A study in the theory of value ...

Front matter

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A STUDY IN THE THEOEY OF VALUE

Chapter I 182 The Question as Eaised in Personal Experience 182

The difficulty of finding standards for judging literature — Antecedents bear on the question but fail to solve the problem — It is the old question of mechanical explanation of qualities — Illustrations of valuing in ethics on the basis of uncritically assumed authority and of the inadequacy of ' ' antecedents ' ' to explain such valuings — The questions of value-theory raised by such valuings — Formulation once more of the situation illustrated and of the questions involved.

Chapter II 196

Preliminary Account of the Experience of Valuing and the Logic of Value Judgments 196

Necessity for a clear view of the empirical experience under discussion — This is to be sought in the first person as its only possible locus — The two tasks of the present chapter are:

(1) to describe consciousness of value, ethical and esthetic;

(2) to give an account of the logic of this situation — Value-judgment not merely instrumental — The valuing experience and its implication of the good life illustrated in the case of a useful article — An example of ethical value, illustrating the sense in which ethical values are not means but ends — An example of esthetic value, illustrating the sense in which it is true that all values as ends are esthetic — This merely another aspect of the traditional description of the esthetic experience as ' ' intrinsic ' ' — The generalizing of these individual experiences, while it does rest on the assumption that other minds resemble one's own, is thus assuming only what is necessary to rational discourse — So far the experience of valuing has been described psychologically — For the logical form of the value-judgment we may use Kant 's phrasing in the Critique of Judgment — The difficulty for our investigation is not the form but the import of judgments such as This is right, This is beautiful — This logical difficulty is that of all judgments, however — But to assert it as invalidating all judgments is meaningless — Our real difficulty is not so much logical in any technical sense as it is empirical; we are to seek a fuller account of the meaning of right and beautiful in such situations as were described in the earlier part of the chapter.

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Chapter III 206 An Account of Value as Interest in Terms of Psychology 206

The question at this point seems to be: What is value? — Psychologists answer that it is based on interest: I value what suits me — That this is merely a psychological result is not significant criticism — According to Shand and Stout valuing anything = having an interest or sentiment directed towards that thing — This is an intelligible account of the valuing experience — In spite of some difficulties and confusions Ribot substantiates this view — The psychological school of valuetheorists, Ehrenfels, Meinong, and others, seems more interested in the denotation than in the connotation of value — Since we are looking for the distinguishing characteristics of the experience rather than the variety of instances in which it occurs, or the laws of its occurrence, we get little aid from this school — We have so far merely taken up the psychological result suggested: that value is interest — This, however, suggests a hedonistic doctrine, and it is a question whether such a defense even as Professor Perry's is adequate support for the position — Our interest at least demands a different sort of development of the subject, for we are asking the meaning of the value-judgment.

Chapter IV 215

The Pragmatic Theory of Valuation as Expounded by Dewey .... 215 The definition of value in terms of interest suggests a question as to the function of judgment in determining value — An illustration to show that according to our proposed definition judgment merely records value — Dewey's recognition of the distinction between motor-affective attitude and cognitive judgment — Interdependence of judgments and attitudes does not identify them with each other — While Dewey does admit value in the sense defined in this essay, the statement of his investigation indicates that for him this sense of the word is unimportant and that the significant object of study is a process which he calls valuation — But Dewey admits two senses of the word: to value is to esteem or to estimate, to prize or to appraise — Value in the first sense is a datum, in the second the result of a logical process — Dewey thus regards our definition, which considers value in the first sense, as irrelevant — Dewey's judgment of practice defined and illustrated — Value thus "something to be given by future action" — An illustration of this process of valuation — The judgment here fills out the process itself — Truth of the judgment and validity of the value thus dependent upon outcome in later action — This account seems to contain confusions of thought — It fails to distinguish between a logical process and a succeeding set of motor activities — It makes present truth depend upon a future outcome — It appears that value is not instituted by judgment, but is present before the judgment is made — Summary of the view presented and of the criticism offered.

Chapter V 227

So far it has been maintained that having value is based upon being in relation to a motor-affective attitude — The idealistic criticism of such a thesis (1) is in error in its definition of value, but (2) points to an important phase of value theory not so far treated in this essay — The difficulty in refuting any idealistic theory lies in the idealist's insistence on his own epistemology as the prior question — But this prior question really involves the assumptions to which he objects — The present chapter will attempt the analysis of one example of the idealistic criticism — Bosanquet chosen as representative — One characteristic of idealistic theories seems to be the insistence on the logical nature of value — A second characteristic is that value is in a special sense held to be objective — Idealism appears to make value non-subjective, but somehow of the nature of thought; and it does so on the basis of what is apparently a failure to distinguish motor-affective attitude from cognitive judgment — Our criticism would be that idealism is thus wrong on two points, viz., (1) the objectivity of value and (2) the logical nature of value; but idealism points also to a lack in our theory which a later chapter is to supply — To use Bosanquet as illustrating these errors and this suggestion we must note his general position — Summary of his conception of mind in nature — Quotations to show Bosanquet 's essentially idealistic position — This position defines value much as it does reality, and thus neglects the real issue as to what sort of reality value has or is — Bosanquet 's argument to be taken up in detail — The sort of experimental data he employs — His treatment of the question seems not to distinguish value from the rest of real experience — He meets the issue by attempting to substitute a more adequate concept for that of satiety or end as applied to a finite conscious process — His actual formulation of the problem in a question, Can values be argued on? — Difficulty in his use of the word ultimate — We can agree with his first assertion, viz., that values can be argued on, but we disagree that this admits their logical nature — We can also agree with his refutation of one interpretation of the negative answer to his question — His second interpretation of the negative answer, however, is our own contention, and we can not agree with his refutation of this answer — This refutation makes two points: (1) that the distinction between motor-affective attitude and cognitive judgment is negligible and (2) that value depends upon the inherence in the object of the character of "logical stability of the whole" — The first point has already been met; the second we must now meet — Summary of the argument up to this point — In admitting that the experience of caring for something is necessary to arguing upon the question of the nature of value Bosanquet appears to admit that interest or motor-affective attitude is closely related to value itself and

not at the opposite pole as he has affirmed — Furthermore it can be shown that the "logical character of the whole" merely names a relation which is constituted by a motor-affective attitude — This shown by his phrasing — Furthermore, analysis of Bosanquet 's statements in detail indicate either that the experience of the logical character of the whole inherent in the object is another name for motor-affective attitude or else that experiencing the logical character of the whole is not a humanly possible experience— Since valuing is a human experience, the second alternative appears impossible — Bosanquet 's conclusion quoted — Summary of the position we have taken in opposition — Our position clearer and more consistent — The next chapter to sketch a theory of value based on this position as to the nature of value.

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Chapter YI 248

The Status and the Kinds of Value as Implied in Judgments of Value 248

The present chapter to show how all judgments of value imply the reality of esthetic and ethical value and to exhibit the status of value — Value as denned in this essay implies relation to a subject — Some further questions that have not so far been considered — A concrete case of value in the light of our definition — Meanings of the objection that value is objective — These objections answered — Judgments of value, however, are not motor-affective but logical and have logical implications — On the basis of our definition two points to be made — The first of these is the identical nature of value, as illustrated in examples of various sorts of value — To admit this does not blur useful distinctions; it simply makes the concept available to describe any value situation — The second point is to show that judgments of value in any field imply the reality of "higher" values — The identical nature of value tacitly admitted in many of our conventional arrangements — To see that our definition always applies, it is important to notice that while the sort of reality of the object valued may vary the value itself always consists in the same sort of relation to a subject — Thus the intangibleness of the object does not affect the nature of its value — The importance of this conception to be illustrated in the next chapter — Some misconceptions stated and the objections thus arising answered — To assert that valuing is not a logical activity does not deny the validity of logical thinking, nor the stability of the universe — To say that judgments of value merely record valuings does not deny that future valuings depend upon previous judgments — Value judgments themselves vary in value as well as in validity — We have thus considered the meaning of real value — Meaning of the term absolute as applied to value — A suggestion that with proper arrangements money might be a satisfactory criterion of value — The second point in the chapter is to show the implication of the reality of "higher" values in all value-judgments — An example of a value-judgment and its implications of further values: the judgment that this pencil is valuable implies the intrinsic value of truth — Sense in which truth is intrinsically valuable — Sense in which the judgment that truth is valuable may imply the reality of the value of right action — Sense in which the right is intrinsically valuable — Sense in which the judgment that this is right implies the reality of esthetic value — Justification of use of terms intrinsic and extrinsic as applied to value — Objection to the term absolute as applied to value — None of these considerations denies our purely relational definition of value — This fact shown by illustrative analysis of a particular motor-affective attitude: the valuing may be explained in terms of its component parts or in terms of its end — In either case the value is created by valuing — Eeligious values are created by the valuing of the valuing activity itself — Social

is a confusing term as applied to value — Summary of the results of the thesis: it has defended a relational theory of value, but it has not denied the reality of truth or right or beauty.

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Chapter YII 270

An Application to the Theory of Literary Criticism 270

A theory of value should throw some light on the theory of literary criticism — Criticism is a valuing activity and thus adds value to the world — How our theory would apply to the judicial-impressionistic controversy — The present chapter to treat a few arbitrarily chosen points — The reality of literary value — Esthetic values are not always indicated by price, but criticism is nevertheless an attempt to measure esthetic value — Value of a poem an example of intrinsic value as defined above — All intrinsic value really esthetic — The value of literature is thus esthetic value, and literary criticism is necessarily esthetic criticism — The abuse of the term pure literature: value lying in the relation to a subject which is a complex person, not a special faculty, it follows that purely literary value is commonly a false abstraction, involving a form of the substance fallacy — The impressionist -judicial controversy — Criticism must consist of judgments; but judgments of literature are records of impressions — Judicial criticism depends for content on impressions; on the other hand logical inconsistency in judgment is self-destructive — The question of standards and the answer suggested by our theory of value — The lack of formulated standards in the work of judicial critics what we should expect — Logical principles not peculiar to literature, and names for qualities too many to be called standards — Examples: the unities, probability, high seriousness — The first a logical requirement, the last neither peculiar to literature nor universally applicable, the second either a logical requirement or the name of a quality, or both, usually a suggestive descriptive term rather than a general criterion — Summary — Conclusion.

INTRODUCTION STATEMENT OF THESIS AND OUTLINE OF CONTENTS

The thesis which I wish to defend in the present essay is a very common one, believed, I think, by most people, but usually only approximately and only half-heartedly, and expressed vaguely if expressed at all. Some such belief is in fact present whenever we reflect upon acts that stir our interest ; but the belief baldly expressed in propositions sounds fanciful or weak or sentimental, and we avoid pronouncing it clearly in much the same way as that in which we hurry over an expression in an unfamiliar language — partly from modesty, but mostly from fear of appearing ridiculous and from inner conviction of ignorance. Our belief, in other words, not only seems to us sentimental and weak when we approach the formulation of it in a creed, but it actually is sentimental and weak when thus formulated, and this for the reason that we have not taken the trouble to make the formulation accurate or definite. On the one hand we are afraid of seeming sentimental ; on the other hand we do not know what our belief really is, nor what definite formula embodying it will stand the test of logical criticism.

My thesis, then, is such a belief formulated for criticism; it is simply that the interest that we take in the most utilitarian matters indicates an interest in ideals. This is not the same as saying, for instance, that our taking the trouble to get out of bed in the morning is a proof that the Kreutzer sonata is beautiful, much less that we should enjoy hearing the Kreutzer sonata performed. But its intention is not far from saying that in so iar as we are interested in living at all we impute value to life, and that in order to preserve our intellectual integrity we shall find it hard to deny value to any sort of thing that has stirred

180 A STUDY IN THE THEORY OF VALVE

the interest of any human being. Moreover, I think that it can be made clear that our very interest, say in money itself, the symbol of the economically valuable, implies so-called higher interests on our part; that a consideration of the value which we put upon the most every-day utilities logically drives us to admit the value of the 'finest' of the fine arts. , Not that every one who is capable of enjoying his breakfast is capable of enjoying poetry ; but that every human being who reflects upon the matter must, by virtue of logical necessity, admit in the value of poetry, for example, a value which has at least as genuine and as distinct a reality as that of the value of nourishing food or warm bedding.

Perhaps some sorts of value are specifically different from others ; perhaps also there is a scale of values ; but the point that seems to me clearest and most important is that the so-called " sentimental' ' or "higher" values have as well defined a place, as clearly intelligible a being, as distinctly recognizable and necessary a function in human activity as have the most readily assented-to economic values. Furthermore, I should like to make clear that there is a sense in which it is necessary to admit that the very existence of these "lower" values as such depends upon the reality or the validity of "higher" values. Nor is the sense in which this is true that of an esoteric doctrine ; it is that of logic itself, and to realize the truth in question requires only an open mind and a course of thought.

There is one other consideration to be taken into account immediately, however, in order to forestall a criticism which all thinking people would at once interject here. If the so-called ' ' sentimental ' ' values are by implication logically given a definite status by every one who can reflectively justify the raising of his hand, it does not therefore follow that all the mistaken fancies of men are to be respected, nor that every particular evaluation is valid, nor that the specious and the genuine are all one. In fact, if the "higher" values as such are a logical implication of granting the ' ' lower, ' ' it may follow that they are to be criticized

INTEODUCTION 181

much as the "lower" are criticized, that the intellect is capable of dealing with good works as it deals with useful articles, that works of the spirit are subject to a logical criticism of value as truly as works of the flesh, in short, that esthetic and ethical and religious values are to be judged or criticized on no more esoteric grounds — complexity of grounds is of course altogether another matter — than the worth of shoes or of tobacco.

My thesis is formulated, then, against all those who divide human activities off into exclusive departments : those who would insist that every man knows black from white or good from bad, but who think music and art, and perhaps even science, the cults of visionaries; those who laud scientific pursuits for their eminently useful practical application or their rigorous methods of verification, but who despise philosophy and general criticism on account of their supposed looseness or uselessness or arbitrariness; and finally those who respect the intellect and its logical standards, but who find no "reason in art," no logically sound standards which can be applied to taste or morals or religion.

The contention I make, put analytically, although of course briefly and inadequately, is (a) that recognition of economic values logically implies recognition of ethical, esthetic, and religious values, and indicates the dependence in this sense of the former upon the latter ; ( b ) that all these values have a common nature and therefore a similar status in reality, which can be rigorously and clearly defined; and (c) that the so-called "higher" values are to be criticized by the same logical procedure as that which we apply in the case of the so-called "lower" values.

To demonstrate the truth of this contention in all its details is more than I can accomplish in full in this essay. I shall therefore limit myself arbitrarily in the case of the "higher" values to those called ethical and esthetic, and in the main shall keep to the latter. The actual body of the essay is to comprise the following chapters:

182 A STUDY IN TEE THEOEY OF VALUE

I. A historical account of the problem of value theory as it has occurred in my own intellectual experience. This account seems to me essential to an appreciation of the technical discussion which follows. It is true that any valid theory is independent of the particular examples of its workings ; but value theory in its abstract and technical development has the appearance of being much more remote from human interests than it is. To indicate the genuineness of the problem involved and the intimate relations of more abstractly formulated conclusions to very concrete and apparently simple situations seems to me fully as important as the actual formulation of the theory itself. Without it the theory may appear meaningless.

II. An account of what I should call the value experience in a roughly introspective description, and of what I should call the judgment of value in terms of elementary logic. Since much of the discussion of value is made difficult and obscure by what would seem to be confusion of these two clearly distinguishable phases of our experience in connection with values and valuing, this preliminary discussion is introduced in the hope that the confusion may be avoided from the very first without any artificial abstraction or removal of either phase of the matter from its context, a context which usually, perhaps always, includes both phases.

III. A sketch of the findings of analytical psychology bearing upon the nature of value as defined in terms of interest. This is a more technical discussion, and while the considerations introduced may seem arbitrarily chosen, they seem to me to put value into a psychological context which offers a satisfactory basis for further development of the subject.

IV. A defense of the definition of value in terms of interest against the pragmatic theory of valuation or value-judgment as constitutive of value. This discussion is obviously called for, since, if the pragmatists are right, the definition given in III is quite beside the mark; since the intelligibility of both (a) and (b) of the thesis depends upon keeping clear a distinction which

INTRODUCTION 183

the pragmatists confuse ; and since in the view of the pragmatists the status of value is quite different from that which this essay exhibits.

V. A further examination of this definition of value in the light of the idealistic theory of value and value-judgment. This discussion attempts to show how far idealistic criticism of the definition points to an adequate theory of value, and in how far the idealistic neglect of the distinction between a judgment of value and an experience of valuing makes the whole idealistic theory of value unsatisfactory.

VI. An attempt to show that judgments concerning the values of the most ordinarily acknowledged sorts imply the existence or the reality of ethical and esthetic values, and that these latter values have a status no less clearly definable nor less "real" than that of the former. This discussion is obviously the making good of the chief contention of the thesis, and is the main objective of the previous discussion.

VII. An experimental study in which I shall try to show that the application of standards of esthetic value in literary criticism consists in essentially the same logical procedure as that employed in valuing the most ordinary economic commodities, and that this process is capable of giving equally valid and satisfactory results. This last section is, of course, an attempt to verify, as far as a few examples from one field could amount to verification, the assertion in (c) of the statement of the thesis.

Chapter I

My interest in the problem of value as such grew out of difficulties with apparently inadequate standards of literary criticism. Obviously, however, this interest was not in the main a literary interest, and the questions that I had been trying to answer seemed not to be altogether germane to literary study. My first attempt at finding more reliable standards was by way of geographic, biological, and economic antecedents; but here a difficulty arose which seemed to me to suggest the need of philosophy rather than science. The difficulty is roughly this: "Antecedents" are said to "explain" Chaucer, for example, a biological and economic phenomenon; but Chaucer wrote unequal verse, and the interesting fact is not that Chaucer wrote verse but that much of this verse has been thought excellent.

Whether the Canterbury Talcs are really precious or not, certainly they are humanly precious, or at least they have been thought by human beings to be precious. They have been valued, and still are valued. No doubt also they are generally valued more highly than some of the other works of Chaucer. The evidences are too numerous to cite and too obvious to need to be cited; they are suggested, for example, in the comments of critics and in the practice of teachers of English literature in selecting texts for study. The first fact, then, i.e., that the Canterbury Tales are valued, can scarcely be denied, and the second fact, i.e., that the Canterbury Tales are valued more highly than some other writings of Englishmen in the fourteenth century, or than some English writings of other centuries, will be admitted. A third fact seems to me equally interesting, viz., that the Prologue of the Canterbury Tales is valued more highly than, say, the Rhyme of Sir Thopas. And I think that we might even admit that certain lines in the Prologue are more highly valued than others ; certainly the general practice of choosing particular passages for quotation would indicate that this is the fact. The three facts now before us are three facts concerning values put upon literary work, and although economic or other antecedents might conceivably — would obviously — throw some light upon the particular examples I have used, it seems to me that such theories of antecedents, of causal historical determinants, have very little direct bearing on the points actually at issue in the present inquiry, viz., (1) the valuing of poetry in general as such, (2) the valuing of the poetry of one author or of one period above that of other authors or other periods, (3) the valuing of particular passages of poetry of one author above other passages of the same author.

There is not time here and it would not be to the point in the present essay to attempt a proof of this contention that the study of antecedents necessarily fails to solve the problem of values. The point has been. made over and over again. It is clear in Socrates' famous allusion to Anaxagoras in the Phaedo, in Aristotle's discussion of causes in the first book of the Metaphysics, in modern criticism of evolutionism as philosophy, 1 and in the opponents of so-called scientific literary criticism. 2 The whole argument, it seems to me, amounts to saying that minds are actuated by purposes directed to the future, and that, since no description of the past includes all the particulars of the future, scientific explanation of the past is inadequate for the discussion of purpose. In other words, we may admit a complete determinism, but when we act, i.e., so long as we remain human beings, we are under what may indeed be called the illusion of freedom; an illusion which remains, however, the

1 Cf . e.g., Howison, The Limits of Evolution.

2 Cf. Ethel Puffer, The Psychology of Beauty, chap. 1.

central fact of conscious life, and which is therefore as real and as important as any fact whatever. Purpose grows out of the past, but it is consciously directed towards the future, and for us it is this conscious free direction of purpose that constitutes us moral beings and gives our lives value and content.

Anthropological investigation may prove to us that art had an origin of some sort, a non-esthetic origin, say; but we are interested in art as such just because it is that which offers human beings what seems to us a valuable experience. It is only such art as does give or has given this experience that we value, and it is only in so far as art is capable of giving this experience that we value it. What happened, genetically speaking, before art took on this character is not to the point. Geographic, biological, economic antecedents may offer causal explanations of the existence of objects which we now value ; they can scarcely give any adequate account of the specific qualities which we value in those objects. Or, if they can, then esthetic value is merely a name for something else, and literary merit — purely literary — is an illusion or a disguise or a euphemism.

The function of the genetic explanation of values is like that of the mathematical study of music. It may be interesting and useful to know that the tonic vibrates twice while the dominant vibrates three times; but such a Pythagorean analysis gives not the slightest hint of the peculiar hollow sound of the consonance that we call a perfect fifth ; and the most expert physicist may be completely lacking in musical appreciation. As the sound of a fifth is not a mathematical ratio, and as the knowledge of the physical nature of sound is entirely distinct from the hearing of consonances and dissonances, so the value of a work of art is not constituted by its biological or economic or other antecedents, and the knowledge of these antecedents is entirely distinct from the valuing of the work of art. The study of such valuing is itself a theoretical scientific matter, but it is not a matter of antecedents ; it must be an account of just that element in experience which in the very nature of the case follows upon