilities: (i) teleological determinism, and (2) causal
determinism. He misses the third possibility: free pur-
posive activity, i.e. an ^deterministic teleology in which
it is possible to have false aims, unsuccessful attempts,
trials, getting into blind alleys, with a return to the same
place for new attempts, etc.
There is no constraining power in the composition of
values, nor is there any actual necessity of realizing them. 2
Absolute intrinsic values possess an inner merit, and
hence in loving them we realize that our love is intrinsi-
cally justified. This theory differs from that of F. Brentano
in this way: we find the primary criterion of the good
1 For a Voluntaristic Psychology see ray book. Die Grundlehren
der Psychologic vom Standpunkte des Voluntarismus. In this book the
first step of action^ the striving, is looked upon as a foretasting of
the aim a and as accompanied only by the feelings of pleasure or
displeasure. I would now correct this theory by pointing out that
along with these feelings an infinite number of other feelings has
to be introduced. (See chap. vi 3 "Pleasure and Displeasure/* 2, "The
Connection between Pleasure and Striving," p. 147.)
2 See Munsterberg's objection to Bicker^ pp. 51-7; Scheler,
p. 210; Heyde, p. 74; Hartmann, Ethik.
149
Value and Existence
not in this internally justified love, but rather in the
objective inner merit of the object itself that is loved. 1
Every subject possesses: (i) a striving for the absolute
fulness of being, and (2) an individual normative idea,
which determines that possible peculiar part he should
play in the kingdom of complete realization of the
absolute values. From this it is clear that absolute values
are immediately apprehended the representatives of trans-
cendental idealism would say, "are apprehended a priori"
as something worth loving and realizing. This imme-
diate consciousness is the basic moment of conscience. 2
In the event of contradiction arising between different
values, a thing which often happens in the psycho-
physical kingdom, the preference and realization of that
value which lies on the course of the normal evolution
leading to the threshold of the Kingdom of God are
experienced as that which ought to be. Sometimes such
preference may be expressed in norms, i.e. judgments
limiting behaviour normatively. In the ideal unity of
will and value, to the realistic experience of that which
ought to be, there corresponds an ideal moment, an ideal
of that which ought to be> necessarily connected with the
eidetic structure of the will; and the will is governed by
a normative idea of the individual participation in the
absolute fulness of being. This is the moment which
N. Hartmann calls ideales Seinsollen (Eng. trans., i,
p. 247).
If the protoplastic (first-created) essence of the agent
1 For Brentano's theory see his Vom Ursprung der Sittlicken
Erkenntnis 3 Philos. BibL 3 p. 55.
2 N. Hartmamij Eihik (English trans i, pp. 67^ 68).
150
Siibjectwe-Psychic Experience of Values
furnishes him with such a dependable means of choosing
the right course as conscience and the ability to experience
that which ought to be, then, it seems, he would be
insured against mistakes. As a matter of fact, however,
our behaviour in the kingdom of psycho-physical being
is full of mistakes and false steps. How can this be? To
answer this question let us remind ourselves that the will
of the agent is free: the normative idea, conscience, the
sense of duty, or the feeling of value does not necessitate
action on the part of the agent, and does not cause his
behaviour. The super-spatial and super-temporal agent
manifests his creative power in different directions on
his own account, relying on all his abilities and temporal
experiences, but does not subordinate himself to them.
Besides, the normative idea, conscience, etc., have no
power to act so as to create new events and to make
changes in the agent. He had before him, when he made
his first act of selection, two values from which to choose.
One of these was the highest value as God's existence,
and the other was a value lower in comparison with God
Himself, the value of an active participation of a creature
in the Divine fulness of being on the ground of self-
denying love for God and reverence for His perfection.
Now it was impossible for the agent to prefer the highest
value and to desire to become God himself. Such a
choice is the preference of the value of one's own ego
to the value of God. It creates an empirical character
of selfishness, that is, it creates a more or less stable love
for one's own self greater than one's love for God.
Earlier we have differentiated two such types of selfish-
ness: (i) pride which contests with God, which cannot
Value and Existence
bear God's supremacy and is striving to overthrow Hinb
and (2) selfishness which strives to possess all the
blessings, but which does not contest with God, and is
able to acknowledge His superiority and perfection, and
even to love God and His creatures, giving, however,
the preference to itself. The first type of selfishness is
Satanic, the second is earthly and belongs to psycho-
physical being.
It is possible that a deeper examination of Satanic
existence would cause us to distinguish not only the two
kingdoms of the world's existence discussed in my book,
The World as an Organic Whole, the Kingdom of God
and the psycho-physical kingdom, but three adding to
these two the kingdom of Satanic existence.
The thought that there exist beings who are jealous
of God's superiority and contest with Him seems an
amusing fiction to the ordinary human mind. But cases
of this kind are often to be met with. Once I talked
with a young poet who did not believe in the existence
of God. After I had considered his illogical arguments
and the emotional grounds upon which they rested, I
ventured to tell him that his denial of the existence of
God was probably caused not by reasons of the mind,
but by a pride that would not permit the existence of a
being who was unapproachably perfect. About two years
later I received a letter from him in which he said that
I was right, and that he had changed his views. Suzuki,
the Japanese defender of Neo-Buddhism, says in his
book, Outlines of Mahayana Buddhism^ that if Buddhism
is described as a religion without a God and without a
soul, or simply as atheism, its adherents will not object,
152
Subjective-Psychic Experience of Values
because the conception of a Supreme Being who is
superior to His creatures and arbitrarily interferes with
their affairs is extremely offensive to a Buddhist. 1
Amongst the followers of pantheism, amongst those who
preach self-redemption, the salvation of self, and the
incompatibility of morality with a religious belief in
redemption by God, there are many persons deep in
whose souls there lies a proud aversion to the admission
of the existence of a being who is on an infinitely higher
level than their ego.
Conscience and the consciousness of that which ought
to be, or even an instinctive experience of it, condemn
both kinds of apostacy from God. The good that is
reached by these false paths represents only unimportant
bits of existence instead of the absolute fulness of .being.
Hence, they do not give complete satisfaction. However,
the pain of conscience and other sufferings do not destroy
the freedom of agents and do not predetermine their
behaviour in one particular fashion. Some agents respond
to these sufferings by entering on the course of Satanic
evolution, i.e. they respond with an even greater hatred
of the good, and elaborate their activities which are in
opposition to God. Other agents respond by seeking the
paths of normal evolution. Actually, these paths have to
be sought out with great difficulty. The apostacy from
God and His Kingdom is, so to speak, an anti-trans-
figuration of the agent. As was shown above, earthly
selfishness leads an agent to his relative isolation from
all other agents. It leaves him dependent on his own
powers alone. His union with all other beings remains
1 Page 31.
Value and Existence
only in the form of abstract consubstantiality, pre-
consciousness, and pre-feeling. Led by his selfishness,
the agent does not participate in existences alien to him
by means of a sacrificial experience of them. Rather he
tears out of them only insignificant bits, suitable for his
selfish use, and taking them alone out of pre-conscious-
ness he includes them as a part of that with which he
lives. Thus he lives in his own world which represents
only parts chosen out of the whole universe of actuality.
Creating for himself a relatively impenetrable body, and
strengthening, by the body's actions and reactions, his
connections with some particular sides of the world, he
cuts himself off from other influences of the world.
Thus, he increases still more the peculiarity of his own
environment which is different from the environment of
other beings. Possessing, due to his isolation, weak
creative powers, and having created conditions that lead
to the incompatibility of many values, he, on the one
hand, suffers from the scantiness of his life; but, on the
other hand, he finds a refuge in his isolated life from
the problems that are beyond his power, due to his
weakened condition. He does not live with all values,
but only with a more or less narrowly outlined sphere
of them. The narrowness of value-consciousness (Enge
des Wertbewusstseins) well characterized by N. Hart-
mann in his Ethik is characteristic of him. In his tiny
world made up of bits of the universe, the perspective
for correct valuation is destroyed. Some elements are
experienced in connection with powerful bodily reactions
and passions, while others are crowded into the back-
ground. The first have their value over-emphasized; the
Subjective-Psychic Experience of Values
others are unjustly under-estimated. If we add to this
the weakness of the intellect, conditioned as it is by a
weakness of power in a relatively isolated subject, if we
add also Ms imperfect cognition of objects, the incom-
pleteness of deduction and prognostication of conse-
quences, the plentiful mistakes in knowledge then it is
seen more clearly that an agent in the psycho-physical
kingdom is fated to make many mistakes in valuing
objects, and many mistakes in preferring one value to
another. 1
Under the conditions of a sundered existence, neither
the conscience of relatively highly developed beings, nor
the instinct on the primary levels of existence guarantees
beings against mistakes. To these fundamental guides
experience must be added to discover the path of normal
evolution. Thus it becomes clear that in real existence
there cannot be a clear-cut line of normal evolution.
Trials, deviations from the correct way, getting into
blind alleys, and the search for the way out of them, are
unavoidable in the realm of evolution.
If it is taken into consideration that relative good is
by its own nature connected with evil, and that even the
absolute good is accompanied by evil under the conditions
of the psycho-physical kingdom even though this evil
does not come from the nature of the absolute good
itself then the sad picture of the life of beings who are
condemning themselves to the life of the psycho-physical
kingdom is outlined still more clearly before us. Each
1 Concerning some of the sources of such mistakes see Meinong's
Psychologisch-ethische Untersuchungm zur Wert-theorie 3 p. n; also
Ehrenfels* System der Wert-theorie, p. 102.
Value and Existence
object, deed, thing, or being always calls forth ambi-
valenticihe term of the psychiatrist Bleuler or twofold
reactions of feeling and will. On the one hand an object
is experienced as pleasing, beautiful, etc., and so desirable,
while on the other hand it is experienced as unpleasant,
or dangerous, etc., and so undesirable. The uncertainty
as to what to choose, the impossibility of being pleased
by the customary, introduces difficult situations at every
step. This is owing to the fact that every object is many-
sided and, met in different surroundings, requires in the
different cases different valuations and different decisions
of the will. This is the reason why many subjects are
inclined to believe in ethical relativism and subjectivism,
and are led to a scepticism which undermines their
energy in the battle for the good. However, in all this
mixture, and, as it seems, capricious unstability, there
are hidden everywhere objective values significant for all.
If a savage does not care for a machine, and values a
piece of mirror highly this example is used by Kreibig
in support of the subjectivity and relativity of values it
only follows that the savage makes a subjective choice
from the given objective values. It does not follow from
the subjectivity of the choice that the thing chosen is
subjective. 1
It is even more difficult to recognize the objectivity of
values and the actual presence of absolute values than
to defend the objectivity and absoluteness of truth in
gnoseology. This is owing to the fact that in the conditions
of our life complex, different and contradictory feelings
permeate all our experiences of value. But in order to
1 See Scheler, pp. 21 i, 275.
Subjective-Psychic Experience of Values
hold a straight course of conduct in the direction of the
Kingdom of God with God at the head of it, it is no
less necessary to defend absoluteness and objectivity in
axiology than it is to defend absoluteness and objectivity
in gnoseology.
157
PART II
Characteristic Features of Value as the
Absolute Fulness of Being
CHAPTER VI
The Nature of Consciousness
THERE has been latent in the whole conception of value
presented in this book a unique theory of consciousness.
Since value is always connected with a subject or person^
there is no value possible apart from life and those
activities that are either conscious or an undeveloped
basis of consciousness.
It is quite clear that the metaphysics of this axiology
are a transfigured Neo-Platonism^ a Platonism that is
transformed and remoulded in many of its vital concep-
tions. The theory of consciousness is one of the notions
that are most vitally changed; but the change brings it
more nearly into line with the organic side of the Platonic
tradition. It now becomes a conception that is harmonious
with the metaphysics, elides., and aesthetics of even
traditional Neo-Platonism; for there was present in the
older conception an ambiguous theory of the mind. The
relation of sense-knowledge to the universals immanent
in the nous or higher faculty of the mind was conceived
in such a manner as to lead to a paradox.
The Neo-Platonist admitted a kind of validity to our
sense-experience by making it a lower kind of knowledge, 1
Through the operations of the imagination and of
"sympathy" the soul gave meaning to the sensations. 2
The Philosophy of Plotinus (2nd ed.)> i* p. 222; Plotinus*
Enneads 3 6. 7. 7.
2 Inge, op. cit., i a p. 223; Enneads, 4. 4. 40.
L 161
Value and Existence
As there were intellectual distinctions even in sense-
perception so there seemed to be an activity of thought
present even there. But sensation was uninteresting
because spirit alone could adequately know the world.
The object as perceived by sensation did not exist in the
soul. 1 Our perception of the object is merely an image
or a dream of the soul. Now spirit can know the world
because it participates in the higher world of spiritual
reality. Thus sense-knowledge is merely a step towards
the knowledge of participation and has validity only in
so far as it leads to spiritual perception. Yet there was a
kind of reality granted to the world of physical objects
existing in time and space, but there was no valid know-
ledge of it possible. We know the realm of spirit because
we participate in it. We have mathematical and intel-
lectual knowledge because it is an aspect of the realm of
spirit; but there is no adequate knowledge of the world
of space-time activity. That is merely a knowledge of
images. It was the disrespect for the realm of time 5 space^
and movement which caused the Neo-Platonist to be no
more concerned than he was by this paradoxical element
in his theory of knowledge. He reduced the world of
change to an illusory world; and yet he recognized that
there was a kind of reality about the world of space
and time. But he did not adequately account for our
knowledge of this changing world which in a sense is
real.
Because the spirit participates in the ultimate life of
reality^ the forms that are immanent in it are identically
the same forms as those immanent in the physical object.
1 Inge 3 op. cit i, p. 223; Enneads* 5. 5. i.
162
The Nature of Consciousness
We must say that they are identical because the Neo-
Platonist was a realist and not a nominalist. For him as
for Aristotle., "where the objects are immaterial that
which thinks and that which is thought are one and the
same." 1 Now, if we follow this through, the categories
of thought are identical with the categories of reality. 2
If this is true, there is no parallel between thought and
object, at least as far as the categories are concerned.
When we rightly think the object, we participate in the
reality of the thing in so far as it is characterized by form
and order. To be sure, we do not participate in the
sensory qualities of the thing. The thing in so far as it
embodies universals, and the thing as cognized, are not
two but one.
Thus, there is an immanence of "all in all" as far as
the intellectual forms are concerned. When rightly
thinking the nature of an object, that object as intellectual
form is actually immanent in my mind. Now some of
the present-day scholastics have understood this, and
have recently been opposing the sharp dualism and
subjectivism of the Neo-Scholastics, Such a thinker is
Gredt, who is critical of the thinking of the Neo-
Schokstic Mercier. 3 But as one reads Neo-Platonic
authors he has the impression that the "forms" imma-
nent in physical reality are not identically those immanent
in the perceiving mind.
Neo-Platonism developed a very remarkable insight:
it freed Aristotle's doctrine of the intellect as the "form
1 Aristotle, De anima^ 430^ 3; Inge, op. cit., ii 5 p. 49.
2 Inge, op. cit ii, pp. 56, 57.
3 Unsere Aussenweh* pp. 9 if.
Value and Existence
of forms" from Aristotle's sensationalism. By making the
eternal forms immanent in the intellect of the knowing
mind it gave an explanation to Plato's conception of the
eternal ideas as inborn. We no longer have the forms
explained by a mythological theory of memory., but
rather a conception of the forms as actually immanent
in the human mind.
But owing to the fact that sensations were considered
to be images and not really of the stuff of knowledge.,
the reality of physical objects was supposed to be outside
the mind of the knowing subject. Thus,, the theory of
epistemological dualism was used to explain the per-
ception of sense-objects, But epistemological dualism
naturally leads to the notion of a parallelism between
thought and thing, and when this is done, the categories
of thought themselves tend to be thought of as parallel
to the categories of reality.
Thus,, because of its theory of sense-knowledge, Neo-
Platonism tended to make the categories of thought
subjective. And so it came to think of the intellect as
the inner organ which helped us to find the meaning of
the external world. Now, rightly or wrongly, this inter-
pretation was the one accepted by the Renaissance and
Cambridge Platonists. The theory of inwardness swallowed
up the conception of the immanence of the object as an
intellectual form within the mind. It was this doctrine
of inwardness and epistemological dualism that gave us
our modern tendency towards subjectivity. And this
subjective theory destroyed the possibility of the coherent
and organic metaphysics of Neo-Platonism. The meta-
physics of Neo-Platonism are a theory of the immanence
164
The Nature of Consciousness
of "all In all," if only an immanence to a small extent. 1
But one aspect of its epistemology leads to the theory
of Leibniz, where the soul has neither windows
nor doors. For Leibniz all my experience is immanent
in my mind, but my experience is only a copy of
reality. 2
Most of modern thought has followed the theory that
the whole content of the external object transcends
human experience. However, if we follow out the sugges-
tion latent in the doctrine of the immanence of the same
universal in both thought and thing, and if we expand
it by the doctrine of the immanence of "all in all/ 5 we
have the conception of intuitionalism as a theory of
knowledge. Intuitionalism makes the organic theory of
Neo-Platonism effective in its epistemology.
By intuition we do not mean an irrationalism in the
theory of knowledge, as Bergson does, nor do we mean
that abstraction and analysis have no place in thought.
Rather, we mean that all objects, processes, forms, and
beings may be made explicit, under ideal conditions, as
natively immanent in the consciousness of the knowing
individual. Traditional Neo-Platonism made all universals
immanent in the mind of the knowing subject. This was
merely a beginning of the reformation of the whole
concept of consciousness. If we carry out this reforma-
1 This paradox is illustrated by Henry More's theory of an organic
metaphysics connected with nominalism and the conception of our
knowledge of all reality as phenominal. See Mackinnon^ The Philo-
sophical Writings of Henry More, pp. 260, 261, 280.
2 It was the new stress on observation in natural science that
caused Neo-Platonism to become completely subjective. The world
of change became significant in a manner quite foreign to traditional
Neo-Platonism .
165
Value and Existence
tion, not only the forms are immanent but everything
else is immanent in the knowing mind.
Now there is a philosophy of immanence in the theory
of knowledge called "Immanentism," but it makes
everything immanent in the knowing mind by reducing
the theory of knowledge to a type of solipsism. The theory
here presented as an aspect of Neo-Platonism is obviously
not solipsism. Everything is, to be sure, potentially
immanent in my mind,, but my mind in addition to
everything else is also immanent in every other indi-
vidual's mind. It is the theory., then., of the mutual
immanence of "all in all" for knowledge.
In such a conception there is no need for several
faculties of cognition,, since intellectual knowledge is not
the only type of knowledge that involves immanence.
Intellectual knowledge differs from sensory knowledge
only in the object upon which attention is turned. The
intellectual forms are immanent in reality, even in
physical objects, and are cognized by attention being
directed upon them. Even super-temporal and super-
spatial concrete beings such as selves are known when
attention is directed upon them.
Thus the faculty psychology of traditional Neo-
Platonism disappears and is replaced by a functional
theory of the psychic processes. The self or ego directs
its attention upon different types of reality immanent in
its consciousness. As a self it acts as a striving being.
Striving is a feeling-willing process. The ego attends to
different types and aspects of objects. Thus sensory
experience and intellectual experience differ only because
the objects to which the subject attends differ; but they
166
The Nature of Consciousness
do not represent a difference of faculty on the part of
the attending subject.
Our analysis above has treated ever yttung that is known
or may be known as immanent in the consciousness of
the knowing individual. If we wish to use the word
consciousness to cover both the psychic processes of the
self and the objects upon which attention is directed, we
may say that the objects known, even though they be
trees and flowers, form the objective side of consciousness.
But the term psychic is a more sharply defined one. It
means the mental activities of the self. Now, obviously,
a tree or a flower is not a mental activity. It is that to
which attention is directed when we perceive a tree or a
flower, and, even as cognized or perceived, forms no part
of the psychic content of consciousness.
So, when we study mind we are studying will and
feeling as aspects of attention and we are studying the
general activities of attention; but we are not studying
sensations or perceptions as the "sensed" or the per-
ceived. We are studying the processes of sensing and
perceiving, for they are merely special kinds of attention,
but not the content perceived. Psychology, which deals
with the psychic, should not deal with the sensa, logical
forms, or the perceptual content. These all belong to
other fields of knowledge, and not to psychology.
Psychology deals with psychic events as the activities
of a striving and attending subject, and should not be
confused with the theory of knowledge, which deals with
the general nature of objects immanent in conscious-
ness in so far as they are a revelation of truth. To under-
stand the nature of the theory of knowledge we must
167
Value and Existence
examine the complete nature of consciousness more
carefully.
Consciousness is possible because the self is joined
together with all other parts of the world by ideal forms,
spiritual links that weld it together with the rest of the
world. Not only consciousness is made possible by these
spiritual links, but other types of spiritual activity as
well such as the creative activity that has been made
possible by space, time, causality, number, etc. These
forms also have logical significance, as we shall see
further on.
But consciousness is made possible by the knitting
together of the self and its world by a form of connection
that makes everything immanent in everything else for
knowledge. This connection is called gnoseological coor-
dination. It merely asserts this mutual immanence of
subjects in knowledge. Consciousness thus involves at
least a subject and an object, and the ideal connection
between them. Thus consciousness transcends the limits
of individuality, and involves super-individual connec-
tions. But the psychic or mental side of knowledge
involves only the activity of the subject directed upon
the object. Consciousness thus involves more than the
psychic.
Now, the theory of knowledge is interested in the
objective side of consciousness. Judgment is possible
because the intentional acts of the self may be directed
to something immanent in consciousness but not a part
of the psychic life of the knowing individual. Judgment
is also possible because the content of reality immanent
in consciousness is knit together by ideal forms. These
168
The Nature of Consciousness
ideal forms ate a part of the real worfd> quite indepen-
dent of any act of cognition on the part of the knowing
subject. They are forms that knit together the world
itself into a unity.
Now judgment and inference are possible because the
objective side of consciousness is the real world, or at
least some aspect of it; and because the real world is
bound together by ideal forms. Since the world is con-
nected by ideal forms 5 it is possible^ in discriminating
any particular content of the world immanent in my
consciousness^ to pass from one aspect or particular of
it to another. If a given aspect of reality., when scrutinized^
is found necessarily to lead to another aspect of reality
due to its connection with it 3 the first of these aspects
is the logical ground of our cognizing that aspect of
reality called the consequent. The category of ground
and consequent is a logical, not an ontological category,
but as a logical category it is possible only because of the
ontological connections or ideal moments of the real
world.
If we understand ground and consequent in judgment
we have the clue to the theory of inference. The two
premises of the syllogism are the logical ground of the
conclusion as a consequent. This novel theory of the
nature of inference may be so developed that non-
syllogistic inferences may be incorporated without any
violence to "the general logical theory. Thus we can
account for those types of reasoning which had previously
seemed inexplicable except on the basis of the newer
symbolic logic.
It should now be clear that if the concept of imma-
169
Value and Existence
nence, which is one significant phase of Neo-Platonism 5
is allowed to develop to its logical conclusion it will
transform the entire concept of consciousness. But this
change brings psychology and the theory of knowledge
into a coherent connection with the metaphysics of Neo-
Platonism. The world becomes more explicitly an organic
whole in the light of this new theory of consciousness.
It must be admitted that the first steps in the develop-
ment of this new theory of consciousness were not made
explicitly as a transformation of Neo-Platonism. Its
author was labouring to construct an authentic psychology
and epistemology. It was only later that he discovered
how near his theories were to those of Solovyof> who
had developed epistemology as an internal critique of the
Neo-Platonic position. It was then that this new theory
of consciousness became the basis of a Neo-Platonic
metaphysics.
The theory of value developed in this book is meta-
physical; but it is the concept of consciousness in its
new role which makes possible a theory of meaning^ and
this theory of meaning is metaphysical and not psycho-
logical. It is this theory of meaning which is the clue to
the whole concept of value.
170
CHAPTER VII
Meaning Value as Meaning
I. THE PERSON AND THE "IMAGE OF GOD"
WE have found that consciousness is based on the
immanence of "all in all" for contemplation. The self
may turn its gaze upon either the temporal or the eternal.
That which is gazed upon is the objective side of con-
sciousness. But the psychic life itself is temporal. Now
psychic activity is only one side of the creativity of the
self. It also creates in terms of body, it produces that
which is space-filling as well as temporal in its nature.
This, like psychic activity, is also possible because of the
mutual immanence of subjects through other forms
besides the one of epistemological coordination. But
personality as temporal and as spatial is something that
is not temporal or spatial. The core of personality is that
which is super-temporal and super-spatial. This core is
a reality that lies outside of space and outside of time.
It is metalogical and hence does not fall under the laws
of logic. It is not subjected to the laws of identity, non-
contradiction, and the excluded middle. It is a non-
conceptual reality. It cannot be conceptual because it
does not fall under the laws of logic. Hence it has no
essence; and in this respect is like the Absolute Himself.
The Absolute is beyond the realm of essence.
This super-essential core of personality is the source
of personal life as psychic and as physical manifestations.
It is the will or source of action. It is the creative centre
171
Value and Existence
of personality; that which gives attention and strives.
Striving;, attention, and feeling are all the creation of this
self or core of the personal life. The psychic events and
physical events are real; they are not illusions; but they
are creations and not the original being or agent. For
this reason the self is free from its own character; the
self can renounce its own creations in time,, just because
it is metalogical.
Now we can understand the theory of experience, or
life. The self attends; the self feels; the self acts. But
that which the self sees, hears, and acts upon is that
which is beyond its own psychic activities at least in
such cases where it is not introspecting. In the case of
introspection it is aware of its own creative activity as a
mental life in time. But when it is giving attention to
a tree or a house or even its own body it is aware of
something that is beyond its own mental life. This leads
once again to the theory of coordination in knowledge.
The self attends to something that is beyond its own
mental life. This something is united with the self in a
unity that is unique to consciousness. Attention is founded
on a coordination of selves within the world. In this way
only is experience possible. Of course this coordination
is necessary if intelligent action is to be possible.
The self can also physically act in the world. That is
due to the fact that the self creates not only mental
events but also physical events. It creates an impenetrable
body which is uniquely its own. Of course this body
which is uniquely mine is not to be confused with that
large body of head, arms, legs, etc., which is usually
called mine and is really a body that is due to the creation
172
Meaning Value as Meaning
of many selves. That body is the product of the myriads
of selves who cooperate to make human life possible.
This theory is similar to that of Leibniz,, with this
exception., that these monads have windows. Also these
monads differ from those of Leibniz in having a core of
personality which is to be distinguished from the mental
life in time.
This theory is not unlike that of Professor James
Ward as developed in the Psychological Principles and
Realm of Ends. Ward held that there was a coordination
between the self and the objects of its experience. He
called it the duality of subject and object that is the
necessary form of all experience. But Ward differed from
this theory in making the objects of experience states of
the psychoplasm rather than the actual objects of the
extra-somatic world. Ward thought that the external
world was mirrored in the psychoplasm of human expe-
rience. This psychoplasm was really the structure of the
immediate environment of the human monad within the
brain.
Let us return to the problem of the super-essential
self which is the core of personality. The casual reader
finds a reference to the image of God or that unique idea
of God which forms the essence of the particular person-
ality and stands in contrast with the empirical nature of
personality. He might be led to think that the image of
God is really the essence of the self in so far as it is out
of time over against the empirical essence as the personal
life in space and time. This is a false interpretation: both
the image of God and the empirical character refer to
the life of personality within the temporal realm. The
Value and Existence
true self or core of personality is super-essential. The
empirical character is the character that I actually do
create in time. It may be very, very evil or it may be
more perfect. This cfrvms or empirical character is
transformed into a deified character when it is lived
according to the image of God of which the super-
essential self is the bearer.
Strange as it may seem, the image of God is that
which gives the human personality its true identity.
The image of God is not the empirical character. The
image of God is the norm of what the given individual
should be. It is realized in the experience of that person
who is a member of the Kingdom of Heaven. Because
the self, as a super-essential being, is connected with a
normative idea, it has an identity that is all its own. But
the image of God is not creative; it is the self that is
creative. The self may reject or it may accept this essence
as the norm for its activity. But the essence is that which
makes it unique; it points out the place that the self
ideally holds in the eternal Kingdom of Heaven.
2. THE SIGNIFICANCE OF MEANING
In one sense the whole of this book has been furnishing
a new definition of meaning. The particular theory of
experience here developed is a unique theory of meaning.
This theory of meaning is essentially bound up with the
theory of value which it is the aim of the book to
define.
The first thing that is essential to meaning is the fact
that the states of one person's mental life may be expe-
rienced by another person or the physical creation of one
Meaning Value as Meaning
person may be experienced by another person. This is
the mutual immanence of A and B. In other words, B is
an object of A's experience and is directly experienced
by him. In such a case B is a meaning for A. We always
have meaning when an object enriches my experience
by being present in the field of my attention and exciting
my interest in it. Not only is a person a meaning for
another person, but also the physical creations of one
person have a meaning for him and for others. "We
have . . . meaning when the pure blue colour of a light
ray, or an aria sung by Chaliapin, are not indifferent to
me, because, although they are realized outside of me,
they are still ideally present also in the composition of
my life, enriching or impoverishing it" (supra, p- 98).
But to define meaning in this way is not enough. We
must make a second implication of the theory clear to
ourselves. If the self were not coordinated with the
physical world and with other selves it could not expe-
rience them. It is related to other beings and hence it
can experience them. We have found that this experience
of another is meaning.
The peculiar form of relation involved is one that
means that every connected event transcends its own
limit and becomes through its relation to other events
consubstantial with them. The term consubstantial means
"of one substance with." Events transcend themselves in
a substance that does not destroy their individuality but
does unite them within a being that is more than the
mere plurality so united. We shall find that this theory
of consubstantiality develops into the highest criterion
and explanation of value itself.
Value and Existence
But most important of all is a third implication:
meaning also involves the existence of events as the
manifestations and experiences of a subject which creates
them. Thus not only does B have meaning for A, but
the manifestations of A have meaning for A himself:
the subject has meaning for himself in his own mani-
festations. The reason for meaning being so vitally
connected with the super-essential substantival agent is
that the subject is that which creates meaning through
its own activity. It is the subject which by its activity
transcends its own being through the forms which it
bears. These forms are its connections with other agents.
These connections are the expression of the agent's
abstract consubstantiality with which it was endowed in
its very creation.
We should now see that meaning always has an ideal
aspect. This is due to the fact that meaning always
involves relations. These relations are ideal because they
are the residual of the ideal relations of the Kingdom
of Heaven. But more than this, a self or substantival
agent is always involved in meaning. The manifestations
are always manifestations of an ideal being. It is this
ideal being that gives them unity and causes them to
be related to that which is beyond themselves because
it involves in itself some consubstantiality.
So there is an ideal aspect always indirectly involved
in the meaning even of events. Thus, if we are dealing
with a creation in time and space, such as a song, we
have the ideal relation involved in the form or essence
of the song and we have its relation to its creative source,
the substantival agent. If we treat the event within itself
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Meaning Value as Meaning
we have an abstraction, but even so, there is always an
ideal element left, the ideal form of the event and the
relations by which it transcends itself. But if the self
as an object of experience has meaning, then we have
value that is completely ideal; or if we consider an ideal
essence as having meaning we have a completely ideal
value.
Due to the strongly cognitive character of modern
philosophy we are inclined to consider meaning primarily
as a cognitive matter. Now the theory of meaning that
has been expounded in this chapter must be carefully
distinguished from any theory that makes meaning merely
that which is known. A content considered merely as
known is not a meaning. It is not the "light ray" or "an
aria sung by Chaliapin" merely as intuited that are
meanings for the mind so passively contemplating them.
No, A is a meaning for B when B is not indifferent to A,
when A enriches or impoverishes B's life.
Meaning is a relation that involves more than the
coordination of knowledge: it involves the relation of
significance for personality in its larger sphere. For, with
the theory of consciousness here developed, everything
known may enter the sphere of the knowing individual's
life. The whole world ideally forms part of the sphere
of every subject's life. Not only his own activities,
physical and mental, are meaning for him, but anything
that comes into his life may have meaning for him. This
leads us to a very interesting problem, the problem of
concrete consubstantiality, or meaning that draws persons
very close together.
M 177
Value and Existence
3. GOD AND THE WORLD
The Absolute has an existence that is completely
independent of the created world. The Absolute has
neither essence nor value. It is super-essential and
timeless; It is beyond the realm of value. But like the
human self which is also super-essential. It has a life.
This life of the Absolute is the God of religion. The God
of religion is God manifesting Himself as the Trinity.
The Trinity is of a threefold nature. Three Beings
live cooperatively a single life. But the Trinity is not
the whole of the reality of God. The core of the life of
God is the super-essential Absolute which creatively
manifests Itself in the life of the Trinity. Just as the
super-essential core of human personality creatively works
through the mental life, so the Absolute creatively works
through Its life which is the Trinity.
Even so the Divine Life is not the same as human
personality. It has a concreteness unknown to human
personality. It is a union of three in one and so is
analogous rather to the Kingdom of Heaven than to the
life of the single human personality. Each member of
the Trinity is an individuality which, united with the
other two, creates the concreteness of the life of the
Godhead. This concrete life of the Trinity is the life of
complete value. It involves ideal relationship in perfect
cooperation and harmony. Each member of the Trinity
has an absolute value as one aspect of the whole of the
life of God.
Value in its creative and original form is the life of
the Trinity. The human individual has value because he
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Meaning Value as Meaning
can in some sense cooperate with the life of the Trinity.
The Kingdom of Heaven may be considered the body
of the Trinity Itself. Because it was created there is a
distinction between it and the Trinity; but as a creation
it is the body of the Trinity. The Kingdom of Heaven
in one sense is the expression of the Trinity, and as the
Body of Christ, the Logos, it is the body of the Father
and the Holy Spirit besides.
Using this as a clue, we can see that value lies primarily
in the Trinitarian life of God; but secondarily in the
Kingdom of Heaven as the Body of the Trinity, for the
Church Triumphant, or the Kingdom of Heaven, is Its
Body. The Kingdom of Heaven is therefore distinct in
structure from the inner life of the Trinity Itself. The
Kingdom is a complex organization of many agents
forming and creating a common life in space and time.
The common life of the Trinity is above space, and
above time. It is only the Body of the Trinity that is
spatial and that is temporal. However, since the Kingdom
of Heaven is the Body of the Trinity, the principle of
unity within the Godhead is the principle of unity within
the Kingdom of Heaven.
The principle of unity in the Godhead is a very old
one in Christian thought. It is termed the perichoresis
or circumincession. Each member of the Trinity has a
distinct individuality; but due to their union through
the Absolute they cooperate in such a way as to live one
undivided life, a life of concrete fulness and joy. The
principle of perichoresis is that of individuals united
together in a larger life that is more than individual. The
Trinity is a super-individual unity. God is not a person,
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Value and Existence
but He is the union of persons in one super-personal
life. The Absolute is beyond the distinction of number;
It is that which makes possible the concrete life of the
Trinity as a unity of three in one. So we find within
the dogma of the Trinity a principle of union in which
individuality through a cooperative life becomes some-
thing that is super-personal.
It is usually not recognized that the theory that God
is a person is relatively novel in Christian thought. Even
the Protestant reformers did not assert it. It is probably
the product of Deism and really the denial of the Christian
doctrine of the Trinity. For traditional creedal theology
God is a unity of three personalities or, if you will, three
hypostases,
God in Three Persons, blessed Trinity.
The Kingdom of God is a unity that is analogous to
that of the Trinity within the Godhead. The principle
of perlchoresis explains the unity of all the myriad
personalities of the created world within the Kingdom
of Heaven. This even brings the terminology of the
Nicene Creed into logic and metaphysics. Thus we may
name the unity of individuals even within this realm of
imperfect life by a term that is really derived from the
Nicene Creed. The term is consubstantiality. It is to be
remembered that the doctrine of the Incarnation was
defined by the Nicene Creed by asserting that the
second member of the Trinity was consubstantial or of
one substance with the Father. The theory that was
rejected at Nicea was that of Arius, the theory that the
second member of the Trinity is like the Father in
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Meaning Value as Meaning
substance rather than consubstantlal or of the same
substance as the Father. Thus we see that according to
the Nicene doctrine of the Trinity the three Persons
unite to make one substance. The substance of the
Godhead is not three, but rather one; yet it is the union
of three hypostases.
If we apply the principle of consubstantiality to the
Kingdom of Heaven we have one substance within the
whole of the Kingdom. But all the selves that make up
that Kingdom are united as individuals into that one
consubstantial life.
But this is not the whole of the theory of consub-
stantiality. AH the selves of the entire universe were
endowed in their very creation with a bond that united
them to all other selves. Epistemological coordination,
space, time, number, etc., were a part of their endow-
ment as created beings. This endowment cannot be
destroyed, although its sphere of application may be
narrowed. This is a part of the unity of the Kingdom
of Heaven, since it makes possible the cooperation with
God and with other selves which is the very essence of
the close-knit unity of the Kingdom. But this one aspect
of the Kingdom is possessed by all selves. Hence we
may say that there is a slender connection that connects
every self of the whole universe with the Kingdom of
Heaven.
At their creation the selves were all endowed with
creative power, with abstract consubstantiality, and with
"the image of God," but they were not determined in
their choice of creative life, or the sphere of meaning
which they would make their own. Some selves chose
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Value and Existence
God as the meaning of their life. Love for him and for
each other was the end of living., the true Meaning of
life. They became the members of the Kingdom of
Heaven. Others chose themselves or some narrow sphere
of life as the meaning of existence, and they made up
our world, the world of evil, sin, and sorrow.
Abstract consubstantiality is necessary for all existence.
It is the original endowment of the creature. But concrete
consubstantiality is quite different. It involves a relation-
ship of cooperation where one purpose and one all-
inclusive meaning brings all persons into one common
life. God as the Supreme Meaning of life is our next
problem.
4. VALUE AS MEANING
To understand concrete consubstantiality we must
appreciate the whole conception of body in relation to
our problem.
A body and I am using the term in the sense of an
animal or a vegetable organism is a unity in a plurality.
If we conceive of it as the product of many substantival
agents producing it as their joint action we realize that
such an organism has a concreteness unknown to an
electron or a molecule. Now this unity is due not alone
to space, time, causality, etc., but also to the fact that
the activities of all the agents that make up the body
are united by one dominant purpose. We are using the
conception of Leibniz with the change of making the
monads equipped with open doors. The purpose of the
organism as a whole, its unity as a body, is due to
the directive purpose of the dominant monad.
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Meaning Value as Meaning
Now, the meaning of the organization as a whole is
to be found in the dominant monad in so far as it gives
meaning to the life of every other monad in the whole
body. Its life is the meaning for every monad in the
body because the life of the organism as a whole is the
larger life of every unit in it. Every monad exists for the
whole, and the purpose of the whole is the concrete
meaning of life for all the members of that body.
Now we are in a position to understand the conception
of the Kingdom of Heaven as the body of the Trinity,
and its bearing on the problem of concrete consubstan-
tiality. God is the supreme meaning for the Kingdom
of Heaven because He is the head of that body, while
the selves of the Kingdom of Heaven are its members.
The life of God is the directive life of the Kingdom of
Heaven; the eternal purpose of the Trinitarian life of
God is that which gives purpose to the Kingdom of
Heaven. It is a completely self-justified meaning because
It produces perfect unanimity and love, and is in Itself
a concrete interplay of unanimity and love. Thus, the
concrete life of love within the Trinity is self-justified,
but It receives a secondary confirmation in the love that
It awakens within Its body, which is the Kingdom of
Heaven.
NoWj we may say that God is the absolute intrinsic
primordial value because He gives meaning to that
perfect consubstantiality of the Kingdom of Heaven.
And nothing else can or does give such concreteness to
the Kingdom of Heaven. We may say also that all our
values are positive in just so far as they move towards
a completeness of consubstantiality. Then clearly, values
Value and Existence
are positive in just so far as they bring individuals closer
and closer to the Kingdom of Heaven. And to bring the
meaning of life closer to the Kingdom of Heaven means
to bring life more and more under the dominance of
the purpose of God. The world will become good and
beautiful and true when God is "all in all" for the life
of every creature. The Divine life is the life of love, a
love of the members for each other within the Godhead.,
and love for all created beings. Thus, when God becomes
the supreme meaning for a being, that means that every
other creature has a meaning as an object of the Divine
Love. So the fulness of life for every creature is a life
of complete and active love for God and for all other
beings.
184
CHAPTER VIII
) Beauty ', and Goodness
I. GOD AS COMPLETE MEANING
Positive value is meaning in relation to the Absolute
Meaning; it is measured by the Absolute Fulness of
Meaning and is a participation in the All-Embracing
Meaning Itself. In its concreteness value becomes satis-
factory only as meaning becomes more and more a
participation of the related content in the life of God
Himself.
Thus any positive meaning is only possible because in
experience there is a Ground of all meaning,, the meaning
of the subject and of all its objects., and because this
Ground is the measure of the fulness of the meaning of
any value-experience.
This helps us to understand the concept of value from
the side of experience. The self can never make judg-
ments of value until it has experienced value as an
aspect of its life. Due to the immanence of "all in all,"
everything in the world complements the sphere of the
life of each being. In the wider sense., my fuller life
includes everything with which I come into contact.
Everything comes into the sphere of my life as a factor
of it. And as we have already seen, God Himself is the
true meaning of my larger life. However, that does not
mean that everything enters the sphere of my own
creations, the sphere of my inner life. But owing to the
fact that everything enters the sphere of my life and is
185
Value and Existence
experienced as worthy or unworthy in terms of God as
the All-Embracing Meaning of all being, God is the
primary experience of value. Positive Meaning exists
where objects and events are experienced as worthy or
unworthy in terms of the Ultimate Meaning. All of this
is a part of the sphere of my life because my fuller life
includes God as its ultimate meaning and all agents as
potential members of the Kingdom of Heaven as a part
of its completed nature.
Final Meaning is the experience of God as the Fulness
of Meaning and everything else in relation to that Final
Meaning. Hence everything that enriches that fuller life
of ours, the whole of the created world, is a positive
value, and everything that mars it is a negative value.
But I can only realize it as a value in so far as it becomes
concretely experienced as a part of my larger life. This
does not mean that the evils in this larger Hfe of mine
are my intentions, my inner creations. But it does mean
that I am in relation to the whole world as if it were
my body. In fact, in a larger way it is my body. I some-
times experience the sickness of my body as my sickness
in the larger sense, and yet it is experienced as something
which was not due to me and was not my wish or desire.
When my body is sick I experience the pain as in a
larger sense my pain. However, the disease and pain may
not be due to my failure. Yet the sickness is meaningful
because it has a relation to my life. In the same way
everything in the universe has value for me as I experience
it in relation to its marring or improving aspects of my
wider life, the life lived in the Fulness of the Divine
Meaning. Although nothing is experienced as value unless
186
Truth) Beauty^ and Goodness
it bears a relationship to my life, yet this is not indi-
vidualism in axiology because my life only has positive
meaning through its relationship to Ultimate Meaning.
This concept has been expressed most magnificently
by F. D. Maurice in his description of Our Lord's
relationship to the man "possessed by an unclean spirit."
The expression is somewhat theological, but the thought
is quite valid.
"There was a time in our Lord's life on earth, we are
told, when a man met Him., coming out of the tombs,
exceeding fierce., whom no man could bind., no, not with
chains. That man was possessed by an unclean spirit. Of
all men upon earth., you would say that he was the one
between whom and the pure and holy Jesus there must
have existed the most intense repugnance. What Pharisee.,
who shrank from the filthy and loathsome words of that
maniac, could have experienced one-thousandth part of
the inward and intense loathing which Christ must have
experienced for the mind that those words expressed?
For it was into that He looked; that which He under-
stood; that which in His inmost being He must have
felt, which must have given Him a shock such as it could
have given to no other. I repeat the words; I beseech
you to consider them; He must have felt the wickedness
of that man in His inmost being. He must have been
conscious of it, as no one else was or could be. Now, if
we ever have had the consciousness, in a very slight
degree, of evil in another man, has it not been, up to
that degree, as if the evil were in ourselves? Suppose the
offender was a friend, or a brother, or a child, has not
this sense of personal shame, of the evil being ours, been
1*7
Value and Existence
proportionably stronger and more acute? However much
we might feel ourselves called upon to act as judges, this
perception still remained. It was not crushed even by
the anger, the selfish anger, and impatience of an injury
done to us, which, most probably, mingled with and
corrupted the purer indignation and sorrow. Most of us
confess with humiliation how little we have had of this
lively consciousness of other men's impurity, or injustice,
or falsehood, or baseness. But we do confess it; we know,
therefore, that we should be better if we had more of it.
In our best moments we admire with a fervent admira-
tion in our worse, we envy with a wicked envy those
in whom we trace most of it. And we have had just
enough of it to be certain that it belongs to the truest
and most radical part of the character, not to its transient
impulses. Suppose, then, this carried up to Its highest
point: cannot you, at a great distance, apprehend that
Christ may have entered into the sin of the maniac's
spirit, may have had the most inward realization of it,
not because it was like what was in Himself, but because
it was utterly and intensely unlike? And yet are you not
sure that this could not have been, unless He had the
most perfect and thorough sympathy with this man,
whose nature was transformed into the likeness of a
brute, whose spirit had acquired the image of a devil?
Does the coexistence of this sympathy and this antipathy
perplex you? Oh! ask yourselves which you could bear
to be away; which you could bear to be weaker than the
other! Ask yourselves whether they must not dwell
together in their highest degree, in their fullest power,
in any one of whom you could say, c He is perfect; he is
188
Truth} Beauty > and Goodness
the standard of excellence; in him there is the full image
of God. 5 Diminish by one atom the loathing and horror,
or the fellowship and sympathy, and by that atom you
lower the character; you are sure that you have brought
it nearer to the level of your own low imaginations; that
you have made it less like the Being who would raise
you towards Himself." 1
We experience God as complete meaning. He gives
meaning to everything else in so far as those other
things participate in Him. Everything that has interest
for me actually belongs to the sphere of my life. And
as Maurice's passage shows, everything should enter into
the sphere of my life as belonging to the wider area of
myself. It is in this way that the experience of value is
possible, and, indirectly, it is the way in which the
judgment of value becomes possible.
We can best understand the judgment of value and
even gain a larger knowledge of the nature of value itself
if we examine the problem of truth.
2. TRUTH AS THEORY AND TRUTH AS VALUE
If we are to understand truth as a value, a meaning
that has significance, we can best make it clear to our-
selves by understanding theoretical truth, and then con-
trasting the two types.
As we have already seen, objects of which we are
aware, whether they be physical objects, ideal forms, or
spiritual beings, are immanent in the consciousness of
the subject aware of them, although except in the case
1 Lincoln's Inn Sermons* Sermon XII, on "Christ made Sin for
Us," pp. 185 ff.
Value and Existence
of self-consciousness they are not created by the aware-
ness of the subject. They exist as realities that are not
dependent on my psychic processes for their being, and
are known as having a reality apart from my conscious-
ness. Thus consciousness contains material objects, ideal
forms, and spiritual beings, although none of them are
a part of the subject's psychic life.
The knowing process is psychic, but the objects known
need not be psychic at all. If I am aware of a passing
train, that train is immanent in my consciousness, but
is not a creation of my mental activity. The train has an
existence quite apart from my mind, but in the relation
called knowledge it is immanent in my consciousness.
In knowledge the object is connected with a knowing
subject by an ideal relation which makes them mutually
immanent in each other. Thus knowledge involves the
subject, the object, and the relation between them. An
object is not an aspect of knowledge, unless it is known.
If truly known, it is known as it is; but as known it is
immanent in the consciousness of the knowing subject.
It would be false to say that the object known is in any
way created by the knowing subject's mental processes;
but as known it is always immanent in a subject's con-
sciousness and forms the objective side or content of
that consciousness.
This special relationship which we find in knowledge
makes knowledge possible. It is a relation where all is
immanent in all for contemplation; and we would enjoy
such complete contemplation except for the imperfec-
tions of our bodies which keep us from enjoying it. This
theoretical immanence of "all in all," this possibility of
Truth) Beauty > and Goodness
universal awareness, is an ideal relation, a connection of
the immanence of "all in all" that makes intuition
possible. Along with space, time, and number, it belongs
to the abstract consubstantiality of every subject with
every other subject in the world.
We now see that an object as known is an object
related to a subject by a special relation; but this con-
nection alone does not give the subject knowledge. There
is no knowledge until the knowing subject correctly
discriminates the characteristics of the object of which
it is aware.
Truth is found in the knowledge situation in which
the object is seen as it is. Truth is the object known as
it is. However, truth is not the object as it is, but the
object known as it is. So truth involves the relation of
an ideal coordination; it is the object in a very special
type of relation, the relation of explicit knowledge.
Without the subject there would be no truth, and yet
the subject does not constitute the truth. Truth is the
object made explicit in its full nature; but it is the object
made explicit to the gaze of a subject. But truth as theory
need not be more than the object made explicit in its
full nature to the contemplation of the knowing subject.
Theoretical truth considers the object solely in its own
nature.
So much for truth, considered in its logical and
epistemological aspect. Now truth as value likewise is
not subjective, but it is experience in a sense that truth
as theory is not. The nature of theoretical truth is the
object in its original being made explicit to the contem-
plation of a subject. But the nature of truth as value is
Value and Existence
the real as meaning, in opposition to that which is
shadowy and unsubstantial, the real as opposed to the
unrealities of life. The Truth is that which gives life
meaning as eternally real and abiding in opposition to
that which perishes in the using; it is the real in contrast
to that which promises a reality which it does not have.
God is the Truth because He is the Fully Real, and the
meaning of the completeness of reality lies in Him.
Truth as value like theoretical truth involves the
relation of subject and object; but it is not that slender
relationship where the object is merely perceived as it is.
Rather it is the meaning of the fuller life itself as that
which is substantial and real rather than something
dreamlike and unreal. Truth is the concrete, the sub-
stantial, as the richness of life. It is God who is the
Completely Real, just because He is real in the highest
degree of consubstantial life. He is the substantial value,
the Truth, for all other beings, since there is Truth for
them when they are united through Him in "one body
and one Spirit."
3. GOD AS THE GOOD
God is goodness in so far as the cooperative life of the
Trinity is the end of all action of created beings. That
mutual participation of life within the Trinity is good-
ness. And as a complete outpouring of love it becomes
the love which is the meaning, the true positive meaning
of life for every creature. Now of course God must be
related to the creature to be a value for that creature,
but it is not the creature who gives value to God but
God who gives value to the creature. God would not be
Truth, Beauty, and Goodness
title supreme value for the creature if there were no
relation to the creature,, just as an object could not be
truth unless it is made explicit in the consciousness of
the subject. But the psychic activity of the subject does
not constitute theoretic truth. Theoretic truth is literally
the nature of the object made explicit in the conscious-
ness of the subject. So there is no value apart from
subjects., but the value is not of the nature of a con-
tribution that the subject makes to the object, when the
object is adjudged to be valuable, but the contribution
that the object makes to the fuller life of the subject.
So, God awakens my love but He is not the supreme
value due to my love. My love is awakened because He
is the supreme end of my life. I do not make Him
valuable, but He makes my life valuable because of His
worth. Hence God as the Good is the end of my life,
as a cooperative life of love which gives me value in so
far as I participate in it. And I participate in it in so far
as I share its love for all created things.
4. BEAUTY TRANSIENT AND ETERNAL
Beauty, like goodness, and like truth as a value, is the
completion of life, and in its fulness is to be found only
in God. Beauty is perfect expression. Of course, perfect
beauty would be goodness and truth perfectly expressed,
as revealed in God and as mediated in the complete life
of the Kingdom of Heaven. It is a wholly self-justified
value. Hence it cannot be found completely revealed
within our world, full as it is of evil and opposition.
Beauty can only find a faint echo within our world.
Our material creations are necessarily imperfect in
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Value and Existence
character. Matter as impenetrable and resisting cannot
be good. That does not mean that all space-time life is
evil. The life of the Kingdom of Heaven has a higher
type of space than is known within our system of time
and space. The space-time creations of the Kingdom of
God are perfect because they have no shadow of evil in
their composition. The material of their composition is
the perfect life of love and truth.
But in our life here and now, within the sphere of sin
and death., we can only create that which is partially
beautiful. The best that we can do is to try to express,
to give some hint of, the beauty that is to be found in
the life of the Kingdom of Heaven. That is the reason
that our beauty is always of the nature of a symbol.
"I saw no mortal beauty with these eyes/ 9 is the motto
of Michelangelo when he attempts to mould the imperfect
materials of this world in such a way as to make them
shine with the light that he has seen glow with perfect
brilliance in the world of eternal beauty.
The mountains perish, the hills pass away, the green
grass withers, the flowers fade, the beauty of man is
turned into the ugliness of death: aU the creations of
man or of nature perish. They are but passing symbols
of a beauty that never fades, of a glory that never dies.
There is a light never seen on land or sea, the brilliance
and the radiance of which inspires the man who would
cause the temporal forms of this world even faintly to
reflect the radiance of a world that knows no dimness
and no tarnish. Hence we express in a transient form, in
mere symbols, that which is eternally beautiful.
The world of nature contains much beauty: there is
194
Truth} Beauty., and Goodness
the beauty of Inanimate nature and the beauty of animate
nature. Even animals that are very cruel exhibit a great
deal of beauty. The question that naturally arises is why
so much beauty exists in animals and humans that seem
to have a character that is far from being in accord with
goodness. The answer to our question lies in the fact
that the beauty of our world is for the most part only a
matter of the surface: it does not penetrate deeply
enough into the structure of life to transform the inner
nature of the object that exhibits it. The cruelty of
nature has not been transformed by beauty: the beauty
is very superficial and does not touch the core of life.
Perfect beauty Is completely expressed Absolute Good-
ness and Truth. Hence the beauty of nature, which is
merely an expression of matter that has not yet become
good. Is merely an expression of a very slight amount of
the good. The task of the artist Is the transfiguration of
matter so that it reveals to us the nature of the possible
change that It may undergo in being made completely
beautiful. The artist shows us what can be done with
the material world. He indicates that it may be trans-
figured into the radiance of true beauty. But he does not
completely transform: he merely touches the surface of
matter. He gives us a clue as to the possible transfigura-
tion of the world.
In so doing he indicates that the beauty which he
creates, the beauty that only transforms the surface of
matter, is a suggestion of that beauty which is the com-
plete transfiguration of the creation of life. Space and
time in their highest forms may express the true beauty
which is the Life of God and the Life of the Kingdom
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Value and Existence
of Heaven. Our artistic creations and the beautiful objects
of nature are both alike: they are a transfiguration of
matter so that it reflects the realm of Eternal Goodness
and Truth. They are "broken lights" that suggest to us
the Eternal Light.
The beauty of nature^ even when it is a beauty that
is expressed on the surface of a life that is evil., gives us
a hint of what can be done with life; but it does not
commit us to the position that that which has superficial
beauty is good in its "inward parts." Thus beauty and
goodness are inseparably bound together., but every
object that has superficial beauty is not of necessity good.
It is only when beauty completely transfigures a life that
it can be called completely good; and it is only when a
life is completely good that its expression is complete
beauty. Such beauty and such goodness exist only in the
Kingdom of Heaven.
196
CHAPTER IX
Physical Relativity and Absolute Values
IN recent centuries values have almost always been
considered relative, but the physical world absolute.
To be sure, this relativity of value was largely a matter
of human morals; but even so, it is surprising how wide-
spread an implicit Utilitarianism has been in the thought
of modern philosophy. Even Henry More, the Cambridge
Platonist, was one of those philosophers who explicitly
developed Utilitarianism. Yet it was a Henry More and
others of his type of thought who believed in the absolute
attributes of the ineffable God. It was in the realm of
these absolutes where his true values lay. It was not
clear to him that his theology should have a definite
connection with his theory of morals. It was the relativism
of Aristotle's Ethics that seemed to him a solution for
the barren and arbitrary conceptions of Calvinism.
Utilitarianism was an escape from an arbitrary absolutism
in the field of morals.
Deism is a natural heritage of the Western world. It is
a natural development of one phase of a very ancient
theory of value. Deism, we are usually told, is a natural
theology that grew out of the scientific development of
modern physics. It was the attempt of the thoughtful
mind of the eighteenth century to conceive God and His
relation to the world in terms that were consistent with
the developing insights of physics. What was it in Deism,
based as it was on an abstract science, that gave it its
Value and Existence
sense of satisfaction with the world? It was a highly
developed, though implicit, conception of the absolute.
It was an implicit conception of value. God was all- wise,
all-good, and all-powerful; man and the physical world,
as His creations, were also basically and fundamentally
good and beautiful; the world also had an absolute
character.
This conception of the final adequacy of physical
existence is one of the most striking conceptions of
Western thought. It has become a folk heritage of the
Western world, and goes back in its origin through
Augustine to an ancient Semitic belief. Augustine tells
us in his Confessions that before he was a Christian he
believed that the disgusting objects of the physical world,
such as vipers and reptiles, were things of evil. After he
became a Christian he realized, so he tells us, that all of
these were the creation of a good God and were in them-
selves good and altogether perfect.
"And to Thee is nothing whatsoever evil: yea, not
only to Thee, but also to Thy creation as a whole, because
there Is nothing without, which may break in, and
corrupt that order which Thou hast appointed it. . . "
"And I perceived and found it nothing strange, that
bread which is pleasant to a healthy palate is loathsome
to one distempered; and to sore eyes light is offensive,
which to the sound is delightful. And thy righteousness
displeaseth the wicked; much more the viper and reptiles,
which Thou hast created good, fitting in with the inferior
portions of Thy Creation, with which the very wicked
also fit in; and that the more, by how much they be
unlike Thee; but with the superior creatures, by how
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Physical Relativity and Absolute Values
much they become more like to Thee. And I inquired
what iniquity was, and found it to be no substance, but
the perversion of the will, turned aside from Thee, O
God, the Supreme, towards these lower things, and
casting out its bowels, and puffed up outwardly." 1
The Deist inherited this view; he was convinced that
the world in which he lived was in a general way perfect.
Read the pages of Voltaire and you find him telling us
that the Lisbon earthquake was not cruel or diabolical
but as it should have been. 2 It is the duty of man to learn
the nature of this benevolent and kindly aspect of nature.
The interesting thing about this view is not only its
optimism, but its failure to understand the very highly
problematic character of human life in both its individual
and its social aspects. Deism is based on physics and is
only to a moderate degree concerned with specifically
human problems. But its optimism is of the same sort
as that which is characterized in the general trend of
Western thought.
We thus see that for the thought of the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries the physical world had an abso-
lute character. The general background for the thoughtful
man was the type of absolutism that grew out of physics.
Even the nineteenth century struggled in vain to escape
from this basic form of absolutism that really grew out
of mathematics. Phenomenalism as developed out of
Kant by Comte also had within it the absolutes of the
Newtonian physics. 3 Most of the conceptions of the
1 Augustine^ Confessions,, bk. vii 3 chap, xiii, chap. xvi.
2 Brightman, "Lisbon Earthquake: a Study in Religious Valua-
tion," American Journal of Theology > October 1919.
3 Kant, Metaphysische Anfangsgrunde der Naturwissenschaft.
199
Value and Existence
absolute that we find in the nineteenth century, with the
possible exception of those of Fichte and Schopenhauer.,
assume what is assumed by Deism, that the natural order
is ultimately good. They are all fundamentally the type
of absolutism that really makes the forms of the natural
world in some real sense final Thus it was that the God
of Deism Is relatively unimportant, and in the case of
Spinoza and Hegel there is no God apart from the
world.
It should now be clear that the absolute developed by
modern thought tends to be the absolute of the world
order as it now is. The most convincing form of this
absolute appeared in the Newtonian system. There we
encounter the absolutes of absolute space, absolute time,
and absolute motion. The absolute of space was the same
absolute as Henry More, the theologian and philosopher,
admired. 1 It is not alone the common-sense realist and
the traditional physicist who defend the Newtonian
position; it is also those who in some sense believe that
the physical order is absolute. The Newtonian physics
practically makes the laws of Euclid's geometry into
laws of physics. To be sure, there is a relativity as far
as observation is concerned; but the world, as it is, is
contained within the frames of two absolutes and in a
real sense, due to them, is absolute itself. You remember
that Newton took over much from Galileo, and it would
seem that Galileo was a man who was not speculative in
tendency. Newton himself thought that it was obvious
that we must ultimately deal with absolute space 3 absolute
time, and absolute motion. It was Newton who said:
1 Mackinnon, Philosophical Writings of Henry More, p. 294.
20O
Physical Relativity and Absolute Values
"Hypotheses non fingo." 1 The absolute character of
space, time, and motion seems self-evident to these
thinkers.
Most philosophers do not realize how much the new
theory of relativity has really changed the outlook for
most systems of modem thought. I suppose it is true
that the follower of Berkeley is fairly safe as far as the
criticism and the change of perspective that emanate
from the new theory of relativity. But the follower of
Berkeley is really a nominalist as far as scientific law is
concerned and cannot in any case be a genuine believer
in absolute time and in absolute space. This is clear from
Berkeley's mathematical writings and Principles. But for
those who accept the physical world as in some sense
trans-subjective and non-mental the physical world is
deprived of its absolute character by the new theory.
It means that existence in so far as it is physical is relative
and not absolute. There are many theorists who even
consider that every existent is relative., that is, is con-
stituted by the relations in which it stands to other
existents.
If the theory of relativity is true, and evidence is
accumulating very rapidly to confirm it, then we no
longer have even absolute time. Of course it is true we
have general laws of nature that are valid; but these laws
are formulated with the explicit assumption that all
points of reference are equivalent for the formulation of
the general laws of nature. But that does not mean, for
example, that the time-interval will have the same
1 Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica, section at the end
of the volume.
201
Value and Existence
magnitude for different systems of measurement. Rather
it will be different; but the general laws ascertained by
observation will be the same. Thus, for example, the same
event may have a different time-duration for various
observers. Each one of these time-intervals is valid. The
general laws are valid for all points of reference, but that
does not mean that the time and the space will be the
same for each observer of the same event. Thus a special
time must be assigned to each inertial system.
It is hard for us to realize that this theory means that
every physical existent is relative. If we take space, time,
motion, velocity, and mass as the formal constituents of
physical existence, then in dealing with any object we
must assert from what standpoint the existent reveals
such and such characteristics. No absolute attribute can
be ascribed to it in terms of space, time, motion, mass,
velocity or any other characteristic used by theoretical
physics. A physical existent is a many-faced object
relative in its physical characteristics. In place of the
Newtonian physical system with its absolute charac-
teristics of space, time, and motion we have bodies that
have become more independent of each other than in
the Newtonian system because they are no longer parts
of an absolute system; 1 yet they are relative in terms of
the relations to each other.
Is value also a variable? To the modern mind, parti-
cularly to the mind of Western Europe, it seems self-
evident that it must be. Formerly we always tended to
make value, at least ethical value, more relative than
1 Russell, "Relativity: Philosophical Consequences," Ency. Brit*
(i3th ed.)j xxxi, pp. 331 if.
202
Physical Relativity and Absolute Values
physical existence. The great mass of thinkers have made
values subjective. Merely look over the list of modern
thinkers and you will be surprised to find how many of
them make values dependent upon feeling, or the bodily
statej or human interest^ or individual development.
Pragmatism joins hands with realism and idealism in
making values relative. One of Miss Calkins' last articles
was one in which she made values subjective, 1 and she
an Absolute Idealist! One wonders in reading her and
even Professor Pringle-Patterson if they did not have
two value theories : one a theory of human values, the
other a theory of absolute values. 2 This higher kind of
value seems to be merely existence taken in its totality.
Bradley and Bosanquet undoubtably equate existence
and value. This dualism between absolute values and
relative human values we found implicit in Henry More's
system.
Max Scheler and Nicolai Hartmarm give us a new
type of absolute. They give us values that are qualities,
material qualities that may be added to existents. These
qualities are borne by existences. In a sense values exist
in their purity only in a very unreal sense. It would be
better to say that pure value subsists rather than exists.
An existent per se is not valuable, it only bares values.
Pure value may have reality apart from existence. We
see that this conception is very close to the theory of
tertiary qualities espoused by some of the English and
American realists. The difficulty with this theory lies in
1 "Value Primarily a Psychological Conception/' Journal of
Philosophical Studies^ October 1928.
2 Temple, "Some Implications of Theism/' Contemporary British
Philosophy 3 i 3 pp. 4i4ff.
203
Value and Existence
the fact that it deprives existence itself of intrinsic worth.
If we are dealing with a beautiful object we ask our-
ourselves, and I think legitimately., if the picture itself
is not beautiful apart from the adding of a quality called
beauty. If we take the position that a tertiary quality
is the only value we must ask ourselves whether there is
not a value that lies in the bearer of the quality in addi-
tion to the quality borne. This point was made clear above
in Part One.
It seems to be a fundamental insight regarding value
that all objects and all persons do not have positive value.
The attempts that have been made to give positive value
to all that exists have been the most prolific soil in which
relativistic theories of value have grown. Pragmatism,
Utilitarianism, and all forms of value-relativism have
been quite right in pointing out that some objects are
incapable of being considered positively valuable, even
sub specie aeternitatis. It seems to some of us that they
look worse, the better the perspective. All that glitters
is not gold; there are negative values, as humanity has
gradually learned to its sorrow.
If there are negative values then there must be a point
of reference, and if it is absolute, it must be valid for all.
The position we are taking in this book is one that con-
siders physical reality as trans-subjective and non-mental
in its reality. Now since human life is bound up with
physical existence, our value-problem is closely con-
nected with the problem of the physical world. We are
faced with the straggle for existence, with physical injury,
and with the competitive problem due to the limited
amount of physical goods. These factors are acute in the
204
Physical Relativity and Absolute Values
value-problem for they seem, to force relativism upon us.
I suggest that the relativity of physical existence stands
in sharp contrast to absolute value. If we accept this
thesis it cuts the ground from under all conceptions
based on the assumption that if there are absolute values
they must be found in physical being or human life as
we know them, conditioned as they are by the very
relativity of all physical nature. The terrible havoc
wrought in our traditional English and American theology
and philosophy by the new discoveries of biological
science is to be explained by the fact that such thought
as that of the Bridgewater Treatises considered physical
nature and the body of man to be perfect. But Helmholtz,
who was no atheist, tells us that the eye is a very imperfect
optical instrument and we are all well aware of the loss
and tragedy that exist in the whole realm of the struggle
for existence. It would take a very calloused mind to sing
the Te Deum while watching a hawk slay a dove, a cat
tease a mouse, or the rage-filled armies of the last war
destroying themselves and modern civilization. The
world in which we live is not a world of absolute values.
Even when we do good we find that it is relative owing
to the fact that the good that we do is infected with evil.
This relativity of human morality due to the relativity
of physical nature should be made clearer. Possibly we
can do so by using several concrete examples. Suppose a
reformer is faced with the evils of the slave trade,, or,
better, the evils of slavery itself. He works to have the
slave freed and concentrates his mind upon the good he
is doing; but it is inevitable that in creating a public
sentiment to have the slaves freed he creates hatred and
205
Value and Existence
the destruction of certain human values. I think it is
now quite generally agreed that the British West Indies
suffered enormously, both culturally and economically.,
when slavery was abolished. I use this illustration because
it involves abolition of slavery without the use of war
and therefore it does not involve so drastic a change. But
if we take into consideration that many reforms are
carried out by the use of extensive force, then we realize
that whenever we do good we are faced with the creation
of evil as well.
Suppose a man finds that to do justice to the young
lady to whom he is engaged and to his own life he must
break the ties that bind him to his own home. We say
he is justified, but very often evil is wrought by his act:
he does harm to his parents. Or suppose a man has many
obligations. If he does one thing he is prevented at the
same time from doing something else that should be done.
By the very condition of space and time values are made
relative. Thus a theory of value that is sound must recog-
nize the truth of our present-day stress on relativism.
The tragedy of our day is that Utilitarianism joined
with Hegelianism has developed a new kind of abso-
lutism. We find it in Bolshevism and Fascism. Our new
social absolutism is attempting to escape the relativity of
human life by a false Value-Absolute. In the case of
Bolshevism this is particularly pathetic. As it holds the
human mind to be merely a mirror of the material world,
then it must hold that the material world is absolute.
That is the reason it has no sympathy with any form of
relativity in the field of physics. It seems to be closing
its eyes to a very obvious truth.
206
Physical Relativity and Absolute Values
We now see that our lives, lives conditioned by those
forms of space and time exhibited in this world, are
relative. Human life only exhibits relative value. We do
not find, and we cannot find, our Value-Absolute within
the earthly sphere. I believe that Newton following
Henry More had a sound instinct. He thought that in
some way God gave us the true Value-Absolute. But I
do think he was wrong in conceiving our space and time
as the absolute attributes of the Divine; for our world
is more chaotic than he thought it to be. It seems to me
that we must seek our absolute beyond this world. It
must be concrete existence, something much more than
a mere quality or an abstract form. The argument against
the abstract concept of absolute value we have already
developed in connection with the theory of Scheler and
of the followers of Realism.
The thesis we are developing is that value as absolute
goodness, truth, and beauty, must be concrete and
beyond the world if it exists at all. Such a being would
have absolute value for all beings who directly apprehend
it. We must remind ourselves once more that we must
not expect to find it among the objects of this world,
nor to find it adequately manifested in the world. The
reason that most thinkers are opposed to the theory of
the mystic who holds that we can see God as the Absolute
beyond all the species and types of reality known in this
world, is because we wish the mystic to define the
Absolute.
We forget that in reality an absolute cannot be defined.
All that Newton did in his definition of absolute space,
time, and motion was to presuppose their existence and
207
Value and Existence
then merely use synonyms to describe them. They are
final categories that cannot be defined in terms of some-
thing not themselves. At bottom they are really the
indication that the absolute is not the relative. "Absolute
space,, by its own nature without relationship to anything
external, always remains like unto itself and immovable.
Relative space is any measure or changing dimension of
that space., which is defined through our senses by its
location in regard to bodies and is commonly used in
place of immovable space thus the dimension of sub-
terranean, aerial, or celestial space is defined by its
location in relation to the earth. 3 ' 1 The definition of the
Absolute cannot give us a higher genus under which to
classify it. If the Absolute transcends the world it cannot
be defined in terms of the world. God is the Ultimate
from which the logical forms are themselves derived. He
is the concrete of which the thin forms of earthly existence
are merely broken threads of life.
If the Godhead has absolute value, does it then mean
that human personality must necessarily be instrumental
in its value, or merely relative? Of course it might be
true that only God could have absolute value. Then
there would be absolute value but finite personality could
never participate in it. However, Plato has pointed out
the right way to handle this problem. He holds that by
participation the individual obtains value. If we use this
clue we can hold that we share in the absoluteness of
God by cooperative life with Him. If value is the concrete
fulness of life, then perfect cooperation with God pro-
duces an organization in which a personality shares, or
1 Newton^ op. cit Scholium to Definition Eight.
208
Physical Relativity and Absolute Values
better., participates in the absolute value of the Divine. 1
The Christian has attempted indirectly to deal with
this problem by his conception of the Trinity. Most of
us do not realize that in the speculation of the Greek
Church;, the Church from which the theory of the Trinity
emerged in its maturest form,, the Trinity was conceived
as the concrete fulness of life although each had an
individual existence. Thus the Trinity became the type
of what communal life of persons may be.
Our theory means that each individual gains absolute
value by complete love for God and complete love
for man. The love for God is the way of participating in
the Divine Life. Our psychological theories of love leave
to one side the conception of love as a life of participation;
but in fact it is a way of transcending the self in a perfect
unity with that which is loved. If we completely love God
we are no longer merely ourselves; we become united
with the absolute life of God Himself. But our love for
God is always a love that presses out in many directions
and carries with it an organization with all other life.
That is the truth in that Romanticism which in English
thought so frequently united with Neo-Platonism.
However^ I do not mean to suggest that our life becomes
absorbed in the life of God. Just here lies the value of
the Christian theory of the Trinity. It recognizes that
there are three individuals in the Godhead but that these
individuals even as individuals are united in one life.
So we are knit together in one common life if we share
the life of God. We are part of the fellowship of another
which is also the fellowship with the Absolute.
1 Supra, pp. 61 ff.
o 209
Value and Existence
In the ideal order each individual has an absolute
position in the whole. Hegel was wrong when he gave
a positive value to all that exists: some existents are
moving away from the fulness of being. But his concep-
tion of what the world is does give us a faint hint of that
ideal order which Kant called the realm of ends?- and
which we may call the Kingdom of Heaven. Each indi-
vidual ideally has some universal function in the whole.
So also each member of the Trinity is the whole of the
Godhead from one particular point of view. Thus the
individual has an absolute participating value. Because
he shares in the life of the absolute he has a participating
absoluteness in the life of the realm of ends.
How does this all relate to our conception of physical
relativity? The answer has been implied already. Human
life is relative because of the relative nature of all life
in space and time. Hence if we are to conceive of our-
selves ever participating in the ideal concrete order we
must either hold that the realm of ends is outside of space
and time or else hold that there is a higher type of space
and time than that known to the order in which we now
live. Very often the Christian or the Neo-Platonist holds
that the "realm of ends" is a timeless and spaceless realm.
That was the position of Plotinus and even of some of
the Christian Fathers. However^ it is quite possible that
we have not exhausted the whole realm of possibilities
in assuming the eternal life must be timeless. Two
modern Platonists 2 have suggested a cumulative theory of
1 Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals (Abbott's
trans. 3 p. 51).
2 Lossky, The World as an Organic Whole, pp. 88-905 A. S.
AlexeyeVj My si i Deistvitelnost (Thought and Reality);, p. 307.
210
Physical Relativity and Absolute Values
time connected with a theory of space which holds that
the approach to one point does not necessarily mean the
leaving of another point. If such theories are thinkable
they may throw light on our problem. If they are valid
the life of the realm of ends may be a special type of
spatial and temporal existence. It is to be hoped that
their future work may throw light on this difficult
problem.
Does such a theory take into account the problem of
beauty? Yes, but since it insists that physical life is
relative and that our present physical life does not have
absolute value it holds that no physical object is abso-
lutely beautiful. Hence., until a higher life of the body
is reached the physical can only symbolize but cannot
embody absolute value. The beauty of the mountains,,
the beauty of a flower., the beauty of a picture, is not
perfect beauty. Each of these relatively beautiful objects
points to the transfiguration that has been wrought in
some bit of physical existence. 1 Thus by being a relative
value., participating to some degree in the absolute life
of beauty, it can symbolize the complete beauty that lies
beyond it. Only when life and physical existence are
completely transfigured can they express that perfect
life which shares in the absolute life of God. This
theory makes music a supremely great art because
it so marvellously suggests the infinite reaches of
life. And it is to be remembered that it was just
this theory of art that inspired Michelangelo, da Vinci,
Raphael, and the marvellous writers of Russian
church music, acclaimed by some to have com-
1 Eugen N. Trubetzkoy, Altrussiche Ikonenmalerei.
211
Value and Existence
posed the most beautiful church music of the modern
world. 1
According to our theory the relativity of the physical
world can only be escaped by transfiguring it and thus
sharing in the absolute existence which is the absolute
value.
1 Norden, "A Brief Study of the Russian Liturgy and its Music/'
The Musical Quarterly > July 1919.
212
CHAPTER X
The Fulness of Life
IT would seem absurd even to the most bigoted soul
not to seek life as a fulness and richness of existence.
The Don Juans, the Goethes, the Heines, the Byrons,
as well as the saints, have sought life in its fulness as
they thought. Goethe thought that by tasting every type
of experience even at the expense of others he would
make his life full and rich. He drained the cup to the
bottom and tasted it to the full as he thought, drinking
dregs and all. Even if many souls had to suffer for him.,
yet that was necessary that he might have the fulness of
life. Some tell us that even the saints must crush others
if they stand in the way of the soul that moves on toward
perfection. If men stand in our way as we strive on to the
life of solitary fellowship with God, where beauty., truth,
and goodness are our blessed heritage, then we must
thrust them aside, for our fuller life is that which is all-
important.
But how thin is the conception of a Goethe, a Heine,
or even those who make the life of the saint that of
crushing others for his own perfection. The life of the
selfish seeker of his own salvation is not the fuller life.
It has not that beauty, that radiant charm that only the
deeper, unselfish life can yield.
Now according to the conception of life implied in
our theory of value, life in its fuller aspects, in its rich-
ness and fuller development, is not the seeking of one's
213
Value and Existence
own salvation for himself alone. The fulness of life is
not "self-perfection" in the sense of making oneself
complete over against other souls. Rather it is the seeking
of perfection through union with God and with the
Kingdom of God. In myself I am not the bounding
walls of even a possible perfect life. It is only as my fuller
life expands into the life of God and the Kingdom of
God that I become a being of worth. My fuller life is
God and the Kingdom of God; it is not mine as my own
creation. It is my fuller life because I am an organ of its
life. Even the Kingdom of God is value only because It
is the Body of Christ and because through it His purpose
and His life flow. "I am the vine, ye are the branches:
He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth
forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing"
(St. John xv. 5).
Now this doctrine of value as the fulness of life, and the
fulness of life as the participation of the creature in the
Life of God Himself, and the participation as a corporate
life of the Kingdom of Heaven this doctrine, I say, is a
conception that is found in its classic form in the Fourth
Gospel. It is in the Gospel according to St. John that
there lie hidden the germs of that concept of value which
unites the virtues of individualism and universalism in
axiology, and brings together the value of God, the ulti-
mate group, and the individual. Yet this theory is critical
of every attempt to set up any group in our earthly order
as a substitute for the Kingdom of Heaven. To the casual
reader its pages may appear naive and unphilosophical,
but that is due to the fact that so little of its inner meaning
has been assimilated by any philosophy of the past. In
214
The Fulness of Life
many respects it is like Neo-Platonism, and much of it
can be illuminated by Platonic doctrines, but in many
other ways it is very different.
Now we have already seen that the Neo-Platonist had
a developed theory of knowledge, but one that had a
paradoxical element., an element that led towards sub-
jectivism in the realm of epistemology. For he held that
the immediate objects of our sense-experience are mental
images, although he also assumed the objective validity
of the categories of thought. Thus the most elemental
ideas of geometry are known through notions latent in
the mind, rather than through forms that are immanent
in observed reality.
For the Neo-Platonist there is a concrete spiritual
reality, the Good or the Absolute. We do not apprehend
it by an objective mystical experience, but rather
by seeking God within our own breast. There is
a mystic spark of the divine in each soul, an inner
organ of the divine. Through this inner light, this
centre of the soul that can never be contaminated,
the Funklein, as Meister Eckhart later called it, we
intuit the divine. It is what Plotinus refers to in the
Fifth Ennead as "the Interior Man," to use Mackenna's
translation. 1
Now the Gospel according to St. John approaches the
problem in a very different manner. Although St. Paul
is saturated with inner mysticism, the author of the
Fourth Gospel has a much more natural theory of the
process of apprehending the Divine. The language is
1 5. 1. 10. Some of the Neo-Platonists did not espouse this doctrine;
but our exposition is true of Plotinus and many of them.
215
Value and Existence
that of seeing and hearing. ". . . If them wouldest believe,
thou shouldest see the glory of God" (St. John xi. 40).
"Hereafter ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of
God ascending and descending upon the Son of man"
(i. 51). "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father"
(xiv. 9). "Even the Spirit of truth; whom the world
cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth
him" (xiv. ly). 1 It is a naive theory of knowledge, you
say. In one sense it is, but in another sense it is not.
The Gospel espouses a naive theory of sense-perception,
but also a theory of the direct and objective apprehension
of spiritual facts. "A little while, and ye shall not behold
me, and again a little while and ye shall see
me" (xvi. 16). E. A. Abbott says of this passage,
"The disciples repeat the saying in perplexity. It is
repeated again by Jesus in His reply to their questionings
with one another. In each of the three cases the same
distinction is observed, apparently indicating that "behold'
means c behold with the bodily eye' but 'see' means c see
spiritually.' " 2
The glory of the Gospel according to St. John lies
in its grasp of the fact that both our sensory and spiritual
knowledge are a direct and outward apprehension of
reality. Spiritual knowledge is not the grasp of the divine
within us through an inner core of divinity. The Divine
is not a part of our nature, but is that which we grasp
when we see "the heaven opened." Thus there is, in
1 The conclusion of this passage^ not given here, brings out a
point we shall deal with Iater 3 i.e. the fact that "abiding in" is higher
than seeing.
2 Johannine Vocabulary, 1597. By permission of the Macmillan
Company and the Cambridge University Press.
216
The Fulness of Life
St. John's 1 rejection of the Pauline metaphysic of know-
ledge with its inner light, a return to the simpler position
of the sayings of the Synoptics. This makes possible a
return to Jesus' own concept of Faith.
According to the Old Testament,, faith is not a cognitive
act. To the writers of the Old Testament there was no
doubt at all about the existence of God. Faith was a
personal confidence in the character of God. 2 In Jesus'
own thinking faith seems to have a similar meaning.
There was no doubt in His mind about God's existence.
Faith was for Him a personal trust in God and His
tender love for all men. Men showed faith in our Lord
Himself when they trusted His personal character and
kindness. 3
St. Paul was saturated with the conceptions of the
Hellenistic world, and his theory of knowledge was
much like the Neo-Platonic one: there is an inner light,
a spark of the divine in each man's breast. 4 St. John
returned to a more direct system of knowledge^ a system
that has caused many thinkers to consider him naive.
But naive he is not. His theory is complex but very
simply stated. For St. John 3 knowledge seems to be
above "believing"; but Faith as an abiding in the Father
is above knowledge. 5
The achievement of value is only possible by coopera-
tion with God Himself through the Life of the Trinity.
1 In using this expression I do not mean to commit myself on the
question of the authorship of the Fourth Gospel.
2 Johannine Vocabulary^ 1469-71.
8 Inge, Faith and its Psychology, pp. 8, 9.
* Col. i. 27 1 2 Cor. iv. 16; Rom. ii. 15; Rom. vii. 22.
5 Johannine Vocabulary > 1479* 1629.
217
Value and Existence
Value is only possible through concrete consubstantiality
or an "abiding in" the Life of God. Thus the achieve-
ment of value is above the mere recognition of it. This is
only possible, St. John maintains, because of our personal
confidence in the divine Goodness as truly the Good and
the Truth, and a mutual cooperative life with God. The
doctrine of perichoresis grew out of the Fourth Gospel,
and it is the clue to the whole theory of value.
The Gospel of St. John is a gospel of the fulness of life.
"I am come that they might have life and that they
might have it more abundantly" (St. John x. 10). But
the abundant life was a life of the fellowship of one
disciple with another, just as the Son had His abundant
life in His association with the Father. It was the doctrine
of the perichoresis that made St. John's conception of
the fuller life a social one. For the Platonist it is the flight
of the alone to the Alone that makes life rich and full.
But for St. John the branches are parts of one organism
through the life of the Divine Son and the Holy Ghost.
The doctrine of the Church and the Sacraments in the
Fourth Gospel is a theory of the presence of the divine
in human life in a similar way to the consubstantiality
of the Persons of the Trinity. This is also a Synoptic
conception and seems to represent Jesus' own thought.
"For where two or three are gathered together in my
name there am I in the midst of them" (St. Matt. xvii. 20).
The presence of the divine in the world, the very fulness
of life, comes through the Trinitarian Life of the God-
head present in human life through a corporate life
which means fellowship with God. "Abide in me, and
I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except
218
The Fulness of Life
it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in
me" (St. John xv. 4).
Bishop Westcott has caught the same message in the
Fourth Gospel. "The true unity of believers., like the
unity of Persons in the blessed Trinity, is offered as
something far more than a mere moral unity of purpose,
feeling, affection; it is, in some mysterious mode which
we cannot apprehend, a vital unity. In this sense it is
the symbol of a higher type of life, in which each con-
stituent being is a conscious element in the being of a
vast whole. In 'the life,' and in c the life* only, each
individual life is able to attain perfection." 1
It is this perfection of the fuller life which gives a
joyful meaning to all existence. It is the felicity that makes
life true, beautiful, and good. It is the radiance of a
goodness that shines forth in beauty, the fineness of the
life of virtue which has transfigured all human endeavours
by finding their meaning in the Kingdom of Heaven.
This is a joyous life that makes thin earthly pleasures
seem poor and insignificant.
1 Bishop Westcott, in his Commentary on St. John (xvii. 21). By
permission of John Murray, publisher^ London.
2I 9
INDEX
Abbott, E. A., 210;, 216
Absolute, ii, 12, 59, 70-1, 99,
171, 178, 179;, 180, 209, 210,
215
Albertus Magnus, 52-3, 73
Alexeyev, A. S., 210
Aquinas, Thomas, 52-3, 74
Aristotle, 9, 13, 16, 73, 163, 164,
197
Augustine, 13, 52, 73, 128, 198-9
Beauty, 109, 193-6, 211-12
Berkeley, 201
Body, 179, 182-6, 214
Brentano, F., 149-50
Concretely ideal existence, 64
Conscience, 155
Consciousness, 161-70
Consubstantiality
abstract, 68, 72, 117, 176,
181-2
concrete, 72, 76, 108, 175,
181-3, 218
Creator, II
Deification, 73, 74, 77, 84, 108,
115, 128
Democritus, 62, 80
Dionysius the Areopagite, 52, 53,
73
Dostoevsky, 88, 91, 116, 126, 127
Eckhart, Arnold, 53-6
Eckhart, Meister, 215
Ehrenfels, C. V., 28, 44, 155
Emotional Intuitivism, 35-6,
145-6
Erigena, Johannes Scotus, 53, 74,
78, 138
Evil, 123-31
Evolution, 1 1 6, 118-20, 132-40,
*50. 153
Faith, 217
Feeling, see Value
Fichte, 36, 79, 127, 200
Florensky, P., 58-9, 69
Frank, S., 66, 83, 84
Freedom, 76-8, 87, 108, 117, 128
Fulness of being, see Value and
see God
God-
as the absolute, n, 12, 59,
70-1, 99* I7i 178, 179, 180,
209, 210, 215
as absolute intrinsic value,
59-61, 99, 109-13, 178, 183,
185-9, 208, 218
as the beautiful, 109, 193-6
as creator, II
as the fulness of being, 56-61,
73-4, 82, 113
as the good, 59* 99. *<>9. **3.
192-3, 218
as meaning, 59, 185-9
as personal, 70-1
as the truth, 109* 192, 218
Good, the, see Value and see God
Gregory Theologus, 138
Gurvitch, G. D., 36-7, 79
Hartmann, N., 36* 4*> 126, 142,
143, 147, 149. *5. *54> 203
Hegel, 10-12, 200, 210
Heyde, E., 33. 34. 44. 45. 46-50,
102, 142, 147. 149
Husserl, E., 39
221
Value and Existence
Image of God, 74, 84, 93* *43>
173-4
Immanence, 67-703 97, 185
Immanentism, 166
Individual existence 3 79-94
Inge, 1 6 1, 162
Intrinsic, see Value and see God
Intuition, 165-70
Jesus Christ, 187-93 2163 2183 219
John, St., Gospel according to,
214-19
Judgment, see Value
Kant, 97, 199, 210
Kingdom of God (or Kingdom
of Heaven)
as absolute value, 13-14, 133,
157
as the body of the Trinity, 179,
182-3, 214
as the fulness of life, 16, 115
and God, 70-4
and individuality, 81-94, *74>
210
as Spirit, 83, 130
Kreibig, I. C., 29, 156
Leibniz, 53-6, 80, 95, 96, 165,
1735 182
Likeness of God, 74, 93
Logos, 179
Love, 75-6
Maurice, F. D., 10, 187-9
Maximus the Confessor, 73
Meaning, 48, 59, 65, 66, 81,
97-8, 106, i7i-7 182-9
Meinong, Alexius, 29-33, 44, 155
Mill, J. S., 38
Moore, G. E., 42-3, 51
More, H., 197, 200, 203
Mtinsterberg, 42, 45, 142, 149
222
Newton, Isaac, 16, 200, 202, 207,
208
Paul, St., 215, 217
Paulsen, F., 42
Perfection, 53
Perichoresis, 179
Personalisni, 95
Personality, 94-8, 171-4
Plato, 15, 16, 42, 59, 164, 208
Plotinus, ii, 16, 161, 210, 215
Pre-consciousness, 65, 69, 144
Pre-feeling, 65, 66
Psychologism, 28, 38-46
Quality, see Value
Relation, see Value
Relativism, 28-32, 41, 104, 140
Relativity, physical, 201-2
Renouvier, Ciu, 78, 95, 96
Rickert, H., 45, 79, 149
Russell, Lord, 202
Satan, 125-6, 129, 138
Scheler, M., 34-6, 41, 44, 46,
50-2, 6^100, 126, 203
Schelling, 9-10, 127
Schopenhauer, 130, 200
Sense Knowledge, 161-6, 216
Seuse, H., 57-8
Solovyof, V., 9, 10, 44, 74, 78,
170
Spencer, H., 41
Spinoza, 37, 53, 200
Stern, W., 39, 48, 59, 953 96,
112-13, 118, 142
Strahlwerte, 112-13
Substantival agent, 62-7, 72, 81,
10 L, 150, 1 66, 176
Temple, W., 203
Tolstoy, 137
Index
Trinity, 16, 71-2, 81, 1 09-10,
141, 143. 178-81, 183-4,
209-10, 217-19
Truth, see Value and see God
Value-
absolute, 14, 31, 103-14, 139,
205, 207-9
absolute all-embracing intrin-
sic, 109-11
absolute all-embracing partial,
111-14
beauty as a, 193-6, 211-12
definition of, 49-50, 99-103
derivative, 99, 101, 112
and existence, 52-3
as feeling, 28-33, 38~45
feeling as a clue to, 42-4, 48,
60, 100, 102, 144-7^ *56
as the fulness of being, 56, 76,
115, 213-19
good as a, 59-61, 192-3
impersonal, 33, 96
instrumental, 39, 125, 131-2
Value continued
intrinsic, 38, 103-14
judgment of, 146-7
as meaning, 59, 66, 174-7,
182-4, 186-7
negative, 56, 60, 101, 123-31
objective, 156
positive, 185
as a quality, 34-6, 50-2, 203-4
rank, 141-3
as a relation, 33-4, 46-9
and relations, 49-50, 109,
176-7
relative, 104-7, 114-23, 205-6,
210-11
subjective intrinsic, 119, 123
theory of, relative, 202-3
theory of, subjective, 28-33
truth as, 109, 189-92
Ward, J., 173
Westcott, B. F., 219
Will and Value, 102, 147
223
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