(Contributions To Phenomenology 28) James G. Hart (Auth.), James G. Hart, Lester Embree (Eds.) - Phenomenology of Values and Valuing-Springer Netherlands (1997)

PHENOMENOLOGY OF VALUES AND VALUING
CONTRIBUTIONS TO PHENOMENOLOGY
IN COOPERATION WITH
THE CENTER FOR ADVANCED RESEARCH IN PHENOMENOLOGY
Volume 28
Editor:
John Drummond, Mount Saint Mary's College
Editorial Board:
Elizabeth A. Behnke
David Carr, Emory University
Stephen Crowell, Rice University
Lester Embree, Florida Atlantic University
J. Claude Evans, Washington University
Jose Huertas-Jourda, Wilfrid Laurier University
Joseph J. Kockelmans, The Pennsylvania State University
William R. McKenna, Miami University
Algis Mickunas, Ohio University
J. N. Mohanty, Temple University
Tom Nenon, The University of Memphis
Thomas M. Seebohm, Johannes Gutenberg-Universitiit, Mainz
Elisabeth Straker, Philosophisches Seminarium der Universitiit Koln
Richard M. Zaner, Vanderbilt University
Scope
The purpose of this series is to foster the development of phenomenological philosophy

through creative research. Contemporary issues in philosophy, other disciplines and in
culture generally, offer opportunities for the application of phenomenological methods that
call for creative responses. Although the work of several generations of thinkers has
provided phenomenology with many results with which to approach these challenges, a truly
successful response to them will require building on this work with new analyses and
methodological innovations.
PHENOMENOLOGY
OF VALUES AND VALUING
edited by
JAMES G. HART
Department of Religious Studies,
Indiana University, Bloomington, USA
and
LESTER EMBREE
Department of Philosophy,
Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, USA
SPRINGER-SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, B.V.

A C.I.P. Catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress
ISBN 978-90-481-4826-4 ISBN 978-94-017-2608-5 (eBook)

DOI 10.1007/978-94-017-2608-5
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© 1997 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 1997
No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or
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Table of Contents
Preface vii
Introduction James G. Hart: "Value-Theory and Phenomenology"
Chapter I. Don E. Marietta, Jr.: "The Concept of Objective II
Value"
Chapter 2. John B. Brough: "Image and Artistic Value" 29
Chapter 3. Lester Embree: "Problems of the Value ofNature in 49
Phenomenological Perspective or What to do About
Snakes in the Grass"
Chapter 4. Steven W. Laycock: "The Value of Absence" 63
Chapter 5. Robert Welsh Jordan: "The Part Played by Value in the 81
Modification of Open into Attractive Possibilities"
Chapter 6. Karl Schuhmann: "The Notion of Value in Christian 95
von Ehrenfels"
Chapter 7. Thomas Nenon: "Values, Reasons for Actions and 117
Reflexivity"
Chapter 8. Kenneth W. Stikkers: "Values as Ontological 137
Difference"
Chapter 9. Phillip Blosser: "Scheler's Theory of Values 155
Reconsidered"
Chapter 10. Ullrich Melle: "Husser1's Phenomenology of Willing" 169
Chapter 11. James G. Hart: "The Summum Bonum and Value- 193
Wholes: Aspects of a Husserlian Axiology and Theology"
Chapter 12. H. Peter Steeves: "A Bibliography of Axiology and
Phenomenology" 231
Notes on Contributors 245
Index ofNames 249
Index of Topics 253
v
Preface
The basis for this book is a conference on the Phenomenology of Values

and Valuing sponsored and organized by the Center for Advanced Research
on Phenomenology under its Director, Lester Embree. It was held on the
ocean in Delray Beach, Florida in June, 1994. The participants wish to
thank again Lester Embree for his kind hospitality and energy which made
possible this very successful philosophy conference. The technical side of
the preparation of this volume for final printing is a result of the skills and
savvy of Tamy Sherwood, secretary to the Religious Studies Department
at Indiana University. The editors thank her for her excellent work as well
as her unflappability and graciousness in the face of all the contingencies
and surds the use of modern computer technology occasions.
Vll
Introduction
Value-Theory and Phenomenology
James G. Hart
Indiana University
As with most areas of philosophy and with philosophy itself it is a disputed

philosophical matter what precisely the subject matter is to which the name
of the subject matter refers. Value-theory, J.N. Findlay has claimed 1,
"began as a tailpiece to Ethics, but it arguably ought to end as the tail
which wags the dog, which by illuminating the ends of practice alone
makes the prescription of norms for practice itself a practicable
undertaking." This view, I believe, remains disputed today even among
those for whom value-theory is a basic discipline.
In the nineteenth century we find economics emerging as a science of
values. Karl Marx, echoing discussions in Aristotle's Politics, Book I, built
a critique of capitalism around the distinction between the instrumental or
use-value of something and its transformation into its exchange value, or
a commodity, i.e., its value in the marketplace or its translatability into
capitaJ.2 Marx's discussion, as has often been noted, is
"phenomenologically" rich. By this what is meant is that there are not only
rich necessary distinctions brought to light, but also this is done in
connection with the human consciousness' pursuit of meaning in the
historical context in which it finds itself. Perhaps most authors who are
1J.N. Findlay, Axiological Ethics (London: St. Martin's Press, 1970), p. I; this is a survey of
important literature. Findlay is the author of one of the most distinguished works on the
phenomenology of values and valuing; see his Values and Intentions (New York: Humanities Press,
1961).
2Karl Marx, Capital, especially Part I.
J. G. Hart and L. Embree ( eds.), Phenomenology of Values and Valuing, 1-9.

© 1997 Kluwer Academic Publishers.
2 JAMES G. HART
connected to phenomenology do value-theory in this rich sense.

But as in the nineteenth century there was also a formal reflection of
values and valuing as such, so there have been phenomenologists who have
thematized values and valuing. In the middle to late nineteenth century we
find the cluster of thinkers who today are referred to as the Austrian school
of value-theory, von Neumann, Brentano, Meinong, and Ehrenfels (cf. Karl
Schuhmann's essay in this volume). Early Husser} too must be aligned
with this movement, at least in spirit. For most of these thinkers there is a
parallel between value-theory or "axiology" which term, according to
Findlay, Urban introduced into English (in his 1906 work Valuation: Its
Nature and Laws) and formal logic and formal ontology. In such a view,
as there are laws governing the relationship of wholes and parts as applied
to propositions depending on the grammar, consistency, as well as the
meaning (extension and intension) of terms, so there is an analogous formal
relation between values.
Of course, since Brentano this could only be half the story. That is, the
ray of reflection has to be cast also in the direction of the intentional
activity which correlated with the values. There also had to be a logic in the
presentation of values and even a logic of the value of the presentations.
All this was inaugurated in Brentano's The Origin of Our Knowledge of
Right and Wrong in 1889. Brentano's developed his views in his lectures
and these appeared later as The Foundation and Construction of Ethics.
Brentano's writings and lectures generated what are generally regarded as
"phenomenological" discussions among Meinong, Husser}, Scheler, N.
Hartmann, Dietrich von Hildebrand, et alii. But the influence of
Brentano's seminal work may also be traced in the English philosophers
G.E. Moore as well as W.D.Ross and H. RashdalJ.3 And in America,
besides the work ofUrban, the work ofR.B. Perry and the Latin American
philosopher, Robert Hartmann, at least have one foot in this tradition.
A tension between and within perhaps most of these writers is to what
extent formal value theory is embedded tacitly in the quest for the good life
and the Good; or whether the formal value theory is the fundamental and
sufficient philosophical context for raising the question of the good life.
Again see Findlay's Axiological Ethics for a sketch of these matters.

3
VALUE-THEORYANDPHENO MONOLOGY 3
Note that this is not the same question as whether the proper good of
human action or what humans ought to do is to be decided by what is
formal in the sense of what belongs to pure reason and what is not a
correlate of inclinations or desires and therefore material. Although it
would seem that this latter Kantian theme is pretty much decided against
by this tradition, Robert Jordan, in this volume, points out that the positions
of Scheler and Hartmann agree with Kant's deontological position in as
much as moral worth is independent of whatever value an action's
immediate consequences might have. Here we see that value theory tends
to be teleological, whether utilitarian-consequentialist or Aristotelian in the
sense of both consequentialist and involving intrinsic goods, i.e., goods
which are good independent of their consequences. Not that there is no
issue of obligation or deontic logic. Husserl's axiology is replete with
these issues. And Max Scheler's major work, Der Formalismus in der
Ethik und die materiale Wertethik ( 1916) wrestled mightily with the sense
in which imperatives and duties are tied to the experienced good. But there
still are, as Philip Blosser points out (in his essay in this volume), serious
issues in Scheler regarding adjudicating value-claims and sorting out one's
duties and responsibilities.
The ancient Greek philosophers, of course, asked about what the good
life is, what true happiness is, what the good of humans is, and, of course,
what the Good is. Although many themes of interest to value-theory and
valuing surface in Greek thought, there is not a special discipline of value-
theory. Thus we find analyses of whether what the value theorist might
name as values ("good," "noble," "beautiful," "wise") are properties; we
find even efforts at the ontology of the Good and the question of whether
it can be conceived as a being, substance, or property. But these are all in
the context of the quest for wisdom and the good life. We also find
analyses of the valuing kinds of intentionality, e.g., kinds of desire (eros),
contemplation (theorein)-as well as disvalues, e.g., of fear, sadness, etc. It
is an issue in value-theory and especially among the phenomenologists of
value whether or not the question of the good life, with its contingencies
and surds, its ecstasies and abysses, can be adequately discussed in the
framework of the formal-logical analysis of values and valuing. Assuming
that axiology provides the logic of the purity of heart as well as the logic
4 JAMES G. HART
for the impure of heart,4 one has reason to ask whether, e.g., the
problem/mystery of the human good or the problem/mystery of evil is best
grasped in the context of disvalues and disvaluing. What is the yardstick
appropriate to the "thick" senses of the good which the question of the
good life or the meaning of life require? Is this of the same order of the
calculus of more or less, higher and lower, etc. which characterize
axiology? (Cf. Husserl's meditations here as presented in Hart's essay.)
There is the further issue of whether axiology as a formal analysis does
justice to the nature of practical reasoning which is embedded in habits of
action and perception. (See the essys of Lester Embree and Robert Jordan
essay for some of these matters.) And one may also ask whether the formal
axiologic of valuing is able to capture the rich texture of what we mean by
will and willing. (See the essays by Robert Jordan and Ullrich Melle in this
volume.)
A philosopher whose framework was the classical tradition once
complained about more recent discussions of love, e.g., those of Martin
Buber, that the analysis in terms of I and Thou is distortingly abstract and
the Greeks do it better because they speak of friends and friendship. It, of
course, is true that friendship is more concrete than 1-Thou, but when is a
philosophical analysis distortingly abstract? It would seem that
philosophical analysis is guilty of what Whitehead calls the fallacy of
"misplaced concreteness" only when it forgets or suppresses the context of
the reflection. A familiar example, of course, is the post-Galilean
mathematicized version of nature, which Husserl called a "veil of ideas."
Another example, equally familiar today, is the application of the Free
Market calculus to the quality of the experience of the world. Consider that
along the Mississipi in Louisiana fertilizer companies want to dump ten to
twenty million tons of gypsum (which contains cadmium and low-level
radiation) into the river. If they are not permitted to do this they will have
to pay the costs of hauling the gypsum to the deep ocean for dumping there
and raise the price of the fertilizer. The ecologically minded economist
will argue that, if this is so, the fertilizer companies have not been
estimating the proper cost of the production of the fertilizer. Because they
'Cf. my "Axiology as the Form of Purity of Heart," in Philosophy Today (1990); also chapters two
and four of The Person and the Common Life (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1992).
VALUE-THEORY AND PHENOMONOLOGY 5
may not simply destroy the oyster, shrimp, and other fishing industries
downstream, they must dump their gypsum elsewhere and pay the costs for
this. 5 To which the deep ecologist might ask, what is the cost of what is
done to the land by the use of these fertilizers? And what is the cost to the
"deep ocean" for dumping the gypsum there? And, indeed, what is the
cost to the ecosystem of the river inflicted by the intensive fishing industry
downstream? What is the cost to all the human beings involved in terms
of the life-style tied to the service of the "megamachine's" constant growth,
profit, consumption and production? And on top of these questions one
might well ask: Are we able to find ways of rendering the values and
disvalues commensurate or are we not dealing with incalculable values?
The trouble with this latter position, if it is true, is that it makes impossible
or almost impossible a form of discourse which can resolve the disputes
because, in this case, by definition we are dealing with incommensurables
vs. commensurables. Or is there here required a new, less philosophical
discourse and genre which resembles the homily, the jeremiad, and the
poem? In any case, as Daly and Cobb very nicely demonstrate, the Free
Market value-grid is a fallacy of"misplaced concreteness" when taken as
the norm for all economic decisions. 6
Greek philosophy does not speak explicitly of sense and reference nor
does it make a distinction between meaning and object of meaning - to say
nothing of actus essendi, the transcendental ego, quasi-indexicals, etc.
Philosophical schools emerge around the conviction that these
philosophical terms make explicit or clarify in an essential way our
experience of the world. Can we say that the topic of value strives to
explicate and therefore enrich our appreciation ofthe concrete context of
experience in the way the modem reflection on, e.g., sense and object of
meaning (whether as in Neo-Kantianism, Neo-Fregeanism, or
Phenomenology) are thought, by the proponents, to be indispensable
considerations? Or is it a bogus notion? Today many are disposed to
compare "essence" with phlogiston and ether. As these latter notions gave
way to the more recent physics, so, it is alleged, essential meanings must
'I am indebted to Hennan E. Daly and John B. Cobb, Jr. For the Common Good (Boston: Beacon
Press, 1994), p. 57 for this example.
•see their book, For the Common Good, passim.
6 JAMES G. HART
give way to "family resemblances" or to the unknown hidden context

which generates the apparent necessities and apparent essential
frameworks. Similarly, are "values" a result of philosophers being
mesmerized by a concept which in fact has no counterpart in the
experienced world or the experiencing of the world?
Although this view has not been a temptation for value-theory or the
phenomen<?logy of values it has been a temptation for Heidegger and the
thinkers persuaded by him and Nietzsche. In this volume, Thomas Nenon
and Kenneth Stikkers wrestle with some of the issues raised by Heidegger
in regard to the phenomenology of values.
Husserlian phenomenology holds that the transcendental reduction
makes clear the senses in which we do and do not experience values. Of
course, in the natural attitude we experience good and bad, lovely and ugly,
and attractive and repugnant people and things. Indeed, we are coming to
appreciate aspects of nature, which we overlooked before and took for
granted. (See Lester Embree's discussion in this volume.) In this sense we
never experience values but only mundane objects, environments, and
human and non-human persons which happen to have attractive and
unattractive aspects. Just as we never, in a proper sense, experience merely
spatial perspectives, properties, syntactic ties, token reflexives or quasi-
indexicals, but rather we experience these as the constitutive moments of
the appearing objects or aspects by which we experience the objects of the
world, so values are not what we experience but how we experience the
world. (Cf. Kenneth Stikkers proposal in this volume that there is
symmetery between what Scheler means by values and what Derrida means
by differance.) Borrowing a scholastic distinction, values then would be
not id quod but the id quo, i.e., not what we experience but that by which
and through which we experience. Or, following Chisholm, they would be
the adverbs of the appearings of things or people: She is appearing
stunningly, charmingly, sexily, etc. And, for Husserl's transcendental
phenomenology, the properly philosophical reflection involves a
detachment from what appears to its appearings and how it appears. This
brings to light what before had a kind of anonymity and implicitness. And
now what appears becomes a peripheral consideration, albeit the necessary
context, to how it appears. In this sense we may say that now, in the
attitude of philosophical reflection, we are experiencing what before was
that "through which" we experienced. And in this sense we may be said,

now, in the attitude of philosophical reflection, to experience values in the
same way that we experience concepts, syncategorematicals, indexicals,
etc., even though, of course, these are only constituent moments or aspects
of what properly appears to us in the natural attitude.
Of course it may still be the case that there are such constituent
considerations which we properly do not experience but are that through
which we experience the world and which have to be exorcised. Doubtless
many of our forebearers organized their experience of the world in terms
of an absolute above where heaven resided, just as earlier scientists
organized their experience through the concepts of phlogiston and saw
certain phenomenon as manifesting phlogiston. And when our forebearers
came to see that there was no absolute above, no necessary correlation
between the exalted and the highest- which does not mean that therefore
all senses of hierarchy of values had to be dispensed with - their sacred
cosmology changed. And similarly scientists came to see that phlogiston
was a mistake. For value-theorists and phenomenologists of value a
parallel exorcism of value is not possible. Value has a more fundamental
status than an empirical or cultural universal. The reasons are to be found
in the individual theories. Here we may simply note that for many
phenomenological value theorists one reason is that valuing in its manifold
forms, e.g., of desiring, loving, willing, wishing, delighting in, being
enthralled by, admiring, finding pleasing, etc. is an ineluctable and
fundamental way that humans exist. Another route to establish values is
the proposal that all forms of intentionality may be understood by a generic
sense of valuing, e.g., desiring, tending, loving or willing. (See the essays
by Stikkers, Melle, Hart and Schuhmann for some of these matters.)
Of course, the introduction of the themes of intentionality and
constitution raise the issue of the objectivity of values. Are the values we
assign individually or collectively to the world really revelatory of us and
not the world? Are the values predicated properly only of human
intentions and agency or also are they properly constitutive of what
intentionality intends? Are values "merely intentional" objects which, like
spoken sentences, exist only in the performance of the speaking or do they,
again like spoken sentences, disclose material apriori propositions, which,
in the eyes of some phenomenologists, exist independently of the one
8 JAMES G. HART
making the disclosure. The essays by Karl Schuhmann and Don Marietta
deal explicitly with this problem; most of the others in this volume of
course are forced to deal with it at least implicitly.
Finally, like other branches of philosophy, philosophy is in part issue-
oriented as well as commentary on and discussion of earlier discussions of
issues, foremostly those of the thinkers who have the most distinctive voice
in the conversation by reason of their having made distinctions which have
determined the direction of the conversation. What determines how the
philosopher habitually proceeds depends on many things which it would
probably be too tedious to mention. Suffice it here to say that there have
been great philosophers who insisted that they were primarily
commentators on their mentors. These are the "neo-" philosophers, e.g.,
Plotinus, Averroes, St. Thomas, John of St. Thomas, etc. Others have been
propelled to be issue-focused not necessarily because of a disdain for the
work of mere commenting but because the issues that most intrigue them
have not found appropriate distinctions and categories in the tradition in
which they were schooled. Thus, placed at the beginning of this volume,
we find an examination of the objectivity of values, especially from within
the context of how we in fact function in our everyday discourse and
interaction (seee Don Marietta's essay); and there is an original effort to
elucidate the aesthetic value of contemporary works of art (see John
Brough's essay); similarly there is an attempt to integrate nature into value-
theory (see Lester Embree's essay); there is also a very original Buddhist
encounter with phenomenology and wrestle with the priority of absence
over presence (see Steven Laycock's essay); and finally there is a wrestle
with the difficult question of whether there is possible genuinely novel
valuations (see Robert Jordan's contribution). It is not that these
discussions happen outside all prior discussions and traditions; nor that
these thinkers do not integrate the decisive distinctions drawn by the
distinctive voices in these discussions. But rather, because their angle of
vision opens up to them new fields of reflection their work is less
expository and less a commentary. In this sense these thinkers go more
directly zu den Sachen selbst and throw off the more rabbinic garb of
commentators and do philosophy less encumbered with research and
learning. Only the reader can say, however, whether the ideals of
phenomenological philosophy are best approximated in the issue-oriented
focus or the more "scholarly" commentaries. I doubt that the genre itself
decides the issue.
Chapter 1
The Concept of Objective Value
Don E. Marietta, Jr.

Florida Atlantic University
When philosophers, and many non-philosophers, wish to claim that a value

is well-founded, that it is a value which should be accepted, they describe
it as an objective value. As widely used as this terminology is, I think that
it is unfortunate. Calling a value objective is not very informative, since it
does not give the grounds on which the value is commended. Also the
concept of objectivity in knowledge and in values suffers from significant
confusion. The concern that values be understood as grounded in
something much stronger than individual opinion or liking is legitimate. I
certainly sympathize with the concern. My interest in this topic is
motivated by a firm belief that subjectivism in ethics and value theory is
mistaken, but talk about objective value can be replaced with description
of value which is sounder and more instructive.
First let us examine my reasons for saying that talk of objective value is not
sound, why we do not do well to divide values into those which are
objective and those which are subjective. A phenomenological analysis of
the recognition of value suggests that we reject the concepts of pure
subjectivity and pure objectivity. Knowledge and evaluation have both
objective and subjective aspects, with the objective referring to the
extramental world and the subjective referring to the subject which knows
and values.
11
J. G. Hart arul L Embree (eds.), Phenomenology ofValues arul Valuing, 11-28.
12 DON E. MARIEITA, JR.
None of our knowledge is objective in the sense of being caused only

by objects in the extramental world, imparted to a passive mind with no
activity of the knowing subject. The amount and kind of activity by the
subject's consciousness may vary from case to case, but there is at least
some degree of intentionality and constitution.
Our knowledge is not a product solely of consciousness. There may be
pure fantasies, facticious creations which do not reflect anything existing
in the world, but we would not want to call these thoughts knowledge, and
even they are composed of images which originally came to us in our
experience of the world. That which we would call knowledge involves
both the world which we know something about and consciousness, by
which all knowledge of the world must come to us.
The subjective aspect of knowledge lies in our adverting to something
in the world and our constitution of the intentional object. We constitute the
object with its natural aspects and its cultural aspects. The objective feature
of this lies in the extramental existence of the object which is constituted.
Constitution is placing a thesis on the object; it is not creating it out of
whole cloth. Our role in this is not the same as that attributed to God or to
Mother Nature. The object influences its own constitution. In fact, we count
on its doing so and value our knowledge to the degree that our idea of the
worldly object is thought to be a fair representation of the object in the
world. The gardenia bush beside the house becomes a gardenia for me only
through my constitution of it as a gardenia. It is unlikely, however, that I
would ever constitute it as a doghouse, or even as a narcissus. I might at
times fail even to notice it, so that I do not constitute it at all, or I might
constitute it as an undistinguished part of the shrubbery around the house.
If it plays any role in my awareness, credit should go to a joint authorship
of my consciousness and the gardenia itself.
It should be clear by now that I do not consider phenomenology a kind
of subjective idealism. Aside from the question of Husser]' s being or not
being an idealist, I think that phenomenological analysis gives ample
grounds for rejecting subjective idealism. We have good reasons for
believing that our perceptions of worldly objects are not just ideas in our
minds. A phenomenological analysis of our perceiving of things in the
world gives compelling evidence that the objects we experience are not
wholly subjective.
THECONCEPTOFOBJECTIVE VALUE 13
The wide extent of intersubjectivity goes a long way toward

demonstrating that we live in a common world, a world not of an
individual's own making. This world could still be held to be ideal, perhaps
in the divine mind. The radical difference between ideas and perceptions,
however, are strong evidence that an idealistic interpretation of reality is
mistaken.
An evidential feature of the awareness of worldly objects which I find
most convincing is that these objects are spatially located in relation to the
body of the observing subject. They always stand apart from the subject in
a specific direction and at a certain distance. My favorite chair is in a place,
always in front of me when I enter the room, behind me when I walk
toward the patio. Ideas are not like this. As I work in my office at school
and think about the chair, the thought is not before me or behind me. The
thought of the chair is not spatially located. The difference between ideas
and worldly objects is obvious also in the limited part of itself which an
object can present to the viewer. I believe it was Merleau-Ponty who said
that this presenting of only one side is the price of being real. When we are
dealing with ideas this limitation disappears. I can think about the interior
of my briefcase even while thinking of it as closed. The inside and the
outside can be visualized at the same time. The difference between
experiences of the world and thoughts about the world is such a radical
difference that it is impossible for me to believe that the real things are
also thoughts.
The belief that objects themselves influence the constitution of them
is not just an abstract notion. To some extent the role played by the objects
in their constitution can be identified. One example of this is the work on
arttheoryofRudolf Amheim (e. g.Artand Existence, 1954 and 1974), who
explains the role of lines, masses, and colors painted on a flat surface in
enabling people to see them as pictures.
In virtually any awareness of the world, we can discover this blending
of subjective and objective aspects, so that we should see the inadequacy
of calling the perception either simply objective or simply subjective.
Why is there resistance to accepting what seems obvious, that
perception of worldly objects is neither purely objective nor purely
subjective. Perhaps it is because we do not want to accept all perception as
on all fours together. The things we perceive in good light, such as my
14 DON E. MARIETTA, JR.
seeing the tree outside in the yard, seem to have a different status than my
seeing a big dog when I woke up last night, in the same place where I saw
my bathrobe lying over a chair this morning. We believe that some awaring
is more to be trusted than other awaring. We have little basis for doubting
some of the things we see or hear, while there is room for doubt in regard
to other things. I have seen our light brown Honda repeatedly, but did I
really see a car with pink fenders last week, or was it just the bad light? I
would be more confident of having seen it if I saw it again, or if someone
else had seen it. This difference between perceptions is important to us. We
want to be able to distinguish those perceptions which are made repeatedly,
which are validated intersubjectively, and which do not conflict with our
understanding of what the world is like from those which we have reason
to be doubtful about. Describing them as objective and subjective is not the
best way to preserve the needed distinction.
Even though we have extensive intersubjective confirmation of factual
matters, we should not make the mistake of seeing intersubjective
agreement as objectivity. Intersubjectivity is the nearest thing we have to
objectivity, but we should not confuse a high level of intersubjective
agreement with the notion that we have an access to objects which is totally
independent of consciousness. We should not assume, in the face of wider
agreement over facts than over values, that we have completely objective
knowledge of facts, or that values are completely subjective.
The terms 'subjective' and 'objective' cause confusion, confusion
which is most damaging when we think in terms of objective facts and
subjective values. We start from a position of confusion when we ask
whether values can be objective. We need to bear in mind that awareness
of facts and the valuing of objects are both constitutions, so there is an
element of subjectivity in both of them. The constitution of both values and
facts, however, are not completely independent of an extramental world.
We can learn more about the part which the world plays in the perception
of fact and in awareness of value. These two kinds of constitution are not
exactly alike, but to speak of either facts or values as simply objective or
subjective only leads to confusion.
Accepting something as a fact is to constitute it as a fact. Recognizing
something as a value is to constitute it as a value. Before we constitute
these things as facts and values, they were neither facts nor values. By
THE CONCEPT OF OBJECTIVE VALUE 15
constituting them, we extract something from our original awareness of the

world and give it a significance which it did not have originally. There are
no pure facts or pure values in the world as it is originally given to us. The
material which we constitute as factual and the material we constitute as
value were originally together and undistinguished in original experience.
In fact, our constitutions of fact and value are not fully separated in our
later experience. Lester Embree describes how any intentive process of
consciousness, any lived experience, has within it four sorts of strata.
Awareness, believing, valuing, and willing, along with their correlative
objects and various subtypes and modalities are found in experience of the
world. The several strata are related, so that, for example, a subtype of
awareness, evidencing, justifies believing, as valuing justifies willing. Even
though many people are uneasy with the suggestion that believing justifies
valuing, Embree considers this plausible, and uses the example of
something once considered healthful, but now discredited. The evaluation
would change with the changed belief about the effect upon health. Embree
does not present this as an argument, but as reflective observation of such
conscious processes as believing and disbelieving, valuing positively or
negatively, willing for and against, along with their correlative objects as
they are perceived, remembered, or anticipated. 1
I agree with Embree that the four elements of being aware, believing,
valuing, and acting are present in all lived experience, but I prefer not to
consider them as strata, but as variably united in any constitution of
worldly objects and events, with any one of them or mixture of them being
dominant in a particular experience.
Some years ago I was taken with what Abraham Maslow wrote in his
1963 paper in American Journal of Psychoanalysis about a fusion of fact
and value. 2 He gave several examples of this fusion of fact and value in his
own experience. His use of the term 'fusion' might be misleading, since it
suggests a more complete or permanent blending than the elements of fact
and value actually have. We do separate them to a great extent in
1Lester Embree, "Some Noetico-Noematic Analyses of Action and Practical Life." J. J. Drummond
and L. Embree (eds.), The Phenomenology of the Noema. Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1992.
2Abraham H. Maslow, "Fusion of Facts and Values." American Journal of Psychoanalysis 23
(1963): 127-129.
constitutions of fact and of value. Maslow's general idea, none the less, has
greatly influenced me. I do not think of factual information as entirely
separate from value judgments. I do not think that we must rely on logical
argument to relate facts to values or to see that believing gives support to
the valuing of specific things.
It is widely believed that values are supervenient upon facts, so that a
value must be defended by reference to some prior factual information. I
believe, on the contrary, that phenomenological analysis of valuing will
indicate that facts have no necessary priority over values. We make
judgments of value without prior judgments of fact. When as a child I first
saw a large body of water, it was not its size, not its coloration, nor the
movement upon its surface which I first constituted. First came awe and
excitement, even before any quantifiable aspects or other physical qualities
were constituted. When I realized its size, it was awesome size. When I
first grasped its deep color, it was amazingly beautiful color. When I saw
the waves move upon the shore, the strongest part of the experience was
feeling for which I still can find no words.
I have had many experiences in which the realization of value was as
primitive as was the constitution of factual information, perhaps more
primitive. When I saw the cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris the first time,
the awe at its majesty and the realization of its beauty did not wait upon
cognition of its size or the colors in its rose window. The sweeping grace
of its buttresses ran ahead of my figuring out what they were. Even when
I cannot visualize very clearly what the building looks like, my initual
reaction to its beauty can still be felt.
Of course, when I reflect upon those striking experiences, I realize that
certain physical aspects of the ocean and of the cathedral correspond to the
more immediately felt values. I would not expect to get the feelings of awe
and beauty from seeing a ditch or a woodshed. My experiences do not
support, however, the common view that factual observations are more
basic than the realization of value and must be the foundation of the
valuing. Often in my experience the value aspects have been the clearest,
the strongest, and the longest remembered aspects of the experience. In
fact, I have been stirred by quick glimpses of a clump of flowers beside the
road, the easy grace of a person running on the beach, the first rays of
morning sunshine, the charm of a smile, even though the physical aspects
of the experiences were never clearly perceived. I have read that infants,
who cannot be expected to know much about noses, eyes, mouths, and
other aspects of physiognomy, recognize immediately the significance of
a smile or a frown. Adults do not loose this ability to "size things up"
immediately. A crowd can be seen to be threatening before the number,
size, and other factual aspects are determined.
The raw materials of fact, value, and volition are imbedded in our most
original constitutions of the world, its objects, and its events. Different
situations and the different things we have to do call for us to process this
raw material in different ways. Different moods call for different ways of
adverting to things. When I see that the shades in my bedroom have taken
all the ups and downs of which they are capable, exact measurements and
colors become necessary considerations. I must buy new shades that fit the
hardward and fit attractively the furniture and decorations already in the
room. That kind of concern has no role in what is to be done when the
person who rang the doorbell is recognized as a neighbor. The face of the
neighbor does not require detailed analysis before I see worry or joy. I see
she is anxious before she says, "I can't find Tommy!" In a happier scene
her face radiates pleasure before she says, "John called from Kennedy.
He'll get home tonight." What exactly makes a face show fear or joy?
Frankly I cannot tell you. Knowing this was never necessary for me.
We constitute factual material as facts, value aspects of experience as
values, and volitional aspects as desires and intentions when we reflect
upon our lives to deside what to do. We pull these elements of experience
from a primitive constitution of reality in which cognition, valuation, and
volition stood, I believe, on common ground. We must go beyond our
primitive constitutions of the world and make judgments and make
decisions about our lives. What we often do at this point, however, is forget
the insights to be gained from phenomenological reflection upon our more
original constitutionss. We slip easily into abstract and theoretical notions
and use language which grew out of a world view which was not greatly
influenced by phenomenological considerations. One important aspect of
this adoption of a theoretical frame of reference is assuming that factual
knowledge is objective and valuations are subjective.
We would do well to remember that the division of aspects of our
experience into that which is objective and that which is subjective is a
product of a kind of abstract and theoretical reflection which is quite

different from concrete phenomenological reflection. This abstract
reflection separates facts and values, values and volitions in a way which
makes it difficult, perhaps impossible, to put them together again
satisfactorily. We do well to realize that the separation comes from a
theoretical and abstract reflection which does not elucidate the world as we
live it. We should not lose that rich primitive experience in which
cognitive, valuative, and volitional aspect of experience do not have a kind
of temporal or logical priority over each other. The schema of an abstract
mode of reflection does not reflect the world as we encountered it, and it
puts several obstacles in the way of our making judgments and decisions.
It confronts us with dichotomies, such as that between fact and value,
which have their home in formal logic, but may have no necessary place in
our deciding what we will desire and what we will do.
The search for objective values and objective moral standards is part
of an effort to make correct choices. This search has not accomplished what
is needed, however, and has created many problems. Another way to go
about making value judgments and moral decisions is badly needed.
Looking for objective values and trying to avoid being influenced by
the subjective has not helped us. We need to approach some real and
legitimate concerns in a better way. We need a more helpful understanding
of the logic ofmoraJ and value judgment and a better vocabulary. We can
replace the words 'objective' and 'subjective' with words that are more
precise and more informative. We have been a bit lazy in using 'objective'
and 'subjective' as catch-all terms. We will do better to think more
carefully about what we want to claim, then we can use more descriptive
terms such as "based on strong evidence," "widely experienced," "well
founded," "strongly supported by recent experimentation," "generally
agreed upon," "intersubjectively verified," along with other expressions
which indicate the precise grounds on which a statement is supported. We
can say plainly why we reject a claim or a statement by using descriptive
terms such as "not well supported by evidence," "biased," "imaginary,"
"mere conjecture," "wishful thinking," and other expressions which not
only announce that we should not accept some claims to know something,
but also explain why a claim is not worthy of acceptance. Saying that a
statement is subjective does not tell us nearly as much as saying why the
claim lacks grounds for being accepted.
II
We need to examine more closely the purpose behind the effort to find
objective values. We need to see what a claim that values can be objective
is actually claiming? I believe the claim can be clarified by being expressed
in more precise terms. The question of whether there is any substance to
the concept can then be examined.
What was being sought in discussion of objective value? What would
objective value be? There seem to be at least two aspects of value
philosophers were trying to talk about with use of the term 'objectivity.'
One very proper concern is that values and moral standards be correct and
well-founded. It is important that values not be just whimsical fancies. One
aspect of this is that values not be merely subjective in the sense of being
reducible entirely to the act of valuing itself. Another aspect of value is the
ascription of a higher status to things which are valued for themselves, not
as means to something else.
In talking about these aspects of value, philosophers have usually used
the terms 'intrinsic' and 'inherent.' This usage has not been as helpful as
the users of the words thought. Different writers have used the terms in
different ways. One person's inherent value was another's intrinsic value.
The same term may have been used by one writer to refer to one aspect of
value, such as being valued for itself, while another writer was trying to
claim that value is not dependent upon the subjectivity of a person's act of
valuation. The dictionaries have not been of much help. They usually
define one of the words by reference to the other, often without any real
explanation of what the basic concepts are.
I believe we need to leave behind the confusing vocabulary and employ
terms to which specific meanings can be given. Previous attempts of
philosophers to prescribe meanings to the old terms were largely ignored,
and so far my new terms have not been accepted, but I can write more
clearly by using some new terms, some of which have the advantage of
being too awkward to be confused with older words and concepts. I
assigned definite meanings to these new terms. 3

One kind of value which philosophers have referred to using the
confusing terms 'intrinsic,' 'inherent,' and 'objective' is the value of things
which are valued for themselves alone and not as means to something else.
We refer to this as valuing something as an end in itself. I will refer to
value as an end in itself as end-value. What is meant by "x has end-value"
is "some subject (s) values an object (x) as an end in itself."
Let us examine the notion of end-value carefully. What sort of value
is it? What are we attributing to an object when we say it has end-value,
that it is valued as an end in itself. As it turns out, we might be saying very
little about the object itself, and a great deal about the person doing the
valuing. Virtually anything whatever can be valued as an end in itself, and
attributing end-value to an object is not describing the qualities of the thing
itself. We tend to get carried away with awe when we speak of valuing
something as an end in itself, since we usually use as our examples really
important things like peace, love, health, even life itself. Let us see that we
can also value in this way things which most people would consider trivial
or quaint objects of valuation. I might value for itself some old thing which
you would not value at all. I have some rocks which I have had a long time,
an old letter opener, a little bottle. The value I place upon these things can
be entirely arbitrary. If your press me for an explanation, I might be able
to speak of certain characteristics which the valued objects have. The bottle
has a certain sheen, the rock a peculiar color, the letter opener a certain
shape. These are not qualities which mean anything to you, however, so I
have not explained why anyone else should recognize any value in my
trinkets. You may have learned something about me, but the objects do not
seem to have contributed much to their being valued. Why is my attribution
of end-value to my things a personal matter which makes little sense to
you? We have to examine this kind of value further.
To say that an object has end-value is to take liberties with language.
When we understand what is involved in the attribution of end-value, we
see that referring to end-value should be understood as referring to an act
of valuation. It is simpler and easier to speak of value than it is to say that
1 Don E. Marietta, Jr. "Thoughts on the Taxonomy and Semantics of Value Tenns," The Journal
of Value Inquiry 25.1: 43-53.
someone is valuing an object. We speak as though the object possessed the

value, but what is really the case is that an object is valued. To talk of end-
value, which suggests that it is a kind of value possessed by an object, may
be hannless as long as we know what we are doing; otherwise, it can
mislead us into thinking that end-value refers to some quality possessed by
the object itself.
Many, perhaps most, philosophers think that all value should be
understood as evaluation. I am not ready to accept this view, even though
it is widely held, since it may or may not be correct, and I am still
investigating the matter in this paper. Several philosophers have urged me
to write about valuation and not about value, but to do that would cut short
my inquiry. I am investigating the possibility that there are some values
which cannot be reduced to the person's ascribing of value to the object.
End values seem to fit the popular notion that value can be equated with
evaluation, but there might be value which is in the valued object itself.
There might be value which is independent of any person's valuing the
object.
I use the tenn 'independent value' for values which are not acts of
valuation. If there are any such values, they will not be dependent upon
human ascription of value. What I mean by "x has independent value" is
"x has value independently of being valued by somes."
Where will we look for independent value? Do we have any
candidates? First let us consider things which we value now, but which
were not valued earlier. Some of these things were not even known until
fairly recently. I do not think we achieve anything by calling this virtual
value, that is claiming that the object which is now valued was only
virtually valuable before its value is realized. This strikes me as a way to
avoid the question of whether there is any value apart from the act of
valuing. It is a way to preserve the view that all value is valuation, a view
which is something of a dogma with many philosophers who still have not
overcome the hold which positivism held upon them. If we begin our
inquiry with the belief that value is only valuation, it will be obvious that
there is no independent value. If we begin phenomenologically, however,
and look at the matters themselves, we might come to a different
conclusion.
Let us then look at some actual examples of objects now valued which
were unknown a short time ago. Holmes Rolston, III, writes about valuable
things in natural systems, such as myoglobin, which evolved into
hemoglobin, photosynthesis and glycolosis, and other chemical activities
upon which life depends. 4
Rolston thinks it is wrong to deny that these things were valuable at a
time when they were enabling and preserving life. Even before there were
humans, other living things were benefiting from photosynthesis and other
chemicals and processes. Insisting that there was no value before humans
placed value upon things seems to me to be insisting on a certain definition,
thus making an interesting question about value into a merely verbal
controversy. It is a way to end the investigation prematurely. We need to
examine the sorts of things Rolston writes about, and any other things
which might be independent values, to see what kinds of things they are
and decide whether attributing independent value to them is a significant
thing to do.
The things cited by Rolston have their value in being processes within
large systems or material components which play a significant role in a
system. This is a special kind of instrumental value, a special way of being
valuable as a means. I use the term 'functional value,' to refer to the role
of an active part of a system. "X has functional value" will mean "x has
value as an active part of a valued system." Later we need to discuss this
restricting of functional value to a role in a valued system, but we need to
tend to some other matters first.
III
It seems to me that talk of objective value, often labeled intrinsic or

inherent value, was referring to what I am calling end-value or independent
value or a combination of the two. The concerns about value which those
defending the notion of objective value have expressed are that an object
be valued for itself and that the value of the object not be dependent upon
human valuation, that is upon human subjectivity. A combination of end-
value and independent value would seem to capture best what people were
'Holmes Rolston, "Are Values in Nature Subjective or Objective?" Environmental Ethics 4.2: 131 f.
looking for in objective value. It would provide something which has more
than instrumental value. Writers have frequently contrasted intrinsic or
inherent value with instrumental value, which would indicate the
importance to the concept of intrinsic value of being something valued for
itself. I believe that some defenders of intrinsic value are talking primarily,
or only, of end-value.
Is this identification of intrinsic value with end-value adequate? Would
end-value give the objectivity which is sought. By itself, end-value would
not be as important as some people seem to think. Remember that end-
value can be quite arbitrarily, quite idiosyncratically, ascribed. By itself, it
indicates no more than that a person values an object for itself. It does not
show that the object has any characteristics which make it the sort of thing
everyone should value. If end-value is joined with independent value, then
it would not rest upon some one person's choice. Clearly it could not be
whimsical.
The combination of end-value and independent value may be as close
as we can get to what defenders of the concept of objective value were
seeking. Can an object have both independent value and end-value? If an
object is seen to have both kinds of value, will this be of much
significance?
There does not seem to be any problem in something being valued in
more than one way. The pieces of china which were mother's can be valued
as keepsakes and as a useful tea service. They might also be valued just for
themselves. There seems to be no reason why these things cannot be valued
in these ways. These different ways of valuing the tea cups seem to be
logically independent of each other. They do not preclude each other, and
they do not seem to add anything to each other. The sentimental valu~ .does
not make the cups hold tea more satisfactorily.
There seems to be no problem with ascribing end-value to something
and recognizing that it has independent value. I think some of my friends
who scuba dive value the ocean reefs as valuable independently of what
anyone thinks of them. They make valuable contributions to life. The reefs
are also valued intrumentally for making diving interesting. I think some
of my friends value them also just for themselves, ascribing to them end-
value. The question is not whether an object can be valued in these ways
simultaneously. The question of concern is whether this gives the
significance sought in objective value.

As we have seen, end-value does not of itself indicate as much as some
people have thought it does; it turns out to be remarkably unimpressive. It
is utterly dependent upon the act of valuing, or better said, it is the act of
valuing, an exercize of human subjectivity. Later we can explore the
possible significance of joining end-value and independent value.
People have claimed that some pretty important things, such as beauty,
health, and life, are valued as ends in themselves, so perhaps we need to
investigate this further. Is there more to end-value than I have recognized.
Yet, if we examine it further, what will we examine? What will we look
for? We could look at things which are valued by virtually everyone. What
would that show us? It would teach us something about human psychology,
but the popularity of an object does not show that it should be valued. If we
found some reasons for valuing these things, we would be learning
something useful, but these objects would no longer be end-values. Having
a reason for valuing something as an end in itself is self-contradictory. If
one values an object for a reason, the object is not valued as an end in
itself, but for that which the object provides or enhances. An object valued
as a means can also be valued for its own sake, but then the benefit derived
from the object is not the reason for valuing it for its own sake. I can value
mother's old china for several reasons, but its usefulness cannot be the
reason for valuing it as an end in itself.
Is the valuing of beauty, health, or life an exception to this? We get
terribly reverential when we talk about such values, but let us take another
look at them. Do most of us really value them as ends in themselves? Let
me suggest that we value them because of the good experiences they make
possible for us. It really seems that they are valued under certain
conditions, but not under all. Life allows us to have experiences, and we
~read or at least regret having this openness to experience come to an end.
When advanced age and ill-health make good experiences impossible for
us, replacing them with pain and loss of mind and dignity, how much value
will we place on life? Many of us have signed Living Wills and given
trusted friends power of attorney to make sure we will not live on past the
time when life has value. Aestheticians try to understand our valuing of
beauty. One plausible explanation of our valuing of beauty is that it gives
us a richly rewarding kind of experience. We do not value beauty very
highly in certain adverse circumstances. Health is valued because it enables

us to do things we want to do and it enables us to avoid pain. Few of us are
so Platonic as to value health just because it is wholesome. Some very good
people seem to value goodness and virtue as ends in themselves, but they
are hardly a mighty host. For most people the notions of goodness and
virtue are so abstract that most talk of them is too confused to be paid much
attention.
In ethics, many philosophers want values which are not just
instrumental, and they want these values to be well founded. Can the
joining of end-value, which can be arbitrary by itself, with independent
value, be what the call for objectivity was seeking?
IV
Independent value might not make the contribution to the quest for
objectivity which it first seemed able to provide. The best examples of
values which cannot be reduced to a human's act of valuing are things
which have functional value as parts of a valued system. This makes our
classifying of them as independent values questionable. They are not
entirely independent of human valuation if their worth is in being part of
a system which humans consider good. These values are not reducible to
an individual person's valuing, but their value depends upon the collective
value judgments of humanity. This gives them some weight as values, but
it does not make them entirely independent of human subjectivity.
We can avoid making functional value dependent upon human valuing
by dropping the requirement that functional value consist of a role in a
good system. We could define functional value as a role in any system,
even an evil system from a human perspective. The cost of doing this is too
great, however, since it would be making the normative concept of value
purely descriptive. Recognition of value would no longer be a reason to
value, seek, or support the thing which has functional value. It seems that
we must acknowledge that our examples of independent value were only
independent in a very limited sense. These concrete examples are very
important, since the concept of things which are valuable whether they are
valued or not tends to be a very abstract concept. I do not think we can
make it defensible unless we can come up with concrete examples.
It seems that we have not been very successful in trying to give

substance to the concept of objective value. End-value is reducible to
individual valuation. Independent value cannot be reduced to individual
valuation, but it does not escape a broader human value assessment. I can
think of no reason to think that a combination of these two kinds of value
produces a kind of value which transcends human subjectivity.
v
Has our investigation forced us into a destructive sort of relativism
regarding moral and aesthetic standards? Has it undercut the possibility of
any sort of knowledge? We should not jump to any such conclusion. We
may have taken away any basis for moral absolutism and for scientism, but
this is no great loss. We still have knowledge which is worth having and
valuable guidance in making moral and other choices. What we have in
place of a certainty which has always been spurious, is good reasons for
believing and valuing. The uncertainty with which we live in all areas of
our lives does not make all knowledge fanciful or all values whimsical. We
can test knowledge claims and believe those which hold up best to careful
scrutiny. We can do the same with values.
We are fairly familiar with the ways we check knowledge claims. How
do we check value claims? Experience can teach us much about values.
Personal experience helps us check the fittingness of our values with the
actualities of life. A rich intersubjectivity allows us to learn from our
contemporaries, and a knowledge of other cultures and of people's lives in
the past gives us perspective on our values.
I think it is a mistake to dismiss intersubjectivity when it comes to
value. Even though there is not as much intersubjective agreement about
questions of beauty, moral rightness, and social propriety as we seem to
have about the physical natures of things, a kind of intersubjective
confirmation of values is important to us. In practice we value the
agreement, especially of those whom we admire; in theorical discussions
about values, we tend to overlook the large amount of intersubjective
agreement and its significance. The difference between agreement about
the physical nature of things and the value to be placed upon things (or
discovered in things) is a matter of degree. Why do we have more
agreement about physical features of things than we have about value.

Possibly it is a result of our evolution, coming from an early time when the
life and death struggle made it necessary for us to be most careful about
sizes, colors, numbers, etc. We might learn to do better with recognition of
value if we work at it over a period of time as diligently as we have worked
at gettting the facts straight. In any case, we should recognize the
significance of intersubjective validation of values.
An important thing to remember about values is that they are related
to other values. Treating values as separate things, detached from other
values, is as unsound as it would be to treat facts that way. One reason we
get confused about values is that we examine a value and try to justify it in
isolation from other values. Doing this isolates our values from our lives
and the lives of other people. It is no wonder our value does not make a
very good showing. An isolated value is like a flower pulled up by the
roots.
Values are related to other values and to ways of life. We cannot pick
values at random, the way a child might pick a meal from the cafeteria line.
Some values are antithetical to others. I simply cannot have the value of
being respected as a teacher and scholar by a large number of people and
enjoy at the same time the value of being lazy and escaping pressure and
responsibility. So strongly antipathetic are some values to others that we
soon reject some of them as non-values. Perhaps we have forgotten the
freedom from being clean, supposedly highly valued by little boys, but now
something which would be more loss than gain to us. Values are related to
ways of life and styles of living.
How does this help us make judgments about values? This part is not
difficult; a value is known by the company it keeps. We find a way of life
attractive and rewarding. Part of this life is a set of values. If we are wise,
we will judge values by the way they fit with other values in this manner
of living.
Thinking of facts as objective and values as subjective created
unnecessary intellectual problems. The attempt to make values objective
was an anxious and unfruitful pursuit. When we recognize that values can
be examined in much the same way we examine factual claims, we can
face the uncertainty and the need to act upon the values which fit best into
an attractive way of life. Understanding that values are not objective does
not take away our ability to make rational moral choices. It does not take
<,1way our ability to judge works of art. It does not make whimsical our
decisions about daily life. Actually, when we see that facts and values are
not entirely objective or entirely subjective, we can deal more fittingly with
both aspects of our lives. We have not lost our values; we can have a more
secure grasp upon them and see more clearly how to make them a part of
our lives.
Chapter2
Image and Artistic Value
John B. Brough
Georgetown University
The difficulties facing the philosopher who wants to reflect on art today are
daunting. In 1900, the aesthetician would have had to worry about
paintings, which could be on canvas, on wooden panel, on walls in mural
form, and on objects of use and decoration; or about works on paper, such
as watercolors, drawings, and prints in various media; or about sculptures,
which would be shaped by the artist himself or by his assistants in bronze,
stone, wood, plaster, or wax. In all of these works, the visual image would
enjoy pride of place. The dramatic changes on the picture plane and in
sculptural form that began to occur shortly after 1900, although certainly
posing difficulties for traditional philosophy of art, did not threaten the
central role of the image in any fundamental way. The threat was not long
in coming, however. In retrospect, one finds it in the Dada movement, and
particularly in Marcel Duchamp's readymades, the first of which was
"produced" in 1913. The readymades, ordinary manufactured objects such
as a snow shovel or urinal-selected by Duchamp, usually inscribed by him
with some sort of title, and inserted into the context of the art world-are
now widely taken to be works of art. The readymades and the Duchampian
spirit they represent have had countless heirs in contemporary art. The
readymades are, of course, visual objects, in the sense that one can see
them, just as one can see any snow shovel. Whether or not they and their
progeny, such as the works of conceptual artists, are visual images,
however, is another matter.
29
J. G. Hart and L Embree (eds.), Phenomenology of Values and Valuing, 29-48.
30 JOHN B. BROUGH
What is one to do, philosophically, in the face of such developments?

Philosophers who have taken up the Duchampian challenge have largely
assumed that the readymades are works of art and accordingly have
developed theories to account for that status. George Dickie's institutional
theory is an example. The theory includes many elements that an adequate
account of art should include-artifactuality, for example, and the role of
the artworld as the social and cultural matrix in which artifacts made by the
artist with the intention that they be art achieve artistic status. One element,
however, is conspicuously missing from the institutional account: the
image. Dickie apparently does not think that it is a defining feature of art
that it include or be an image. This seems to reflect, in philosophy, the
challenge to the role of the image posed in the advanced art of this century
by the readymade and its kin. I will not attempt to show in this paper that
something must be an image if it is to be a work of art. I will rather proceed
on the assumption that the vast majority of works of art are indeed images,
and I will focus on the image as the ground of the artistic value those works
possess. I will also offer some reasons, or at least suggestions, for claiming
that the image is of value in itself. In the final section, I will suggest that
the image asserts its presence as a condition even in efforts to eliminate it
from art.
I. Husserl's Conception of the Image
My understanding of the image will follow the general outlines ofHusserl's

account of image-consciousness in Phantasie, Bildbewusstsein,
Erinnerung. 1
Image-consciousness, according to Husser!, is a unique form of
imagination or re-presentation. Husser! signals what is unique about image-
consciousness by describing it as "physical imagination" (Hua XXIII, 21)
or "perceptual re-presentation" (Hua XXIII, 476). While both ordinary
phantasy and ordinary perception may be said to have a single object, the
object of image-consciousness is twofold, and in some instances threefold.
'Edmund Husser), Phantasie, Bildbewusstsein, Erinnerung (1895-1925), Husserliana XXIII, ed.

Eduard Marbach (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1980).
IMAGE AND ARTISTIC VALUE 31
It invariably includes what Husserl calls (1) a "physical image" and (2) an
"image" (Bild) or "image-object" (Bildobjekt); if the image-object
represents a subject, as a portrait does, it also includes (3) an "image-
subject" (Bildsujet) (Hua XXIII, 19).
There can be no image or image-object without the physical image.
The physical image consists of pigment spread on canvas, lines of ink on
paper, marble, and so on. The physical image is a physical thing (Hua
XXIII, 19), actually existing in the perceptual present (Hua XXIII, 151 ), in
real space (Hua XXIII, 19) and real time (Hua XXIII, 53 7) along with other
physical things. It can hang on the wall, be destroyed by fire and be
attacked by mildew. It is not itself the image, but it founds the image,
serving as its substrate, awakening it (Hua XXIII, 29), offering it (Hua
XXIII, 492), exciting it (Hua XXIII, 137).
The image, by contrast, "truly does not exist, which means not only
that it has no existence inside my consciousness; it has no existence at all"
(Hua XXIII, 22). Husserl therefore describes it as "a nothing" (Hua XXIII,
46), "a nullity" (Hua XXIII, 48). This does not mean that it no longer
enjoys existence, as we might assert in the case of a depicted building that
has been destroyed, or that it never did exist, as we might say in the case
of a unicorn. Strictly speaking, then, "the image is taken by me neither as
existing nor as nonexisting" (Hua XXIII, 385). Thanks to its physical
support, which does exist in the actual world and which is actually present,
I can now enjoy the image that does not exist in the world. The perceptual
apprehension of the physical foundation of the image is there along with
the image-apprehension, but it recedes and lets the image-apprehension
hold sway. The perceptual basis is still there, however, as long as one is
aware of the image, in constructive conflict with the image-apprehension.
Neither attempts to cancel out the other; they exist as an inseparable pair.
The image, then, is a peculiar form of presence and absence, which makes
it particularly valuable in art. An aspect of this, as we shall see, is that the
value of the image does not depend simply on its status as an image-object,
but also on the physical basis that makes the image possible and from
which it is inseparable.
The image may be "nothing" in comparison with canvas, paint, and
bronze, or with other physical items in the real world, but it does "directly
and genuinely" appear (Hua XXIII, 44 ). If it represents a specific subject,
32 JOHN B. BROUGH
that subject is meant but does not genuinely appear in the image. In
depictive consciousness, what appears and what is meant do not coincide;
in perception, they do. A photographic image appears to me, for example,
but the photographic image does not coincide with the person meant or
depicted by it. They will differ in some way, in color perhaps, or at least in
the fact that one is two-dimensional and the other is bodied forth three-
dimensionally in space. If, on the other hand, I perceive the person, there
is no discrepancy between what is meant and what appears. And so, in the
case of depiction, we must add to the constitutive conflict between image
and physical ground the conflict between the image appearing and the
subject depicted. The consciousness that takes place in depiction, even in
the simplest portrait, is therefore highly complex, arising in the interplay
or conflict between the image, the actual physical thing that awakens it, and
its subject.
When Husserl claims that the image genuinely appears, he does not
mean that it appears in the way in which an ordinary phantasy-object might
appear. The image of physical imagination is precisely "perceptual," which
means that it is given with "the full force and intensity of perception" (Hua
XXIII, 57,60). Thus a painting on the wall of my study presents itself to me
with as much force and vivacity as the wall on which it hangs and the
bookcases stretched out beneath it. And yet, thanks to the conflicts we have
alluded to, it is no ordinary perceptual object, a fact of which I am fully
aware when I experience it. "This Grecian landscape, in which I immerse
myself visually," Husserl writes, "surely stands before me differently from
these books on my desk, which in genuine perceiving I have before my
eyes as actualities" (Hua XXIII, 412). He goes on to explain why, using
another example: my perception "is not ... a normal and full perception,
insofar as what appears, e.g., the image-person in the oil painting, is not
taken as actually present; it appears as present, but it is not looked upon as
actual" (Hua XXIII, 40).
A key element in the "nullity" is the conflict of the image with its
physical surroundings. The horizon of the world or space of the image in
a painting does not fold smoothly into the horizon of the room and world
beyond the painting's frame. In fact, it conflicts with it, thereby contracting
into itself and refusing assimilation into the context of actuality. 2
II. Readymades, Cadavers, Broken Utensils, and Images.
Husser( did not think that every image-object is a work of art, but he did
think that every work of art is an image-object. As we have seen, this is not
a view universally shared in the contemporary artworld. The readymades,
for example, do not seem to be image-objects, but many in the artworld
consider them to be works of art. One thing the readymades clearly are is
physical, and in that respect they have something in common with the
"physical image," which is one of the moments of image-consciousness, as
Husserl understands it. Furthermore, the institutional theory, which strives
to accommodate the readymades among the citizens of the artworld, takes
them seriously because they are physical, sensible, and intersubjectively
available. A private thought in an artist's head is none of those things, and
so, on Dickie's account, cannot be a work of art. Since the readymades do
have a physical and sensuous aspect, and since they do enjoy "iconic"
status among certain artists, critics, and philosophers, it is reasonable to ask
whether they may not actually be images. Construing them in this way
would have the bonus of tightening the loose boundaries of the
contemporary artworld.
One might claim, for example, that in transplanting the snow shovel out
of the hardware store and onto the "planet of aesthetics," 3 Duchamp has
not only made a common physical object into a work of art; he has also
made it into an image-object. What would ordinarily be the subject of a
work of art literally becomes the image-object. This would differ from the
case, discussed in the next section, in which one first suffers from an
2 Husser! attempts to convey the unique character of the "perception" at work in image-
consciousness by using the term "Perzeption" to indicate the experience in which an image is presented
as perceived and not actual, and "Wahrnehmung" to indicate the experience in which an existent object
in the world is presented as perceived and actual [cf, e.g., Hua XXIII, Beilage Ll, Nr. 17]. He will also
describe the latter experience as "positing" and the former as "nonpositing" or as "quasi-positing."
3 Marcel Duchamp, cited in Marcel Duchamp, ed. Anne d'Harnoncourt and Kynaston McShine
(New York and Philadelphia: The Museum of Modem Art and Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1973),
275-276.
34 JOHN B. BROUGH
illusion and then discovers, for example, that what one took to be a human
being really is not a human being but a hyperrealist sculpture by Duane
Hanson. In the letter case, one can truly say: "I have been fooled; I thought
this was a person and now it turns out to be a sculpture made of resin,
dressed in real clothes, etc." In the case of the readymade, however, it is
hard to imagine a parallel expression. It would be odd to say: "I have been
fooled; I thought this was a snow shovel and now it turns out to be an
image-object." It is not as ifl had discovered that it is made of wax or resin
rather than wood and metal. Another way of putting this is to say that it
would be perverse for a spectator who originally thought that he was seeing
a living human being to go on insisting that he is seeing one when he
knows full well that what is in front of him is a sculpture. It would not be
perverse-though in the eyes of some it would be philistine-to go on
insisting that the shovel one has just been told is a work of art is, in fact,
truly a snow shovel. One might tum in this regard to Richard Wollheim's
description of the connection of physical substrate and image in terms of
twofoldness and seeing-in. 4 One sees at once, say, the physical marks of a
pencil on the surface of a sheet of paper and, in those marks, a face, a lake,
or a snow shovel. But in the case of the readymade "IN ADVANCE OF
THE BROKEN ARM" ( 1915), the physical substrate is a snow shovel. Can
one see a snow shovel in a snow shovel in the sense in which one can see
a human figure in the bronze shaped in a certain way? Perhaps the
formalist would say that what you see in the physical wood and metal-at
least as far as its artistic meaning is concerned-is a pleasing configuration
of abstract shapes, and that this configuration is the image-object. But
Duchamp insisted that "the choice of these 'readymades' was never dictated
by aesthetic delectation." 5 Given his generally "anti-retinal" outlook, one
can reasonably construe this denial as excluding the possibility that the
4 Richard Wollheim, Painting as an Art, Bollingen Series XXXV (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1987), chapters two and three.

5 Marcel Duchamp, 1he Essential Writings of Marcel Duchamp, ed. Michael Sanouillet and Elmer
Peterson (London: Thames and Hudson, 1975), 141.

snow shovel is supposed to appear to the spectator as a pleasingly formed

image-object. 6
These difficulties, incidentally, do not arise, or at least are minimized,
in the case of the readymades produced by an art dealer in Milan in 1964
and signed and inscribed by Duchamp. These were not really readymades
at all but replicas manufactured just as any other multiple edition art work
might be produced. One could plausibly argue that these "edition"
readymades are indeed image-objects. That is certainly the case with
Robert Gober's sinks ( 1985), which, while on the face of it owing much to
Duchamp, were specifically made by the artist to be art and which manifest
a degree of abstraction sufficient to prevent the careful observer from
mistaking them for real sinks. And as for the photographs of the original
readymades, which remain as our only record of most of them, they are no
doubt images, and may, in the case of those taken by Stieglitz and Man
Ray, be works of art.
But perhaps a shift in context would be sufficient to account for the
readymades' transubstantiation into images if the contexts were different
enough. Suppose, then, that they differ as life and death-as actual fruit
and the "nature morte" that represents it. It is to this difference, in fact, that
Maurice Blanchof turns in meditating on the nature of the image. Blanchot
joins Husser) in speaking of the image in terms of nothingness: "When
there is nothing, that is where the image finds its condition,"8 and he cites
Pascal's thought that through the image " ... we make a nothing of eternity
and an eternity of nothing" (Pensees, #I 07). A thing dissolves in its image
and yet continues in its dissolution, and therefore "has, behind it, that heavy
sleep of death in which dreams might come true." 9
6 Duchamp's own remarks about whether the readymades are works of art are interesting in the light
of the almost universal acceptance of the rcadymades as art. For example, he said in conversation that
he chose the word "readymade" (in 1915) because "it seemed perfect for these things that weren't
works of art, that weren't sketches, and to which no art terms applied. That's why I was tempted to
make them." Pierre Cabanne, Dialogues with Marcel Duchamp (New York: The Viking Press, 1971),
48.
7 Maurice Blanchot, The Gaze of Orpheus, trans. Lydia Davis (Barrytown, N.Y.: Station Hill Press,
c1981).
8 Blanchot, 79.
• Blanchot, 80.
36 JOHN B. BROUGH
Blanchot carries this reflection further by comparing the strangeness

of the cadaver with the strangeness of the image. The body lying in state is,
and yet is not, the person. The dead person becomes the image of himself.
Arranged on bier or death bed, the dead person is at once himself and yet
more monumental, more imposing; in this interplay of absence and
presence, "he is in some sense doubled by himself, united to the solemn
impersonality of himself by resemblance and by image." 10 Blanchot links
this phenomenon to classical Greek sculpture, the cadaver guaranteeing its
idealism, revealing "how much the apparent spirituality, the pure formal
virginity of the image is fundamentally linked to the elemental strangeness
and to the shapeless heaviness of the being that is present in absence." 11
Might not this experience of something as image of itself find
application to the readymades? Could the snow shovel, put on display
before us, both be itself and yet not itself, be more than itself, more
monumental, more beautiful, and therefore an image of itself? "IN
ADVANCE OF THE BROKEN ARM" would then be a cadaverous snow
shovel and "Fountain" (1917) a cadaverous urinal. But is there a
sufficiently violent shift of context in the case of such inanimate objects,
analogous to the difference between life and death?
Blanchot suggests one himself, with his claim that a utensil, when
damaged, "becomes its own image," and can even become an aesthetic
object, as the surrealists thought. 12 Blanchot contends that it becomes its
own image because it now appears rather than simply "disappearing in its
use." 13 No longer used, the utensil, one could say, has in effect died,
sending us back ''to absence as presence, to the neutral double of the object,
in which belonging to the world has vanished."~ 4 By dying to the world of
use, the utensil preserves a shadowy life as image of itself in the world of
appearance. (Duchamp, certainly aware of different contexts,
acknowledged that the object loses its practical function once it becomes
10 Blanchot, 83.
11 Blanchot, 83.
12 Blanchot, 84.
11 Blanchot, 84.
14 Blanchot, 88.
a readymade; 15 and, in the other direction, he imagined a kind of

resurrection for the familiar shades of the art-world, what he called a
"reciprocal readymade": a painting by Rembrandt used as an ironing
board. 16)
Blanchot makes two important general claims in this connection about
images and appearances. First, whatever manages to appear, as opposed to
disappearing in its use, is an image: "Only what has surrendered itself to
the image appears .... " Second, "the category of art is linked to this
possibility objects have of 'appearing"' 17 ; it seems fair to conclude from
both remarks in conjunction that Blanchot holds that works of art must be
images.
Now if one claims that the readymade is precisely an object taken out
of its context of use and put into a context in which it simply appears,
specifically, into the context of the artworld in which it appears to artistic
contemplation, then it would, on Blanchot's account, be an
image-presumably, of itself. But if we simply gaze at or contemplate a
real object, look at it "face to face," in Richard Wollheim's phrase, does
that mean that the thing has "sunk into its image" 18 ? Wollheim does not
identify appearing with being an image. Nor does Husserl. 19 Both, as we
have seen, make imaging or being an image-object depend on the presence
together of a physical substrate-paper with marks on it, e.g.-and of the
image seen in it. In Wollheim's terminology, there is a difference between
seeing face-to-face and seeing-in; 20 seeing face-to-face lacks the
twofoldness of seeing-in, and without twofoldness there can be no image.
If I gaze at a face and think that it is beautiful, I am not seeing an image-
"Marcel Duchamp, ed. d'Hamoncourt, 196-197.

The Essential Writings of Marcel Duchamp, 32.
16
17 Blanchot, 84.
18 Blanchot, 80.
19Certainly this seems to be the case in most ofHusserl's discussions of the matter. In a text prob-
ably dating from the mid-twenties, he writes: "In a certai'l sense, I can view any thing as an
'image'[Bild)" (Hua XXIII, 593). The use of scare quotes, however, suggests that he is using the term
metaphorically and is referring to our capacity to ignore the existence of something and to contemplate
its appearance aesthetically. This would not be enough to make it into an image-object in the strict
sense.
20 Wollheim, 46-47, 64-67.
38 JOHN B. BROUGH
face in bone structure and epidermal pigmentation; I am simply seeing a

face, an appearing face. In the case of the appearing real thing, I can
abandon the contemplative attitude and adopt an ordinary, pragmatic
attitude towards it~ and still be dealing with the same object. I can take the
face I have been contemplating into my hands and kiss it, and experience
a perfect identity between the two. Or I can take the snow shovel and start
to shovel snow with it. On the other hand, I cannot kiss the image-object
in the painting (although I could kiss the surface of the canvas in which the
image appears). The same point can be made in terms of existence. Husserl
writes that aesthetic pleasure "leaves existence out of play and is
essentially determined by the mode of appearance" (Hua XXIII, 145, note
1). To leave existence out of play, however, does not mean that the object
ceases to be a real object; it says something about the perceiver, not about
the ontological status ofwhat is perceived. I can slip out of my reverie and
put existence back into play at any time. In the case of the image-object,
however, I do not put existence out of play, for the object itself does not
exist; it is, as we have said, "a nothing." Nothing I can do will make it real.
On this reading, then, the readymade would not be an image-object, no
matter how violent its shift in context, because it lacks the twofoldness that
constitutes the authentic image. To be sure, just like any other real thing
that is not an image but that appears to me-a person across the room, a
sunset, a flower-it could be the subject of aesthetic feeling, for on
Husserl's account, one can have an aesthetic interest in things that are
neither image-objects nor works of art (Hua XXIII, 145, 386-87). Duchamp
himself, of course, did not select objects to be readymades because they
were aesthetically pleasing.
Blanchot's observations about images, rich though they are, fail to
promote the readymades to the world of image-objects. If the readymades
are works of art, it is not because they are images and it is not because they
are appreciated aesthetically.
III. Wax Museums, Some Contemporary Sculptors, and Images
I have argued that in the case of the readymade, a real object, even when
transported into the artworld, does not become an image-object. At the
other extreme, however, there are cases in which one can take something
to be a real object and then discover that it is really an image.
The late art historian Howard Hibbard addressed this issue, also
drawing a parallel with the cadaver, though with an aim different from
Blanchot's. Those who understand sculpture as an exercise in creating the
illusion as of seeing, for example, a human being, expect sculpture to
furnish a kind of petrified man or women, the artistic equivalent of a
corpse. "Petrification, like embalming, reeks of the grave, and most
sculpture," Hibbard thinks, "seeks to evoke life, not death." 21 To make his
point, Hibbard turns to what is also one ofHusserl's favorite examples of
sensory illusion involving images: the deceptions of the wax museum.
Hibbard adds another example, not available to Husser!, that is even more
vivid, the sculptures of Duane Hanson and John de Andrea.
Husser! focuses on the deception sometimes perpetrated by such
realistic figures in order to learn something about the nature and
possibilities of the image, and about the value of the image when it is
released from the entanglements of confusion with reality.
One of the things such cases tell us is that, while the image may be in
some sense an illusion, it is no ordinary sensory illusion. Suppose I come
upon a Hanson sculpture of a woman pushing a shopping cart in a grocery
store. It will be wearing real clothes, its hair studded with rollers, its lifelike
skin mottled and pale. To the casual glance I routinely direct at other
shoppers, the sculpture will, in fact, appear to be a real person. I will be
fooled. Then suppose I brush against the figure and am impressed by how
solid "she" is; suppose further that I notice that she does not react in any
way at all to our collision. I will suddenly begin to doubt whether this is a
real person after all. At that point a war of competing beliefs or perceptual
apprehensions breaks out in my consciousness (Hua XXIII, 479): Is this
really a person or is it an effigy, a simulacrum of some sort? One of these
apprehensions will have to surrender to the other. Both cannot be
maintained, outside their warring state, with respect to what I see. In the
case of the nondeceptive image, however-an ordinary painting or
sculpture-the apprehension of the image and the apprehension of the
21 Howard Hibbard, Masterpieces of Western Sculpture (New York: Harper and Row, n.d.), 7.
40 JOHN B. BROUGH
physical substrate coexist, with the image-apprehension dominating but not

eliminating the perceptual apprehension of the physical ground. Thanks to
the peculiar relation of the two apprehensions, I am aware of the image,
which does not involve deception at all. In ordinary image-consciousness,
then, there is an essential and enduring connection between the two
apprehensions. In the case of deception, there is warfare; and if resolution
is achieved, one apprehension has destroyed the other.
If we assume that the conflict I undergo in looking at the Duane
Hanson is resolved in favor of the apprehension that takes it to be an
artificial construction, I am then aware of it as an image-object. But the
image-object in this case approximates so closely the appearance of a real
thing that it remains virtually indistinguishable from it. I can overcome the
tendency to take the figure as a real person, but only with effort and
probably only temporarily. One might even say that the image-object is
designed to frustrate my efforts to experience it as an image-object.
Experientially, then, sculptures of this kind, just like effigies in the wax
museum, are "barely" image-objects. Husser) implies that this diminishes
their possibilities and effectiveness as works of art. Their aim, as Howard
Hibbard says, "is to fool and beguile," and he finds their value as works of
art to be nugatory: "the radical realism of John de Andrea and Duane
Hanson .. .is probably not more than a novelty, fascinating (or horrifying) as
their works sometimes are."22 This echoes Husserl's judgment about the
sort of pleasure the country bumpkin in all of us takes in being surprised
and amazed at the deceptions perpetrated by the figures in the wax
museum: "Aesthetic effects are not the effects of annual fairs" (Hua XXIII,
41 ). Genuine aesthetic satisfaction is not to be found in the strife of
deceptive realism but "is grounded on the peaceful and clear consciousness
of pictoriality" (Hua XXIII, 40). Images that succeed as art must stand out
as images: "Without an image," Husserl writes, "there is no fine art. And
the image must be clearly set apart from reality..." (Hua XXIII, 41). An
image, distinctly appearing as such, lets art do things that ordinary objects,
or pure phantasies, or even image-object illusions such as those we have
been discussing, cannot do. Let me point to just a few of these.
21 Hibbard, 162.
IV. The Image-Object at Work in Art
A. The Physical Image and the Image Object

There is nothing incidental about the physical ingredients of a snow shovel.
They determine in large part whether or not the shovel can carry out its
function. The connection between an image and its physical support is
equally intimate. Any discussion of the image as condition of value in art
and as a value itself must take into account that it has a physical basis, for
many dimensions and possibilities in the life of the image depend on its
physical substrate.
For example, the physical image plays a role in the degree of
verisimilitude figurative art can achieve. One can see a human face in a
single pencil line forming a silhouette on a sheet of paper. Minimal
physical means can generate a minimal image. Or one can have a life-size
bust of a person, perhaps a plaster life-cast whose form is identical with the
size and shape of the upper body ofthe subject. In this instance, the shape
of the physical substrate, the shape of the image, and the shape of the
subject all coincide, with important consequences for the image. If the
plaster is left unpainted, that too will play a role in the artistic sense of the
image, and will also insure that there is no confusion between image and
subject, since human beings are not "white like plaster" (Hua XXIII, 490).
If the right pigments are applied to the plaster so that the image appears
with the colors the subject possessed when the life-cast was made, as in the
case of John Ahearn's sculptures of residents of the South Bronx, the
degree of verisimilitude will be greatly enhanced, since the form and color
of the image presents the form and color of the subject. But there is still
"conflict" between image and subject in this case, again in part because of
the nature of the physical substrate. The shape of the physical support is
such that it can sustain only the image of half a person, and yet, as Husser!
writes, "There are no half people" (Hua XXIII, 133, note 1). The image will
therefore carry a certain meaning and value that it would not have
otherwise carried, and I will know that I am contemplating an image and
not a real person. One can, of course, go still further and construct a
physical substrate of the sort that would belong to the deceptive sculpture
discussed in the last section. All of the physical elements necessary to
found the image of a full three-dimensional body would be there. Real hair
42 JOHN B. BROUGH
and real clothes would furnish the physical foundations for the image-hair
and image-clothes, which would depict the corresponding features of the
subject with astounding verisimilitude. Add life-like movement, and the
consciousness of depiction might vanish altogether: "If the image-object
appearance were completely like the thing, not only as momentary
appearance but as temporally continuous appearance, we would have
normal perception and no consciousness of conflict, no image-object
appearance" (Hua XXIII, 138). We would have returned to the deceptions
of the wax museum, perhaps even gone beyond them And the image-object
could have brought this about only if the physical image had permitted it.
The physical image plays other roles in the constitution of the image.
We have already seen that it founds the size and shape of the sculptural
image, but it plays a similar part in two-dimensional art such as painting,
whose images may conform to the gothic frame of an altarpiece, the lunette
over a doorway, or the segment of a ceiling. And in recent decades, the
shaped canvas has emerged as a fundamental determinant of the artistic
image, particularly in nonfigurative art. Furthermore, although the image
may be "a nothing," as Husser! claims, thanks to its physical foundation it
will be objectively large or small-as small as a miniature by Hilliard or
as large as Christo's 28-mile-long "Running Fence" in California (1976).
While one can form in consciousness the phantasy of a large object, to
speak of the pure phantasy-image itself as large seems odd, while it makes
perfectly good sense to observe that the size of an image in a work of art
is an integral part of its sense.
The difference between phantasy-image and image-object suggests
other ways in which the physical substrate contributes to the possibility of
value in art. The phantasy-image, which has no physical support, is private
and unstable. Even while being entertained, it fluctuates, fades in and out,
continually varies in its degree of completeness, and cannot be directly
shared with others (Hua XXIII, 60ff.). Once past, it is irretrievably lost,
except perhaps to memory. By contrast, the image-object, thanks to its
physical ground, is stable and public. As an "authorized instigator" (Hua
XXIII, 492), made by the artist, the physical basis awakens a stable image
with an abiding and fixed content available to a multitude of subjects at one
time and at different times and, if the physical image is portable, even in
different places (Hua XXIII, 545).
Furthennore, the fact that works of art have a physical basis puts them
into history. One can write a history of art because the images in art have
a physical foundation. One can point to changes in scale, for example,
observing that the huge works of nineteenth-century Romanticism gave
way after 1870 to works of more modest size, with a corresponding change
in value, 23 or that scale changed again with the appearance of the vast
abstract expressionist canvases in the middle of this century. Perhaps one
could write a parallel history of private phantasy, but it would have to tum
to paintings, literature, recorded myths, and so on-that is, to image-
objects with physical foundations.
This is only a sampling of ways in which the physical basis of the
image enters into the constitution of the image in art, but it should suffice
to indicate that the physical basis of the image is essential both to its being
an image-object at all and to the value it may have in art.
B. The Image as Nothing and Everything

That the image in a work of art is not a real thing but an absence that is
nonetheless an abiding and intersubjectively available presence opens it up
to the breadth and depth of human experience and to the infinite
possibilities of human creativity. That it is not an actual object posited in
the world and "disappearing in its use," but something existing exclusively
for our contemplation, opens us up to the wealth that it embraces. These
may be commonplaces, but it is surely why we value art, and it is a
condition of art made possible by the image. What troubled Plato about the
image was precisely that it was not something real, but "a man-made dream
for waking eyes" (Sophist, 266c), that it was nothing and yet was the
vessel of everything-of houses and beds, horses and reins, warriors and
battles, doctors and fishennen, grief and rage. By being nothing, the image
can be everything without actually being anything. Thus Plato mistrusted
artistic imaging, or at least much of it, as the moral and metaphysical
equivalent of counterfeiting. Another tradition, however, saw its creative
hospitality as a metaphor of divine creation, and Hegel took it to be the
Absolute itself coming to self-consciousness in sensuous form.
21 Kenneth Clark, What is a Masterpiece? (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1979), 42.
44 JOHN B. BROUGH
I will look briefly in the next section at a few of the presentational

possibilities opened up by the image. Plato's view about their value happily
has not carried the day. The possibilities I will discuss are related, more or
less directly, to some themes that appear in Husserl's discussion of image-
consciousness.
C. Image and Subject

Images in art can have specific subjects, and traditionally that has been one
of their most valued possibilities. Part of that value lies in the fact that the
subject of the image is seen within the world created in the image and is not
merely symbolized by the image. The symbol, on Husserl's reading,
appears in its own right and points externally to something that is not
present and that does not appear. "The symbolizing function is an
externally representing function: the depictive function is an internally
presenting one, seeing the subject [Sache] in the image" (Hua XXIII, 82).
This, of course, means that the subject will be presented in the manner of
the particular image presenting it. Thus Matisse may paint his wife with a
green stripe down the center of her face ("Portrait with Green Streak,"
1905), and it is towards Madame-Matisse-in-this-image that our
contemplation is directed-unless, of course, we are trying to find out what
Madame Matisse looked like, in which case the painting would not be a
very good guide.
Husserl may have thought at one point that an image must depict a
specific subject, on the model of a portrait. After 1918, however, he held
that an image need not depict any particular person or place or event (Hua
XXIII, 514; and see Marbach's "Editor's Introduction" to Hua XXIII,
lxxix). When Husserl severed any necessary link between imaging and the
depicting of someone or something specific, he did not deny that images
would still have subjects in a more general sense, and he offered as an
example a play whose characters and plots are altogether fictional, but
which is nonetheless "about" something, that is, has a subject
commensurate with the boundaries of its image-world. Richard Wollheim,
in a similar vein, observes that one can draw a distinction between a
painting that is clearly intended by the artist to be the picture of a particular
person or particular event and a painting that is intended to be the picture
of a person or an event of a particular kind.24 Art abounds with both sorts

of works, and the constitution of the image reveals or embodies the artist's
intention in each case; it is not something that one must infer.
The examples we have cited indicate that in art it is not the subject
alone that engages or moves us; it is the subject as presented in the way in
which the particular image presents it. The image therefore underwrites the
authentic sense of the often maligned distinction between form and content.
As Kenneth Clark observes of Donatello's Annunciation, it is not just its
illustrational side that moves us, but its "mastery ofform."25 In the image
the two mingle and unite.
As we have learned in this century, however, the images of art need not
represent either a particular subject or a subject of a particular kind.
Malevich and Mondrian produced nonfigurative images that, they claimed,
express something transcendent or spiritual. Such works were not supposed
to be external symbols in Husserl's sense; the spiritual content was
supposed to be in the artistic image. Other painters in this century, usually
nonfigurative but not always, produced works that are to be taken simply
as images, without subjects of any kind, except themselves. Frank Stella
accordingly said of his early shaped and geometrically striped paintings:
"What you see is what you see,"26 and Ad Reinhardt insisted in manifesto
after manifesto on the purity of"art-as-art."27
D. Image and Liberation

The image, as we have been describing it, is liberated from the actual
world even in its relations to it, and also liberating with respect to it. It is
therefore open to the possibilities we have described. The artist can freely
play games within it, introducing fantastic beings, landscapes, and forms.
The artist can, for example, plant ambiguity in the work (Hua XXIII),
supplying, or perhaps not supplying (as in the case of Escher), motives for
its resolution. Whether or not such ambiguity draws on the image's subject
24 Wollheim, 67.
25 Clark, 9-10.
26 American Artists on Art, ed. Ellen H. Johnson (New York: Harper and Row, 1982), 117.
27Art as Art: The Selected Writings ofAd Reinhardt, ed. Barbara Rose (New York: The Viking
Press, 1975), 45-78.
46 JOHN B. BROUGH
for its inspiration, the ambiguity itself and whatever value it bestows on the
work as art dwells within the image. It is image-ambiguity, and the "doubt"
it awakens in the spectator is a quasi-doubt, the doubt of one contemplating
an image, not real doubt.
The idea of liberation in and through the image points to further
dimensions of human experience that artistic images can accommodate and
that differ from the subject matter of persons, places, and things. Certain
artistic images, for example, can liberate us from our immediate absorption
in the act of perceiving so that we can contemplate the act itself. Robert
Birmelin's paintings of events and people in motion on the streets of
Manhattan let the spectator contemplate engaged perceptual life, and do it
by becoming involved as a participant and even as the cause of the action
depicted-a particularly vivid variation ofHusserl's observation that "since
the sensuous appearance eo ipso presupposes an ego-standpoint, I am
always somehow in the picture as picture-Ego" (Hua XXIII, 467, note 1).
Turning to ourselves as contemplators of art, the image, because it
presents itself as something whose whole being is to be contemplated,
gives us a dispensation simply to look. I can sit in a museum and gaze at
a painting fora long period oftiine without arousing anyone's suspicions.
Indeed, the quiet observer of pictures in a museum is commonly taken to
be an admirable person absorbed in a noble activity. On the other hand, I
cannot stare with such impunity at the stranger standing next to me or even
at the couch in the middle of the gallery. I am expected to be engaged in
some practical way with things and people, and "contemplation" of them
is taken to be a prelude to action. (Thomas Struth's ongoing "Museum
Series" photographs capture dramatically the disengaged looking that
images invite and allow-with a twist, since in looking at one of Struth's
photographs one contemplates an image of museumgoers who are
themselves contemplating pictures on the museum's walls: that is, the
spectator of a Struth photograph is doing precisely what those depicted in
the photograph are doing.)
Emotions can also enter into images and be contemplated there.
Husserl makes a number of interesting distinctions about the ways in which
this can happen and the ways in which I can experience them. For example,
just as artworks through their images can present image-things and image-
persons, they can present the physical and emotional states of those
persons. Thus a figure in an etching can appear to be ill. The sickness will
be image-sickness, not actual sickness, but it will be present to the
spectator with just as much force as the image-sheets covering the ill
person's body or the image-pillow behind his head. Furthermore, the ill
person may appear to be wretched and pitiable, and this belongs to him just
as much as his sickness does (Hua XXIII, 465). Now Husser! says that I
have a feeling of compassion in looking at such an image. One has to be
careful in working out the nature of this feeling, since the "feeling" does
not seem to be actual feeling, the feeling one would have at the bedside of
a dying friend. And yet it is not a perfectly dispassionate inspection either.
Rather the "feeling" is fitted to the state of the person it reveals: just as the
wretchedness is not actual wretchedness but image-wretchedness, so the
feeling is not actual feeling but, in Husserl's language, "modified feeling"
(Hua XXIII, 465), a "quasi-positing" (Hua XXIII, 480), or "quasi-feeling."
This means that it is not an actual or unmodified feeling and that it does not
posit an actual condition of wretchedness in its correlate. To fail to have
this "compassion" would be to fail to comprehend the artwork, to fail to
experience what the artist intended one to experience in facing the work.
It would be like not seeing-in a "quasi-" or nonpositing perception-the
face or sheet or pillow in the etched lines. This may be taken as Husserl's
attempt to handle the question of psychical distance in contemplating
works of art. George Dickie considers psychical distance to be nothing
more than paying attention to this or that aspect of the work, 28 but
something more than paying attention seems to be involved here. What
more is caught by Kenneth Clark in his comment on Professor Samuel
Alexander's dictum about images of the nude: '"If the nude,' says Professor
Alexander, 'is so treated that it raises in the spectator ideas or desires
appropriate to the material subject, it is false art, and bad morals.'" To
which Clark responds: " .. .it is necessary to labor the obvious and say that
no nude, however abstract, should fail to arouse in the spectator some
28 George Dickie, "All Aesthetic Attitude Theories Fail: The Myth of the Aesthetic Attitude,"
American Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. I, No. I, 1964, 56-66.

48 JOHN B. BROUGH
vestige of erotic feeling, even though it be only the faintest shadow-and

if it does not do so, it is bad art and false morals."29
My modified compassion is the appropriate intentional correlate of the
image-wretchedness with which I am confronted. My compassion is not
itself in the image. On the other hand, the image may well contain an
image-person who is presented as experiencing compassion. That person's
compassion is present in the image while my compassion is not.
Finally, Husserl observes that images can also possess moods or an
overall emotional tone, and can do so even when no person-whether one
showing an emotion or one calling forth an emotion-is presented there.
An image-landscape can appear "melancholy," for example. The mood
would belong to the image and be its characteristic just as surely as its
image-trees and image-mountains (Hua XXIII, 476). Again, I will not
actually experience the presented mood when I contemplate the image, but
I will experience a nonpositing attunement with it: "In my quasi-being-in-
a-mood I am conscious of the mood of the landscape (as of a quasi-mood),
and this presents to me the mood of the landscape" (Hua XXIII, 476).
V. A Concluding Remark
I have attempted to show in this essay, not that all images are works of art
and not that all works of art are images, but that many if not most works are
images, and that the many types and degrees of value we attribute to them
are inextricably entwined with their being as images. And perhaps the most
dramatic gestures of the avant-garde, including the readymades and their
progeny, even in challenging the hegemony of the image in art, make sense
and have value only with the image as background. In any event, we can be
satisfied with the images we have and will continue to have, for art, as
HusserI assures us, "offers us an infinite wealth" of them (Hua XXIII, 519).
29 Kenneth Clark, The Nude, Bollingen Series XXXV (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1956),
8.
Chapter 3
Problems of the Value of Nature

in Phenomenological Perspective or
What to Do about Snakes in the Grass
Lester Embree
Flordia Atlantic University
I. Approach
The perspective of this essay is phenomenological, by which is intended the

original mature Husserlian or constitutive and not the existential, hermeneuti-
cal, or realistic forms of phenomenology that have also arisen. There are two
objectionable aspects to Husserlian phenomenology today. Firstly, the texts
of Husser! and his closer followers are difficult to comprehend, even in
translation, and this explains in part why so much that considers itself
"phenomenological" is actually no more than the interpretation of phenom-
enological texts by methods that are not especially phenomenological. This
is not even good hermeneutics, which is interpretation and critique, for it
does not reach the phase of critique, which can be phenomenological. In this
respect, then, phenomenology needs to get beyond mere scholarship and into
attempts to verify, correct, and extend earlier descriptions.
Secondly, while it is phenomenological to combine methodological
reflections with substantive investigations, too many soi disant
phenomenologists are so preoccupied with the specific procedures of
transcendental and eidetic epoches or refrainings and the resultant correlative
purifications of objects and reductions of attitudes (and the four specific
combinations of worldly factual, worldly eidetic, transcendental factual, and
transcendental eidetic attitudes) that they tend to forget that phenomeno logi-
49
J. G. Hart and L. Embree (eds.), Phenomenology of Values and Valuing, 4~1.
50 LESTER EMBREE
cal method is fundamentally reflective, theoretical, and, in a broad significa-

tion, observational.
The following analyses have been produced through reflective theoretical
observation. Whether through reflection on others (based on so-called
"empathy") or through self-observation, the phenomenologist focuses
alternatively on intentive processes or encounterings (Erlebnisse) as intentive
to objects and on objects as they present themselves to or as encountered
by the personal or communal subject in question. This is also called
noetico-noematic investigation. Proceeding thus, she can, firstly, differentiate
components within encountering that belong to types and subtypes of
awareness, be that awareness presentational or representational, if presenta-
tional, then predominantly perceptual, recollective, or expectational, and
if representational, then subspecifically indicational, linguistic, and/or
pictorial. Correlative to such types of awareness within encounterings, real
objects, i.e., objects in time, present themselves directly or indirectly as in
the present, future, or past ofthe awareness of them. There is also awareness
of ideal objects, but it is not of concern here.
Secondly, the phenomenologist can reflectively distinguish encounterings
according to the type of positionality that predominates in them, which is
to say, according to whether believing, valuing, or willing predominates.
Then the encounters can be called cognition, evaluations, or volitions (or
actions). Then again, when it is desirable to combine allusion to the original
form of awareness and to the type of positionality, one can speak of cognitive
encounters, evaluative encounters, and volitional (or actional) encounters.
It is not uninteresting that there are positive, negative, and neutral modes
of believing, valuing, and willing. Emphasizing the noetic side of the
noetico-noematic parallelism, there is also a difference between firmness
and degrees of shakiness for the positive and negative modes in the three
sorts of positionality. Practical or volitional firmness is often called "resolute-
ness" and shakiness in this component is often called "hesitancy." Cognitive
firmness can be called "certitude" and cognitive shakiness can be called,
to restore an old philosophical word, "conjecture" (the correlative state of
the noematic doxothetic characteristic can be called "probability" in a
non-mathematical signification). There are also firm and shaky processes
of valuing, the latter sometimes referred to as "ambivalence."
On the side of the object as it presents itself and in intentive correlation
PROBLEMS OF THE VALUE OF NATURE 51
with the types, modes, and states of noetic positionality, objects as believed
in can be called "entities," which can be positive or negative (and, as such,
certain or probable) or neutral, objects as valued can be called "goods,"
"bads," and, perhaps, "neutrals," and objects as willed can be said to be
positively or negatively useful or, neutrally, useless "practical objects." Such
expressions have referents by virtue of the positional characteristics of
objects as posited being focused upon and believed in, i.e., due to being
objectivated.
An additional difference may come to mind with respect to the voli-
tional-practical stratum, namely that between ends and means or, in other
words, the end uses and the means uses that objects have when willed either
for their own sakes or willed for the sakes of other objects. This can be
considered the volitional specification of the generic intrinsic/extrinsic
difference that is usually made with respect to the values that objects have
as valued for their own sakes or as valued for the sakes of other objects. As
for the cognitive stratum, some objects, are believed in as conducive to other
objects, e.g., effects, while objects believed in for their own sakes have
intrinsic belief characteristics. Something being believed conducive is
different from its being extrinsically valued for its conduciveness and also
different from its being willed or used as a means. Conduciveness includes
causation but is not restricted to it, for a road is conducive to a destination
without causing it. One can believe a road leads somewhere, in which case
it has an extrinsic belief characteristic for the believer. (See Figure 1) The
extensive parallelism among the types of positionality just summarized can
lead to their confusion, e.g., mistaking the end use of a goal of the will for
the intrinsic value of an object valued for its own sake. Perhaps more clarity
will come below. For now it needs to be said that these differences are among
components reflectively discernible within concrete intentive processes or
encounters and among correlative components also reflectively
ditferentiatable and observable as abstract parts of objects as they present
themselves or as they are encountered. Concretely, encounters can be
classified handily according either to the type of awareness or the type of
valuing, and willing and, conversely, cognitive encounters, evaluative
encounters, and volitional encounters always include some mode or modes
of awareness or other. It is a question of what is there and predominates and
what the reflective researcher is interested in.
52 LESTER EMBREE
(Figure I)
Taxonomy of Some Components in Intentiveness (Noeses) and of
Objects as They Present Themselves (Noemata)
24. extrinsic
23. neutral intrinsic
22. extrinsic
21. negative intrinsic
20. extrinsic
19. volitional positive intrinsic
18. extrinsic
16. extrinsic
14. extrinsic
13. evaluational positive intrinsic
12. extrinsic
10. extrinsic
08. extrinsic
07. positionaity cognitive positive intrinsic
06. linguistic
05. pictorial
04. representational indicational
03. expectational
02. recollectional
0 I. awareness presentational perceptual
One can read characterizations from this taxonomy from right to left and with omissions and
transformations, e.g., from "perceptual awareness" (omitting "presentational") to "extrinsic
neutral volition" (omitting "positional" and nominalizing "volitional"). The numbering from
bottom to top is to suggest something about the orders of original and derivative and of
founding to founded when justification in question.
II. Focus
Problems of the value of ecological nature include, to begin with, questions

of whether it can be valued as a whole, in part (or parts), or both, whether
it (or they) has (or have) intrinsic value, extrinsic value, or both, and whether
it (or they) has (or have) positive, negative, or neutral value or combinations
thereof. Before approaching problems of this sort, more focus on the
evaluational is needed.
Firstly, there is the question of the differences and relations of awareness
and evaluation. Objects as objects of awareness, "awared objects," objects
as "awared," as one might force English to say, are different from objects
as valued. For example, when we speak of seeing a snake in the grass and
speak literally, such speech refers to a reptile located among plants of a type
and perceived visually. If a person fears snakes, i.e., disvalues and tends to
avoid or destroy them, then the snake there has negative value for that person.
On the other hand, a zoologist specializing in snakes might value this
specimen quite positively. And the change in the same wriggling animal as
it goes from expected to perceived and then from perceived to remembered
is different from the change that a valued object can undergo when one goes
from hating it to liking it.
Secondly, under the genus ofpositionality, there are differences between
valuing and objects as valued, on the one hand, and both believing in and
objects as believed in and willing and objects as willed, on the other hands.
If we will the snake dead and use a stick as a means to kill it, there will also
be disvaluing of the snake involved, but the destructive willing and the
negative use of means to the negative end are different from valuing. This
is because we can value without going on to will positively or negatively.
(Analogously and on the linguistic level, there can be advice, which amounts
to saying that something is good or at least better than something else and
is thus evaluative, that neither the advisor nor the advisee acts on.)
Nor is valuing believing. Belief is not easy to distinguish from awareness
when the object is given in person, e.g., when we see and believe in the snake
right there before us. They can be distinguished more easily if the difference
between so-called empty or, better, blind and intuitive or seeing awareness
is used. Thus, while we are not seeing the snake, we can still believe or
54 LESTER EMBREE
disbelieve in it being in the patch of grass. Perhaps it has just slithered out
of sight, but there has not been enough time for it to leave the patch or
perhaps we merely shut our eyes. It is then believed in but no longer seen.
There is awareness underlying the believing, but that awareness is blind. We
then believe in the snake and can argue soundly that the snake is still in there
somewhere. That about which we thus argue is not intuitively awared, but
rather blindly awared. It can be intuitively remembered, but as a strictly
present object it is out of sight, albeit still believed in.
Just as valuing and objects as valued can be regularly discerned in the
background of willing and objects as willed, so too believing in and objects
as believed in can be discerned in the background of valuing and objects as
valued. Putting the four strata of the encountering process and of the objects
as they are encountered together with our running example, we can say that
the willing to destroy or to protect the snake in the grass is different from
but related to the valuing of it positively or negatively, that the valuing is
different from but related to the disbelieving in as well as the willing of the
object, and the belief component is different from but related to one or
another subtype of awareness component as well as to the valuing of the
snake there in the grass.
Evaluation appears crucial to questions of the justification of willing
or action. At least prima facie, if the valuing of one alternative over another
is justified, then the willing that it founds and motivates, i.e., justifies, would
be justified. This is like the way in which the believing component in a
concrete encountering can be justified by the awareness of the pertinent
subtype, e.g., the seeing of the snake justifying the believing in it as there
now and the remembering of the snake justifying believing in it as in a place
previously. The problem is whether a justified believing is sufficient to justify
a valuing directly and thus an action indirectly. This problem has been
mentioned here in order to reinforce the appreciation of the place of valuing
and objects as valued and not in order to propose a solution. A solution does
presuppose at least an outline of what evaluation is, which is, in relation to
living nature, the present concern.•
1This analysis of the concepts in encountering and objects as encountered is derived from
Husserl's ldeen zu einer reinen Phiinomeno/ogie und phiinomeno/ogischen Phi/osophie, I, II, & Ill
(continued ...)
III. Nature
The terms distinguished in the taxonomy above will be employed in

approaching some value problems in environmental philosophy after a sketch
of living nature. Nature here is biological or, better, ecological nature.
Without taking a position on the question of the reducibility of biology to
chemistry and physics and recognizing that there is not a great deal yet in
the way of a constitutive phenomenology of biology, it is still clear that
nature can be observed ecologically. Then organisms are seen to have
environments with which they interact. The environment of any given
organism contains organisms of the same and different species. An organism
takes nourishment from her environment and nourishment can be conceived
so broadly that not only food and water but also air, light, and other forms
of radiation are included. An organism also returns waste gases as well as
fluids, solids, and heat to her environment; wastes of one organism may well
be nutrients for other organisms.
Such interactive processes involving organisms and environments are
quite complicated and vary with the temperature, minerals, wind and water
currents, fellow organisms, and so on. They also result from evolution, so
that, in an ongoing way, ever changing organisms adapt to ever changing
environments, including environments changed by organisms and organisms
changed by environments. Starting from any organism one can quickly
recognize that it functions with many others in communities, ecosystems,
etc. If pertinent factors and the long-term processes are considered, then one
can even speak of the planet as an ecosphere. In that case ecosubsystems
and sub-subsystems of various sorts can be recognized within it. Everything
alive is alive amidst all else that is.
Nature in ecological perspective, i.e., focusing on organic bodies,
interestingly parallels nature in broadly social-scientific perspective, i.e.,
(... continued)
(1912-1913). Cf. Lester Embree, "Some Noetico-Noematic Analyses of Action and Practical Life,"
in The Phenomenology of the Noema, edd. John Drummond and Lester Embree, Dordrecht: Kluwer
Academic Publishers, 1992, 157-210 and "Advances concerning Evaluation and Action in
Husserl's Ideas II," in Issues in Husser/'s "Ideas II", edd. Thomas Nenon and Lester Embree,
Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1996. 166-91.
56 LESTER EMBREE
the latter focusing on relationships and interactions among psyches rather

than somas. An individual subject interacts economically, linguistically,
sociologically, etc. with others and participates in families, clans, communi-
ties, societies, nations, empires, etc. and ultimately the analog of the
ecosphere for humans socially is humanity. This similarity can be pursued
quite far. Indeed, cultural evolution might well parallel biological evolution
conceptually. Although there are interesting exceptions, philosophy and other
disciplines seem thus far to have tended to emphasize the psychic and
sociological. But the soma can also be emphasized over the psyche just as
the psyche has been emphasized over the soma.
In ecological perspective, Homo sapiens sapien is but one species among
others, albeit the one currently causing the greatest environmental change,
and the above remarks apply to it. Since at least Descartes, however,
contrasting perspectives have been popular in which the human body and
its organic insertion in nature are abstracted from and the remaining mind
considered apart from and relating chiefly contemplatively to the rest of
nature. In that contrasting view, there tends to remain interest in how the
outer world physically and neuro-physiologically affects mental events and
vice versa and within the mind there is a tendency in this perspective also
to abstract from the evaluational and volitional in order to emphasize the
intellectual or cognitive. Even questions of relationships with fellow humans
are at best secondary.
Ecological thinking includes somas as organisms, but does not need to
go to the opposite extreme of eliminating psyches such that organisms are
considered merely complex physical systems causally connected. The
ecological or environmental perspective can thus be viewed as between two
extremes. It would then still not be too surprising to find specimens of homo
sapiens sapien considering themselves in various ways more important than
other species. On the other hand, among the differences of this species is
the ability to recognize ecological insertion and to value various behaviors
of its own as well as of other sprcies within the ecosphere and indeed
consciously to act upon its evaluations.
Few until recently have appreciated the human participation in the
ecosphere, but changes in the planetary atmosphere from smog to
green-house effects and ozone holes seem to have made the pollution of the
seas and lakes and rivers and streams and ground water and indeed ecosys-
terns and species extinctions and various unsustainable practices less

ignorable. Some of the talk is hysterical and paranoid, but just because some
of us are hysterical and paranoid does not mean that really huge and
dangerous things are not happening out there in living nature.
Essentially confining ourselves now to ecological objects as valued and
the valuing of them by humans, which can be focused upon reflectively,
observed, and theoretically described, we can begin in a methodologically
individualistic fashion, but need to follow through to communal life in the
end. We can also begin from human life but need to end up considering the
earth as ecosphere. Each human can focus on her own body or, preferably,
her soma as a case of personal human organic life and, with respect to the
soma, a difference between wellness and illness can be recognized. Precise
scientific definitions of these terms are not necessary here.
Like many terms referring to somatic life, wellness and illness are
equivocal. It is difficult to comprehend them without the connotations that
wellness is good and illness is bad, but such a comprehension is possible
in, e.g., a biological-scientific attitude. Then the effect of venom whereby
illness and perhaps death replaces wellness and then that whereby an antidote
causes wellness to replace illness can be observed and believed in. In an
attitude of the pertinent type, which can be called "cognitive," causal
assertions can be true or false but normative assertions are excluded. Then
the words "wellness" and "illness" as well as statements about their causes
have purely cognitive significations.
In the evaluative, axiotic, or normative signification, by contrast, one
ought to be well and ought not to be ill. In other words, wellness is good and
illness is bad. In yet other words and with questions of justification aside,
wellness is positively valued for its own sake and illness is negatively valued
for its own sake. The same holds for circumstances conducive to them, such
as water and air unpolluted and polluted, except that their values are extrinsic.
If illness is of negative value, then poisonous snakes, who can cause illness,
are also of negative value. Keeping away from such a snake in the grass as
well as, more drastically, killing it would be valued positively in relation
to the positive value ofwellness. Avoiding the bad here is seeking the good.
This is of course an abstract example, for the poisonous snake is, like
any organism, part of an ecosystem. Suppose such snakes eat rodents who
carry nasty diseases to which humans are prone. Again valuing our wellness
58 LESTER EMBREE
over illness intrinsically, there seems a problem of valuing these snakes

negatively with respect to the effects of snake bites on humans over valuing
them positively as disease-controlling agents. Two recognitions are involved
here. Firstly, the organism needs to be considered within its ecosystem and
thus in relation to other organisms, and, secondly, there is more than one
respect in which an organism can be valued. Snakes in the grass may be good
for us if left alone and their habitat preserved.
This has been a case of evaluating relations among organisms, namely
humans, snakes, rodents, and viruses, and also the patch of grass, and chiefly
in relation to humans. (This anthropocentrism can have a herpecentric
position substituted for it, although it seems doubtful that mother snakes warn
their young about humans in the grass.) As the scope of consideration
broadens, more and more organisms are included and are valued either for
their own sakes, e.g., human wellness as good and human illness as bad, or
for the sake of other organisms, e.g., humans, and in positively or negatively
extrinsic ways. Since interplanetary biological interactions seem minimal
and physical factors, especially the solar radiation of light, heat, ultraviolet,
etc., are fairly constant, there is a limit to the broadening of the scope of
consideration. The planet can be treated as a closed totality.
Of late there is an increasing recognition of planetary ecological
processes. There is the ozone layer, global warming, and other atmospheric
changes, circulation patterns included, there are changes in the seas- which
is to say most of the surface of the planet- that include animals, vegetables,
and minerals (and raise more than twenty questions), and there are solid and
fluid changes on and in the land. The spread of organisms called diseases
because of their impacts on other plants and animals positively valued by
humans are prominent in this sphere thus ecologically considered. As more
and more dependencies and interactions and feedbacks are recognized, that
which is valued has become more and more complicated. Yet, if it is granted
that the same object can be valued in different respects, sometimes positively
in relation to this and sometimes negatively in relation to that, it seems
plausible that a value system be developed in parallel fashion. Indeed,
contemporary culture can be seen to include increasing re-evaluation as more
and more ecological knowledge is disseminated.
IV. Problems of the Value of Nature
Two issues seem especially philosophical in this connection. One concerns

the relation of part and whole and the other concerns extrinsic and ultimate
intrinsic values. Putting these together in a distorted or at least incomplete
form, we can ask whether or not the whole of the rest of living nature ought
to be valued for the sake of humans, who are alone valued for their own
sakes.
If we are phenomenologists, we have learned to reflect even in the
formulation of our questions. Thus, when we speak of the values of objects,
we know to reformulate this talk reflectively into speech about objects as
valued and about the valuing of objects by valuers. Then we ask about any
evaluated object not only "Evaluated how?" but also "Evaluated by whom?"
Tacitly, the above discussion has been confined to human valuing and,
correlatively, to objects as valued by humans. It is not currently clear to the
present writer whether or not plants value themselves or one another and
not much clearer whether insects do. Cats and dogs and most other so-called
higher animals may or may not value themselves, but it is plain that they
have preferences in food and people. Nevertheless, it is doubtful that
so-called lower animals can envisage and value entire ecosystems, much
less the planetary ecosphere.
What of super-human animals? Since most societies have been polytheis-
tic, it is not prima facie foolish to speak of gods. For most societies, the gods
are alive, they have minds, and indeed they have bodies, although they seem
powerful enough in that case not to suffer somatic illness much. They are
higher than humans in various ways in various societies due to their believed
in greater powers in this or that respect. Most if not all of the gods would
seem valuers and probably even more easily capable than humans at valuing
the earth as an ecosphere.
It is not idle to speculate in this way, for the doctrine of stewardship is
prominent in environmental thinking today. This doctrine seems reasonably
interpretable axiologically such that either living nature is of intrinsic value
for the gods or the gods themselves have the ultimate intrinsic value (for
themselves, to begin with) and living nature, hwnans included in it, is valued
by them extrinsically for their sake. It could also be true that the gods value
humans above the rest of living nature and require humans to steward the
60 LESTER EMBREE
earth secondly if not ultimately for human sake. Sometimes, of course,

humans believe themselves the gods, the ultimate good in relation to whom
alone all else has value.
At the other extreme, the earthly ecosphere as a whole would have the
highest intrinsic value. This might involve conceiving it as evaluated by all
organisms counting equally, but, as just suggested, it does not seem that all
can value it as a whole. The snake might not value more than the mouse she
is currently stalking or swallowing. Setting aside super-humans, this would
leave the entirety ofliving nature as possibly valued solely by humans. This
seems possible. There is, for example, a traditional opposition whereby the
god-like human is considered essentially outside nature. From that point of
view, that which humans value ultimately might not be themselves but rather
their big object called nature of which they are parts, but this does not seem
to have happened much in the history of philosophy.
There is another approach. The valuing by human persons of their own
somatic wellness intrinsically seems rather common. The wellness of others,
such as spouses, children, parents, siblings, friends, and indeed all specimens
of Homo sapiens could be valued for its own sake. Then, as ecological insight
increased, the believed in separateness of humans from their environments
would decrease. It might even be recognized that they are inseparable and
that to value one in one respect is to value the other in the related respect.
Briefly, the wellness of the organism cannot be positively and intrinsically
valued without the wellness of the environment, specimens of other species
as well as of the same one, etc., being then positively and intrinsically valued.
They are both parts of a whole that is then itself ultimately intrinsically
valued.
By whom is it valued? At least by humans. They do not value themselves
apart from nature first and they do not value living nature without them first.
Rather, they value the earth, themselves included, first. Not trees before
humans or humans before trees but earth as including humans and trees might
have the ultimate intrinsic value.
*
* *
This essay has attempted to show something of how environmental
philosophy can be phenomenological with respect to some problems of value.

The claim is not that the problems have been solved, nor even that all of them
have been raised. The problem of how to value social systems in relation
to ecological systems, for example, has only been implied. A final remark
concerning phenomenology and also to show that much still needs to be done:
If the approach to evaluation through reflective observation of objects as
valued and the valuing of objects is pursued far enough, then the problem
will arise of whether intersubjective valuing can play the role of ultimate
ground for non-relative values at the same time that it is part of the valued
object that is grounded. At that point, the option of a provisional suspending
of belief or refraining with respect to the being-in-the-world of the valuing
intersubjectivity for the sake of a transcendental grounding ofvalue can be
considered. The purpose, again, of this essay is more to raise than to settle
questions about the value of living nature phenomenologically.
Chapter 4
The Value of Absence
Steven W. Laycock
University of Toledo
Setting aside, though by no means discounting, the lucid, explicitly

developed and formalized theory of value of the Nachlass texts, there is a
simpler, and in this sense, conceptually more elegant, but not for this
reason alone, a deeper, axiology implicit in Husserl's reconstruction of the
prethematic interest which sustains our recurrence to identity. Our
reflections will orient themselves by reference to the value-theory lying
tacit, and awaiting voice, in salient ruminations extracted from Experience
and Judgment. But it is not alone for the simple sake of expositing an
outlook of unquestionable interest and philosophical penetration that we
take up this task. For Husserl's view will form the backdrop of a dramatic
departure. Though reticent to appear merely disputatious, I must urge the
precise opposite of Husserl's implicit opinion: The primordial value
pursued in every conscious act and orienting all conscious interest is, pace
Husser!, not presence, but rather absence, the absence even of "absence"
inasmuch as absence is itself regarded as a modality of presence.
Succeeding years, if not inevitably increasing wisdom, have found me a
doctrinal apostate from the Husser! ian straight and narrow. I now see in the
non-polar, non-processive and atelic "emptiness" (siinyata) central to
Buddhist thought a fund of values which a Buddhist revisioning of
primordial interest alone makes available. It is not, however, in the breach
that I would honor Husser!. Replication of his conclusions pays no tribute
to the integrity of his spirit. And it is to his spirit, the spirit of the perpetual
beginner, the painstaking fidelity to experience, his peerless rectitude and
philosophical vigilance, that my own divergence bears allegiance.
63
J. G. Hart and L. Embree (eds.), Phenomenology ofValues and Valuing, 63-80.
64 STEVEN W. LAYCOCK
Interest functions, for Husser!, at three levels: the passive synthetic, the
primal voluntative, and the existential. The first can be regarded as a
transposition, into a different register and tonality, of certain strains of
Aristotelian psychology. We are, as we say, "struck" by the object,
"impressed" by it, passive in its grip, receptive, perhaps captivated. Its
manifestation is the "collision" (festus) of the "fist" (manus). Or in
Findlay's graphic declamation, "the manifestation of bodies to the senses
involves a violence." 1 Like the soft wax of Aristotle's simile, we yield to
the irruptive intrusion of sensuous manifestation. The ego is affected, at
this primordial level, in much the same way that the passive intellect is
impressed. In Husserl's words:
We say ... of that which, in its nonsimilarity, stands out from a

homogeneous background and comes to prominence that it
"strikes" us, and this means that it displays an affective tendency
toward the ego. 2
Again:
... what is obtrusive comes more or Jess close to the ego: it

obtrudes on me.... In proportion to the intensity of the
obtrusiveness, what is obtrusive has greater proximity to, or
remoteness from, the ego. 3
But these natural metaphoric suggestions must be qualified. The

passive/synthetic presencing activity of consciousness is not, like the
J. N. Findlay, The Discipline of the Cave (New York: Humanities Press, 1966), p. 85.
1
'Edmund Husser!, Experience and Judgement: Investigations in a Genealogy of Logic, James S.

Churchill and Karl Ameriks, trans., Ludwig Landgrebe, ed. (Evanston: Northwestern University Press,
1973), p. 76.
3Husserl, Experience and Judgment, p. 77.
THE VALUE OF ABSENCE 65
Aristotelian passive-intellect, purely receptive. Here, activity and passivity

are as yet indistinguishable. Being-impressed is the activity of primordial
consciousness.
Presupposing passive-synthetic "impression" is the emergent volunta-
tive action of the ego. Though "yielding," in the primordial passive/active
sense to the implosion of presence, the ego now concedes, or refuses to
concede, to this primordial intrusion. We either turn toward or refrain from
turning toward the presence of the object. Thus, for the first time, there
appears a distinctive sense of choice. We are presented with an authentic
option. It is now possible to refrain from attending to the sensuous
incursion. And in this sense, activity now exceeds passivity.
Moreover, as Husserl observes,
If the ego yields to the stimulus, a new element enters. The

stimulus exercised by the intentional object in its directedness
toward the ego attracts the latter more or less forcefully, and the
ego yields to it. A graduated tendency links the phenomena, a
tendency of the intentional object to pass from a position in the
background of the ego to one confronting the ego. This is a
transformation which, correlatively, is a transformation of the
entire intentional background-experience into one of the fore-
ground: the ego turns toward the object.4
The locus of this second-level "yielding"-the distinctively active, optional

and voluntative ceding of attention-has now become a thematic figure
upon a ground. And thus is established a possibly perdurant "tending" of
the ego toward its figural object. This disposition-a certain psychic
"momentum," if you will-founds a distinctive at/tending. For Husserl:
... attention is a tending of the ego toward an intentional object,

toward a unity which "appears" continually in the change of modes
of its givenness and which belongs to the essential structure of a
specific act of the ego (an ego-act in the pregnant sense of the
4 Husserl, Experience and Judgment, p. 77.

word); it is a tending-toward in realization. 5
Ricoeur is no doubt correct in his insistence that "every attention reveals

an 'I can' at the heart of the 'I think."'6 We thus find in Husserl's thought
a certain strand of pragmatism. Cognition assumes volition. At/tention to
a given figural object presupposes both the equi-possibility of second-level
yielding and refraining and the voluntative realization of the former.
Second-level yielding is, then, supported by a certain disposition or
tendency, a certain inertial proclivity. And it is this bent, this impetus,
which is, in the full "existential" sense properly denominated "interest."
Being inertial, existential interest is "passive." Though choosing to tum
toward sensuous intrusion, the ego does not chose to constitute thereby the
tendency to do so. Second-level interest does, however, involve the
voluntative realization of a given optional possibility .
... it can also be that the object itself touches our feelings, that it
has value for us, and that for this reason we tum to it and linger
over it. But it can just as well be that it is disvaluable and awakens
our interest just because of its abhorrent qualities. Thus the feeling
which belongs to interest has an entirely peculiar direction. In
either case--whether the object motivates our turning-toward by
the value or by the disvalue we sense in it--as soon as we
apprehend it, its sense content is necessarily enriched ... 7
Existential interest thus subtends the distinction between (second-level)

value and disvalue. Existential interest is "an interest in the object of
perception as existent." 8 It is indifferent to those higher-order intentional
achievements (notably, value-achievements) which presuppose the
existence of the object.

"Paul Ricoeur, "Philosophy of Will and Action," in Erwin W. Strauss & Richard Meridith, eds.,
Phenomenology of Will and Action (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1967), p. 16.
7 Husserl, Experience and Judgment, pp. 85-6.
'Husser!, Experience and Judgment, p. 82.
As a weighted proclivity, existential interest is ''the disposition to bring
the intuitively given object to givenness from all sides."
In genuine cognitive interest, however, a voluntary participation of

the ego is in play in an entirely different way: the ego wishes to
know the object, to pin it down once and for all. Every step of
cognition is guided by an active impulse of the will to hold onto
the known as the same and as the substrate of its determining
characteristics ... the goal of the will is the apprehension of the
object in the identity of its determinations, the fixing of the result
of contemplative perception "once and for all."9
Cognition involves the realization of an authentically voluntary (not merely

a "voluntative") interest in cognition, and thereby inaugurates a higher-
order disposition thus forth to regard the object in the manner in which it
was cognized. The sedimentation of this "manner" is achieved through a
certain psychic inertia or momentum.
At each level of conscious activity-the active/passive primordial
impression, second-level yielding, voluntary cognitive explication, and
whatever modalities of conscious activity might thereby be supported-an
inertial (passive) sedimentation is instituted. Primal impression is
maintained in passive retention. Second-level yielding is maintained in
existential interest. Active attention is maintained in cognitive interest. And
characterizing explication is maintained in a third-level sedimenting
interest. It is in each case interest which accounts for perpetuation. To
interest oneself in an object is thereby to "dwell" upon it at length, to recur
to it repeatedly. The object perdures for consciousness by captivating our
interest. We in tum recur to it because of the interest therein invested.
The transcendent intentional object serves, for Husserl, not merely as
an etherial ideality indifferent to its different modes of presentation, but
(and for our purposes, more significantly) as an ideal. Ideals, like the stars,
orient our celestial endeavors, but remain eternally out of reach.
Potentially, if never actually, limitless in its possible manners of displaying

itself, the transcendent object is similarly inaccessible. Inasmuch as no

finite array of profiles can exhaust the transcendent object-its being
perpetually exceeds its appearing-it is not subject to proximation. Or
rather, though we may always advance beyond a given "zero" of
manifestation, and in this sense "ap/proximate" the object, we remain ever
at infinite remove. With respectto the telos of distance less proximation, all
our finite approximations are null. 10
But the transcendent object is "ideal" in another, and more appropriate
sense: it functions as a locus of value. Or rather, it functions as a boundless
wellspring of value. For Husser!, what motivates recurrence to the object
in its various modes of givenness is, of course, prethematic interest. The
relational theory of value sponsored by Ralph Barton Perry proposes the
coextension of interest and valuing. Interest is a modality of valuing, and
conversely, valuing is equally a modality of interest. And if we take the
additional step of presuming values to be the objects of valuings, we can
easily credit Perry's observation that
a thing--any thing--has value, or is valuable, in the original and

generic sense when it is the object of an interest--any interest. Or,
whatever is object of interest is ipso facto valuable. u
While Husserl's analysis of both "value" and "interest" is inestimably

richer and more subtle, and Husser! would undoubtedly object to the
relativism of Perry's view, 12 it is easily seen that the progressive
"immanentization" of transcendence sustained by interest is experienced
as an endless plunge into a bottomless fountain of value, each newly
emergent phenomenal manifestation being the realization of a prethematic
1°For a richer explication of intentional teleology, see the third chapter, "Divine Cognitive
Teleology," of my Foundations fora Phenomenological Theology (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press,

1988).
11 Ralph Barton Perry, Realms of Value: A Critique of Human Civilization (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1954), pp. 2-3.

12To avert the charge of relativism, Perry undertakes what seems a merely verbal manoeuver: "But
suppose that one substitute the more colorless word 'relational' [i.e., 'relational theory of value' for
'relativism'] and, instead of rejecting it as a fault, boldly affirm it as a merit, since it provides not only
for value, but for ambivalence and multi-valence. Perry," Realms of Value, p. 12.
valuing.
The perpetually elusive "bottom" toward which immanentization
plummets is the "absolute presence" of which I have elsewhere written at
length. 13 In Derrida's words, absolute presence would be
... an absolutely perfect evidence, which would finally present the

object itself in respect of all it is--an evidence in whose synthesis
everything that is still unfulfilled expectant intention, in the
particular evidences founding the synthesis, would attain adequate
fulfillment. 14
As the vision which would greet the envisionment of a putatively

omniscient mind (were this notion phenomenologically coherent), absolute
presence is the inachievable, but endlessly approximable telos of all
conscious life. Omniscience implies, however, that "there is no essential
difference between transcendent and immanent, that in the postulated
divine intuition a spatial thing is a real (reeles) constituent of the stream of
the divine consciousness and the divine experience." 15 For omniscience,
all is immanent. What awaits the omniscient envisionment is, not the
adventure of endless discovery whereby novel profiles are tirelessly
extricated from the fathomless depth of transcendence, but rather, in
Merleau-Ponty's phrase, a "flat projection." 16 Perfect knowledge would be
perfect ignorance of transcendence. What quoad nos is transcendent, for the
omniscient would be immanent, thus indicting either our own or the
omniscient outlook. To the question, "What would a transcendent object
look like to an omniscient mind?," we could only reply that it looks like
13 Cf. chapter two, "Divine Cogitive Finitude," of Foundations for a Phenomenological Theology
and "Actual and Potential Omniscience," in The International Journal of Philosophy of Religion, 26
(1989).
14Jacques Derrida, Speech and Phenomena and Other Essays on Husserl's Theory of Signs, David
B. Allison, translated (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973), p. 63.

15Edmund Husserl, Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology, trans. by W. R. Gibson
(New York: Macmillan, 1931), p. 123.

16Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible, Claude Lefort, ed., Alphonso Lingis, trans.
(Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1968), p. 242.

nothing at all. We shall see that the Buddhist conception of emptiness is the
precise inverse of omniscience. In emptiness, all is transcendent; nothing
simply is as it appears. Yet if, with Husser), we demand preservation of the
immanence/transcendence distinction, we must also recognize that
consciousness (in Sarfte's telling phrase, a "futile passion") is abandoned
endlessly to cascade toward a putative ideal which is inachievable exactly
because it is incoherent.
II
Implicit in Husserl's account is the assumption that consciousness is

voracious for presence, that it is presence, not absence, in which the
primordial interest of consciousness is invested, that presence is, for
consciousness, the final and intrinsic value. Consciousness is "empty" and
seeks its own "fulfillment." It is unfulfilled/unfilled, unsated/unsatisfied
to the exact extent that its appetite for presence is unachieved, to the extent,
that is, that it fails in its futile aspiration to be omniscient. If intentionality
is construed as the openness of consciousness to its world, and if, with
Husser), it is also regarded as essential, then genuine satis/faction,
fullfillment, of interest can only spell the annihilation of consciousness.
Merleau-Ponty castigates Sartre for inconstancy. Sarfte's postulation
"begins by opposing being and nothingness absolutely, and it ends by
showing that the nothingness is in a way within being, which is the unique
universe."" Husserl, of course, does not "end" there. The openness of
transcendental intentionality is not, in Sartre's sense, "within being." But
an essentially unsatisfied consciousness would be, nonetheless, a "futile
passion."
In the view which I commend, consciousness in its "natural"
functioning is, not "passion" for the immanent qualitative fulfillment
denominated "presence," but rather a flight from presence toward the
absent transcendental ground--or rather, as we shall see, the
Abgrund-which is manifest within, and also conditions the manifestation
of, presence. What for Klee was declamation, for consciousness is avowal:
17 Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible, p. 66.

"Je suis insaissable dans l'immanence." 18 Diverging from the Husserlian

analysis, I urge that the primordial "interest" of consciousness, is invested,
not in the presence, but in the utter or "absolute" absence-the absence
even of the absence-of its object, and thus, that it is originally absence
(emptiness), not presence, which is of value to consciousness.
In elucidating the pre logical notion of respect, mode of givenness, or
more familiarly, of phenomenon-a notion (like that oftime) assumed in
the articulate formulation of the principle of contradiction 19-
phenomenology proves itself deeper than logic. Accordingly, its methods
of investigation are not deductive. It does not "argue" except in the sense
in which this word is etymologically entangled with the Latin word for
silver, thus suggesting clarification, not the stepwise, rule-governed descent
from conceptually richer to conceptually more impoverished propositions,
the fragmentation of complex meaning-formations into shards of
conceptual simplicity. Phenomenology interrogates this event offracturing,
asking not only whether Humpty Dumpty can be put back together again,
but whether the rubble of conceptual fragments can in any sense have been
the rich, integral and unbroken "egg" at all. I will not, then, "argue" my
case, but will simply, quietly, unobtrusively, set my own reconstruction of
prethematic interest beside that of Husser!. A given patch of gray appears
darker next to a lighter patch and lighter next to a darker one. Next to any
alternative reconstruction, Husserl's must look a bit uncomfortable, since
the possibility of its neighbor provides an implicit refutation of its own
apodicticity, revealing the Husserlian thesis to be precisely what it is: a
theory, an account, a reconstruction, but not a phenomenological
description. Of course, the pairing or com/paring of my own view with that
ofHusserl's deprives it likewise of any pretense to theory-free description.
Recourse must, then, be sought in the canons of theory-construction: the
value of absence accounts for the data with at least equal adequacy, and
'"Paul Klee, Journal, French trans. by P. Klossowski (Paris: 1959), as quoted in "Eye and Mind,"
in Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Primacy of Perception And Other Essays on Phenomenological
Psychology, and the Philosophy of Art, History and Politics, James M. Edie, ed. (Northwestern
University Press, 1964), p. 188.
"For any property, F, and any entity, x, x cannot both possess and fail to possess Fin the same
respect and at the same time.
exceeds the value of presence in consistency, since the telos of

consciousness is not (as Husser! himself not only admits, but insists)
incoherent. Absence or emptiness, as our proposed telos, is not only
coherent, but has the pragmatic advantage of underwriting a fund ofvalue
unavailable to the presence theory. Finally, not only does the theory of
emptiness account equally well for the pretheoretical givens which Husser!
was concerned to address, it also accommodates certain intimations of
experience which Husser) seems to have overlooked.
One gathers such intimations in the release, the relaxation of tension,
the rest, the contentment, which attend our emergence from the confining
entanglements of the forest into the capaciousness of the clearing; when,
following a prolonged restriction of vision, the scene opens out suddenly
upon vistas of breathtaking magnitude and spaciousness. And though we
find some comfort in the still measured expansiveness of our now dilated
vision, we would wish for an even vaster spectacle, and finally, for vastness
without measure. Pinned, conversely, in the flow of traffic, to the backside
of a ponderous semi, irritation mounts. Though perhaps this as well, it is
not simply our thwarted zeal to get on to our destination that conditions the
upsurge of vexation over the obstruction posed by this great metallic
pachyderm lumbering languidly on before us. The eye itself is imbued with
desire. And here its desire is undeniably thwarted. One might think, in view
of the Latin roots of our word "object," that vision would appreciate
obstruction. Is it not the primary function of the eye to seize hold of that
which is ob/jectus: thrown in our path? And is not that thundering steel
leviathan sufficiently "ob/jective"? Latinate suggestions aside, the eye is
impatient with occlusion. Its gaze does not wish to be stopped up.
Whatever obturates will be met with the dynamic will to resolve opacity
into transparency, to see-through. The natural resting place of the eye, its
home and the condition of its satisfaction, is sheer boundless and
unobstructed emptiness. If, borrowing the ancient image, the eye were a
lamp and our vision the beam of light cast thereby, it would be as if this
beacon sought to project itself into boundless empty space; as if its
least-not most-wanted befallment were that of being remitted, by the
obtrusion of an unyielding surface, back upon its source; as if the luminal
return upon self, the circuit which would constitute a certain reflective self-
elucidation, were counter-final, dys-teleological.
As we kick along the sands beside the open sea, the eye is drawn
almost irresistibly toward the horizon-not, as Husser) might suggest, as
a wistful but fruitless apperceptive surrogate for the genuine perceptual
presence of presently absent presentations of this great watery globe, but
as an effort to slip through the horizon, as it were, as if the delimination of
heavens from earth were the secret pass through which our intentional
proflux sought to avert confinement by either celestial or terrestrial
presence. The summons to the horizon, and thus to the very possibility of
figural positivity, is a summons to the "between." But Zwischenheit is not
thereby transformed into a super-subtle plenitude, a rarified object. In
MaglioIa's arresting trope, "the authentic experience of sunyata runs a sort
of Maoist 'continuing revolution' against focus!" 20 Like an elusive imp,
horizonal emptiness beckons at the corner of the eye, but vanishes the
moment at/tention is conceded. To lodge in the "between" as if here, in its
healing presence, we had found the waters to assuage the terrible thirst of
consciousness, is no longer to be in between. And it is thus, that we can
understand the words of Ryoho (1305-84 C.E.): "enlightenment and
illusion are one. Do away with both, but don't remain 'in between' either."21
What Merleau-Ponty says of color, we may say of qualitative presence
in general:
[It] is not a chunk of absolutely hard, indivisible being, offered all

naked to a vision which could be only total or null, but is rather a
sort of straits between exterior horizons and interior horizons ever
gaping open ... a certain differentiation .. .less a color or a thing,
therefore, than a difference between things and colors ... .22
Were presence "absolutely hard," were it to give itself over to a an intuition

which either seizes it exactly as it is or not at all, it would, indeed, stop up
the gaze. And it would become exceedingly difficult to discern what value
20Robert MaglioIa, Derrida on the Mend (West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 1986),p.l 04.
21Ryoho, "On Emptiness," in Lucien Stryk & Takashi Ikemoto, translated, Zen: Poems, Prayers,
Sermons, Anecdotes, Interviews (Garden City: Doubleday, 1963), pp. 63-4.
22Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible, p. 132.
might repose in having a thumb stuck in our eye. If presence is understood,

however, as the "straits" which separates terrestrial figure from celestial
ground, if, as in our recent example, nothing is simply gray in itself, but
enjoys its particular qualitative manifestation only in com/parison with
companioning quality, then quality is relational, the product of a certain
complex multi-valence holding sway over the field of consciousness, not
a monadic qua/e. It is "a certain differentiation," a gap, a vestibule. In its
evasion of(monadic) presence, consciousness bears witness to a renewed
affiliation of manifestation and its conditioning ground. For a
consciousness which seeks emptiness, there are no "chunks," no qualia, nor
even any "things," but only manifestations-in-horizon. Evasive
consciousness is, then, in a recognizable sense, ''transcendental," dissolving
presence into horizonally constituted presence, and slipping through the
divergence of manifestation and condition.
The apperceptual functioning of consciousness is not, as Husserl might
postulate, the effort of a mind of limited perceptual capacity to secure-in
the spectral, vague and lacunary quasi-presence which typifies this
counterfactual modality-a richer fund of presence. It is, again, a strategy
of evasion. If it cannot penetrate the object, if its intentional "rays" are
deflected, as it were, consciousness will seek penetration by other means.
Exchanging Husserl's image for one borrowed from the Taoist tradition,
consciousness is like water. A stone in a stream is no more than an
occasion for circumvention. As water soaks into the earth, it seeps around
the rocks and roots and particles of earth that stand in its way. Presence is
a stone. And apperception is the expectable by-passing comportment of
consciousness. The "natural" proclivity of consciousness is to seek
absence, emptiness. Opacity is always encountered as unnatural
(unheimlich). Thus, the first movement of consciousness is invariably
toward presence-not because presence is of value, but because, in its
nai'vete and prior to the shock of repulsion, consciousness presumes
transparency. This is its "general thesis." The active ceding of attention to
the primordial passive/synthetic intrusion of presence is, if in any sense
voluntative, the nai've movement of a child expecting a door and meeting
a wall. Pace Husser}, the option of attending cannot be authentic, exactly
because it is nai've: the "natural" presumption which motivates proversion
collides with the lesson of encounter only after it is enacted. Apperceptual
evasion follows upon proversion. And the nai've presumption that here at
last, in the murky deliverance of apperception, lies the doorway, the
passage beyond presence, is responsible for the emergent disposition of
consciousness to tum toward the transcendent object. What might easily
seem like an interest in presence turns out, upon closer inspection, to be an
interest in the dissolution of presence.
Consciousness seeks boundless emptiness in an ordinary and in an
extraordinary way. Evasion is the customary mode. Frontal deopacitization
is a rare and extraordinary accompaniment of certain unusual and highly-
developed modes of concentration. Subjects enjoined to lend their
complete, undivided and sustained attention to a given object will, with
time, begin notice a luminous "halo" emanating from the object. And as
concentration deepens, the now luminous object will begin to surrender its
opacity, becoming translucent. Phenomenology is not, of course,
descriptive psychology. But such results may be taken up into Husserlian
phenomenological investigation in the customary way: by prescinding
from their empirical factuality and regarding them as merely possible
illustrations of eidetic regulation. For present purposes, the eidetic
necessity of their possibility is the message. It is enough to see that
consciousness is capable, in extraordinary states of penetration, of
dissolving the opacity, the obturating, ob/jective presence, of the object.
III
The initial and motivating Buddhist conception of emptiness is, like our
refined analysis of presence, not that of a monadic attribute. Emptiness
(siinyata), as Magliola reminds us, "is not voidness but devoidness ... :m
To say that something is "empty" is by no means to postulate its sheer non-
existence, nor, despite the etymological resonance of "slinya," is it to
suggest that the object is hollow. To be void is to be evacuated of self-
existence, or what the tradition calls "own-being" (svabhava), to be, thus,
ontologically dependent. Failing in ipseity, the very being of the object is
factored out among the conditions without which it could not be precisely
23 Magliola, Derrida on the Mend, p. 116.

as it is. Kripke queries whether this very table could have been made of
"water cleverly hardened into ice--water taken from the Thames River?,"
and responds, as would the Buddhist tradition, that:
We could conceivably discover that, contrary to what we now

think, this table is indeed made of ice from the river. But let us
suppose that it is not. Then, though we can imagine making a table
... from ice, identical in appearance with this one, and though we
could have put it in this very position in the room, it seems to me
that this is not to imagine this table as made of ... ice, but to
imagine another table, resembling this one in all external details,
made of ... ice. 24
The Buddhist analysis of emptiness begins with this very table, here, now,
precisely as it is-not with tables in general, "a" table, some table or other.
This table could not have been here, now, as it is, were it not for its material
and efficient aitia-the wood, for example, which makes it up, and thus the
soil and atmospheric factors which conditioned the growth of the trees from
which this wood was taken, and the labor and machinery which worked this
material to fashion the table. Even the visual background of its
presentation, the neighboring objects and associated qualities which
determine its mode of manifestation, comprise the wealth of environing
conditions, each necessary, without which the table, in its concreteness and
specificity, could not be as it is.
Emptiness (emptying) is a thoroughly phenomenological, not merely
an ontological, notion. It is the resolution of phenomena-or in one of its
several senses, dharmas-into their horizoning conditions. Buddhist
thought repudiates immanence, the coincidence of being and appearing.
Nothing simply is as it appears, since this would reintroduce the monadic
and irrelative quale "offered all naked to a vision which could be only total
or null." Thus, the objects of our experience are, in the only sense
Buddhism would allow, "transcendent"-though not, as Husserl maintains,
identities sewn across the manifold fibers of immanence. The figural
24Saul Kripke, Naming and Necessity (Cambridge: Harvard, 1972), pp. 113-4.
salience is not, moreover, an intrinsically indeterminate "X," the ideal it

which is invariably disclosed throughout "its" variegated modes of
presentation. Though mistaken in foisting this view off onto Husserl, Sartre
complains that "Such an X would, by definition, be indifferent to the ...
qualities it would support." The phenomenon "is never indifferent to its
states; it is 'compromised' by them."25 Or in Merleau-Ponty's concomitant
suggestion, the reality of phenomena, their manifest quality of being
"things" (res), of thus comprising the realm of realitas, is "their common
inner framework (membrure) ... and not something behind them: behind
them, there are only other 'views' still conceived according to the in itself-
projection schema. The real is between them, this side of them." 26 The
Buddha affirmed that "All phenomena are insubstantial" (sabbe dhamma
anatta), thereby not only dispensing with the "X," that which purports to
lie "behind" phenomena, but also ensuring that our awareness of
phenomena is possible only within what might be called the "Buddhist
epoche." The Husserlian epoche puts in question the archaic distinction of
appearance from reality, pennitting deployment of the distinction only after
it has yielded up a detenninate experiential difference. The distinction is
phenomenologically warrantable only if the real appears differently from
the apparent. Paradoxically, the appearance/reality distinction is drawn
within a distinguished portion of itself: appearance. In foreclosing the
hypokeimenon, the Buddhist epoche does not court paradox in the same
way. For Husserl, reality breaks out once again within the residual realm
of appearance. In offering, from the outset, a negative response to the
question, "Is there a reality distinct from the appearance we have of it?,"
Buddhism enables the investigation of phenomena without importing the
troubling suspicion that a reality distinct from phenomenal disclosure ever
does appear.
Once again, to say that the wielding of a given cross-cut saw by a
particular worker is a necessary condition for the table-as it is-is to say
that without this occurrence, the table would not be. Take away the
"Jean-Paul Sartre, The Transcendence of the Ego: An Existentialist Theory of Consciousness,

Forrest Williams & Robert Kirkpatrick, trans. (New York: The Noonday Press, 1972), p. 74.
26 Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible, p. 226.
condition, and that which is conditioned is thereby "taken away." Thus, it

"itself' resides in its conditions, and is nothing over and beyond its
conditions. The same is true, however, for the conditions, and regressively,
for the conditions of those conditions, and thus without end. Emptiness in
the more expansive sense recognized by the Mahayana is not dependence
as it might be applied discriminately to this or that phenomenon, but the
endlessness of this regressive analysis. The regression plummets
bottomlessly into an "abyss" which conditions its possibility and which, at
the same time, provides its ever-elusive telos. Falling endlessly, floating
buoyantly, within the "abyss" we will never suffer concussion upon an
ostensible .fundamentum inconcussum. The capaciousness of emptiness
offers no impedance. It is this unimpeded spaciousness which
consciousness, in its evasion of presence, seeks to realize.
Though the existence of an object is regressively deferred to its
conditions, deferred once more to the conditions of those conditions, and
thus without end, like the scintillae of exploding fireworks which burst
again and ever again, this deferral is not, as in the Derridean notion of
differance, the endless deferral of presence. Presence, or what in the
Buddhist tradition is recognized as "suchness" (tathata), is, if you will, the
precise inverse of emptiness. Emptiness is the space of infinite ontic
regression, the abyss into which the successive relinquishment of own-
being plummets without limit, the ultimate condition-not the
foundation-for this unfolding. Suchness is tribute to the fact that although
each thing owes its very being to its conditions, this debt is paid, and in
having no self-existence, it stands clear of obligation; tribute to the fact that
although it is nothing over and beyond its conditions, its conditions are
nonetheless "there." While its existence has fled, it is not abandoned by
presence. The thing is fully manifest. It simply lacks the defining feature
of the Aristotelian substance: ipseity. The regressive analysis leads to
emptiness. The progressive analysis leads to suchness. And the way back
is the way forward. The possession of self-existence by the least pellicle of
being would abolish emptiness. Thus, emptiness is in tum empty. It owes
its very being to the distribution of manifest phenomena which constitute
our world (samsara). We witness here a circuit of deferral. Emptiness-the
condition, not a purported terminus of an unterminating regression-stands
as the conditio sine qua non of every manifest phenomenon, and is in turn
conditioned by every phenomenon. There can be no presence without

absence; but equally, there could be no absence without presence. And
though we are eager to demonstrate the value of absence, our fervor must
be soberly tempered by a lucid appreciation of the circular relationship in
which presence and absence stand to one another. Though objecting to
Husserl's promotion of presence as the exclusive value orienting our
conscious pursuits, we must recognize in Husserl's view a certain half-
truth. If, as we claim, absence is of supreme worth, its worth would be
impossible were it not for the presence which consciousness, in its
spontaneous pursuit of the transcendental, inevitably flees. A circuit has a
direction. The wheel turns from presence to absence, and only then
revolves again to presence. And we must recognize this vector, the
axiological primacy of absence, without relinquishing our appreciation of
the necessity of its inauguration. If it is good that the massive walls of
presence be shaken down, then they must once have stood. If it is good that
the confining partitions of egological selthood be shattered in acts of
selfless kindness, then they must once have surrounded us. A vector is
defined by two points. Without the first, there would be no movement. And
emptiness is above all empty-ing.
IV
Bring to mind, if you will, a vast expanse of pure empty space, a space
devoid of object or event. And set aside, if you would, expectable qualms
over the conceivability of space divorced from spatial contents. These are
the qualms of the cosmologist or the metaphysician. My invitation appeals
to a less sophisticated, more basic, capacity: that of simply "bringing to
mind." Now allow this vast emptiness to function for you as a metaphor
for whatever values or disvalues might spontaneously be suggested. It is
difficult, I submit, to formulate a single metaphor for the values which we
prize which does not, in some way, make reference to capaciousness and
emptiness; and conversely, it is difficult to depict disvalue except as the
very type of confinement. Space is "open," modelling candor, honest self-
disclosure, and receptivity. We admire the transparency of children, the
selfless expansiveness of saints. Generosity is a certain largesse, a dilation
of spatiality. And openness of mind bears the metaphor on its forehead.
Freedom is "elbow room." Spontaneity is the ineffectiveness of immuring

inhibition. And despite its more familiar suggestions, the existential value
of Entschlossenheit can be read as the rupture of confinement.
Unmistakably spatial in its comportment, Gelassenheit "lets-be." Space
embraces, permits. It does not disappropriate, force or constrain.
On the other hand, dishonesty and deceit represent a certain
concealment-the partitioning of space-as do resistance, stand-offishness,
and narcissistic self-absorption. The suspiciousness, the failure of trust, the
jaded outlook symptomatic of the rigidification which leads toward death
involves the erection of walls, the bounding-off of space. Selfishness and
avarice, the tightening of the fist, is a pernicious form of self-closure.
Prejudice and bigotry are attitudes of a mind shut tight against available
evidence. Constraint is confinement. Brutal force confronts with a
boundary.
Presence, qualitative opacity, is a wall. To the extent that presence
impedes the transmission of intentional illumination it occasions the
reflexive remission of this effulgence, thus describing the circuit
denominated "self." And it is this reflexive arc, this "self," which lies at
the core of all forms of selfishness. Whatever forms of deceit, of theft, of
deliberate injury, are enacted to advantage the self are thus conditioned by
presence. And conversely, all genuine beneficence, all generosity, all
kindness involves a decisive rupture of self. Exclusively to value presence,
in itself, for-itself, is, in however subtle a fashion, to value the
confinement, the closure, isolation, limitation and regulation which typify
disvalue, and to value, as well, the central condition for all egoism,
narcissism and self-interest. To treasure emptiness is to burst the self, a
detonation which permits self-giving, self-disclosure, self-abandonment.
Translating the Buddha's words, sabbe dhamma anatta, in another way, this
time emphasizing the other sense of atta, for the enlightened, all
phenomena are selfless. There are no walls, no partitions, no divisions, no
separations, in emptiness. To treasure emptiness is, then, to cherish
emancipation.
ChapterS
The Part Played by Value in the Modification

of Open into Attractive Possibilities
Robert Welsh Jordan

Colorado State University
Moral value as it was understood by Nicolai Hartmann and by Max Scheler

belongs uniquely to volitions or willings, to dispositions to will and to
persons as beings capable of willing. Moreover, as understood in this paper
as well as by Hartmann, Scheler, and Husser!, every volition necessarily
involves if not actual valuings then reference to retained valuings and
potential valuings as well as to cognitive mental phenomena. As used here,
the terms 'volition' and 'willing' denote mental traits, such as lived
experiences and habits insofar as they either do or can occur actively. A
trait of a mind or "monad" can have moral value- in contrast to utility,
for example - only insofar as it is or can be or could have been engaged
in and so performed by the person or ego to whose mind the trait belongs.
The classification of lived experiences as voluntary or not voluntary cuts
across the three-fold classification of mental processes as cognitive,
affective, or conative. This seems to be the most appropriate way to
distinguish the voluntary from the involuntary. Voluntary mental
phenomena are characterized by the engagement of the ego in some lived
experience occurring in the flux of its lived experiences.
Many sorts of mental processes can only occur actively or voluntarily,
including all those which objectivate and so all those through which objects
are categorially formed. Even though they can occur in the first place only
voluntarily, they can become habitual so that they occur in what Husserl
terms" secondary passivity" or a second nature. Some other sorts of lived
experiences, however, - including all sensuous perceivings - begin
81
J. G. Hart andL. Embree (eds.), Phenomenology ofValues and Valuing, 81-94.
82 ROBERT WELSH JORDAN
involuntarily and only then attract the ego to be concerned with some
aspect pertaining to them either noetically or noematically. These may also
continue when they no longer engage the ego's interest.
Even in the case of mental processes that can occur only voluntarily,
the object of the activity must be there for the ego through experiences of
a sort which can also occur involuntarily, otherwise the object could not
attract the ego's concern. Lived experiences that are involuntary become
voluntary insofar as the ego comes through them to be attentive to
something.
...Attention is ... mastering of the process whose flux

itself is radically involuntary. In it arises the free or the voluntary;
it is itself attentive, that is, not a distinct operation but the free
mode of all cogitationes .
.. .Attention presents itself first as a mode of
perception. By generalization we shall be able to extract from
perceptive attention (or better from attention as a mode of
perceiving) the universal characteristics which make it a kind of
production of...thought in general, in the broad sense which
Descartes gives to this word ... attention in its affective or
intellectual forms retains certain characteris~ics of perception and
always remains a perceiving in a very broad sense ... 1
Affective and cognitive mental processes and not just conation scan be
voluntary, and they are, therefore, prima facie bearers of moral value and
subjects of moral evaluation.
The moral worth of an action is, however to be distinguishedfrom the
worth it may have in the sense of utility, called by Hartmann "goods
value." The action's moral worth depends upon- but by no means
exclusively upon- its intended instrumental value, goods value, or utility.
This appears to be in basic disagreement with Kant's formalism since an
action's moral worth cannot vary independently of the value of, using
Kant's terms, the "content" of the action. Nevertheless, the positions of
1Ricoeur, Paul. Freedom and Nature: The Voluntary and the Involuntary, translated with an
introduction by Erazim V. Kobak (Evanston, Indiana: Northwestern University Press, 1966) 152 f.
MODIFICATION OF POSSIBILITIES 83
Scheler and of Hartmann may, perhaps, correctly be termed

"deontological" since they agree with Kant's position that moral worth is
entirely independent of whatever value -whether primary or instrumental
-the action's immediate consequences would in fact possess.
Thus, moral value is founded upon the intended goods value; goods
value is a more basic sort of worth than the "higher" moral value whose
actualization is made possible only through the consciousness of worth of
the more basic sort. How, more precisely, does the intended utility of the
action enter into its constitution? In what sense or senses does its intended
utility condition an action? An inquiry into the way the intended outcome
is anticipated may help clarify what is at issue in these questions. As
proposed here this inquiry leads to the pronounced difference between two
different senses in which an ego may be conscious of possible future
occurrences. The attentiveness which distinguishes volitions from other
mental processes entails choice between possibilities. The possibilities
they involve, however, are potentialities rather than merely fancied
possibilities. Possibilities that confront the agent with a choice have a kind
of unity which sets them apart from what Husserl called "open
possibilities."2 There is a consciousness of a projected possibility as
attractive insofar as there is also a consciousness that it might not be
fulfilled rather than there being simple certainty that it will be so. A
modalization occurs through conflict between a requirement that was
originally simply certain and counter-requirements. 3 Problematic
possibilities are possibilities that are in question as to their factuality (not
as to their possibility). Uncertainty is always a matter of being inclined one
way or another; and, on that account, it always involves a consciousness
%e Gennan is anmutliche Moglichkeit which he sometimes called "problematic possibilities,"

the tenn taken up by Schutz. The differentiation between the two sorts of possibilities is discussed in
almost all of the works published in Husserl's name as well as in most of Schutz' works. Though
'problematic' is the less arresting tenn, Husserl considers more appropriate the word anmutliche
[Analysen zur passiven Synthesis aus Vorlesungs und Forschungsmanuslcripten 1918-1926, ed. Margot
Fleischer (Husserliana, Vol XI) (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1966); cited hereafter as Hua. 11-
page 43]; indeed, he sometimes speaks of the possibilities he calls "problematic" as if they were a
subset of, modes of"attractive" possibilities. The consciousness of such possibilities is a modalized
positing, in contrast to positing with simple, naive certainty, Projected mental processes of all sorts -
whether cognitive, affective, or conative- can be modalized in this way. Where moral worth is the
topic, however, willing comes in for the most scrutiny, perhaps justifiably
3Hua. XI 42 ff.
of attractive possibilities. Only problematic possibilities arise with varying

weights: what attracts is always attractive comparatively.
Inclination and attractiveness arise only with conflict and the splitting
of one consciousness into reciprocal inhibition. The accompanying
phenomenon on the noematic side is a unity of opposition, the unity of the
possibilities which are thus synthetically bound to one another. 4 Some or
all of the possibilities which are thus unified through conflict must entail
a requirement that it they, i.e., ought, to become actual at the relevant
anticipated time. The members of the group are meantal tematives. As
they are anticipated, each can occur during the relevant phase of the flux
of consciousness; yet for each of them, in becoming actual, would preclude
the others' becoming actual. The conflict which unifies any group of
attractive possibilities arises insofar as each, as anticipated, is possible
while none are compossible.
A conflict of this sort can arise even when a single definite possibility
enters into such a union with its negation as acounter possibility. It may
even happen that only one member stands out for the ego while the others
are not awakened, (remain "unconscious"V When only one member of
•such a conflict [Widerstreit] involves the splitting [Spa/tung] of one consciousness into
reciprocal inhibition [Hemmung]. [Hua.IJ, 44] Ricoeur (op. cit. 137 ff.) appears to treat the
phenomena involved in the awareness of problematic possibilities under the title 'hesitation': "... we
speak of hesitation as an indecision. This imperfection of willing is often experienced as painful: I
sense a self-loss in it. It is an anxiety of not being at all, since I fail to be one. In hesitation I am many,
and so am not." On the other hand, the consciousness of the problematic is presented by Husserl as the
origin of of all projects. Ricoeur does not mention the differentiation of attractive from open
possibilities in Husserl and does not refer to Schutz' very thorough and stimulating treatment of the
subject, neither in his discussion of possibilities (ibid. 53 ff.) nor in his discussion of the relation of
projecting to deciding and his review of the literature (ibid. 37 ff. and 38 fn.l).
5Hua. XI 45 fn.
such a unity "stands out," it is nevertheless uncertain, threatened;6 the

consciousness of the other members of the unity is empty in the sense that
all of the counter-possibilities remain quite indeterminate. However,
inhibition still occurs even when the counter-possibilities are not
awakened.
Mutual inhibition and unity through conflict characterize all attractive
possibilities, however manifold [vielfiiltig the members of the conflict.
Conflict, which is the splitting of one consciousness into reciprocal
inhibition, also creates a unity which noematically is unity of opposition,
the unity of the possibilities that are thus bound to one another.
Problematic (attractive) possibilities and only these possibilities arise with
varied weights. 7
Noematically every such conflict generates a unity of opposition, the
6The negation as counter-possibility seems here to imply possibility of cancellation through a
now undetermined but nevertheless determinate possibility. The negation must nonetheless be relevant
to the problematic possibility. What Husserl refers to as the Absurd, the givenness of nothing at all,
would be the counter-possibility to there being anything given at all [Husser!, Edmund. Logische
Untersuchungen (Husser/iana, Edmund Husser/ Gesammelte Werke, Volume 19/2), ed. Ursula Panzer
(The Hague, Boston, Lancaster: Martinus NijhoffPublishers: 1984) 655 ff. (Sixth Investigation, §
39)]. Such a problematic possibility might be there for the ego yet be so repugnant that any alternative
at all is to be preferred (though Schopenhauer and others, whom Nietzsche sometimes considers the
true nihilists, would disagree). The strictly Absurd might be a possibility which the ego avoids
adverting to or one toward which it takes up a resolute position. If there were nothing to be done to
avert the Absurd then presumably a resolute ego would take an affective position against it Still,
taking such a position would be an indication that what the ego takes position against is (understood
to be) possible. (Compare Ricoeur, op. cit. 137 f.)
7 There is an important ambiguity here. Since the attraction is that "exerted" by the noematic
sense, the object with its objective sense and its thetic qualities, it might be suggested that what weight
it has, the attraction it exerts, is entirely dependent on its relation to the ego. It often seems as if Alfred
Schutz, whose view will be presented in detail below, held that this is indeed the case; this is true
especially of the posthumous works edited by T. Luckmann in which it also seems as if this were the
way Schutz understood Husserl's position [see,for example, Alfred Schutz and Thomas Luckmann,
Structures of the Life-World, translated by Richard M. Zaner and H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr.
(Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press,l973) 22 ff. and 186 fl]. This may very well not
have been Schutz' actual opinion however [see below page 1114// and Alfred Schutz, Reflections on
the Problem of Relevance, edited, annotated, and with an introduction by Richard M. Zaner (New
Haven, Connecticut and London: Yale University Press, 1970) 71]. In any event, the texts being
examined and numerous other texts as well suggest very strongly that Husserl held no such opinion
so that Schutz' opinion, if it was indeed at variance with Husserl's is more likely to have been formed
under the more naturalistic aegis of William James (Schutz and Luckmann, Joe cit.).
unity of the possibilities that are thus bound to one another. 8 There is, on
the side of the objective sense, something like an antic attraction, that
issues from the object. Each of the antagonistic alternates in the unity
through opposition attracts as being the object. The meanings themselves
have inclination to be [Der Sinn selbst hat Neigung zu sein]. Considered
apart from the ego, what it is that thus attracts is called possible. 9 The
inclination to be distinguishes attractive possibilities from open
possibilities. Each of the conflicting possibilities attracts the ego to posit
it; each requires that the ego take the position that it is the possibility
which would be fulfilled. When the ego is simply certain about its
possibilities, when it takes the fulfillment of its expectations for granted,
then it is aware of them as open possibilities.
When actual things and their actual values are not the issue then there
are no such demands and the possibilities imagined are open rather than
attractive. When I am not projecting possibilities but merely fancying an
act, I can chose as I please the constraints under which the act would occur.
Hence, I am at liberty then to fancy its occurrence as being subject to
limitations quite different from those by which I am myself limited in my
actual choices.
In contrast, the limitations upon the acts I can at a given moment
project are imposed by what Alfred Schutz termed "my world as taken for
granted" and by my biographically determined situation. What I can
succeed in doing, on the other hand, is subject to determinate limits other
than those explicitly included in my world as taken for granted. Since I
have in the past been frustrated in my efforts to carry out projects, the fact
that there are likely to be further, as yet unknown and, in that sense,
indeterminate limits will also be part of my world as taken for granted. 10
In order to become projects rather than mere possibilities, anticipated
possibilities have to attract the person's attention. How does it come about
that some possibilities rather than others attract attention as things which
8Hua. 11, 44.

9 Hua. II, 42 f.
10 0nly for an omniscient ego would the world as taken forgranted coincide with the world as
such. For anyone whose beliefs about the world have ever been corrected by the course of experience,
the world as taken for granted at a given time will not be simply identified with the world.
the ego might do? For simplicity's sake, a relatively simple act of
predicative judging may be made- following the precedent of Schutz and
of Husser) before him -to serve as point of departure for exploring this
question: any judgment of the form "Sis p" will do. Even such a simple
example of action reveals- as both Husser! and Heidegger emphasize in
their accounts of judging -the phenomenon of choice or selection. Even
when it is quite clearly true that the door is open, its being open is not a
sufficient reason for a person's saying "The door is open." As it presents
itself in an agent's experience, the door has many characteristics. It is open
and has been manufactured and is rectangular and solid and has indefinitely
many other characteristics as well. The interests a person has determine,
in the person's biographically determined situation, whether the person will
say anything at all about the door and what will be said about it if
anything. 11 Certain characteristics of S are of no interest given the
biographically determined situation. Only certain interests are relevant to
acertain situation_ These will determine which characteristic of S is going
to be selected for attention. Which interests thesubject has in the
biographically determined situation is co-determined by the systems of
interests the subject has acquired. This system includes such enduring traits
of the ego as its habitual beliefs, habitual emotional attitudes, ongoing
strivings, and habitual styles of striving - the person's character in
something very like John Stuart Mill's sense of the word.
Following Bergson, Schutz emphasizes that the discussion of choice
has often been embedded in ontological controversies over the relation
between choice and free will. In these controversies, it has been, as a rule,
naively assumed that the agent is confronted with pregiven sets of
alternative mutually exclusive possibilities from which to choose. 12 Choice
has been understood, as a rule, as if the alternatives simply were there,
regardless of the potential agent's interests. This understanding of the
matter may be correct; it may be that in constituting open possibilities as
attractive and problematic, the ego is explicating conflicts already implicit
11 Aifred Schutz, Collected Papers /,The Problem of Social Reality, edited and introduced by
Maurice Natanson, preface by H.L van Breda (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1962)- cited hereafter
as C o/lected Papers /, 76, f.
12 Collected Papers/, 83 f.
in the world as taken for granted. Even so, it appears that competing
possibilities of this sort must arise for (be constituted for) the ego within a
broader field of possibilities that are not projected as competing in such a
way. 13 Action and choice do necessarily entail that there be a
consciousness of groupings of competing possibilities. Schutz, however,
emphasizes that groupings of this sort are not simply given; they are
constituted for the ego. Schutz maintains that groupings of attractive or
problematic possibilities arise only within a projected field of
non-problematic, open possibilities. Schutz, who consistently uses the term
"problematic" rather than "attractive" writes," ... strictly speaking, there are
at the time of my projecting no problematic alternatives between which to
choose." 14 Instead, there is, according to Schutz, only the field of open
possibilities afforded by the agent's world as taken for granted. Open
possibilities must become problematic ones through the agent, i.e., they
must be constituted- through a variety offacts about the agent- as
problematic.
Actions and their meanings are constituted within the agent's stream
of consciousness. Actions are lived experiences, and an action that is not
yet being done is not experienced and does not exist. Still, possible but not
yet actual actions can and do have meaning for potential agents. To
experience anticipating doing something is not to experience the doing but
is rather to anticipate something of a certain kind, something belonging to
an openly determinate class of things designated by the word 'action.' As
it is thus anticipated, Schutz applies to this object the term 'act.' If and
when the person is committed to carrying out the act, then the anticipated
act does exist and is already either turning out to be as anticipated or to be
different from what was anticipated. There must be something by virtue
of which both the act and the action are 'the same' for this to be true. They
are able to coincide, however, only in reference to the quite specific kind
13 Here, it seems to me that Heidegger is in agreement with Schutz and Husser! that there is
'present at hand' or implicit in the Bewandtniszusammenhang a field of open possibilities as a field

of possible extensions of the world as taken for granted. In particular, see Sein und Zeit, Martin
Heidegger Gesamtausgabe.L Abteilung: Vero.ffentlichte Schriften 1914-1970. Band 2, unaltered text
with marginalia from Heidegger's "cottage copy," ed. by Friedrich-Wilhelm von Hennann (Frankfurt
am Main: Vitorio Klostennann, 1977) 192 f. (145 f. in the pagination of earlier editions) and his
discussion [205 f. (154 f.)] of aSsertion as indicative ("pointing-out").
14Collected Papers/, 84. ·
to which both belong. 15 What is common to the act as well as to the action
itself can only be a set of types of which both are examples. An action, or
any other object such that if it exist it will take place in the time of the
actual world, is something unique and individual. Only a single course of
action can be what (all) I was doing on the way to today's session of the
symposium.
On the other hand, kinds or types of things are not objects like actual
things. Belonging to type T is something which can be "common" to many
different actual objects, but type T cannot belong to type Tin that case.
Several different actions can be of the same kind. Every course of action
belongs to a wide variety of types or kinds. For each course of action there
would be a set of types to which it belongs. The action belongs equally
well to each of these types, and other courses of action may belong to (be
an example of) the self-same type. But no action may be a type although
it may rightly be said of every action that the realization or actualization of
a type is implicit in its intention. This common way of talking should,
however, not be taken literally. If the action succeeds then actual entities
come into being that are examples of the type of result or effect which
constituted the in order to motive. What Schutz calls the act on the other
hand may well be identical witha certain type, viz., a course ofaction type.
The in order to motive, the type of result the act would seek, gives rise to
a question as to what is to be done about it now and calls into question the
relevance to the project ofthings in the agent's biographically determined
situation. 16 What is involved here is the transformation of open
possibilities belonging to the world as taken for granted into problematic
possibilities. "The world as taken for granted is the general frame of open
possibilities, none of them having its specific weight, none of them as long
asbelieved beyond question, contesting the others. All are believed to be
of empirical or presumptive certainty until further notice, that is, until
counterproof." 17 It would be only in relation to choices already made by an
15 lndeed, it may be that what Schutz calls "the act" is the relevant specific kind, is an idea. In
that case writers like Croce and Collingwoood would be correct in agreeing with Hegel that to
comprehend an action is to understand an idea. However, with Hegel, they seem quite groundlessly
to identify actions with such ideas.
16Co/lected Papers/, 78, 82.
11Collected Papers I. 82.

agent living in the world as taken for granted that certain "pure"
possibilities come to stand out as problematic because their actualization
would conflict or interfere in some way with that of other possibilities that
also exert an attraction and so stand to choice.
The ego anticipates various, now problematic possibilities,that might
affect in some way the course of events leading to the favored result. 18 In
the process, the agent "grows older." Having anticipated them, the person
no longer is quite the same as when first predelineating them. The meaning
of the several potentialities is now somewhat modified. 19 The
modifications will be such that the ego decides for one of the problematic
possibilities and so against the others. Decision requires the agent's .fiat,
and this is motivated by the in-order-to-motive of the project that stood to
choice together with the weight or evaluation which the chosen course of
action will have acquired relative to the other potentialities participating in
the conflict.
In all of his many discussions of this topic, Schutz seems to have
maintained that the decisive "weight" in the choice of the in order to
motive and the course of action through which it is sought is entirely a
function of a pre-existing hierarchy of projects: The weight of any such
possibility " .. .its positive or negative character is positive or negative
merely with reference to..." a system of projects ofhigher and lower orders
within which " ... all particular plans are subject to our plan for life as the
most universal one which determines the subordinate ones even if the latter
conflict with one another."20 This system of priorities is a major player in
determining what open possibilities will be relevant to the person. The
person's stock of knowledge at hand together with what is given to the
person in the present situation predelineates the range of open possibilities
the person will anticipate. The system of priorities or of projects to which
the person is committed determines, it seems, which possibilities within
this range will become problematic for the person. There are standards or
1"1t seems likely that an attractive possibility must, in order to stand to choice as an act, be of a
kind that has acquired as part of its meaning for the ego that the ego can repeat it "at will". (Schutz
Collected Papers I, 87 f.) It is crucially important to bear in mind that the required likeness in kind
need only be generic.
19Collected Papers I. 84 f.
20 Collected Papers I. 93 f.
priorities through which an open possibility comes to have weight for the
person and so to attract the agent's attention. Through this attraction there
arises an inclination for the agent toward adopting the now valued means
for influencing the course of events in favor of the what has now been
chosen.
There seem to be at least two distinct groupings of problematic
possibilities involved in anyone's "biographicallydetermined situation:"
(1) conflicting "ends" or in-order-to-motives and (2) subordinate to each
of these in-order-to-motives, a grouping of course of action types by which
achievement of the relevant in order to motive might be promoted. Each
of the problematic possibilities involved in these distinct unities attracts the
ego to "take a position" toward it, to thematize it, in two distinct ways: (l)
affectively by preferring it to its competitors and (2) conatively by striving
for its occurrence and so against the occurrence of its competitors.
Acts must exert an attraction upon their potential agent. An act must
be one toward which the person is inclined or else theperson is no potential
agent for such an act, will take no interest in it. An agent for an action will
be a person who has given it his fiat, and this implies that the agent will
have evaluated the projected act according to "a pre-existent frame of
reference .." Such a frame of reference will be afforded by positions which
have been taken by the agent ego. These will be abiding traits of the ego,
involving its stock of"knowledge" in a very broad sense of that word. Such
traits are habitual ways of taking position. They are instituted through lived
experiences of all kinds. If we follow Husserl's classification of lived
experiences then there will be.
a. Habitual conations, i.e., habitual strivings for particular
sorts of results under particular sorts of circumstances;
these will include any strivings there may be for
particular goals that persist under all circumstances.
b. Doxie habits
( 1) These will include habitual beliefsabout the
courses of events that typically lead to certain sorts
of outcomes: beliefs that seem clearly to be implicit
in all habits of striving.
(2) Doxie habits will have been institute through
such mental processes as believings,
disbelievings, anticipating, doubting, affinning, and

denying.
c. Habitual ways of taking up emotional or affective
position wih respect to all sorts of objects. These will
include habitual styles of preferring, and habitual
preferences will also be implicit in all habitual conations.
Schutz seems to have concluded that the valuations involved in

choosing between projects for action must already have been acquired and
so must already belong to the potential agent's stock of knowledge at hand
if the agent is to be predisposed to the evaluation. 21 Nevertheless, 'already'
in such eidetic descriptions must be understood to assert simply that the
requisit evaluations are necessary conditions for choice. The priority
involved is logical rather than temporal and means only that the choice or
the disposition to choose cannot precede the valuation that makes it
possible. This lends no support whatsoever to nativist theories - whether
naturalistic or transcendental- which would maintain that an ego can be
attracted only by familiar sorts of value predicates. Schutz was quite right
to suggest22 that his analysis of choosing between attractive projects is
neutral toward the questions whether some possibilities might be attractive
of themselves and, if so, on what conditions it would be possible for
someone to be attracted by them without a predisposition to be so attracted.
The valuings involved in constituting possibilities as problematic
are necessarily empty in some ways. Reviewing a familiar example of
empty awareness may help in distinguishing Jess familiar ways in which
affective consciousness may also be empty. The unperceived side of a
perceived table is apperceived as existing and existing with its texture and
its color. These are apperceived as objects which would be given now in
and through visual experience quite like that which is protended to occur
in case certain things happen in my future mental life. Along with the
apperceiving of the color and texture, there is an apperceiving of possible
experiences through which the apperceived detenninations of the table
21 Collected Papers/, 93 and Life-Forms, 171

22ibid. " ...the problem of positive and negative weights transcends the actual situation of a
concrete choice and decision ... "See also n. 7 above.
would be given. Should these things happen then the givenness of the
surface's color and texture will more or less completely either fulfill or
cancel my expectations and will thereby more or less completely verify or
falsify the beliefs I have now and will then retend about the color and
texture. My consciousness of the apperceived color and texture is empty;
so, too, is my consciousness of the co-apperceived experiences through
which the color and texture would have been given now. Under most
circumstances, intending something in this empty sort of way involves
protending experiences through which what isnow emptily intended would
be given. Quite universally, however, such an empty consciousness refers
back in time to retended experiences of the same kinds as those which are
emptily intended along with the empty intending of the color and texture.
This is a roughly phenomenological analog of the classical empiricist
conception of the relation between simple ideas and simple impressions.
Quite the same sort of account could be given concerning any

empty emotional or affective mental process and that which would be given
in and through it. If I approve of an anticipated possibility for its
goods-value and prefer it to the occurrence of its competitors within a unity
through conflict, then my approval is empty. It is empty because the goods
value of what I approve and prefer is not and cannot be given since it does
not yet exist. The valuing is, therefore, empty even though it is serious,
actual approval and preference and so constitutes the anticipated possibility
as an in order to motive. 23 Necessarily, it points insofar as it is empty to a
protended liking of the object for characteristics themselves protended as
belonging to it when it will have come into being. This empty valuing
necessarily refers back to a retended non-empty, intuitive valuing to which
the same sort of value predicate was given. All empty liking of something
as worthy of approval would indeed seem to refer to the ego's habits and
"pre-existing interests".
But this fact would have no pertinence to the question whether
some egos might be open to new values. It shows rather, that novel ways
of valuing things are - if they are to occur at all - bound to be intuitive,
23 Much as the belief in the apperceived color and texture of the table is an actual and serious
belief rather than a protended, imagined, or retended.

that is, are bound to be impressions of value rather than being empty
valuings, however correct. Openness to novel value is still very far from
established however. If it occurs at all, disclosure of genuinely novel worth
may be very rare indeed; novel valuations might occur when either of two
conditions is fulfilled:
(a) value of the relevant kind has never before been given
through lived experiences occurring in this person's
stream of mental processes or else.
(b) value of the novel kind has been given before but its
onticfoundation has not previously been correctly
understood-what the intuitively valued object(s)
were valued for has previously always been
misunderstood.
Chapter6
The Notion of Value

in Christian von Ehrenfels
Karl Schuhmann
Utrecht University
I. Introduction
There can be little doubt that Husserl's doctrine of value is less innovative
than most other parts of his philosophy. Though less extreme in its
objectivism than, e.g. that of his Munich and Gottingen followers Moritz
Geiger or AdolfReinach (let alone Dietrich von Hildebrand), it still shares
with them the conviction that values are somehow features pertaining to
objects. Not only do we in non-reflective life experience "a world that is
not a world of mere things, but in the same immediacy a world of values", 1
but also in phenomenological reflection "there appear to valuing acts
objects of value, i.e. not only the objects that have value, but the values as
such'? This position Husserl had inherited from his teacher Franz
Brentano, according to whom only what is good in itself may in the strict
sense of the term be called good.3
Yet this objectivism was not the only fruit of reflection about values
that grew out of the Brentano school. Much more revolutionary than
Husserl's approach was that of early Alexius Meinong4 and his associate
1E. Husser!, Jdeen zu einer reinen Phtinomenologie und phtinomenologischen Philosophie, Bk.
I, Halle 1913, p. 50 (=Husserliana 111/l, p. 58).

2E. Husser!, Vorlesungen uber Ethik und Wertlehre 1908-1914 (Husserliana XXVIII), p. 323.
3Cf. Franz Brentano, Vom Ursprung sitt/icher Erkenntnis, Leipzig 1889, no. 24.
'Cf. A. Meinong, Psycho/ogisch-ethische Untersuchungen zur Werth-Theorie, Graz 1894, p. 15:
"All values go back to the psychic fact of valuing". Even the formalization of the doctrine of values,
(continued ... )
95
96 KARL SCHUHMANN
Christian von Ehrenfels (1859-1932). Especially Ehrenfels' doctrine, the

more radical of the two, may be said to avoid the pitfalls of objectivism
from which Husserl never really managed to extract himself. 5 His theory
of value, which he worked out mainly in a series of five articles published
under the title "Werttheorie und Ethik" in 1893 and 1894 in the journal
Vierteljahrsschrift for wissenschaftliche Philosophie, and in the two
volumes of his System der Werttheorie of 1897 and 1898,6 has rightly been
praised for
"1. its naturalism and descriptive depth: Ehrenfels makes no

assumption that need be regarded as implausible by any human
science; 2. its appeal to structure, to dependence relations and
causal relations, above all involving acts and dispositions to acts;
3. its sensitivity to the relational character of values, which is
manifested in a way which leaves room for a power on the part of
the individuals to determine values - without however collapsing
into mere relativism or scepticism". 7
Notwithstanding such advantages his theory is but little known8 and has
still less been developed by others in a way which his sometimes sketchy
ideas (linked as they are to 19th century Darwinism) seem to demand. In
what follows I will, however not, contribute to this task, but restrict myself
to a discussion of the basic concept of this theory, the very concept of value
(...continued)
which Husserl under the name of"forrnal axiology" considered to be his single major contribution to
value theory, was to a large degree worked out already by Meinong.
5See my "Probleme der Husserlschen Wertlehre", Philosophisches Jahrbuch 98 ( 1991 ), I 06-113.
6 Both works have been reprinted, together with related materials, in Christian von Ehrenfels,
Philosophische Schriften, vol. I: Werttheorie ed. by Reinhard Fabian, Munich- Vienna 1982. In what
follows I will quote Ehrenfels from this edition and this volume, giving page numbers (between
brackets) in the text.
7 Barry Smith, "The Theory of Value of Christian von Ehrenfels", in Reinhard Fabian (ed.),
Christian von Ehrenfels. Leben und Werk, Amsterdam 1986, p. 169.

1For a survey of Ehrenfels' theory see Howard 0. Eaton, The Austrian Philosophy of Value,
Norman 1930, pp. 115-206; Reinhard Fabian and Peter M. Simons, "The Second Austrian School of
Value Theory", in Wolfgang Grassl and Barry Smith (eds.), Austrian Economics. Historical and
Philosophical Background, London- Sydney 1986, pp. 67-75.
VALUE IN CHRISTIAN VON EHRENFELS 97
itself as worked out by Ehrenfels. Especially its roots in desire and feeling
will be highlighted, and so will be Ehrenfels' arguments against any
objectivism in the sphere of value.
II. The Structure of Value
Ehrenfels sets out from two assumptions which certainly may be granted
as not at all unacceptable: values are always valuable for individuals (49),
and these individuals do not always value what is really valuable in itself
(251 ). From the first one it follows that values involving more people than
the given individual (collective values pertaining to social groups such as
families, professions, nations etc.) must be understood in terms of values
shared by a number of persons; the roots of such values are therefore to be
looked for in their individual valuings. 9 From the second it follows that
values, in order to be there at all for the individual, must first be conceived
in valuating acts, no matter whether they are afterwards judged to be
correct conceptions or not. This second aspect, which Ehrenfels of course
inherits from Brentano, implies that all value theory must set out as a
psychology of value facts (214, 416). Therefore a description of what must
be present in the individual when performing acts of valuation, is the chief
aim of Ehrenfels' undertaking. Another point worth mentioning is that
Ehrenfels offers a general theory of value which covers not only, as in
Husserl's or Max Scheler's case, ethical values, but economic and esthetic
values as well. 10
Valuing acts are not only about values, but most often have a complex
object. We certainly do appreciate utility, beauty, justice, honesty etc., but
more often than not appreciate things that are useful or beautiful, persons
who are just and honest etc. From an ontological point of view this is to say
that values do not present themselves as full-fledged entities of their own,
"Ehrenfels works out in great detail the motivation and process of inducing an individual to take
over values dear to another, thus establishing collective values (55-60, 301-307). The most important
ones are compulsion (including reward), example and suggestion.
'"Such a unified theory presupposes of course that ethical action is as much a worldly business
as is any economic undertaking. Unlike Kantianism, Brentanism takes both the acting person and the
objectives of all action to be part of the world. This is why it can be investigated by descriptive means
just as all other phenomena can.
98 KARL SCHUHMANN
but rather as qualities or predicates of things and persons: utility, justice

and so on usually are ascribed to something or somebody. To put it more
generally: "Every valuation is directed towards an object" (88), and it is to
objects that values are usually attached. If the act's reference to the valued
object is positive, we call this object a good (265), otherwise it is an evil.
All this does not only mean that values appear as dependent elements of
objects, i.e. that we experience objects as their bearers, 11 but also
guarantees that valuing acts are psychic phenomena indeed. For they obey
the Brentanian principle (in later developments worked out as the principle
of intentionality) of having an object, just as all other acts do.
In the same way values appear exclusively to persons performing
valuing acts, we may also say that cognizable (i.e. physical) qualities of
objects can be grasped only in a person's cognitive acts. Yet there is a
fundamental difference between the two. Physical properties, in order to be
there, do not depend on a subject directed at them. Values on the contrary
do. For things are good and evil only with regard or reference to somebody.
Values of necessity involve a psychic subject. 12 Whether an individual
considers them to be positive or negative, depends more specifically on
whether they do or do not correspond to and further this individual's
projects and interests. Values, this is to say, get constituted only in the
relation of an object to a desiring subject (38). This subject is neither
accidental nor neutral with regard to them, but literally attaches (or else
refuses to attach) value to something, a value which the thing in question
otherwise would not possess. 13 Something is of value exclusively if it has
value for somebody. To put it the other way round: to something of which
we are certain that it can never be of value to somebody, one cannot ascribe
any value. What could the value of the state of the universe before the Big
"This incomplete description of the phenomenon is a source of value-absolutism, as will be seen

later.
128ecause of this reference to somebody one cannot say that something is, in the proper sense of
the term, good or bad for a thing. It is not good for the house that it is protected by trees against rain,
but rather for its inhabitants that due to a protected house they need not repair the roof every year.
11In view of this two-sided dependence values are gestalt-like entities. I will however not enter
into this problem here. Cf. Kevin Mulligan and Barry Smith. "Mach und Ehrenfels: Ober
Gestaltqualitllten und das Problem der Abhllngigkeit", in Reinhard Fabian (ed.), Christian von
Ehrenfels. Leben und Werk, pp. 106f.
Bang look like? Does it make sense to call it good in itself?

Value qualities, once again, do not simply inhere in the object after the
manner of its properties, but have more precisely the character of relations.
Their fundaments are an object and a subject performing acts of desire
directed at that object. Values therefore have only the mode of existence
proper to relations, and not the one proper to things and their qualities
( 169). In order to make their ontological status clear, Ehrenfels ranges them
alongside other relations such as similarity (169) or, still more compelling,
to the relation between a presented object and its presentation (261 ). Just
as we may say that it is one of the possible predicates of an object which
we present that it is presented, without implying thereby that it has gained
a new property inhering in it, we may say of an object we desire that it is
of value for us without thereby ascribing to it a feature that it would
possess also independently of any valuing act. 14 Not unlike the relations of
presenting or judging, values also do not have spatio-temporal existence
after the mode of things or persons and their parts or properties (among
which may be acts of presenting and valuing), but could more precisely be
said to subsist, instead of to exist. 15 One of Ehrenfels' arguments in favor
of this is that the fundaments of the value-relation may belong to different
times (261). My act of valuing which takes place now, may refer to
something that has happened in the past (I may appreciate the deeds of my
forefathers) or that does not yet and even may not exist at all (I consider it
to be of utmost importance that also future generations can live in an
unpolluted environment). It is only the reverse of this that Ehrenfels takes
to be a proof of his thesis concerning the relational character of values that
they, if they were to be properties of objects, would have to begin and to
cease to exist together with their objects, just as other properties do (260).
Notwithstanding such arguments it remains however doubtful whether
"To put it in Brentanist terms: value-predicates are not attributive or determining predicates, but
rather modifying ones (cf. Franz Brentano, Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkte, Leipzig 1874,
pp. 287f. and especially the development of this doctrine in Kasimir Twardowski, Zur Lehre vom
Jnhalt und Gegenstand der Vorstellungen, Vienna 1894, § 4). Where an object may properly be said
to be of a certain magnitude, it can only in an improper way be said to be good or evil. What is in
proper terms good or evil, is not the object, but rather the way it affects, i.e. relates to our desires.
15 Ehrenfels speaks of their "non-temporal or supratemporal mode of existence" (261 ), which
terms only paraphrase the notion of subsistence developed later by Meinong.
100 KARL SCHUHMANN
the determination of values as relations between a desiring subject and an

object is the most adequate rendering of what Ehrenfels has in mind. For
does not his argument against the inherence of values in objects affect also
his relational view which, instead of only one fundament (the object), in
fact even needs two (the object plus a desiring subject)? Can a relation be
said to exist, if one of its two terms does not exist? 16 In order to solve this
problem, let us return to our statement that the object of valuing acts is in
most cases complex, and that these acts value their object either in a
positive or a negative way. As Brentano had already pointed out, this is a
feature which such acts have in common with judgments. Well now,
according to him judgments, too, in most cases have a complex object.
Judgments of the type "Sis" ("There is a tree") he had taken to affirm the
existence of S ("The tree is"), where judgments of the more common type
"S is P" ("The tree is green") should be reduced to the affirmation of the
complex object SP ("The green tree is"). 17 Here further developments in the
Brentano school as publicly advertised first by Husserl had shown that this
so-called complex object is not an object "0" of the thing-like type at all,
but rather a sui generis objectuality he called Sachverhalt (state of affairs)
expressible in the form "the existence of0". 18 Correspondingly the Munich
phenomenologists worked out also the concept of Wertverhalt (a state of
affairs as valued) as the proper counterpart of valuing acts. Though writing
before these developments, Ehrenfels in fact tends towards this very
conception when refining his earlier notion of a complex object of acts of
desire. 19 We come to know a value's magnitude, he says, "when we present
as intuitively and lively as possible the realization as well as the non-
realization of the object in question" (177). Or, still more precisely: "Desire
16ln the case of genuine relations such as similarity (which is, as one will remember, among the
examples given by Ehrenfels) this is certainly correct. In case we compare values to presentations
(Ehrenfels' second analogy), the counter-argument is however far less convincing. For to present
something, i.e. to relate to something by way of presenting it, manifestly does not include that the
object in question would somehow exist. This is, by the way, why later Brentano did not call those
psychic relations relations proper, but rather "ein Relativliches" (something relation-like).
Franz Brentano, Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkte, pp. 279ff.
17
'Cf. E. Husser!, Logische Untersuchungen, Halle 1901, pp. 416f. (=Husserliana XIX/I, 461f.).
1
1'This has been underlined by Barry Smith in his "The Theory of Value of Christian von
Ehrenfels", p. 155.
is not straightforwardly directed to objects, but to their being or non-being.

To desire a thing means to desire either its existence or its possession, and
then in the latter case the desire also relates to an existence, be it not of the
thing itself, but of our power of disposing over it" (254}.2° We value, this
is to say, not the mere object as such, but rather the fact that it is (including
the fact that it is of this or that nature, that it is in someone's possession,
that it is of use to somebody or for something, etc.).
Yet even this was not to remain Ehrenfels' last word. For he came to
see that, although positive and negative valuations are connected to our
desire for a thing's existence or non-existence, nevertheless the two are not
the same. True, desire determines our valuation, great desire or great need
meaning great value. But when desire comes to an end, for the reason that
possession of the thing desired has been achieved or its existence has been
brought about, its value may continue to be the same. We may even cherish
it all the more, the more difficult it was to be had or realized. So desire is
what gives birth to and determines the valuing act, but the latter may
continue to be (and become a state or habit ofthe mind) even long after
desire has ceased. In Ehrenfels' words: "One can only desire things of
whose non-existence one is convinced or whose existence one at least sees
as open to doubt. But one can ascribe value also to things whose existence
is beyond controversy or seems to be so." (253). But even then a thing's
positive value remains linked to the state of affairs brought about by the
desire for its existence, just as negative values remain tied to its desired
non-existence. That one continues to value something one actually
possesses and therefore cannot any longer desire, is to say that desire for
it would arise again if the conviction or certainty of possessing it, i.e. if the
judgment that it is or is ours would for some reason become invalidated or
would again at least make room for doubt. Values therefore generally are
constituted by actual desire, but they survive it, as long as the possibility
20Since it is important to stress this idea which indeed anticipates the notion of Wertllerhalt and,
more generally, of Sachverhalt, let us give two more quotes: "Desire is directed to the existence of a
thing" (32); "objects, the non-existence of which we desire, have disvalue" (41). Already in his
habilitation thesis "Ober FUhlen und Wollen" of 1887, Ehrenfels had underlined that for a wish (which
is a species of desire) it is necessary that "I present the object as existing or non-existing"
(Philosophische Schriften, vol. III: Psychologie, Ethik, Erkenntnistheorie, ed. by Reinhard Fabian,
Munich- Vienna 1988, p. 70).
102 KARL SCHUHMANN
of its renewal remains. They are in principle therefore the counter-part not
of actual, but ofpossible desire. Where a desire can or may arise, there will
arise an actual value, too. In sum, "the value of a thing is its desirability"
(253, cf. 261), and to be valuable is to be desirable (402). Wherever one
can think of circumstances that might bring about a desire regarding a
thing's existence or presence or possession or the like, we will attach value
to it. Conversely we do not attribute value to things, however necessary and
important to us, when we see no reason of ever doubting our disposal over
them. Ehrenfels gives the example of air, of which there is (or at least, in
his time, was) plenty for everybody (24, 276). As long as one is not in
danger of being suffocated, or as long as a limited portion of air does not
have any superior character (such as mountain air), nobody will ascribe any
value to it, for one cannot imagine that a desire for it could ever arise. 21
Values, we may summarize, are ascribed to objects insofar as they, just
as existence is, 22 are implied in states of affairs as valued, i.e. insofar as
something is or is not the case regarding the valuableness of those things.
They get constituted when a valuing act occurs that relates to an object,
thereby bringing about the state of affairs as valued. What is needed for the
occurrence of such an act is not so much the presence of acts of desire, but
rather their possibility. This desirability is the source from which actual
desire may flow. Ehrenfels calls this possible desiring the subject's desire-
disposition. He therefore gives the following overall description of value:
"Value is the relation of a thing 0 to the desire-disposition of a subject S... ,
according to which the object could be desired by the subject, insofar or as
soon as the subject does not have or should lose the conviction of the
existence of 0" (168).
21 This implies that things of which one would be absolutely certain that they could not possibly
get lost, could never excite any desire at all. Thus for an omnipotent being there is nothing it could
ever attach any value to, especially not to its own existence.
220ne knows since Kant (or, still better, since Gassendi's Disquisitiones metaphysicae of 1643)
that existence is not a predicate (of things). Therefore it cannot be perceived as other properties of
objects can. Rather, it can only be judged as occurring in a state of affairs.
III. Desire-Dispositions
Valuing acts automatically ensue, and values are for us automatically

there, whenever an object's existence is of relevance to our desire-
dispositions, i.e. when it is a potential target of desire. 23 Now desire is the
genus of acts which display a directedness towards a goal or aim (221 ).
Due to their directedness, they are psychic; due to the fact that what they
are directed at has the character of a goal or end, they are desires. 24 The
main species of desire are wishing, striving and willing25 which however
not only are juxtaposed kinds of desire, but at the same time constitute a
hierachy, in which striving is built upon and implies wishing, just as all
willing implies striving (370). To be more precise: striving is wishing plus
sensations of motion or at least of psychic effort, and willing is striving
plus a positive judgment regarding the attainableness of the object by
means of striving for it (368). 26
Though he nowhere explicitly says so, it should be clear that willing to
Ehrenfels is the most clear-cut case of desiring, and that the reference of
values back to desires is first and foremost a relation to willing. For values
get constituted only in a desire for the (non-)existence of the object (e.g.,
its being in or out of my possession), and the object's (non-)existence is
something that can be brought about by actions leading from desire to
possessing or renouncing the thing, i.e. by activities of acquisition or
surrender. Now in order to acquire or surrender something it is necessary
to execute certain actions, and it is these actions that constitute the thread
2'This is why Ehrenfels claims that we do not value, e.g., the stars high up in heaven. Their
existence or non-existence cannot move our desire, as they neither influence our well-being nor are
within our reach.
2' Just like in Brentano, desire is also in Ehrenfels a higher act in the sense that it presupposes
presentations: "Each goal must be presented by the person in whose desire it inheres" (234). However,
as we will see below, the consequences Ehrenfels draws from this fact are the very opposite of what
Brentano says.
25 This threefold division Ehrenfels had already arrived at in his "Ober FUhlen und Wollen"
(Philosophische Schriften, vol. III, p. 25).

26According to the phenomenologist Alexander Pfl!nder, there belongs to striving "an awareness
that it is possible for what is striven for to become real", where willing moreover entails "an awareness
of the possibility of making it real" (Phtinomenologie des Wollens, Leipzig 1900, p. 83). This
obviously is close to what Ehrenfels says.
104 KARL SCHUHMANN
leading from desire to what is desired. Such actions are however

undertaken only in case the desired state of affairs is actually attainable.
Desire therefore presupposes the presentation ofthe possible insertion of
the object into, or else of its possible exclusion from my own sphere of
activity (3 87), i.e. the presentation of a causal link leading from my own
existence and its possibilities to the goal one wants to attain. 27 To desire
something or to attach value to it therefore means "to interweave it with the
causal texture in which one finds oneself' (356). Desire, and more
specifically willing, is restricted to what is actually attainable. 28 If
something turns out to be beyond our reach, it thereby loses its capacity of
being attractive to us. 29 An action may therefore be described as an act of
willing, "by which certain effects one intends are brought about" (423), 30
27 The notion of causality is not worked out by Ehrenfels, but simply taken over from natural
science. But it can be worked out in the same way in which the Brentano-inspired phenomenologist
Adolf Reinach deals with the relation of ground and consequence, which according to him does not
apply to things, but holds only between states of affairs ("Zur Theorie des negativen Urteils", in
Miinchener Phi/osophische Abhandlungen, Leipzig 1911, p. 22lf.). The same seems to be true of
causality. What has value for me can be brought about by actions, precisely because both causality and
value are tied to the existence of things, i.e. to facts, and not merely to things proper.
''This in contradistinction to the wish which may refer to something impossible.- The restriction
Ehrenfels here assigns to our possibilities of valuing seems to be in conflict with his earlier statement
about the possibility to value, e.g., things of the past. Yet it should be remembered that values are tied
to states of affairs, and not to objects. Even though I cannot bring my forefathers back to life, I have
to bring to my mind their valour if I am to appreciate it. Of course one could object that according to
the Brentanist principle accepted by Ehrenfels all valuings do include presentations as their basis, so
that this argument does not resolve the specific difficulties involved by values attached to something
past. And indeed one must concede that this problem is not spelled out by Ehrenfels, which is to say
that there is no detailed theory of time or time-consciousness in his work. Yet it seems probable that,
just as in the case of Brentano, also according to him the past, unlike the present, does not exist and
therefore needs a special act of reminiscence if it is to be there at all. In this sense the above statement
remains intact: I can attach value only to a past I am able to remember. This is to say that I do not
desire the past as such, but rather thinking about it.
"'This is how Ehrenfels would interpret the fable of the fox and the sour grapes. What remains
in the fox, is frustration and anger which he tends to overcome by affirming that the grapes were sour,
but not a (new) valuation of the grapes. The next time he sees them hanging too high, he will pass by
without caring about them.
"'Hitherto we have spoken all the time (and will continue to do so) of the directedness of desire
towards certain ends, neglecting the desire for the means leading up to those ends. The reason for this
is that according to Ehrenfels the object desired may indeed be either a means or an end, while desiring
itself is always directed towards ends, be it directly or indirectly (i.e. by way of the means to the end:
370, 374). Correspondingly he distinguishes in objects valued between intrinsic values (ends) and
(continued ... )
or more precisely as ''the intended initiation of changes which involves an

act of desiring and an activity resulting from it" (92).
Desire or the estimation of something as valuable, we have said, arises
only where the desired situation can be achieved by means of actions
leading from my actual state to the desired one. A presentation, more
concretely a positive judgment concerning the possibility of bringing about
the transition from one state to the other is required in order to make me
consider something as valuable to me. Yet there is more to it. I will be
ready to invest an effort in the desired goal only if I take this goal to be
more advantageous to me than is my present situation and reality. 31 "With
the insertion or exclusion there must go hand in hand a relative
advancement of happiness" (387). Something is considered to be of value
only when I judge that it may increase my actual state of happiness, i.e.
when the new situation I present looks more promising than my actual one.
It is worth repeating on this occasion, as most writers on Ehrenfels'
theory of value do, that this is in no way to say that he somehow would
advocate a hedonist position. True, he concedes that as a matter of fact "the
great majority takes the feelings of pleasure and displeasure as the last goal
of their positive or negative acts of desire" (46). Yet this does not mean that
there is any necessary connection between pleasure and the goals we strive
for. In many cases we desire something without reflecting upon the future
states of feeling this will lead to (34). We have certain goals in mind, but
not the increase of pleasure that is consequent to them. Only the fact that
it is these goals and no other ones, is, as the psychologist's reflection
shows, motivated by the law of the relative advancement of happiness. This
reflection however does not determine which goals we choose, but only
shows us how this procedure of choosing a goal usually works. "We
(... continued)
"effect values". The latter are things valued only in view of the effect or causal influence they have
on what we ultimately want to achieve. This is to say that they are intermediary elements in the causal
chain which extends between us and the goal we aim at.
31 Against any idealist tendency it may be worth while to note that this talk of"me" and "my"
state or situation does not involve, as Ehrenfels is right to point out, "any abstract ego-concept".
Rather, what is involved here is nothing but a concrete presentation of the actual contents of one's
consciousness (356, 392). This is only a reformulation ofEhrenfels' basic thesis that values are there
only for individuals.
106 KARL SCHUHMANN
discern a value by presenting as intuitively and lively as possible both the

realization and the non-realization of the object, by reflecting on our
feeling-states and noting the advancement of our happiness" (177).
Ehrenfels' position can probably be stated best in terms of the Aristotelian
distinction between the efficient and the final cause. The prospect of a
relative advancement of our happiness is the motor that makes us desire
certain things. But it is these things that we desire, and not that increase.
Just as in Aristotle these are different types of cause combined in a unitary
structure (here: that of our behavior). Yet they do not relate to each other
as means to ends. We neither aim at things in order to feel more happy, nor
do we enhance our feelings of happiness in order to get in the mood for
something we otherwise would not be interested in. The tendency to
advance our state of happiness is nothing but a general disposition that
underlies all concrete desire-dispositions as well as the acts of desire and
the actions flowing from them: it is an overall desire-disposition, the
concrete implementation of which characterizes the individual's personal
make-up (424).
This disposition has therefore a formal as well as a material side. As to
the formal side, it invariably is a tendency to realize the greatest attainable
state of happiness we can achieve in the near future (33, 239f.). We
inevitably will perform acts of willing whenever we believe that thereby we
will be better off than by not performing them. 32 Why this does not lead to
a linear accumulation of happiness, so that each day we would feel better
than during every moment of our previous life, is not explicitly discussed
by Ehrenfels. It should however be clear that happiness should not be
conceived after the model of a thing or of an inert state. Rather, like
balance it needs a constant effort to be kept up. For it is tied to life which
also is characterized by continual change and by adaptation to a world itself
never at rest. Life, Ehrenfels says, is a constant process of assimilation
(70). It is therefore important to underline the fact that he never speaks of
32 11 should be clear that Ehrenfels, just as Meinong, is a determinist regarding the question of
freedom of will. On the one hand he considers determinism to be a consequence of the modem belief
in the universal validity of the law of causality. On the other hand he is convinced he can explain all
facts regarding value and valuation without this concept, so that it becomes theoretically superfluous
and so can be dispensed with.
an increase of happiness tout court, but only of its relative advancement. 33

As to its material aspect, a desire-disposition consists in the
individual's attributes which condition the kind of things the person in
question will consider to be valuable with regard to happiness (50). What
we aspire to will always remain the same, as long as these attributes do not
vary or change. Such changes may take place in the course of the
individual's life (an old person will value other things than the young one
does) or over longer historical periods. What in our culture has since long
been considered to be of highest value, need not play any prominent role
in other cultures or may there become important too. This anthropological
basis of our valuings explains the empirically attested fluctuations of values
without however lapsing into sheer relativism. For wherever and as long as
constants in our desire-dispositions can be ascertained, the same values will
prevail. And it goes without saying that the formal law of the advancement
of our relative state of happiness remains the same for all individuals
anyway.
Yet our material dispositions are not the only factor determining the
value of a thing. We have already pointed out that objects whose supply by
far exceeds all imaginable demand for them, will be considered to be of
little or no value. We always will need air for breathing, but this desire-
disposition will under normal circumstances never be actualized, since
there is more than enough for everybody. So a value will here normally not
get constituted. The greatness of a thing's value therefore depends not
exclusively on the given desire-disposition or on the intensity of a desire
actually directed at it, but also on the availability of the material category
of objects we desire. No matter whether our personal demand, and whether
eventually the demand of many individuals together for objects of a certain
kind is limited or not, the limitations of the stock of objects of the kind in
question will also play a role in the coming about and the force of a desire
and therefore of a value (26, 247). Values thus vary in accordance with
both the supply and the desire-dispositions. To the degree the latter ones
-'~A good illustration of this is given by Barry Smith: "One might, for example, do continuous
battle against an evil (for example ill-health), which is nevertheless continually worsening, and still
be always relatively happier than one would otherwise have been" ("The Theory of Value of Christian
von Ehrenfels", p. 155).
108 KARL SCHUHMANN
determine the direction of desire and therewith the types of objects we

value and desire, they themselves are rooted in certain needs, which may
be more or less ephemeral or basic and almost unchangeable. As to these
needs, they in turn flow from certain dispositions which are no longer
dispositions of desire, but rather of our feeling.
IV. Feeling-Dispositions
A need, Ehrenfels says, is a feeling-disposition that determines our desire

(263). To the degree an object is capable of satisfying our needs, it has
value for us (28). So desire-dispositions, and therewith values, are on their
part founded on a still lower level of dispositions. Ehrenfels even lumps the
two together under one common name of''tendencies of behavior" (457),
which shows that in some respect one can distinguish them but with
difficulty. This seems at first blush a rather paradoxical result. For such an
indistinguishability apparently fits well with Brentano's thesis that there
exists, alongside presentations and judgments, a third basic class of psychic
acts called "phenomena of love and hate", to which both feelings and
strivings (including acts of willing) must belong. In this view feeling and
desire are only gradually distinguished, so that the one can flow over into
the other.34 Ehrenfels in contrast had already devoted his habilitation thesis
"On Feeling and Willing" to a refutation of that view. According to him
these belong to different classes, in harmony with the traditional theory
from Kant's time onward (the very theory rejected by Brentano). 35 Thus
one would expect Ehrenfels to introduce a clear-cut distinction between the
dispositions proper to feeling and those peculiar to desire. But this is
exactly what he is not prepared to do.
There are two reasons for this. Firstly, Ehrenfels does not see desires
as constituting an irreducible class of psychic acts. True, their goal-
relatedness is a peculiarity not to be found in any other kind of acts. But
34 Franz Brentano, Pli)IChologie vom empirischen Standpunkte, pp. 307fT.

HOne of his arguments in favor of this view may here be briefly summarized: The opposition
between love and hate peculiar to desire is in no way tied to the one between pleasure and displeasure
peculiar to feeling, for these two pairs of opposites are mutually combineable (229).
this does not mean that desire should be put on an equal footing with
presenting, judging and feeling. "There is no special psychic basic-element
'desiring' (wishing, striving, willing)", he affirms (386). 36 Desire rather is
the result of an interference between the two basic classes of presenting and
feeling. In Meinong's terminology one could qualify it as a gestalt-like
object of higher order. We had said that under certain circumstances a
desire will automatically arise. Now we can see why this is the case. If the
inclusion or exclusion of an object in or from my own causal network is
presented, and if this presentation brings about the conviction that I will
feel relatively more happy in case what I present is realized, then a desire
will spring from this feeling and the corresponding realization will get
under way (367). Desiring therefore is but a special case of the course of
our presentations (Vorstellungsverlauj), namely that case in which our
feelings and more specifically the feeling-disposition or the tendency
towards a relative advancement of our happiness comes into play and
functions as the background against which these presentations are judged
(179, 386).
The second reason for the indistinguishability between desire-
dispositions and feeling-dispositions is that they are the same in terms of
their content. A desire-disposition is nothing but a feeling-disposition in the
form of goal-directedness, i.e. a feeling of happiness in the form of striving
for its increase. Therefore "the occurrence and strength of desire is
conditioned only by the feeling of interest which the individual can invest
with a view to37 the being or non-being of the object to be desired" (233).
This investment of feeling is governed by the already mentioned formal
law of the promotion of a relatively more pleasing state of feeling. Where
desires were goal-directed phenomena, feelings are in fact characterized by
being pleasing or displeasing, i.e. by making us feel happy or unhappy
36This position he had already advocated in "Ober FUhlen und Wollen": "Desire is not a basic
psychic phenomenon" (Philosophische Schriften, vol. III, p. 96). It is therefore certainly not at variance
with his distinction between these two classes of psychic acts in this work.
3'I.e., when presenting.
110 KARL SCHUHMANN
(220). 38 On the one hand there is the tendency to attain pleasure and to
avoid displeasure, on the other there is the actual awareness, in the sense
of feeling them. As a disposition this feeling is best described as "the
capacity for connecting with certain psychic phenomena certain feelings of
pleasure and displeasure" (51, 99, 296). This capacity is a last element in
the process of valuing, and we simply have to accept it as it stands. In view
of certain presentations or judgments we cannot but react with pleasure or
displeasure (45). If the pleasure connected with them is greater, or at least
if the displeasure a certain presentation promises is less than what we
actually Jive through and feel present in us, we cannot but desire its
realization. This is how a given feeling is reshaped into desire.
Ehrenfels is very cautious in singling out material feeling-dispositions
as anthropological constants that would guarantee a uniform direction of
ethical valuation in all human beings. It seems however likely to him that
in our present cultural world at least most, though certainly not all feeling-
dispositions that are favorably valued, are types of love and sympathy for
other people, of compassion regarding their weal and woe (1 00). We
appreciate such attitudes and still more all actions indicating their presence
in the individual (427). 39 What is however certain, is that values
corresponding to such feeling-attitudes are considered to be intrinsically
good, i.e. their existence is willed because of themselves, and not for some
other (e.g., hedonist) purpose. Since they are governed by the psychic
disposition of feeling and are moreover governed by a law concerning
something essentially psychic, namely happiness, it is not surprising to see
Ehrenfels state that in principle only psychic elements, i.e. possible
attributes of psychic subjects, can gain intrinsic value for us (48, 88): love,
justice, possession, pleasure and so on. This explains according to him also
the modern development from transcendent religion to more secular
38 "0ber F!lhlen und Wollen" states still more succinctly: "Feelings are phenomena of pleasure
and displeasure" (Philosophische Schriften, vol. III, p. 24).
39 lt could seem a paradox to see Ehrenfels on the one hand defend a relational theory of value
involving the directedness of a desiring subject to something objective, and on the other hand consider
certain desire-dispositions themselves to be the true object of (ethical) valuation (95, 426). Yet the
latter are valued only insofar as they are a directedness to certain categories of objects or situations,
i.e. insofar as from them ce1tain values derive, and not insofar they are dispositions, i.e. psychic states
of the subject.
interests culminating in the above-mentioned interest for other people, in

other words: for psychic individuals. Where a God and a world full of
angels and souls, which is a world of purely psychic entities, had in earlier
times captured man's interests to a degree that they even could eclipse
interest in life on earth, modern physics has shown that the world at large
consists of nothing but matter and force. But however overwhelming the
masses making up the universe may be: they do not appeal to our feeling-
dispositions, since they are entirely non-psychic things. This is why our
valuing capacities have become restricted to human life on earth (293). In
this shift nothing in the world of objects has changed; the shift was all ours
and internal to our psyche. Value-changes, Ehrenfels says, "are not changes
in the objects, but of valuations" (296). And such changes only reflect
changes in our psychic feeling-dispositions (51).
It is therefore important to underline the fact that intrinsic values are
brought about by feeling-dispositions, which is to say by our awareness of
the potentialities contained in a given state of affairs as valued for
furthering our relative happiness. For this shows that such values are
determined by those dispositions alone (41 ), and not by some additional
act, e.g. of reasoning or judging. Such theoretical functions come into play
only when we have reasons to determine the means best suited for attaining
those intrinsic ends (35). This we do by reflecting upon the efficacy and
power these means possess regarding the production of the desired end, and
by judging whether they are appropriate and to which degree they are, as
well as by deciding about the costs or sacrifices their use involves. What
is valued as a means depends on prudence, reasoning and judgment. In this
sphere it is therefore possible to err, but therewith also to correct error and
to reach agreement with others about what are the most valuable and
helpful means. Here is the field in which thought exerts a decisive
influence on desire (233). Such true and false value-judgments have
however no place in the sphere of intrinsic values or ends. "This is why
reason cannot exhibit us the 'true ultimate goals' of life", Ehrenfels states
in a vein close to the later views of Max Weber (38). To be sure, he does
not believe that we should be sceptical about the powers of our
understanding and judging regarding what is to be judged, but quite to the
contrary is convinced that the very question makes no sense. For it contains
a category-mistake. The intellectual functions of judging and believing are
112 KARL SCHUHMANN
in no way possible ingredients in the process of cherishing something as

valuable for its own sake.
This is, by the way, also the reason why philosophy in general and
more specifically ethics cannot make people choose better ends (148). The
task of ethics is therefore a descriptive, not a normative one. It has to point
out what is essential to real acts of valuation (87), and the fact that it does
so with clarity and precision, makes it a scientific enterprise (90). The
science of ethics may even suggest possibilities of further development.
But which one of them is in fact realized, depends on the given feeling-
dispositions and on the acts of striving and willing that flow from them
(224). 40 This is not to say that reflection on one's feeling-dispositions
would be a rather futile business. For our awareness of the feeling-
dispositions that are present in us is insofar part of the overall mechanism
of desire and valuing, as it is the factor translating feeling into desire.
Mistakes in identifying our feeling-dispositions are in fact quite common.
"Otherwise 'know thyself would not be considered to be such a grave
admonition" (234; cf. 38, 286). Thus one may misjudge one's feelings
towards another person or one's interests for a certain profession and
correspondingly act along lines that ultimately lead to dissatisfaction with
one's own status or behavior. In order to prevent or at least to mend such
errors about one's own life-goals and fundamental interests, the light of the
intellect is an essential and indispensable prerequisite. Yet it goes without
saying that it remains even in this regard in a subordinate position and does
not change, but only help to correctly identify one's basic feeling-
dispositions on which all valuing is built (45).
V. Against the absolutism ofvalues
Any over-estimation of the role of the intellect and of judgment in the

sphere of feeling and desire leads, according to Ehrenfels, to value-
absolutism, i.e. to a view that treats values as entities or at least as
""'n view of Socratic intellectualism on the one hand and the famous Medea-problem on the other
("I see and approve what is better, but follow what is worse") Ehrenfels adopts an intermediary
position. We cannot do knowingly evil- in the sphere of means; we can do so in a sense - in the sphere
of ends, for there no knowing properly speaking is involved.
properties unrelated to the valuing subject, in the way cognized entities and
properties are independent from a cognizing one. This absolutism is a
wide-spread phenomenon both in daily life and in the philosophical
reflection upon value, against which Ehrenfels seems to defend an
implausible minority position that runs counter to our most settled
intuitions. Ehrenfels will conform to this pregiven idea only insofar as he
restricts the task of ethics to a psychological description of the actually
prevailing and given feeling-dispositions. As to the nature of value itself,
he is however not prepared to give in to our everyday views. It was
practical life, not science that created the first ethical theories and concepts
(86f.), and though we usually have no reasons to question the views
developed there, this does not mean that they are beyond criticism. The
Brentanists (and not only they) were convinced that, for example, the state
and language had not been devised by the jurists and the logicians, but had
simply developed in response to some urgent need of life. This means that
as a rule they must be critically reconsidered if one is to understand their
essence. This rule Ehrenfels extends to the problem of value. It is not the
task or worry of daily life to scrutinize the nature of value, but rather to fix
a canon of values acceptable to a community. That in this process values
became objectified, is a quite natural phenomenon. For it is a customary
leaning of human thinking to handle elements as independent from the
subject even when they are of relative character (550). History shows how
long it takes before philosophy sees through the unwarranted character of
such objectifications. A salient case exemplifying this is the so-called
secondary sense-qualities (248). Did it not take two thousand years before
Galileo discovered their merely subjective character, a discovery accepted
ever since by all physics and philosophy, although it had been dreamt of
neither by Aristotle nor by Aquinas? So the general approval a certain view
meets with does not of itself guarantee its tenability. "The reality of a
conviction," Ehrenfels says, "and its correctness are different things" (163).
Therefore he is not very much impressed by the fact that his views are
not supported by common sense and rejected even by most philosophers. 41
41 Wolfgang Grassl. in his introduction to Philosophische Schriften, vol. I, p. 16 is right in
pointing out that Ehrenfels has at least one powerful ally in his struggle against value-absolutism:
(continued... )
114 KARL SCHUHMANN
Yet this tendency to understand what is subjective and relative as objective

and absolute is not the only root of value-absolutism. A second one
concerns more specifically reason. We have already seen that judgment is
apposite in the sphere of means or effect-values, but not in that of ends or
intrinsic values. Now it is a general inclination of the human psyche to
transpose what holds in one sphere also to another in some way connected
with it. What we see in effects, we tend to ascribe also to causes, and what
is true regarding means, we assume to be true also regarding ends (551).
This is how the above-mentioned pseudo-problem of a detennination of the
highest intrinsic values by reason originated. It is in fact nothing but a
category-mistake. Already in his habilitation thesis Ehrenfels could
therefore state: "something good or valuable in itself, in the sense of
'irrespective of all desire', is as impossible as, e.g., something greater in
itself or similar in itself'. 42
Ehrenfels' refutation of value-absolutism applies a double strategy. On
the one hand, he shows how its origin can be psychologically explained as
the natural result of psychic leanings at work also in other cases. On the
other hand, he argues that the very notion of absolute value contains a
contradiction. To be absolute means to be independent of the subject. In
contrast, to be of value means to be the target of desire. "We do not desire
things, because we would recognize them as valuable, but call them
valuable, because we desire them" (246). 43 There is no objective value in
a thing to be cognized in the way we cognize its constituent parts,
otherwise the cognition of values would not be the task of psychology, but
rather of physical science. A thing is not valuable in itself, but is called so
by us due to a certain custom of language. Like in so many other cases,
language is here misleading, too (31, 168), and it is the task of philosophy
to help us to avoid such pitfalls.
(... continued)
Thomas Hobbes. According to Hobbes, "good" means "good for somebody", and if the somebody in
question is not the individual (as in the state of nature), it is the community of citizens for which the
sovereign by decree has fixed a common standard of what is to be called good.
42 "0ber FUhlen und Wollen", Philosophische Schriften, vol. III, p. 84f.
43 0r,still more poignantly: "We do not desire things because we recognize in them some
mystical, incomprehensible essence 'value'; rather, we ascribe value to things because we desire them"
(219).
Concerning his own doctrine, Ehrenfels freely concedes: "The

incapacity of this doctrine to erect a strictly general moral law, is clear and
manifest" (151). Yet this does not mean that his theory would be
insufficient. Rather, the search for such a theory is what is absurd. It is
important to see that absolute values founding an absolute moral law are
sheer linguistic fictions due to certain psychic tendencies. An absolute
value must be described as a value independent of all changes in an
individual's desire (540). Experience shows us however that no such thing
exists. Where a thing is no longer desirable, it will of necessity lose its
value. This applies not only to economic goods, but also to ethical ones.
Just as gold loses its value at the very moment nobody is prepared any
longer to pay a price for it, also chivalrous values lost all their hold on
society when people were no longer ready to exercise or to value them.
Altogether, the notion of absolute value is therefore nothing but an
unreflected prejudice (218). Strictly general values could be found only
where there were to be found feeling-dispositions occurring in each given
individual (cf. 164). True, people and groups living for some stretch of time
are always convinced that the moral code they apply is eternal,
unchangeable and obligatory not only for them, but also for all mankind of
the past, present and future. This is however nothing but a human, even all
too human perspective error, according to which every individual, as it
cannot get rid of the viewpoint on the world which itself is, tends to
consider as absolute everything regarding its own make-up and
constitution.
Chapter7
Values, Reasons for Actions, and Reflexivity

Thomas Nenon
The UniversityofMemphis
Let us take seriously Heidegger's (and not just Heidegger's) insight that
any systematic phenomenological inquiry necessarily also involves
historical reflection, or what he comes to call the "destruction" of the
tradition. That means that our phenomenological reflection must be
accompanied by an explicit turn back to the historical developments that
have proceeded us and set parameters within which our reflections and
discussions are undertaken. It also means that our turn back to the history
of philosophy can only be genuinely fruitful if it is phenomenological, i.e.
if it is guided by the issues at stake in our analyses and if we are constantly
asking ourselves what experiences must have been guiding the texts that we
are concerned with. If this is so, then it is appropriate that many of the
papers assembled in this volume take as their point of departure some
figure or figures who have already reflected upon the issues at stake in the
conference, in this case the question of values. We turn to figures whose
work has influenced the kind of "default assumptions" that we ourselves
start with in our attempt to come to terms with these issues.
The starting point taken in this paper will be the early Heidegger,
roughly speaking Heidegger' s work from the time of his dissertation on the
The Doctrine ofJudgment in Psychologism1 in 1913 up through Being and
1Martin Heidegger, Die Lehre vom Urteil im Psychologismus. Ein kritischer-positiver Beitrag zur
Logilc, in GA 1: 55-188. In this note and in all following citations, the abbreviation GA refers to Martin
Heidegger, Gesamtausgabe (Frankfurt/M: Klostermann 1975 tf.), followed fii'St by the volume number,
and then after the colon by the page number.
117
118 THOMAS NENON
Time 2 in 1927. Nonnally this period should also include some of the essays
published during Heidegger's first few years as Husserl's successor to the
chair in Freiburg, as well as his Kant and the Problem ofMetaphysics, 3 but
since these writings do not bear as centrally upon the issues that we are
discussing as some other texts from that period do, I will not be saying
much about them in this talk. Instead I will be concentrating upon some of
the recently published early Freiburg and Marburg lectures in which the
positions that ultimately culminate in Being and Time are being developed
in Heidegger's confrontation with the tradition out which his own work
grew.
In one of his earliest lectures entitled "Phanomenologie der
Anschauung und des Ausdrucks" (The Phenomenology of Intuition and
Expression) from 1920, he characterizes the philosophical situation out of
which he emerged as characterized by the philosophy of life, on the one
ZMartin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, in GA 2; translated by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson
as Being and 1ime (Bloomington: Indiana U. Press, 1962).
3 Martin Heidegger, Kant und das Problem der Metaphy!ik (Frankfurt/M: Klostermann, 1973);
translated by Richard Taft as Kant and the Problem ofMetaphysics (Bloomington: Indiana U. Press,
1990).
VALUES, REASONS FOR ACTIONS, AND REFLEXIVITY 119
hand, and the philosophy of culture or values, on the other.4 Thus, I will be
taking a somewhat indirect approach to the question of the phenomenology
of values, by looking at the development of the early Heidegger' s critique
of value theory and the philosophy of life as developed during the late 19th
and early 20th century, analysing the motives for this critique, and
suggesting which insights were guiding him in this critical confrontation
and in the positive philosophical story he attempts to develop in Being and
Time as an alternative to positions of his predecessors. Among these
immediate predecessors, the most important for value theory will be
Rickert. I will be using Rickert as Heidegger does, namely as just one
exemplar of a longer and broader tradition, in order to highlight certain
common features of many traditional theories of value and to show how
Heidegger's own position is developed in response to what he sees as the
shortcomings of these theories.
I.
My general thesis is this: one interesting way to look at Heidegger' s

positions in Being and Time is to see them as a response to what he
recognizes as the fundamental problems in the traditional theory of value
which represented the point of departure for his own work, namely its
overreliance on judgments as the focus of investigation into values and the
inadequate theory of human mental life as subjectivity or consciousness
which underlies this theory. At the same time, however, he must take into
account certain motivating phenomena behind this theory of human life as
subjectivity if he is to avoid falling back into a naturalistic theory that
would eliminate not only values, but any nonmechanistic element in its
account of human life in general. As an illustration of the philosophy of
value from which Heidegger had to proceed, let us look briefly at some of
the main doctrines of his teacher Heinrich Rickert.
In this early lecture, Heidegger characterizes the philosophical
situation as located between two alternatives, both of which are associated
•oA 59:3 fl.

120 THOMAS NENON
with the philosophy as Weltanschauung movement. 5 On the one hand, one

finds the philosophy of value (Windelband, Lask, and Heidegger's teacher
Rickert), which identifies values above all in terms of stances that are
revealed in the subject's judgments about things as true or untrue, beautiful
or ugly, good or bad, desirable or undesirable. By pointing to the
ontological character of the claims to validity that the values revealed in a
judgment have for us, this theory ends up stressing the objectivity of values,
the ideal character of values that are in themselves therefore timeless and
merely instantiated in different ways by different individuals and societies
throughout the process of history. Thus although there is an emphasis upon
history in the Southwest Neokantianism, values end up being anything but
historical on this view.
On the other hand, Heidegger points to another influential position,
namely a philosophy of life in another narrower sense, one that aims at
capturing life in its immediacy and facticity, locating values as nothing
other than the patterns of a human life or of life in general. Heidegger does
not make it explicit in his early lectures, but it is nonetheless clear that the
former movement is closely connected to a philosophy of life as
consciousness, as subjectivity that is or can be directly aware of itself and
its own operations (including beliefs and desires) through reflection. As
such it is closely related to the philosophy of culture as espoused by
Windelband and Rickert, except that it emphasizes the historical genesis
and internal locus of values instead of hypostizing them as entities in
themselves. The latter, by contrast, aspires to capture life in all of its
diversity and immediacy apart from reflection, but in doing so finds itself
easily slipping into a kind of "biologism"6 or "naturalism"' - to use
ssee, for example, GA 59: 9 ff.

•compare GA 59: 14 ff., where Heidegger identifies James and Bergson with the "biologically
oriented" (15) side ofthe philosophy of life, as opposed to Dilthey, who is cited as an example of the
orientation on life from the perspective of the Geisteswissenschaften. My contention in this paper, and
I believe that Heidegger would agree, is that Dilthey and his followers face the same dilemma
Heidegger does, and that Dilthey had failed to resolve it successfully. However, Heidegger emphasizes
that in spite ofthe influence of James, who did lead Dilthey to import terms such as adaptation that
have psychologistic or biologistic overtones, Dilthey remains a champion of nonreductionistic
approaches to life (Cf. GA 59: 166.) In the same section of his lecture, Heidegger also points to
Dilthey's tendency to reduce the soul to a "bundle of drives" (167) as a dangerous confusion.
1GA 56/57: 136.
VALUES. REASONS FOR ACTIONS, AND REFLEXIVITY 121
Heidegger's terms - or a kind of "behaviorism" at worst, or

"instrumentalism" or "functionalism" at best - to use terms borrowed
from Anglo-American analytical philosophy. 8 By 1927 in Being and Time,
Heidegger will avoid both the term "value" (substituting in its place the
notion of"significance" (Bedeutsamkeit) and the term "life" (substituting
the term Dasein) each for somewhat different reasons, but these two
movements set up the two poles between which he must negotiate. What
Heidegger must do is take into account the way that human beings (at least,
perhaps other organisms as well) do make choices, do find some things
more important, more attractive, better than others, and yet he must take
account of this fact in a way that avoids falling back into either a
philosophy of subjectivity or a naive "value realism" on the one hand (later
I will say a little about why these are two versions of the same thing from
Heidegger's perspective), or into a kind ofpsychologism or biologism on
the other.
Let me begin with Heidegger's critique of value theory as it is
developed in the work of his early mentor, Heinrich Rickert, using some
phenomenological analyses as a guide to explain why Heidegger departs
from this theory in the way he does. As a starting point for our analysis, we
may take a hypothesis that at least within the German tradition had become
standard by the end of the last century and is a founding principle of the
phenomenological approach in general, namely that values are to be studied
as they present themselves to us in our experience. If we think about it a
bit, we can see that there are two primary modes of access to values, one
which is primarily internal and the other external, the former being one's
awareness of one's own beliefs, aversions, and desires through judgments,
and the latter being the analysis of motives for a person's actions which
may be ourselves but need not be.
Of course, this disjunct is not exclusive. From the internal pespective,
some might point to feelings or attitudes to which one has immediate
access at least in one's own case as another mode of access, or perhaps
8Heidegger sees the danger of a reaction to speculative idealism which leads to "die absolute
Versachlichung des Geistes in Dinge, K(}rper, Bewegungen und Vorgllnge" (GA 56/57: 122). Modem
experimental psychology in his view arises from the (inappropriate) attempt to approach Iife through
the methods of modem natural science (see GA 58:90-92, 212-16).
122 THOMAS NENON
even as the most reliable mode of access to one's valuing and values. Or,
from the external perspective, one might take the products of one's actions
and not the actions themselves as the best mode of access, especially in the
case of products such as art works that have traditionally been taken to be
an especially important expression of the values of a person or society. 9 For
our purposes here, what is important is that - at least within traditional
value theory- both of these have been interpreted in terms of judgments
as well.
With regard to the immediate feeling, the predominant assumption has
often been these feelings not only can be expressed in propositional form,
but that the propositional form is the very way that we know them.
Furthermore, as far as art works are concerned, it is also instructive to note
that they too have often been seen in terms of judgments. Not only are they
seen as expressions of feelings that have to do with values, but very often
as statements about them - ambiguous statements, statements with a
uniquely efficacious technique for conveying the information they are
meant to convey, but statements nonetheless whose meaning is discerned
in the interpretation that shows what it is they are really trying to say. 10
From Heidegger's perspective, the tradition has for the most part taken
judgments as the chief mode of access to values; what he will be doing is
shifting the primary model to that of actions or practices. How is it that the
judgment came to occupy such a central place in value theory, one might
ask. 11 If we think about it, then it turns out that at least one reason is that it
fits in with two other predominant developments in the modem age. The
first is the orientation upon the subject as the starting point for any
philosophical investigation and the second is the specific orientation upon
knowing as the primary activity of the subject upon which all other are (or
91 am thinking of Dilthey here, of course, but on the whole this is a predominant tendency for all
of German Romantic philosophy going back at least to Herder and Hegel, and will remain an important
theme in Heidegger's middle and later work such as The Origin of the Work of Art and his essays on
language and poetry.
10Th ink for instance of the entire project of semiotics as a comprehensive theory of signs, with a
grammar, a semantics, and a vocabulary that may indeed be different from that of articulated
propositions, but which are nonetheless grasped in terms of the very categories that we have developed
to classify the elements of propositional speech.
"One account of how this took place historically is given by Heidegger in GA 56/57: 148 ff.
should be) based. Thus, for example, in Descartes, the subject's awareness
of itself is seen as a kind of knowledge, as a reflection back upon itself so
that it becomes aware of itself and can express the proposition "I am" with
complete certainty. Even its own operations are things which are thought
of as "predicates" of this underlying substance, and the specific
determinations of the subjects are thought of in terms of its propositionally
expressed determinations of its own activities: knowing, doubting,
believing, desiring, hoping etc. This tendency is reinforced by Kant's
doctrine that the mere perception of an object is not enough for it to
become an object of consciousness, but rather that it must also undergo an
operation of synthesis which puts together the manifold in a certain way so
that the object becomes the object of our consciousness, i.e. an object for
us, and the way the material is put together so that the object becomes an
object for us finds its expression in judgment. Hence for Kant the most
basic level of consciousness is that of (usually silent) judgments as
combinations of the material presented to us in perception.
The second pervasive tendency consists in an orientation upon
knowledge and knowing as the fundamental activity of the subject, as
activity which takes place in silent or articulated judgments. Furthermore,
at the latest since Baumgarten and in his succession Kant, there has been
a strong tradition of analysing first aesthetic, then later moral, and
eventually even theoretical judgments as expressing above all states of the
subject who expresses the judgment (truth as a value) so that the explicit
judgment, even about truth is simply the expression of a feeling of
aesthetic, moral, or epistemological assent or disagreement. In some very
important respects, Rickert for example will disagree with the Kantian
theory of what aesthetic judgments are really about, but throughout the
disagreement, the orientation of judgments as the place where one's
analysis is to begin persists, because judgments are the locus of claims of
value.
Thus, for Rickert, values are related to "Stellungnahmen," 12 position
1 ~For instance, in Rickert, Die Grenzen tier naturwissenschaft/ichen Begri.ffsbildung, (TUbingen:
Mohr 1929,), p. 504: " ... events in which an alternative stance, i.e. a recognition or denial, an approval
or disapproval, a desire or repulsion, an assent or denial, in a word a position-taking toward a value
(continued... )
124 THOMAS NENON
takings that have the form of judgments in which things or states of affairs
are asserted to be existent or not, true or false, beautiful or repugnant, good
or evil. He is careful to distinguish between the act of valuing and the
valued object itself, ultimately coming to an essence of the true, the
beautiful, and the good as self-sufficient values that transcend the relativity
of individual recognition of them. Nonetheless, even though values are not
longer seem as subjective, the access to them is through judgment, perhaps
silent ones but judgments nonetheless, that the subject performs in its
encounter with objects.
Thus from a Heideggerian perspective the critique of the philosophy of
values is motivated not just by misgivings abuut the specific misconstrual
of values, but is rather part of a more fundamental critique of the basic
assumptions underlying almost all of post-Cartesian philosophy. That is
why the reference to the problems of value theory are often rather general.
His entire approach is directed to an examination of basic assumptions on
which it is based and upon the search for alternative models to account for
the phenomena that the traditional theories of values had been able to
address only inadequately because of the ontological and epistemological
frameworks within which they were operating.
Rickert's work exhibits these fundamental tendencies of the traditional
theory of value very clearly. First of all, he explicitly states that his point
of departure is judgment. As he states in the foreword to the first edition of
first major work, Der Gegenstand der Erkenntnis, his work began as an
"investigation into judgments." 13 The realms of the first theoretical, the
practical, and the aesthetic as self-subsistent values, then of mediate values
such as the necessities of life or the goods of civilization are all analysed
through the judgments in which their validity is asserted. Even the sphere
of the religious, which as Heidegger notes presents some problems for
Rickert, is approached in this way. In fact, even the very question of the
"sense" (Sinn) oflife and history, which Rickert sees as the central question
(...continued)
is expressed .... " or in Rickert, Grundprob/eme der Philosophie (TUbingen: Mohr, 1934), p. 117-18.
Heidegger recounts the importance of the Stellungnahme in value theory for instance in GA 56\57: 10
and 51.
"Rickert, Der Gegenstand der Erkenntnis, TUbingen: Mohr, 19286, p. V.
for philosophy, follows upon his definition of "sense" as a property of

statements as opposed to words. 14 Value in general has to do with assent
and negation, 15 and positive values are described as that which is to be
striven after ("erstrebenswert sein"). 16 For judgments as such, their
theoretical value consists in their truth, the necessity of assent; for
judgments about value, their truth consists in asserting correctly what is to
be striven after or avoided. Since (following a doctrine at least as old as the
Stoics but which figures prominently in Descartes as well) assent or
withholding assent are free acts of the subject, it is the spontaneous activity
of the subject in which values emerge, in fact human autonomy is described
in terms of the human beings' ability to recognize values. Rickert defines
"Freedom as the capability to take an position towards values independent
of causal coercion ... or the determination of a subject through a value," 17
a determination whose necessity is not that of a natural law, but an obliging
ought. 18 Note here again the doctrine of values as essentially related to the
subject's "position takings" (Stellungnahmen), a term which those
acquainted with Brentano (and later of course Husser!) will find very
familiar. In fact, for Rickert (following Brentano and Lotze, as well as the
NeoKantians) the essence of human mental life as spontaneity consists in
this very position-taking, not merely in having representations but in taking
a stance towards them and their status as subjective or objective, illusory
or real, and then towards the objects that they present not merely as existent
or not, existing in this way or that, but also as good or evil, as beautiful or
repugnant, as useful or not. But, following the tradition, it is important to
note that, although there are parallels between the logical, the morally
practical, and the aesthetic position-takings, there is still a precedence for
the logical since the others are built upon it in Rickert's view. Regarding
the pervasiveness of values even at the theoretical level, he states: "We can
say of it [the cognizing subject] that it in part intuits or 'represents,' that is
Grundprobleme, p. 83.
14
15 /bid., p. 86 ff.
16 /bid., p. 98.
11 /bid., p.l79.
18/bid.
126 THOMAS NENON
simply accepts something as given, and that it additionally takes a position

toward what is intuited or represented or accepted. To 'representing' in the
broadest sense we have to oppose valuing in other words; and accordingly,
scientific knowledge may not only be dependent upon a representing
subject, but one must also recognize its dependence upon a valuing subject,
wherein one would have to see an even more 'subjective' subjectivism." 19
In Rickert's view, even at the lowest level of human consciousness
representation of objects involves judging, judgments which concern the
existence or non-existence of the object or a specific state of affairs.
Moreover, the higher- level values involve not only its existence, but also
its desirability in a practical or aesthetic regard and thus have not merely
a positive phenomenon or its absence at stake, but find themselves located
in an opposition between positive and negative values, with negative values
as more than merely the lack of positive value: "The negation of existence
or more precisely of an existing something yields as a mere negation only
the not-something or the nothing. The negation of a valid value by constrast
can indeed also signify a nothing, but also a something, namely the
negative value or that which is invalid, and just as value becomes an ought
or an imperative if we relate it to an assenting ego, so to the negative value
becomes an ought-not or a prohibition for the position-taking acts of the
subject."20 This is the difference between existence (in the narrower sense
of natural existence) and validity (Geltung), which is the kind of being
possessed by values. Although the state of affairs posited in as simple
object-directed statement exists or does not, the judgment itself has more
than mere physical existence, it lays claim to validity and thus is
appropriately evaluated in terms of its positive value, truth, that is what it
is supposed to have; or the negative value, falsehood, that it is not supposed
to have.
To sum up then, we can identify several key features of Rickert's
theory that are typical for the movement termed "philosophy of value" and
will be subjected to radical critique by Heidegger. The first is the focus on
judgment as the primary locus for identifying values, even though he
"Grenzen, p. 674.
Der Gegenstand der Erkennlnis, p. 261
10
clearly recognizes that values are not judgments or even elements of a

judgment, but rather-to use Husserl's apt phrase--the correlates of correct
judgments. The second is the priority of theoretical judgments as the
foundation upon which other kinds of judgments, - again to use a
Husserlian phrase-higher-order judgments are based. And thirdly, there
is the idea of values as emerging in subjective position-takings
("Stellungnahmen") that express a theoretical, practical, or aesthetic norm
towards which one does or should strive.
II.
Heidegger's earliest work centers around the notion of judgment as

well. His dissertation on The Doctrine of Judgment in Psychologism had
focussed on judgment as the "primordial element of logic," 21 i.e. with logic
taken here in its broadest sense as the doctrine of the foundations of
thinking in general and of science in particular, just as his habilitation on
Duns Scotus deals with categories and meanings, again as concepts central
to an analysis of the genesis and validity of judgments. In his first lecture
courses, we find Heidegger concerned with the doctrine of values as quasi-
Platonic timeless and absolute validities whose relationship to the concrete
acting of valuing is just as mysterious as that of the Platonic forms to
individual instance of the things that participate in them. He is concerned
with its concentration on them as a priori, absolute validities. 22 However,
his objection has to do less with the concentration upon values as such or
the way the analysis of them by way of an analysis of judgments, but
simply to the idea of absolute validity as the teleological orientation point
ofthe analysis.
What does Heidegger see as the opposed position that he aspires to?
The answer is a phenomenological philosophy of life. But as Heidegger
(and just about everyone else who employs the term) notes, the term life is
extremely ambiguous. There is life as the general term referring to a kind
of being which we (perhaps among other things, depending upon whose
2'GA 1,64.
22GA 59,21 and GA 56/57: 42 ff.
128 THOMAS NENON
terminology is in question) possess that cannot be reduced to a strictly

mechanical process. Then there is life as a term for the sheer fullness and
richness of human experience, as something that cannot be captured in
propositions or expressed in any concepts, since concepts by their very
nature must always must fall short of the immediacy of lived experience.
As the "ur-phenomenon"23 which Heidegger accepts as the theme of
phenomenological investigation, life can then either be viewed primarily
the way it is seen in the philosophy of value or culture, as something that
objectifies itself in expression, above all in judgments; or as a kind of
immediate experience that is inaccessible to mere concepts. Heidegger' s
misgivings about the former approach are apparent from his early lectures.
However, what about the other side? Why does the philosophy of life as an
attempt "experience existence (Dasein) in its intimacy, fullness, and
darkness" also present a danger in his eyes?
The first and most obvious objection comes from the very nature of
philosophy as a kind of knowledge. To try to recreate or gain access to the
essentially nonconceptual nongraspable realm would not be a new
approach to philosophy, but rather an abandonment of its task. The second
alternative then leads to the "irrationality of the historically contingent"24
Furthermore, there is an ironic twist to the movement towards the
immediacy of life. By abandoning the norms of the intellectual (geistige)
realm, the philosophy of life which is meant to capture the immediacy and
uniqueness of the phenomenon of life, also easily becomes transformed
into its opposite, a kind of naturalistic play of drives and forces that open
the door to a strictly mechanistic determination that was precisely what the
philosophy of life originally sought to escape. 25
Thus in this early stage Heidegger finds himself faced with a dilemma.
The one horn is a twentieth century development out of a philosophy of
consciousness developed along Cartesian lines and employing certain
23 GA 59, 18.
24GA 59, 28.
25 Th is leap is taken when processes are described not a mine or yours, but simply as natural oc-
curences. Such as "Ent-lebnis" of"Erleben" (see GA 56151, 84 ff.) leads away from the appropriate
notion of life and is the danger that can result from an approach that eschews reflective self-awareness
for fear of falling into subjectivism.
Kantian assumptions that ends up with values as timeless absolute

validities and the primary posture of the subject as one of theoretical
reflection in which it turns back to itself and to the absolute values inherent
in its knowing and valueing activity. To put it in "isms": on the one hand,
the theory of values as developed in Neokantianism, is propositionalist
(because of its orientation upon judgment), representationalist (because of
the primacy of the theoretical judgment both as the fundamental building
block of mental activity and also as the form of judgment in which
philosphy realizes itself), and intentionalist (because of its emphasis upon
consciousness' ability to be present to itself in reflection).
The other hom of the dilemma is an antirationalistic emphasis upon
nature as a self-perpetuating bundle of energies and forces. The
abandonment of the priority of the first-person perspective, the priority of
knowledge, and the model of human life as the intellect turning back on
itself through the knowledge of its own judgments. To list the "isms" of
this side, it seems to lead back to kind of naturalism that eventually must
issue at least in a kind of functionalism or instrumentalism, if not outright
behaviorism. Heidegger recognizes this danger and accuses James and
others in the tradition of pragmatist psychology of this failing, whether
intended or not (he calls it "biologism"), and sees the philosophy of life, to
the extent that it involves a rejection of reflection and conceptual analysis,
as an inappropriate mode of access to human existence and a fall back into
psychologism, which he had already rejected in his doctoral thesis and
continued to find inappropriate.
Before I proceed on to sketch out in a very general way Heidegger' s
strategy for avoiding both horns of this dilemma, let me say a little more
in a Heideggerian spirit, but simply from a phenomenological perspective
as well, about the shortcomings of the model of human existence and
values as accessible primarily through reflective consciousness upon one's
inner judgments. The basic and obvious problem -obvious at least once
one has freed oneself from the grips of philosophical theory - is that it
simply does not give a good account of the values we actually hold. To
discover how we really feel, very often what we need to do is not to look
even more closely and carefully inside ourselves and discover our most
hidden thoughts, but to see how we act. Not only are we often or perhaps
even usually unaware of the reasons why we choose the things we do, why
130 THOMAS NENON
we adopt one belief over another, choose one course of action over another,
or find one item more attractive than another; we are often unaware of what
our very preferences themselves are- apart for the reasons or justification
for them - until we find ourselves having acting in a certain way that
involves having chosen one thing over another.
The whole point of the reflective turn of consciousness back to itself
and its judgments at the beginning of the modern age, e.g. in Descartes and
still in Husser!, was to enable us to be aware of ourselves, our beliefs, and
our values, and then to provide us with the opportunity to construct our
lives in a more rational way by examing the justification for each of them
and retaining only those that could stand up to such examination. This
sphere is also supposed to have the advantage of being immediately
accessible to us and beyond doubt. But, one might ask not merely from a
Heideggerian perspective, does this really square with the phenomenon of
human existence? In our lives as lived, actions do not generally follow
from conscious deliberation, beliefs are not entertained in a way that we
have direct access to them, and our preferences are not generally expressed
first and foremost even to ourselves in the form of reflective judgments
about ourselves ("I prefer hot food") that are taken independently of our
observations of our actions. If fact, if we think about it for a moment, when
we are asked whether we like a certain food or not, what we reflect upon
is not some feelings of preference deep within our psyche, but rather our
experiences of certain kinds of foods, or our preferences when we order
food at a restaurant or decide what to cook when we are out shopping. That
is why its not unusual to hear a statement like, "I guess I do like bald men
after all - come to think about it, my last four husbands have all been
bald." This "come to think about it" is not a reflection upon feelings in the
soul but upon patterns of behavior, not on judgments, but actions.
III.
For those even remotely familiar with Being and Time, it is obvious
how the brief comments about the phenomenology of preference and
choice are consistent with the basic position that Heidegger has arrived at
by the time he composes that work. Consciousness or subjectivity as a
sphere of reflection upon cognitions as judgments of which we are directly
and completely aware is replaced by Dasein, whose very being consists in

a way to be (Seinsweise). Thought and reflection, propositional knowing
is replaced by what are called "ways of being," practices and a kind of
practical familiarity with the objects that surround us in our daily life. Thus
between the earliest works from 1913 and 1915, in which Heidegger' s own
analyses centered around questions of knowledge and judgment as the
fundamental activities of human subjects, along with his first lectures in
which deep misgivings about the philosophy of value were also expressed
in phenomenological analyses of various kinds of judgments in 1919 and
1920, but without any real positive solution to the problems he saw; and the
position sketched out in Being and Time in 1927, a very important turn
occured. How and in what context did the turn from an analysis of human
life in terms of judgments and timeless values to an analysis of human
living as Dasein in terms of practices and everyday dealings with objects
in the world take place?
If such a change did take place, then it certainly must have been a
radical one, radical now in the sense that it must involve not only a
different twist in the analysis, a revision or this or that position, but rather
a fundamental shift in emphasis. This was one of the central lessons that
Heidegger sees himself as having learned from Husser! and
phenomenology, not as a set of doctrines, but as an orientation upon the
direct experience of the matters themselves. At each point in the pursuit of
the philosophical enterprise, one must be willing to go back and question
the most basic assumptions that have developed within the tradition.
Moreover, since phenomenological reflection involves starting from a
specific instance or set of instances and then trying to vary that example to
see what sort of invariant structures can be identified, it is extremely
important to ask whether the model one has chosen, the leading example
is appropriate. Somewhere along the way, as Heidegger began to have
increasing doubts about the philosophy of value that takes as its model
those values that we are familiar with in the silent judgments we are make
when we deliberate about a course of action or decide about aesthetic
preferences, he must have begun to ask whether there is not another model
that one can find, one that would be more appropriate to our everyday
experiences in which things like absolute and timeless values seem to be
rather rare, and one that would avoid the kinds of problems that the
132 THOMAS NENON
traditional approaches seem to lead to. 26

His solution, as we know, was to tum to actions, human life as
praxis-and not deliberations or the mind's own awareness of its feelings,
desires, and beliefs in reflection-as the place to analyse how the things
that have traditionally been termed values emerge for us in our experience.
But the challenge nonetheless is how to do so in a way that avoids the
opposite hom of the dilemma, the de-intellectualization of life, the rejection
of subjectivity that ultimately must issue in a reduction of human life to the
blind interplay of forces, a reduction that in the modem scientific world
will ultimately lead to a mechanistic account of the psychological as well
as the physical aspects of human life.
This project of a radical phenomenological reinterpretation of the
phenomenon of human living that can be more appropriate to question of
choice and preference will involve two elements. The first is an explicit
reflection upon the nature and history of the tradition that led it to seem that
the alternatives sketched out above could be the only ones, and a search to
see if there have ever been or might be other alternative approaches. The
first part of the project thus involves Heidegger's increasingly critical
analysis of value theory and its assumptions as necessarily involved in the
entire project of modem philosophy and the Cartesian framework within
which it was posed. The second part of the project is at least part of
Heidegger' s motivation for returning to the Greeks, in particular to
26Since this paper was originally delivered, GA 60 has appeared under the title Phtinomeno/ogie des
re/igiosen Lebens, providing confirmation that an important element in this shift was Heidegger's
occupation with Christian mysticism and primal Christianity. John Van Buren (The Young Heidegger,
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994) gives a detailed account of this element in Heidegger's
development, stressing the mediation of Jaspers and Kierkegaard in this regard.
However, for Van Buren phenomenology appears more as a dogmatic residue and a
hinderance for Heidegger's insights than as an alternative to traditional metaphysics. By contrast
Theodore Kisiel (The Genesis ofHeidegger's Being and Time, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University
of California Press, 1993), to whom much of Van Buren's work on Heidegger's earliest thought is also
indebted, sees Heidegger' s tum to religious life not as a tum away from phenemenology, but rather
as a new guiding example for phenomenological inquiry into human existence. For Kisiel,
phenomenology remains in Heidegger's view throughout his young and early writings a significant
departure from Heidegger's NeoKantian beginnings, much in the way Heidegger describes it in the
closing sections ofhis first lecture course (GA 56157: 109 ff.), where he defends Husserl's description
of phenomenological intuition again Natorps's objections.
Aristotle,27 with the question whether there have ever been any alternatives
to these basic assumptions, any other models we could build upon. And this
is precisely what Heidegger does in his lecture course of 1921/22. He
returns to Aristotle with an explicit interest i11 asking what we can find a
different and better better way of conceptualizing human existence than the
one's that might look like the only alternatives from the modem
perspective: "The Vorgriff of the interpretation arises from the level at
which life has appropriated itself."28 Heidegger expects to find Aristotle
engaged in the same enterprise which he has come to find so pressing, in
philosophizing as an activity in which a living being attempts to come to
terms with lived existence as we experience it in our own existence (what
Heidegger now calls its "facticity"29 ).
Thus philosophy becomes hermeneutics (compare the title of his 1923
lecture: "Ontology: The Hermeneutics of Facticity"30), because it is the
self-interpretation of a lived existence, but also because--following the
Aristotelean example- the philosopher and other human beings no longer
are seen as having direct access to one's own "self," one's beliefs, desires,
and preference through judgments immediately given in reflection. Rather,
we can find out about human existence only through an analysis of lived
existence itself, not just as an "ontological project," a philosophical search
for the structural features of life in general, but also in a very concrete way:
i.e. we know about our choices through an interpretation of our concrete
living, through a hermeneutics. Accordingly, whereas in 1919, Heidegger
had translated the Greek "psyche" as "consciousness" (GA 56/57, p. 20),
by 1925 he is now routinely translating it as "life.' 031 We can then see that
when Heidegger turns back to Aristotle (and Plato, as well as the
Presocratics, but above all at this stage to Aristotle), it is with very specific
27How and when a close reading of Aristotle's de anima helped Heidegger reinterpret Aristotle
in a way compatible with the project of Being and Time is laid out convincingly by Ryoichi
Hosokawa, "From De Anima to Being and Time," in: Bulletin of the Faculty of Letters, Kyushu
University Nr. 21), 6(1995), pp. 1-30.
28GA 61:87.
29GA 63: I.
30GA 63.
31 See for example GA 19: 23.

134 THOMAS NENON
questions he has in mind. He is attempting to find an alternative approach

to an analysis of life, one that escapes the dilemma of human living as
either consciousness or as naturalistic, ultimately material existence or even
as some kind of fusion of the two. He discovers it among other places in the
Aristotelian notion of praxis.
At least two large problems remain here, however. The first is what one
is to make of the positive phenomenon that had been addressed, however
inadequately through theories of consciousness as judgment, and the
second is whether the move to an analysis of actions instead of judgments
really does avoid the second hom of the dilemma if it effaces the
importance of reflection as structure ofhuman life as self-consciousness,
a structure that traditionally has been thought to raises human being above
the level of the strictly natural. I will neglect the first problem in this
paper, since it since it has less immediate bearing on the question of the
status of choices and preferences, or of items worthy of choice or
preference. I would only point out that the problem does not disappear, but
remains in the forefront of Heidegger's interest as he recognizes the
centrality of the notion of logos for the Greeks. In this context, he asks
whether we must necessarily conceive logos as judgment in the way that
judgments are conceived from the standpont of the tradition. His answer of
course is no, and another element in Heidegger's return to the Greeks is his
attempt to find another model for what we call judgment there as well. 32
The second problem is directly pertinent to the issues raised in part two
of this paper. How can an approach which neglects the central role of
reflection in human life avoid the naturalism that threatens the modem
philosophies of life when they downplay or completely avoid the notion of
self-consciousness as constitutive of human existence? Heidegger's
solution is to introduce a kind of reflexivity, a self-relationship that is
neither reflective nor propositional. Heidegger' s redefines "world" now not
as a set of individual objects but as an interrelated set of concerns of
Dasein. Whenever we look at a chair, for example, we see it as something
to sit on, we undertand what it is for, i.e. we grasp what sort of practices it
32Cf. the 1925 lecture course on Plato's Sophist, GA 19, which asserts that the analysis of logos is the
underlying issue that ties the entire dialogue together; and his analyses of logos in the 1925/26 lectures
on "Logic," GA 21.
is relevant for. Thus any relationship we have to objects within the world
in our everyday attitude is in tenns of its relevance for us, which is the
fonn of significance that everyday use objects have for us (significance is
not limited to usefulness, usefulness is simply the dominant fonn of
significance in our everday life). But to understand usefulness one has to
understand certain kinds of activites for which the object is useful. Thus
one is related to one's own way of being, now not as reflection, as an
explicit thematization of oneself or one's beliefs or desires in propositional
fonn, but as a background awareness in terms of which objects in our
everyday world for us show up as they do, and an awareness that is
penneated with "feelings" about whether these ways of beings are what we
want or not.
This story about usefulness is a rather simple one, of course. All sorts
of other factors enter into the way that things present themselves to us in
the course of our lives. Usefulness is only one aspect of our interaction
with objects and persons even in our daily lives. In specific spheres such
as religion, science, or art, very different kinds of significance may be at
work. Moreover, this does not even begin to address the question of the
social signifiance of things and events in our lives (the notorious "man.")
But two points are nonetheless important. The first is that significance is
an essential part of the way objects present themselves to us (even if in
very different specific ways in different ages, in different societies, or even
in different contexts within the same age and society to the same person);
and secondly, significance is always going to involve some relationship
that one has towards oneself (even if only in the abstract), some
understanding of human life. Thus there is an necessary and irreducible
element of something that traditionally would have been called
"subjectivity" involved in human experience, something that cannot be
reduced to mechanistic tenns. What makes human life as Dasein then is not
its biological structure, nor does it involve the thesis that our conduct is
always or even usually guided by self-conscious reflection, deliberation,
and decision, but rather that our daily dealings are penneated by an
awareness of significance of things for us that implicitly points to an
interested self-awareness of what it is we like and dislike, hope for, wish
to avoid, or want to have, and how certain objects and events are likely to
have an impact on our lives and the things we are concerned about.
136 THOMAS NENON
IV
There are a number of other important elements in development of the

doctrines that led to Being and Time. Heidegger's critical confrontation
with the philosophy of values was only one. I have not said anything, for
instance, about Heidegger' s response to the idea of truth as a value or his
transformed notion of truth. But this much at least I think we can learn
from these limited reflections upon Heidegger's confrontation with
NeoKantian value theory.
The first is to question the ontological and epistemological assumptions
of any theory of value that is oriented too strongly on judgments as
opposed to practices. The second is that human practices must be grasped
in a way that preserves the essential reflexive element in practice if all of
human action, including the element that has traditionally been thought of
as value, is not to be irretrievably lost or reduced to mechanistic terms,
thereby distorting the phenomenon at issue, namely the choices and
preferences of an active human being who is practically and emotionally
engaged in the world.
ChapterS
Value as OntologicalDifference
Kenneth W. Stikkers
Seattle University
That "value" was central to classical phenomenology, is indicated by the

following passage from Edmund Husserl's Ideas:
this world is there for me not merely as a world of mere things, but
also with the same immediacy as a world of objects with values, a
world ofgoods, a practical world. I simply find the physical things
in front of me furnished not only with merely material
determinations but also with value-characteristics, as beautiful or
ugly, pleasant and unpleasant, agreeable and disagreeable, and the
like. Immediately, physical things stand there as Objects of use, the
"table" with its "books," the "drinking glass," the "vase," the
"piano," etc. These value characteristics and practical
characteristics also belong constitutively to the Objects "on hand"
as Objects, regardless of whether or not I tum to such
characteristics and the Objects. Naturally this applies not only in
the case of the "mere physical things," but also in the case of
humans and brute animals belonging to my surroundings. They are
my "friends" or "enemies," my "servants" or "superiors,"
"strangers" or "relatives," etc.•
1ldeen zu einer relnen Phaenomenologie und phaenomenologischen Philosophie, bk. I,
Allgemeine Einfuhrung in die reine Phaenomenologie, lst-3rd eds., ed. Karl Schuhmann, vol. 3, no
I, of Husser/lana (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1976), p. 58 (50]; Ideas Pertaining to a Pure
Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, First Book, Genera/Introduction to a
Pure Phenomenology, trans. F. Kersten (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1983), p. 53.
137
J. G. HartandL. Embree (eds.), Phenomenology ofValues and Valuing, 137-154.
@ 1997 Kluwer Academic Publishers.
138 KENNETH W. STIKKERS
That the structure of experience is essentially valuational, was a central

theme in Max Scheler's phenomenology, and he described it as such in
greatest detail. But contemporary continental thinkers have uncritically
accepted Martin Heidegger's blanketed rejection of value theory as final,
and hence the latter is near extinction among such thinkers.
That Heidegger's critique fails to encompass all theories of value,
especially Scheler's, others have already well established. 2 My main point
here then is not to duplicate such responses, although I will briefly
summarize them. Rather, I wish to consider, in what way can "value" be
thought as ontological difference? and to show how, when Scheler's theory
of values is connected with his later phenomenology as an ontology of
suffering, valuation shows itself as an essential trait of the very
temporalizing process which is the emergence of ontological difference:
"value" is manifest in what Jacques Derrida has described as the "deferring
movement" of"dif.jerance."
Such a claim is contrary to the central thrust of the Heideggerian
critique of values. "What, then does the Being of values ... really amount
to ontologically?" he asks in Sein und Zeit. "Values are predeterminations
of things present-to-hand," he answers. "In the final analysis, values have
their ontological origin solely in the pregiven signs of the reality of things
as their foundation. Value-predicates," therefore, "only presuppose again
pure presence-at-hand as the sort of Being belonging to goods." 3 Thus
here and in his accompanying 1928 lectures, Heidegger claimed that
"value," as a constant presence, ignored the ecstatic temporality ofDasein,
whereby all entities, including values, are rendered present only "out of a
'E.g., Manfred S. Frings, Person und Dasein: Zur Frage der Ontologie des Wertseins, Phaen-
omelogica, vol. 32 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1969), "Is There Room for Evil in Heidegger's
Thought or Not?" Philosophy Today, 32 (Spring 1988): 79-92, and "The Background of Max
Scheler's 1927 Reading of Being and Time: A Critique of a Critique through Ethics," Philosophy
Today 36 (Summer 1992): 99-111; Hans Reiner, Duty and Inclination, trans. Mark Santos (The
Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1983), pp. 146-67, 295-98; and Philip Blosser, "Reconnoitering Heidegger's
Critique of Value Theory," unpublished paper, presented to the Society for Phenomenology and
Existential Philosophy, Memphis, October 19, 1991. The first part of this essay freely borrows from
and is indebted to the latter.
3Para. 21. Emphasis in the original. The Macquarrie and Robinson English translation is somewhat
misleading here.
VALUE AS ONTOLOGICAL DIFFERENCE 139
future which remains forever beyond the span of the present."4 It has been
common for Heidegger and Heideggerians to attack weaker versions of a
doctrine and then to assume that they thereby have refuted definitively all
possible versions of it. Such was the case, we shall see, with regard to his
critique of both "value" and "resistance" in Scheler.
Heidegger expanded his attack on value theory in his 194 7 volume on
Plato's theory of Truth: there he links 19th-century notions of"value" to
the Platonic "agathon," claiming that "value," like the latter, is merely the
"presentative foreground" of the Truth of Being, rather than the grounding
for it. In his "Letter on Humanism" ( 1949), Heidegger asserted,
Every "valuing" ... is a subjectivizing. It does not let beings be.

Rather, valuing lets beings be valid--solely as the objects of its
doing. The bizarre effort to prove the objectivity of values does not
know what it is doing. .. . thinking in values is the greatest
blasphemy imaginable against Being. To think against values
therefore does not mean to beat the drum for the valueless and
nullity of beings. It means rather to bring the lighting of the truth
of Being before thinking, as against subjectivizing beings into
mere objects. 5
Further, in Holzwege (1950) Heidegger claimed that "value" is the

"objectification of needs as goals," stemming from the reduction of an
object to representation: the thing so reduced incurs loss of Being, "value"
is ascribed to the object to compensate for such loss, and then such value
is reified. "Value" is thus "the impotent and threadbare disguise of the
objectivity of whatever is," "a poor substitute for Being." "No one dies for
mere values."6 (Has anyone ever died for mere Being?)
Manfred S. Frings, Hans Reiner, and Philip Blosser have well shown
'Parvis Emad, Heidegger and the Phenomenology of Values (Glen Ellyn, IL: Torey Press, 1981 ),
p. 144; Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, para 48, and Metaphysiche Anfangsgruende der Logik, ed. F. W. von
Herrmann, vol. 26 ofGesamtausgabe (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1978); Emad, pp. 23-48.
'Trans. Frank A. Capuzzi, in Basic Writings, ed. David Farrell Krell (New York: Harper & Row,
1977), p. 228. Emphasis added.
6 From Blosser, p. 3.
how Heidegger' s assertions are unsupported phenomenologically. Already

Husserl delineated various strata in the experience of ''value,"
distinguishing the givenness of the value-quality of a thing from "value"
as the objectification of such quality,' and as Scheler demonstrated,
"values" are "intuited" or "felt" as "objective," in the sense of independent
of the human subject, and definitely are not ~xperienced as "posited" by
any act of the human subject's will to power. Indeed, in his Formalismus,
Scheler systematically rejects, one by one, all the familiar subjectivist
theories of value - hedonism, emotivism, utilitarianism, nominalism,
relativism -any theory that makes value dependent upon a willing ego.
Unlike Husserl, though, who places "value," as the quotation at the
beginning of this essay indicates, on the same level of phenomenological
givenness as sensible qualities, Scheler claims "value" to precede, in the
order of phenomenological givenness, all sensible qualities: "Value-
ception precedes perception."8 "Value precedes its object; it is the first
'messenger' of its particular nature." 9 For example, the disvalue of pain
announces itself prior to any connection between it and the sensible
qualities of the hot pan that I have inadvertently grabbed and only latter, in
reflection, identify as the "cause" of my pain. Or, one of Scheler's
examples: "I 'feel the beauty of snow-covered mountains in the light of the
setting sun"' prior to the perceived qualities that "cause" such a feeling. 10
Drawing heavily from Nietzsche, Heidegger seems to want to reduce
all forms of "value" to ressentiment. But the very identification of
perverted valuations in acts of ressentiment indicates another mode of
valuation not so rooted in mere egoistic will to power - the distinction
Scheler makes between the factual and idea! ordo amoris, respectively.
Even Nietzsche distinguished between a distorted and a "true" order of
7Pp. 231-32.
8Der Formalismus in der Ethik und die materiale Wertethlk: neuer Versuch tier Grundlegung
eines ehtischen Personalismus, 3rd ed., ed. Maria Scheler, vol. 2 of the Gesammelte Werke (Bern:
Francke Verlag, 1954), p. 216; Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values: A New Attempt
toward the Foundation of an Ethical Personalism, trans. Manfred S. Frings and Roger L. Funk
(Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973), p. 201.
9Formalismus, p. 41; Formalism, p. 18.
1°Forma/ismus, p. 271; Formalism, p. 256.

values, 11 and not even he reduced, as did Heidegger, all values to "nothing
but postulations of self-interest, which serve the will-to-power in securing
itself by providing a necessary constant, a surrogate for Being." 12 Indeed,
as both Nietzsche and Scheler showed, the very effort to reject an order of
values other than one's own egoistic preferences is itself a characteristic of
ressentiment, and therefore Heidegger's vehement categorical denunciation
of all value theory betrays his own ressentiment.
Throughout his writings Scheler painstakingly distinguished his theory
of values from any Platonism, but such distinctions Heidegger conveniently
and repeatedly ignored. Already in his 1897 dissertation Scheler stated
clearly,
As to the question, "What is value?" I submit the following

answer: insofar as the word "is" in this question refers to existence
(and not only to a mere copula), a value "is" not at all. The concept
of value does not allow any more of a definition than the concept
ofbeing. 13
Again in his Ethics Scheler insisted that values enjoy no ontological status
apart from concrete human acts: 14 values ride "on the back" of such acts. 15
Just as phenomenologists commonly distinguish the metaphysical eidos of
Plato from any phenomenological eidos, so must we distinguish Plato's
agathon from a Schelerian notion of"value."
Scheler's appropriation of American pragmatism, especially William
James's, in Erkenntnis und Arbeit, enabled him to sharpen such a
distinction and to distance his theory further from any Platonism. Values
solely reside ontologically, come into being, are "functionalized," in
concrete acts: they are neither ideae ante res (Plato) nor ideae post res
"The Birth of Tragedy and The Genealogy of Morals, trans. Francis Golffing (Garden City, NY:
Doubleday, 1956), p. 188.
12 Blosser, p. 3. Blosser wrongly accepts such a view from Heidegger as Nietzsche's own.
13 Fruehe Schriften, vol. I of the Gesammelte Werke, ed. Maria Scheler and Frings (1971 ), p. 98.
14 Formalismus, pp. 19-21; Formalism, pp. xxvii-xxx.
15 Formalismus, p. 49; Formalism, p. 27.

(Aristotle) but ideae cum rebus (James). 16 As Frings describes, "Moral

goodness (and evil), then, 'functionalizes' itself on the occasion of
prefering (or rejecting) ...." 17
Moreover, Scheler's familiar delineation and hierarchizing of specific
value-spheres, from pleasure to the Holy, are not what is most important in
Scheler's theory. Rather, what is most essential here is the very idea of
value-hierarchy, viz., that value is essentially manifest in an order of
preferencing and sacrifice. To claim something as valuable but prefer it to
nothing or be unwilling to sacrifice anything for it, is to express a blatant
contradiction and to speak nonsense. (Again, by "preference" and
"sacrifice," we do not mean acts of a subject's will but as pre-subjective,
phenomenologically given, noeses.)
Furthermore, we must reinterpret Scheler's value theory within the
context of his later phenomenology as an ontology of suffering, and that
means to understand "value" as essentially tied to Scheler's notion of
"resistance." In so doing we will see more thoroughly how the
Heideggerian critique of value theory badly misses the mark with respect
to Scheler's own theory, because Heidegger badly misunderstood Scheler's
notion of"resistance," and how for Scheler fundamental ontology entails
"value." That is, the strategy here is to understand "value" as "resistance"
and then, in demonstrating how Heidegger's critique of"resistance" does
not pertain to Scheler, to show how his critique of "value" also fails to
address Scheler's account.
The most general difference between Husserl's and Scheler's
phenomenologies is that while for the former phenomenology is rooted in
and disclosive of "thetic" consciousness, for the latter it is rooted in and
16 James, Pragmatism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975), pp. 104-06; Scheler, Vom
Ewigen im Menschen, 4th ed., ed. Maria Scheler, Vol. 5 of the Gesammelte Werke (1954), pp. 198-208,
On the Eternal in Man, trans. Bernard Noble (Hamden, CT: Archon, 1972), pp. 200-11,
Philosophische Anthropologie, ed. Frings, Vol. 12 of the Gesammelte Werke (Bonn: Bouvier Verlag,
1987), p. 146; Frings, Philosophy of Prediction and Capitalism, Philosophy Library, vol. 20
(Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff, 1987), pp. 66-87.
17 Philosophy of Prediction, p. 86.
disclosive of the impulsion of life-urge (Lebensdrang). 18 For Husser!

phenomenology was a reflexive act that cut across the normal flow of
consciousness to reveal and delineate its eidetic structures, viz., its
intentional nature, as the subjective condition for the possibility of all
thinking, of all mental acts, whatsoever, especially science; for Scheler it
was an "attitude" based in a "psychic technique of non-resistance," a
special act of spirit that suspends the center of resistance to reveal life-
urge's growing, striving, becoming tendencies, on the one side, and the
givenness of "world," on the other.
Phenomenology for Scheler was not a method, as it was for Husserl,
but an "attitude of spiritual seeing," because, Scheler claimed, "A method
is a goal-directed procedure of thinking about facts, for example, induction
or deduction. In phenomenology, however, it is a matter, first, of new facts
themselves, before they have been fixed by logic, and second, of a
procedure of seeing." 19 Phenomenology then is not a series of steps one
follows, in the tradition of Descartes, to arrive at apodeictic certainty, but
a special manner of viewing the world, and "attitude" thus designates this
non-goal-directed manner of viewing.
Conceived as an attitude rather than a method, phenomenology is not
foundational for all other attitudes towards the world, e.g., science, as it
was for Husserl. Phenomenology is no radically presuppositionless science
upon which all other sciences must rest; it is not pre-philosophical, as
Husser! claimed it to be. 20 Rather, phenomenology, for Scheler, must be
seen in dialectical relationship with other modes of knowing and hence
occupies a much more modest position, although providing us insights of
a very special kind. Much like phenomenology for Heidegger had to
become hermeneutics, because it must take into account one's cultural
"Frings, "Foreword" to Max Scheler (!874-1928) Centennial Essays, ed. Frings (The Hague:
Martinus Nijhoff, 1974), pp. vii-viii, and Max Scheler: A Concise introduction into the World of a
Great Thinker (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1965), pp. 23-24; Lewis Coser, "Max Scheler:
An Introduction," in Scheler, Ressentiment, trans. William W. Holdheim (New York: Free Press of
Glencoe, 1961), p. 10.
19 "Phaenomenlogie und Erkenntnistheorie," Schriften aus dem Nachlass, vol. I, Zur Ethik und
Erkenntnislehre, ed. Maria Scheler, vol. 10 of the Gesammelte Werke (1957), p. 380; "Phenomenology
and the Theory of Cognition," Selected Philosophical Essays, p. 137.
20 /deen, p. 39 [33]; Ideas, pp. 33-34.
context, so too for Scheler phenomenology must be contextualized by

"sociology of knowledge." Thus, ''value" in Scheler's phenomenological
ethics is no a-historical, enduring presence, as Heidegger charges. Indeed,
in distinguishing his own theory of value from that ofNicolai Hartmann,
he emphatically states, "One cannot separate the theory of knowledge from
the great problems of the history of the structures of the human spirit ... ,
nor can one separate ethics from the history of the forms of ethos."21
Furthermore, phenomenology, as psychic technique of non-resistance, was
thought by Scheler in essential interconnection with metaphysics, 22 or with
what he later termed "metabiology.m3
While for Husser] the phenomena of dator consciousness are
constituted within the polarities of noesis and noema, for Scheler the reality
of the world is given within the polarities of vital-urge (Lebensdrang),
manifesting increasing spiritualization, and world resistance. Scheler
rejected the sharp distinction between living and non-living things, organic
and inorganic being, claiming that a single vital, growing, becoming
tendency (Alleben) permeates all of nature and could be found already in
the pulsations of sub-atomic particles. 24 This impulsive vital-urge is not
random or chaotic in its becoming movements, but rather, in its
increasingly spiritual manifestations, it projects, like a cone of light from
an automobile headlight, its own possibility, its own ability-to-be, ahead of
itself as phantasmic image. 25 Vital-urge seeks out those object correlates
that most adequately fulfill its interests. "Everything which we perceive
21 "Vorwort zur dritten Auflage," Formalismus, p. 22; "Preface to the Third Edition," Formalism,
p. XXX.
22 Formalismus, p. 22; Formalismus, p. xxxi.
"Schriften aus dem Nachlass, vol. 2, Erkenntnislehre und Metaphysik, ed. Frings, vol. II of the
Gesammelte Werke (1979), pp. 156ff.
24 0nly secondarily does this single becoming tendency differentiate into force centers and vital
centers, which in turn become objectified into organic and inorganic nature. Frings, Max Scheler, p.
33, and "Max Scheler: A Descriptive Analysis of the Concept of Ultimate Reality," Ullimate Reality
and Meaning 3 (1980): 138, 140. Such a view was recently supported by Max Dclbrucck, 1969
recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine; see his Mind from Matter (Palo Alto:
Blackwell, 1986), and "Mind from Matter?" The American Scholar 47 (Summer 1978): 339-53.
Frings notes the striking parallels between Sch~ler and Delbrueck, Philosophy of Prediction, p. 46.
2lScheler, Spaete Schriften, ed. Frings, voL 9 of the Gesammelte Werke, p. 230, "Idealism and
Realism," Selected Philosophical Essays, p. 344; Frings, Philosophy of Prediction, pp. 48-56.
must, before we perceive it, in some way address and interest our vital
drives,"26 i.e., must present itself, be felt, as valuable. On the one hand,
then, we experience something as "real," as existing, only insofar as it
presents itself within and against a world-context, which withstands, or
resists, vital urges's coming to be. On the other hand and reciprocally,
vital-urge experiences itself, is self-given, self-constituted, primordially as
resistant to and withstanding the impingements of what it is not, of its
otherness, that is, of"world." "Existence, or a sense of reality," Scheler
writes, "is derived from the experience of resistance in a world already
present as given, and this experience of resistance is inherent in [i.e., not
external to] the vital drive, in the central vital-urge of our being," and, he
continues, "This original experience of reality as an experience of
resistance, precedes any consciousness, conception, and perception."27 The
experience of reality occurs within the co-relational resistance of vital-urge
and world, and this experience of resistance is prior to the perception of
any whatness (Sosein) and existence (Dasein) of entities as well as the
cognition of essences (Wesen). As Scheler writes, "We comprehend,
therefore, in the order of givenness, the being real [Rea/sein] of an
indefinite something [viz., resistance] prior to its whatness [Sosein]." 28
Scheler fully concurred with the Heraclitian dictum that "Strife fathers
all things": where there is no tension, no strife, within drives--no "world"
resistance to life-urge's coming-to-be and no vital resistance to the
impingements of"world"- there is no "reality" given within life, neither
of"world" nor of itself. Hence, the "reality" (Rea/sein) of value is given in
this primative phenomenon of resistance: resistance concretizes
Lebensdrang's coming-to-be as felt "value." "Value" is the original,
preconceptual experience of resistance as that very "indefinite something"
which first announces itself in the light of vital interests. Again, this
announcement of "value" can be no mere projection of a willing subject,
26 Spaete Schriften, p. 239; "Idealism and Realism," p. 354.

17Die Ste/lung des Menschen im Kosmos (1928), in Spaete Schriften, p. 43; Man's Place in Nature,
trans. Hans Meyerhoff (New York: Noonday, 1961), p. 53. First emphasis added; second, in the
original.
28 "Erkenntnis und Arbeit," Wissensformen und die Gese/lschaft, p. 372. First emphasis added;
others in the original.

146 KENNETH W STIKKERS
for it is manifest prior to the constitution of anything like "ego" or

"subject." We might imagine a world like the one envisioned in the
German fairy tale "The Land of Cockaigne," portrayed by the sixteenth
century Flemish painter Pieter Bruegel the Elder, where every human
desire - be it appetitive, sexual, or power based - is immediately
fulfilled: such a world must be an imaginary world, an "unreal" world, a
world where nothing holds any real value, precisely because it is a world
where there is no strife, no resistance to vital drives. Furthermore,
phenomenology, for Scheler, was grounded in the capacity of spirit to
suspend or annihilate the resistance factor in life-urge: "reality" is thereby
"bracketed," "ideated," and phenomenological viewing thereby rendered
possible.
It was the very lack of an adequate notion of resistance of which
Scheler was most critical in the phenomenologies of Hegel and Husserl and
that he found most objectionable in the "fundamental ontology" of
Heidegger's Sein und Zeit; that is, there is no adequate resistance factor in
the unfolding of Spirit in history, in transcendental subjectivity, nor in
Dasein's way of Being-in-the-world, respectively. This failure explains
especially Heidegger's inability to grasp the relevance of "value" for
fundamental ontology.
Granted, Husser! describes the givenness of intentional objects of
perception in terms of resistance, but the objectivities of the world are
constituted as resisting. "Eidos" is gleened as resistant to imaginative
variation. Resistance is a characteristic of constitution and not an element
of the eidetic structures of consciousness themselves wherein such
objectivities are constituted. Moreover, resistance is strictly for Husserl
mental, while for Scheler resistance is thoroughly vital, felt, and prior to
and conditional for the givenness of any specific objects to consciousness.
With Heidegger the matter is much more complicated. For although he
does not use the term, something like "resistance" is central to Heidegger's
description of the being of tools in terms of their readiness-to-hand and
presence-at-hand: that is, the un-readiness-to-hand ofthe tool, as the tool's
givenness to Dasein as present-at-hand is essentially a matter of resistance,
as illustrated in the following passage from Sein und Zeit:
In our concemful dealings, however, we not only come up against

things within what is ready-to-hand: we also find things that are
missing- which not only are not "handy" but are not "to hand"
at all. Again, to miss something in this way amounts to coming
across something un-ready-to-hand, that which is ready-to-hand
enters the mode of obtrusiveness. The more urgently we need what
is missing, and the more authentically it is encountered in its un-
readiness-to-hand, all the more obtrusive does that which is ready-
to-hand become--so much so, indeed, that it seems to lose its
character of readiness-to-hand. It reveals itself as something just
present-at-hand and no more, which cannot be budged without the
thing that is missing. 29
Although Scheler would undoubtedly use different words to express the

point here, he would be, I believe, in essential agreement with Heidegger.
Their point of difference is this: Heidegger charges that to root the
experience of "reality" in resistance is to ignore the "referential totality" in
which Dasein is emerged, viz., Dasein's Being-in-the-world. Such is
precisely the point he makes against value theory: viz., the presupposed
"referential totality" is the "loss of Being" that, he claims, becomes reified
as "value." Heidegger writes:
Under the strongest pressure and resistance, nothing like an affect

would come about, and the resistance itself would remain
essentially undiscovered, if Being-in-the-world, with its
ontological disposition, had not already submitted itself to having
entities within-the-world "matter" to it in a way which its moods
have outlined in advance. In the ontological disposition lies,
existentially speaking, a disclosive reference to the world, out of
which we can encounter something that matters to us 30
29 15th ed. (Tuebingen: Max Niemeyer, 1979), p. 73; Being and Time, p. 103. Last emphasis added;
others in the original.

'"Sein und Zeit, p. 137; Being and Time, p. 177. Emphasis in the original.
-i.e., something as valuable. And again:
When Being-out-for-something comes up against resistance and

can do nothing but "come up against it," it is itself already
alongside a totality of involvements. But the fact that this totality
has been discovered is grounded in the disclosedness of the
referential totality of significance. The experiencing ofresistance--
that is, the discovery of what is resistant to one's endeavors--is
possible ontologically only by reason of the disclosedness of the
world. The character of resisting is one that belongs to entities
with-the-world. . . . The summation of such experiences [of
resistance and hence of"value"] does not introduce the disclosure
of the world for the first time, but presupposes it. The "against"
and the "counter to" as ontological possibilities are supported by
disclosed Being-in-the-world. 31
Moreover, insofar as the disclosedness of Being-in-the-world occurs in

Dasein within the phenomenon of care, "Reality is referred back to the
phenomenon of care."32
Scheler's responses to Heidegger are several and worth summarizing
here because they help clarify his notion of resistance, upon which his later
theory of value rests, and hence defense of the former forms an important
part ofthe defense of the latter.
First, Scheler suggests that Heidegger severely misunderstands his
notion of resistance by lumping it with Dilthey's.33 Indeed, throughout his
discussion of "resistance" in Sein und Zeit, Heidegger speaks of Dilthey
and Scheler together and even interchangeably, making no distinction
between their respective notions, and in response to Heidegger's dismissal
31 Sein und Zeit, p. 210; Being and Time, pp. 253-54. Emphases in the original.
32 Sein und Zeit, p. 211; Being and Time, p. 255.
33 Dilthey, "Beitrage zur Loesung der Frage vom Ursprung unseres Glaubens an die Realitaet der
Aussenwelt und seinem Recht" (1890), Die geistige Welt: Ein/eitung in die Philosophie des Lebens,
pt. I, Abhandlungen zur Grundlegung der Geisteswissenschaften, 4th ed., vol. 5 of the Gesammelte
Werke, ed. Georg Misch (Stuttgart: B. G. Teubner, 1964), pp. 90-138.
VALVE AS ONTOLOGICAL DIFFERENCE 149
of the concept of resistance in that work, Scheler remarked, "This critique

may have its point, but it does not pertain to me." 34 The experience of
resistance is not to be identified with the experience of reality and of
objectifiable entities within-the-world, as Heidegger does: "resistance" for
Scheler claims no antic status as it does for Dilthey. Moreover, the source
of resistance is not external to life (Lebensdrang), as it is for Dilthey, but
an essential feature of it. Heidegger is altogether wrong, then, when he
reformulates the experience of resistance as a discovery of entities in the
world, as "the discovery of what is resistant to one's endeavors." As
Scheler makes quite clear, the experience of resistance is prior to and .!!
condition for the experience of any whatness or existence of entities, and
it is certainly not the case that the experience of resistance presupposes the
disclosedness ofDasein's referential totality of significance, viz., Dasein's
Being-in-the-world. On the contrary, "resistance" describes the very
manner in which Dasein finds itself primordially already within such a
"context of significance"- viz., a web of value, of preferencings, the very
manner in which Being-in-the-world discloses itself to Dasein, prior to the
constitution of any entities within-the-world- and hence is presupposed
by Being-in-the-world.
Moreover, what experiences resistance--experiences "world" as
resistant to its own coming-to-be and experiences itself as resistant to
"world"- viz., vital urge, is in no way given ontic status by Scheler: that
is, with the experience of resistance there is not yet a subject. He writes:
And when in a real-ontological sense I define being-real as image

posited through vital-urge, I do not mean further to impose realitas
on the state of becoming of vital-urge itself. The "desire," the
"thirst" for being-real is itself not at all real, precisely because it is
not objectifiable but first of all "seeks" realization [Realsein]. I
entirely agree with Heidegger that it is high time to stop finally
transporting the categories and modes of being found in the narrow
sphere of physical being over into life, consciousness, the ego, and
14 As quoted by Frings, ''Scheler's 1927 Reading of Being and Time," p. 112.

so forth. 35
Rather, vital-urge is a pure becoming tendency (Werde-sein), or flux

(Wechsel), being-in-act, which is wholly non-objectifiable, and not that
which is "becoming something" (Sein-werden).
Second, and more seriously, Scheler charges that without a foundation
in something like life-urge, Heidegger's notion ofDasein lacks adequate
unity and represents a doctrine of"solipsism." It is not enough simply to
assert that Dasein experiences itself fundamentally and primordially as
"Being-in-the-world" because, Scheler claims, "Here 'being-in' is
supposed to mean something like 'being caught up in' or 'being involved
in.' Can this idea have any meaning at all unless the 'so/us ipse' also
experiences itself as independent from the world - something that
Heidegger cannot admit?" 36 "Resistance" more adequately describes the
moment of ontological difference than does "Being-in-the-world." We
experience our distinct manner of Be-ing not as a nebulous "Being-in-the-
world" but even more primordially as a unitary becoming, vital act-center
of resistance - which Scheler designates by "person" rather than
"Dasein"37- not in but rather against "world." Reciprocally, the
disclosedness of the world, upon which all cognition of "reality" is
founded, 38 is centered in "the unity of resistance against the unity of the
drive center."39 Heidegger's failure to root Dasein in something like a
unitary life urge means that not only can he not account for the unity of
Dasein, but he also cannot account for, but can only assert, the dynamic
unity of the world where Dasein is Being-in. 40 Scheler writes:
15Spaete Schriften, p. 260.

"Ibid.
17Frings, Person und Dasein: Zur Frage der Ontologie des Wertsein (The Hague: Martinus
Nijhoff, 1969) is the most extensive comparison of these terms of Scheler 1111d Hcideggcr. Also see
Frings, "Hcideggcr 1111d Scheler," Philosophy Today 12 (Spring 1968): 21-30.
38Sein und Zeit, p. 202; Being and Time, p. 246.
Scheler, Spaete Schriften, p. 262.
19
"''bid., pp. 261,266-67.

resistance against the single drive- and life-center, produces the

unity of a real sphere - before all individual realities, insofar as
they are indebted to such being functions and qualities of sensation
in a secondary way .... A "worldhood" as phenomenon (not as
"idea") is, I am sorry to say, absolutely unknown to me. The
"referential totality of significance" (Sein und Zeit, p. 21 0) seems
to me a very vague and ill-defined concept. There simply is no
proof that the drive-impulse is a "modification" of a non-
cognitional mode of comportment, which Heidegger calls "care,"
and that resistance presupposes Being as that about which we care
(or the being of our fellow-man as the one for whom we have
solicitude). 41
Indeed, Heidegger is not able to account for the "throwness," the very Da-
ness, ofDasein without a unitary vital act-center, which both resists and is
resisted by "world."
Moreover, except possibly for rare moments, vital-urge, in its striving
for increasing actualization of spirit against the resistance of «world,"
suffers from a lack of fulfillment: realization of life-urge is incomplete.
Suffering is our most fundamental mode of everydayness. That is, suffering
is co-given with "reality" in the occurrence of world-resistance within
vital-urge's coming-to-be: suffering is the subjective correlate of"reality"
in the experience ofresistance.42 Thus, value occurs also and correlatively
only in suffering: value is the ecstatic excess in life for which the suffering
of Being-in-the-world is "worth" enduring - i.e., the very ecstatic
temporality that Heidegger (erroneously) claimed "value" denied: Dasein' s
way of Being-in-the-world is essentially valuational.
Scheler describes the occurrence of resistance/suffering as
"Wechselphaenomen," that is, as a pure, non-objectifiable alterating
movement, or flux, holding together in dynamic tension fundamental
4 %id., p. 263.
•zoie Stellung des Menschen, pp. 16-17; Man's PllU!e, p. 14; SchriflenzurSoziologie und
Weltanschauungslehre, 2nd ed., ed. Maria Scheler, vol. 6 ofthe Gesammelte Werke (1963), pp. 43-
44; "The Meaning of Suffering," trans. Daniel Liderbach, S.J., in Max Scheler (1874-1928)
Centennial Essays, pp. 129-30.
binary oppositions - existence and essence, being and becoming,

becoming and unbecoming, the vital (organic) and the mechanical
(inorganic), presence and absence, sameness and alterity, part and whole,
the ontic and the ontological, space and time - the latter of which he
reduces to tendencies of reversibility and irreversibility. Such flux evades
identification, evades naming: it is, as we have already seen, an indefinite
"that," which objectivating consciousness works to secure as "thing" and
"concept," as objectified "value."
Scheler would, I believe, see what Jacques Derrida terms "economy of
differance," upon which deconstruction rests, as comparable to
"Wechselphaenomen." "Economy" means for Derrida a pattern of
"exchange," much as the German "Wechsef' connotes-as in
"Geldwechsel." "Differance" entails a double movement, both active and
passive, that divides the present moment within itself, a movement of
timing and spacing. As originary timing, differance is an "action of
postponing [deferring] ... , of taking into account, the taking account of
time and forces in an operation that implies an economic reckoning [i.e.,
a bill to be paid], a detour, a respite, a delay, a reserve, a representation ..
. ." This postponing, or deferring, which is temporalization itself, is "the
mediation of a detour that suspends the accomplishment of fulfillment of
a 'desire' or 'will' or carries desire or will out in a way that annuls or
tempers their effect."43 Within dif.ferance as deferring, "time opens itself
as the delay of the origin [viz., the 'desire' or 'will'] in relation to itself."44
This deferring stems from a "lack in Nature"; 45 i.e., life, in Schelerian
terms, "suffers" from its own inner resistance, from unfulfillment of desire
and will, and therefrom stems the deferring movement of dif.ferance, such
as Derrida describes. The deferring movement of dif.ferance, as elemental
timing, is the primordial prefering of "value": it describes the essential
43 Derrida, Speech and Phenomena, trans. D. B. Allison (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University
Press, 1973), p. 136.

"Derrida, Margins ofPhilosophy, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982),
p. 290.
"Marge de Ia Phi/osophie (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1972), p. 149.
structure of valuation, the emergence of"value."46

Differance also differentiates and thus is the source of all oppositional
concepts that mark our language, precisely as is the case with Scheler's
"Wechse/phaenomen." Differance is the production and primordial
constitution of differences, which "takes place through an opening, an in-
between, an abyss, within a polemos."47 Hence differance is also
elementary spacing: "In 'differents,' ... it is necessary to that interval,
distance, spacing occur among the different elements and occur actively,
dynamically, and with a certain perseverance in repetition."48
Moreover, differance is an "altering difference"49 between and
synthesizing of deferring and differing, fluxuating between and holding
together temporalizing and spatializing processes, very much as Scheler
describes in "Wechselphaenomen." Such movement, for both Scheler and
Derrida, allows for the constitution of the object, as "object," and hence for
the constitution of the concept: it is textualization as such.
"Wechselphaenomen" and "differance" refer to what Husserl in his lectures
on time-consciousness already described as the fundamental "unnameable"
movement which grounds the possibility of all that is made present to
consciousness as such. 5° Derrida claims that this "movement," this shifting,
elusive opening of timing and spacing, is the essential condition for all
metaphysical conceptuality and precisely for this reason cannot be
articulated within metaphysics. As the basis for all logical opposition it
itself cannot be grasped by logic: categorical reason is incapable of
thinking differance. Scheler would agree and therefore for him the thinking
of differance, of Wechselphaenomen, requires a special technique of
intuition- viz., psychic technique of non-resistance, an example of which
46 Frings offers a different account ofthe temporality of value, although one that I believe is
compatible with what has been suggested above. Frings, "Einleitung" to Karol Wojtyla Johannes
Paul II, Primal des Geistes, Philosophische Schriften (Stuttgart: Seewald Verlag, 1980), pp. 19-33.
47R.udolphe Gasche, The Tain of the Mirror: Derrida and the Philosophy of Reflection (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1986).

48 Speech and Phenomenon, pp. 136-37. Emphasis in the original.
49 Derrida, Margins, p. 290.
50The Phenomenology of Internal Time Consciousness, trans. J. S. Churchill (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1964).

154 KENNETH W STIKKERS
he would see in deconstruction, as he did in phenomenology.
Conclusion
"Value," at least as Scheler understood it, therefore, is no "enduring

presence," as Heidegger claimed it to be: rather, the preferring wherein
"value" occurs, is the very deferring movement, the originary timing,
temporality itself, wherein the becoming flux of life suffers. In the lighting
of ontological difference Dasein suffers a loss, a forgoing of Being, not
because of any subjective positing of "value," as Heidegger contended, but
as manifestation of the very temporality- viz., the economy, the deferring
movement-of differance, and in that suffering we experience the
meaning, ''the truth of Being," as the value, viz., the valence, or attractive
power, of Being, for which the suffering of deference is to be endured.
"Value," far from obscuring the "truth of Being," as Heidegger charged, is
its very harkening and disclosure; rather than "the greatest blasphemy
against Being," "value" marks Being's most elementary, authentic call.
Chapter9
Scheler's Theory of Values

Reconsidered
Philip Blosser
Lenoir-Rhyne College
I have been arguing recently that a phenomenology of values such as we

find in the work of Max Scheler 1 may be much less vulnerable to the
Heideggerian critique and much more promising, despite its neglect, than
has been generally supposed. 2 I have stressed, however, that this does not
mean that theories such as Scheler's will not continue to face challenging
difficulties, not the least of which may be precisely the ontological
difficulty of articulating the mode in which values exist. In this essay, I
wish to examine some of these difficulties and then to offer a number of
suggestions as to how these might be resolved.
Theories such as Scheler's are not always clear about what they mean
by "values." They may refer, as he does, to "qualities," while denying that
they originally have either real existence in the sense of empirical entities
or ideal existence in the sense of concepts or Platonic ideas. 3 They may
1 Max Scheler, Der Forma/ismus in der Ethik und die Materiale Wertethik, ed. Maria Scheler, Vol.
II of Scheler's Gesammelte Werke (Bern: Francke, 1954), 275; the English translation, Formalism in
Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values, is by M. Frings and R. L. Funk (Evanston: Northwestern,
1973), 261. Hereallerthis work will be cited as "F," followed by pagination, respectively, of German
and English editions.
2 "Reconnoitering Heidegger's Critique of Value Theory," a paper delivered at the annual meeting
of the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy in Memphis, Oct. 17-19, 1991; and "The
Viability of Scheler's Ethics in Light of Heidegger's Implicit Critique of Value Theory," a paper
delivered at the Japanese/American Phenomenology Conference held in conjunction with the 23rd
annual meeting of the Husser! Circle at Seattle University, June 24-30, 1991.
3 One must advise caution, therefore, against any unqualified assertions about the axiological
"idealism" or "realism" of a theorist such as Scheler. This is doubly the case in view of the position
he takes in his essay "ldealismus-Realismus." Nevertheless, there is a sense in which either
(continued ... )
155
J. G. Hart and L. Embree (eds.), Phenomenology of Values and Valuing, 155-167.
156 PHILLIP BLOSSER
refer to values as intentional, intuitable qualities, objects of "essential

intuition," suggesting that they may have only a FUNCTIONAL kind of
existence, like that of primitive and irreducible intuitive qualities such as
"good" or "yellow" in G.E. Moore's account. 4 But the difficulty such
theories have in specifying the nature and being of values is not necessarily
a sign of a fundamentally flawed theory; it may be due in part to the
phenomenological impenetrability of those question at issue. In fact, as
Hans Reiner claims, it may be impossible to offer a precise and direct
description of value as such (any more than one could do so for colors),
and it may be necessary to settle for a "circumscriptive" account of the
situation in which values are experienced and to see what can be learned
by way of comparison and contrast with similar or related phenomena.5
Few philosophers today are bound to be patient with the intuitionism
and non-naturalism of such theories. This is true even among specialists in
continental philosophy who are generally sympathetic with such theories.
Risieri Frondizi, for example, disputes Scheler's claim that values are
essentially independent, either of their empirical bearers, or of our human
(... continued)
designation is warranted. Scheler may be called an "idealist" in the sense that values, although they
are not conceptual representations (like Platonic ideas), are intuitable essences; and he may be called
a "realist" in the sense that values, although they are not empirically real, actually exist as intuitable
essences. Thus, one must not mistakenly assume that Scheler is denying that value has an intentional
existence, when he simply states that value, as such, has no existence ("Der Wert is/ Uberhaupt nicht"),
as he declares in his Gesammelte Werke, I: Friiheschriften, ed. Maria Scheler & M. S. Frings (Berne
& Munich: Francke Verlag, 1971 ), 98. Scheler is denying here only the real, empirical existence of
values.
'"If! am asked 'What is good?' my answer is that good is good, and that is the end of the matter.
Or ifl am asked 'How is good to be defined?' my answer is that it cannot be defined, and that is all I
have to say about it," writes G.E. Moore. "My point is that 'good' is a simple notion, just as 'yellow'
is a simple notion ... " (G.E. Moore, Principia Ethica [1903; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1982], 6f.).
I use the term "functional" to specify the peculiar nature of existence of values at the suggestion
of Manfred Frings, in his "Introduction to Three Essays by Max Scheler," in Person and Self-Value:
Three Essays, ed. M.S. Frings (Dordrecht: Nijhoff, 1987), who writes: "A value exists only when it
realizes itself with a thing, with a state of affairs, or with a person, i.e., the value enters into afunctio-
nal relationship with these or other factors in order for it to exist. The existence of a value is functional
existence" (xxvii, emphasis added).
5Hans Reiner, Duty and Inclination: The Fundamentals of Morality Discussed and Redefined with
Especial Regard to Kant and Schiller, Phaenomenologica, 93, trans. Mark Santos (The Hague: Nijhoff,
1983), 135. Unless noted otherwise, all further references to "Reiner" are to this volume.
SCHELER'S THEORY OF VALUES RECONSIDERED 157
psycho-physical constitution. 6 He argues that values are gestalt qualities,

neither entirely separable from empirical qualities nor entirely reducible
to them. Indeed, while it is undoubtedly true, as Scheler points out, that we
can talk about "red" as a pure color of the spectrum without experiencing
the need to conceive it as covering the surface of an empirical bearer, it is
no less true that we must have learned to do so from previous experiences
of empirical instantiations of it. 7 Scheler himself was likely aware of such
problems, and they may pose no intractable obstacles for a
phenomenological approach. But they surely warrant a fuller consideration
than Scheler gave them before such an approach can be expected to gain a
wider hearing, especially among those trained in the Anglo-American
analytical approach to philosophy. 8
Still, it is far from certain that a phenomenological approach could
necessarily expect to make itself more readily intelligible by
accommodating itself to the conceptual categories of an Anglo-American
analytic approach. According to Nicholas Rescher, for example, two related
questions at the forefront of the discussion in analytic metatheory of value
have been: ( 1) whether value is a property of objects (like the color on a
surface) or a relationship (like ownership), and (2) whether it is something
6 Risieri Frondizi, What Is Value?: An Introduction to Axiology, 2nd ed. (La Salle: Open Court,
1971), 102f., 135; cf. 160. This is also a major argument in Imtiaz Moosa, "Scheler's Philosophy of
Value and Ethics in Relation to Kant's Ethics," Diss. Toronto 1986, Part II.
7As D. W. Hamlyn points out, while there may be difficulties in trying to define terms like "red"
purely ostensively, by reference to sensory experience alone, they certainly could not be understood
fully without some sensory experience. D. W. Hamlyn, "A Priori and A Posteriori," The Encyclopedia
ofPhilosophy (New York: Macmillan, 1967), I, I4 I; cf. also his comments about the empirical element
in a priori propositions of the form "Nothing can be red and green all over at the same time in the same
respect" (which one finds in Scheler), as well as his remarks about the "relative" and "absolute" a priori
(143f.).
'Reiner, who reguards his own intuitionist ethics as free of the typical objections to intuitionism and
non-naturalism (as noted by William Frankena in his Preface to Reiner's Duty and Inclination, xiii),
is keenly aware of these kinds of obstacles (265f).
A potential gold mine of material illuminating the connections between empirical perception and
eidetic intuition may be found in psychological research on the phenomenon of"synesthesia." The best
relatively recent discussion is Lawrence E. Marks' "On Colored-Hearing Synesthesia, Cross-modal
Translation of Sensory Dimensions," Psychological Bulletin 8213 (1975), 303-31. But cf. Also Odbert,
Karwoski, and Eckerson, "Studies in Synesthetic Thinking: I. Musical and Verbal Associations of
Colors and Mood," Journal ofGeneral Psychology 26 (1942), 153-73; Karwoski, Obdert, and Osgood,
"Studies in Synesthetic Thinking: II. The Role of Form in Visual Response to Music," Journal of
General Psychology, 26 (1942), 199ff. And J. G. Snider and C. E. Osgood, eds., Semantic Differential
Technique (Chicago: Aldine, 1969).
158 PHILLIP BLOSSER
grounded subjectively "in the mind of the beholder" (like the taste of beer
and pizza) or objectively "impersonally" specifiable criteria (like the
nutritive properties of an apple ). 9 A problem with the way such alternatives
are formulated, however, is that they usually imply assumptions about the
relationship of values to empirical bearers and perceivers that are
phenomenologically unacceptable. Almost invariably they presuppose a
pre-phenomenological mundane realism rooted in the so-called "natural
attitude." Even the conventional axiological distinction between "intrinsic"
and "instrumental" values, which goes back to Aristotle's classic final
cause argument (Metaphysics, 994 b 9-16), typically arises only in view of
the relation of values to their empirical bearers without even touching on
the question of their own status as pure eidetic phenomena. Whatever we
may say about Scheler's insufficient attention to the "genetic constitution"
of values-to the way consciousness of them originates and develops in
empirical experience-this does not of itself rule out the legitimacy of his
insistence on the phenomenological point that, as intentional qualities,
values are essentially independent of empirical subjects and objects.
Perhaps the major problem with Scheler's essentialist definition of
value is that it fails to specify how values differ from other "essences."
Subsuming values under the category of "essence" does not of itself
accomplish anything more in the way of specifying their nature than
subsuming them under the category of "Being," as Heidegger does. In one
sense we could agree with Heidegger that value does not stand opposed to
Being, but constitutes something in it. But this something in Being cannot
be specified by means of the concept of Being as such, for, as Reiner notes,
"value (as positive value) is opposed by disvalue (or negative value), which
is clearly something in Being also" (162). Scheler says that values are
essences. But then, presumably bearers of value can be conceived as
essences too. We may speak of the "essence" of a work of art just as we
may speak of the "essence" of aesthetic value. But what distinguishes a
value-essence from a thing-essence? Scheler's term "quality" is not too
illuminating at this point.
Most attempts to specify the nature of values have been less than
adequate because they have not distinguished clearly the junctional nature
"Nicholas Rescher, Introduction to Value Theory (1969; Washington, DC: University of America
Press, 1982), 55f.
of values, but settled instead for descriptions of various relations between

the valuing subject and valued object. Take, for instance, the definition
offered by Ralph Barton Perry in his highly respected classic, Realms of
Value: "A thing-anything-has value or is valuable, in the original and
generic sense," he writes, "when it is the object of an interest-any
interest." 10 What does such a definition tell us? It tells us that if an object,
such as a painting, is an object of"interest," it has value or is valuable. But
this does not yet address the question: what is value? It addresses only the
question: What has value, or is valuable? And it tells us that objects of
value are objects of interest. Presumably, then, valuing is some sort of
"interest." But this still does not say what value is. Still, without
recommending Perry's view that interest is "constitutive" of value, his
"interest" thesis may provide a clue.
An object may be an object of "interest" in a surprising diversity of
ways. For example, a painting may be an object of not just one kind of
"interest," but of many kinds; we could then say that it bears a
corresponding diversity of values. One person may buy a painting as a
financial investment; for him or her the painting is an object of financial
interest and bears an economic value. Another person may display the same
painting on a different occasion as an object of culture and taste; in this
case it is an object of artistic interest and bears an aesthetic value. For yet
another individual, the painting (let us say, Rembrandt's "Ascension of
Christ") is primarily an object of religious interest; in this case it bears
primarily a spiritual value. This does not have to mean that values are mere
subjective postulates; it may mean that different values manifest
themselves in different functional aspects of an entity.
This suggests an illuminating distinction, developed by Herman
Dooyeweerd, between what a thing is and how it functions in experience. 11
On the one hand, how a thing functions-how it is experienced-is
11'R.B. Peny, Realms of Value: A Critique of Human Civilization (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1954), 9. For the development of Peny's "interest theory of values," see his article, "The
Definition ofValue," in The Journal ofPhilosophy, 11 (1914), 141-162; General Theory of Value(New
York: Longman's Green & Co, 1926); and see his article, "Value as an Objective Predicate," in The
Journal of Philosophy 28 (1931), 477-484.
"Herman Dooyeweerd, A New Critique of Theoretical Thought, trans. David H. Freeman, et al.
(Amsterdam and Philadelphia, 1953-1956; rpt. Jordan Station, Ontario: Paideia Press, 1984), II, 7ff.,
and III, 53ff.
160 PHILLIP BLOSSER
determined by the way in which it exhibits what he calls "functional

modalities of meaning." Thus, the painting in the foregoing illustration
exhibited different "functional modalities of meaning." The different
interests which it served and different uses to which it was put, served also
to bring to light the different functional meanings that it latently bore. On
the other hand, what a thing is-the identity of a thing-is determined by
what Dooyeweerd calls its "typical structure of individuality." This means
that a thing, despite the multiplicity of meanings it may bear and
corresponding variety of uses to which it may be put, has generally a
"typical" functional meaning that serves to identify it. Thus, while a
painting may serve as an object of financial investment because of its
economic worth, or as an object of religious interest because of its spiritual
subject matter, this is not the "typical" or "qualifying" functional meaning
that identifies it as a painting. Similarly, a 14th-century chair may be
displayed in a museum as an object of historical interest because of the
historical significance it bears, but this is not what typically identifies it as
a chair. Hence, the identity of a thing is related to how it typically functions
in experience. A typical functional meaning gives a thing its identity. A
painting is typically an object of perceptual enjoyment for its aesthetic
function; a chair is typically something used for sitting because of its
utilitarian function; and so on.
On this view, what Scheler calls a "bearer" of value, or a "good," is
equivalent to what a thing is, and what Scheler calls a "value" (or, at least,
a "rank" of value) is related roughly to how that object functions
meaningfully in experience-that is, to what Dooyeweerd calls "functional
modalities of meaning." This means that values disclose how a thing
functions in experience-how it serves as an object of"interest." Thereby
they also serve to identify what a thing is by manifesting its typical
functional meaning. The nature of value-essences, on this view, may be
distinguished from all other essences by their functional or "MODAL"
character. Unlike thing-essences, which (like the essence of a Rembrandt
painting) may be relatively complex and bear multiple "functional
meanings," value-essences are generally simple and capable of being
classified within a single irreducible "modality" of meaning.
The comparison with Dooyeweerd is suggestive, but there are
differences, of course. Scheler distinguishes four basic "ranks"" of values
(religious, spiritual, vital, and sensible), 12 whereas Dooyeweerd

distinguishes fifteen irreducible "functional modalities" (religious,
juridical, moral, aesthetic, economic, linguistic, social, historical,
psychical, logical, biotic, physical, kinematic, spatial, and numerical). 13
More importantly, Dooyeweerd's "functional meaning" is not quite
identical to "value" in Scheler. It is closer to a "type" or "rank" (or
"stratum") of value in Scheler. Thus, Scheler distinguishes a great variety
of "values" in his writings (such as joy, suffering, comfort, usefulness,
nobility, vulgarity, holiness, and the like), ear.h of which can be classified
within a certain type or "rank" of value (sensible, vital, spiritual, or
religious). Accordingly, while "values" exhibit how an object is
experienced-as do "functional meanings" in Dooyeweerd (or "ranks" of
values in Scheler)-the category of"value" is a more expansive one than
the latter.
This leads to one major problem in Scheler's value theory that we have
not yet touched upon in this essay, a problem related to the way in which
Scheler distinguishes moral from nonmoral values. 14 As is generally well-
known, Scheler says that moral values ("good" or "evil") appear in acts of
"realizing" nonmoral values. For example, when parents make material
sacrifices for the education of their children, they place their children's
education before their own physical comforts, exhibiting thereby a
preference for the "spiritual" value of education over the "physical" value
of their own material well-being. For Scheler, moral value in such a case
appears in the act of"realizing" a nonmoral value-that is, in realizing the
higher "spiritual" value of education over the lower "physical" value of
material comfort. The problem with Scheler's analysis lies in his basic
criterion for moral value-the criterion of the willing and "realization" of
any material values other than moral values.
To avert any confusion at this point, it may be helpful, before
12A discrepancy exists between the first two values in this list (based on F, ch. 2, B, sec. 5) and the
list of corresponding emotional strata (at F, ch. 5, sec. 8), where they are "spiritual" and "psychic," not
"religious" and "spiritual."
llDooyeweerd, New Critique, I, 3; cf vol. II, entitled The General Theory of Modal Spheres,
passim.
14 A brief treatment of this problem, however, can be found in my article "Moral and Nonmoral
Values: A Problem in Scheler's Ethics," Philosophy and Phenomenological Researr:h XLVIII, No. I
(Sept., 1987), 139-143. Its basic argument is summarized in the following discussion.
162 PHILLIP BLOSSER
addressing the problem at issue, to mention a secondary problem here, so

that it may be laid to rest. I mean the ambiguity of the term "realize,"
which could lead to a confusion between ( 1) willing the existence of a
bearer of a nonmoral value and (2) actually bringing about the existence of
a bearer of some value. The notion of "realizing" a value involves, thus,
two crucially different possible meanings, corresponding to notorious
ambiguities of the word "intention." In the first place, "realizing" a value
may mean willing the existence of a bearer of a nonmoral value as the
intended object of willing. In the second place, it may mean actually
bringing about the existence of a bearer of some value whether moral or
nonmoral. Scheler's position is that whenever the first occurs, moral value
is actually brought into existence, regardless of whether it succeeds in
bringing about the existence of the intended nonmoral value. Hence, the
moral value of an act depends on the material value-content it seeks to
realize, not (as Kant correctly insisted) on its success in achieving the good
it intends. This means that right actions always do in fact "realize" moral
value as a byproduct of attempting to realize nonmoral value, whether or
not they actually succeed in bringing a bearer of value into existence.
However, the primary problem with Scheler's analysis is of a different
order; and it may require an effort to step outside of Scheler's own
terminological and conceptual conventions to gain a sufficient appreciation
of it. The difficulty stems from his position that willing the existence of a
bearer of a nonmoral value, as such, results in the realization of a
specifically moral value. This means that the whole "logic of preference"
upon which such willing is based-the whole schema of preference for a
positive over a negative value, or for a higher over a lower value-is
inseparably related to the generation of specifically moral value. (F,
48f./26f.; cf. 102f./81f.) This position, I want to suggest, may need to be
reconsidered.
Let us leave aside for a moment the whole question of the role of
human agency and of acts of preference and willing in the realization of
values. The first thing to be noted is that the mere realization of material
values does not need to be regarded in itself as a specifically moral
phenomenon. To be more precise, the coming into existence of bearers of
nonmoral value, as such, does not need to be viewed necessarily as morally
significant. More importantly, even if we allow that such actualizations of
bearers of nonmoral value are accompanied in some way by the realization
of moral value, this does not mean necessarily that they are themselves
essentially matters of morality. In fact, considered apart from whatever
moral value may accompany them, realizations of nonmoral values are
essentially amoral. I do not think I am stating anything particularly novel
or exceptional here.
Still leaving aside the question of human agency, let us take the matter
a step farther. Even considered together with any possible moral value that
may appear in conjunction with them, realizations of nonmoral values may
still remain refractory to classification as moral. In fact, numerous
nonmoral values may be identified whose realization in some bearer one
would find difficult to avoid classifying as basically "amoral." Take, for
instance, the realization of a positive aesthetic or economic value. Would
we wish to call the realization of such a value, even where it is
accompanied by the appearance of a moral value as a byproduct, in every
case a "moral" good? I think not. If the new wallpaper turns out beautifully
or the stock market takes a tum for the better, these are not in themselves
essentially matters of moral value-whatever the ethical permutations-but
of aesthetic and economic value. This becomes all the more evident when
one begins to consider a range of values not extensively dealt with by
Scheler-including not only aesthetic and economic values, but also legal,
historical, linguistic, logical, and even mathematical values. 15 When a
mathematical calculation has been worked out correctly, the positive value
that has been actualized is first and foremost a mathematical one, not a
moral one. While moral good may certainly accompany the realization of
such a value, the good brought into existence may not be chiefly a moral
one.
Moving a step farther still, let us take up again the question of human
agency and rethink the role of acts of preference and willing in the
realization of values. For it is only through acts of preference that we even
begin to gain an appreciation of which values we ought to seek to realize;
and it is only through acts of willing whereby we aim at bringing into
existence bearers of nonmoral values, according to Scheler, that we
actually realize moral value. Undoubtedly even such diverse nonmoral
15 Dooyeweerd, of course, would consider these irreducible aspects of experience, which he would
call "functional modalities of meaning" in a sense roughly analogous to Scheler's "ranks" of value, as
we have seen above. See references inn. II, and cf. n. 13, above.
164 PHILLIP BLOSSER
values as those considered above exhibit an essential normativity (or "ideal

oughtness," F, 218/203) that makes them candidates for obligatory
realization. Positive linguistic values, for example, "ought" to be realized
in speech. There is a way in which one "ought" to use words-which is to
say, people "ought" to employ reasonably intelligible syntax and grammar.
Likewise, positive logical values "ought" to be realized in argumentation,
and so forth. But when such values are harnessed to the will in acts of
concrete realization, is it reasonable to regard such acts as generating
specifically moral values, or to conceive of such acts as specifically moral
duties? On Scheler's view there is no alternative. Acts of preference and
subsequent willing are regarded as unavoidably generative of moral value.
But this strikes me as confusing, even while it may not be entirely
incorrect.
I have no difficulty with the idea that the realization of positive
nonmoral values, or even the willingness to attempt such realization, is
somehow commendable. But I wonder whether it should always be
regarded as morally commendable. Nor do I have a quarrel with the notion
that such realization or willingness is accompanied by the actualization of
some kind of independent positive value or virtue. But I question whether
it is helpful always to describe these as moral value or moral virtue. A
willingness to try and make use of intelligible syntax and logic might well
be considered a duty in some sense. But I wonder whether it is
appropriately described under every circumstance as a moral duty. Very
likely we have some kind of obligation to seek the realization of such
nonmoral values; and very likely such an obligation is based on acts of
preference for positive over negative values, and the like, much as Scheler
describes. My question is simply whether it is illuminating or even accurate
to describe such obligation or preference as essentially moral.
This consideration suggests that Scheler's theory might be revised
along the following lines. The value that appears in the act of realizing
other values, as he says, is the value of "good" (or its opposite). But this is
not only the value of moral good, but also of aesthetic good, economic
good, logical good, and so forth. What Scheler calls "moral" value, then,
is only one kind of "good" that appears in acts of realizing material values.
This means that "moral good" does not appear through the realization of
positive nonmoral values (such as the values of "utility," "frugality,"
"eloquence," "nobility" or even "holiness") but of positive moral values
(such as "faithfulness," "remorse," "forgiveness," "respect," "honesty,"

"benevolence," and the like). This suggestion admittedly contradicts
Scheler's insistence that moral values do not constitute a distinct sphere of
material values or even a possible content of moral willing. (F, 49/27) But
if it is phenomenologically warranted to speak of the realization of the
nonmoral "good" of aesthetic, economic or social values, it would seem
reasonable to assume that the realization of such values is governed by a
normativity quite different from moral obligation. Moreover, if that is the
case, there seems to be no overriding reason why one may not speak also
of the realization of moral values governed by a specifically moral
normativity. 16
A slightly different but related criticism and correction of Scheler is
offered by Hans Reiner. 17 He argues that the content of moral good and evil
involves more than Scheler allows. While it is true that some kinds of
moral value arise through acts of willing directed at realizing separate
objective values (in the way claimed by Scheler), moral values are not
limited to such "values of direction" (Richtungswerte). There are "values
of bearing" (Haltungswerte), for example, which do not arise through the
realization of separate objective values but are realized for their own sake,
such as industry, perseverance, bravery, self-control, forbearance, and
patience (Reiner, 23 7). Scheler's definition of moral value prevents him
from recognizing the moral good involved in acts supporting the reality of
already existing values, as well as that attached to judgments (as opposed
to decisions) by the will (238). It also keeps him from noticing that those
who act from a sense of honor are concerned more with avoiding the
realization of a disvalue than with seeking the realization of a positive one
( 171 f.). Moreover, against Scheler's claim that moral values (independently
of nonmoral values) cannot be made a direct content of willing to be
realized in conduct, and that the self-deceiving attempt to do so results in
"pharisaism" (F, 22/14), Reiner counters that the moral values attached to
the conduct of others is readily discernible and capable of being evaluated
without prejudicial self-deception; and even in one's own case, as Nicolai
16The idea of specifically moral values could, of course, be included under what Scheler terms
"spiritual values" in his value-ranking as a species of the latter. The suggestion of specifically moral
and nonmoral types of normativity and obligation implies a division within a genus calling for further
examination in itself.
17Chietly in sec. 30 of his Duty and Inclination.
166 PHILLIP BLOSSER
Hartmann admitted, striving after moral values in one's conduct is a

perfectly natural and legitimate moral choice. 18
Scheler's definition of moral value strictly by reference to the
realization of nonmoral values is unduly limiting. For example, his
criterion of the relative "height" of values offers no way of deciding when
the value of the bare, physical survival of human life (a "lower" value) may
be more pressing than the values of high art and culture (a "higher" value).
Additional criteria are necessary, such as the relative "strength" of values,
as suggested by Hartmann (Reiner, 175). More importantly, such defects
in Scheler's theory reveal a more basic deficiency in his conception of good
and evil. Good and evil cannot be determined merely to the choice of
"higher" or "lower," "positive" or "negative," values. For such relative
differences are matters about which one can be genuinely mistaken and
pertain to the relative "correctness" of one's moral discernment and choices
(or what Reiner calls moral "rightness" and "wrongness"); whereas moral
"good" or "evil" pertain to the deliberate and unmistakable affirmation of
objectively important values, or opposition to them. 19
A theory such as Scheler's, then, must do several things in order to
restore its credibility and shore up its viability. First, although I have not
discussed the matter here as I have elsewhere,20 it must show that the
Heideggerian critique of values does not compromise its integrity. Second,
as we have seen here, it must be clear about the functional, non-entitative
yet eidetically irreducible, nature of values. Third, it must clarify the
genetic constitution of values in empirical experience as well as the relation
'"Reiner, 172f. Tapio Puolimatka, in his book, Moral Realism and Justification (Helsinki: Finnish
Academy of Science and Letters, 1989), accepts Scheler's remarks about "pharisaism" only in the sense
that people should not intend to appear good to themselves in a self-satisfied sense. But he insists:
"this does not mean that it is not legitimate to intend to be or to become benevolent" (147).
'"Reiner, 231-236. Hence, in an intriguing observation, Reiner points out that the thesis of Socrates
that no one knowingly acts badly holds true in the case of choosing "rightly" as opposed to "wrongly"
(that is, nobody knowingly chooses "incorrectly"); but it does not hold true in the case of choosing
between moral "good" and "evil." Only where people can knowingly choose evil, he says, can they
be held morally accountable for their acts (232).
For a closer inquiry into this connection, Reiner directs his readers (on p. 233, fn. I) to his lecture
"Das Prinzip von Gut und Bllse" (Freiburg, 1949), 20-30. But cf. also the selection by him entitled
"Good and Evil: Origin and Essence of the Basic Moral Distinctions," a translation by J.J. Kockelmans
of pp. 7-41 of Reiner's Gut und Bose (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1965) in Joseph J. Kockelmans, ed.,
Contemporary European Ethics (Garden City, NY: Anchor, 1972), 158-181.
20 See note 2 above.
between value-essences and their bearers in which they are empirically

instantiated. Fourth, it must overcome the kinds of problems produced by
Scheler's teleology of nonmaterial values by showing how moral values
themselves constitute a distinct and irreducible type of material value. 21
Fifth, it must articulate a more adequate set of criteria by which to define
moral "good" and "evil." While conclusive theoretical demonstration may
not be necessary to justify such definitions in ethics or value theory, there
is no question of warrant for shoring up a theory where it can be shown to
be inadequate. Scheler's account of the criteria for determining the relative
superiority of values and for choosing between material alternatives is not
only incomplete in certain respects; it also appears to overlook a number
of more fundamental distinctions which it tacitly presupposes, such as
those Reiner makes between absolute and relative, objectively important
and subjectively important, values (182, cf. 143). Until such unresolved
issues are more adequately dealt with, it will be difficult to overlook the
consequent problems that stand in the way of a phenomenology of ethics
and values such as Scheler's. 22
21 Puolimatka, in particular, makes a strong case for this point, arguing on the basis of the detailed
research of Henry Sidgwick that the concept of "benevolence" specifies the intuitive essence and
irreducible content moral value, and rebutting objections based on 1. L. Mackie's "multi-person
prisoners' dilemmas" and "paradox ofretribution" (Moral Realism, 143-155).
22 Among other things, Scheler's ranking of values alone is of no help in deciding between two
alternatives where the choice is between realizing the same value for myself or for another, as Reiner
points out (182). Furthermore, he failed to develop the implications of his analysis of"absolute" and
"relative" values (F, 116ff./96ff.) in a way that could assist in showing when the realization of a value
for another might be preferable to its realization for oneself(Reiner, 143).
In another vein, Frondizi offers several specific criticisms of the criteria Scheler offers for
determining the order of ranks among nonmoral values. For instance, with reference to the criterion
of "the depth of satisfaction," he asks: "In which persons are we going to 'measure' this supposed depth
of satisfaction? Under what circumstances?" Again, with reference to the criterion of "duration," he
asks what such a criterion could mean in light of the fact that superior values are no more or less
temporal than inferior ones (What Is Value?, 138f.).
Chapter 10
Husserl's Phenomenology ofWilling 1

Ullrich Melle
Husseri-Archives, the Catholic University of Leuven (Belgium)
I. Historical Introduction
A large part of Husserl 's philosophical work bears on the investigation,

description and analysis of the life of consciousness, of its various forms
and contexts. Hence, it is a non-experimental, reflective investigation of
consciousness. As Husserl says, consciousness is an autonomous field of
being, a field of investigation and work; he even speaks of it
metaphorically as a land, and because of the immense complexity of the
structures of consciousness, he speaks of it as a jungle. One is in need of
great effort and thousands of points of reference in order to clearly
distinguish the phenomena in this jungle and to grasp them in their
essential determinations and their manifold and tangled connections.
Husserl sees this with a truly impressive acuity. He recorded the results of
his investigative journey into the innermost reaches of consciousness in
thousands of manuscript pages.
The emphasis ofHusserl's analyses of consciousness without doubt is
on the forms and structures of intellective consciousness. On the other
hand his descriptive analyses of emotive and volitional consciousness are
much less comprehensive and developed. Between 1909 and 1914 he
worked on the phenomenology of emotive and volitional consciousness,
investigations found in not-yet published and rather fragmentary
manuscripts. These analyses of affective consciousness and volition are a
'This text was originally given in English in 1990 as part of the program for the "Touring Scholar
in Continental Thought" sponsored by the Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology. For this
1 would like to thank Professor William McKenna who organized the tour.
169
J. G. HartandL. Embree (eds.), Phe110me110logy ofValues and Valuing, 169-192.
170 ULLRICH MELLE
part of the comprehensive investigation of consciousness in those years

during which Husserl sought to systematically describe the whole of
consciousness in all its act-forms, founding relations, modes of
accomplishment, etc. Even in its fragmentary state, the scope of this
investigation of consciousness is extremely impressive. It covers more
than 1,000 manuscript pages. As Husserl's assistant in 1926-27, Ludwig
Landgrebe produced, on the basis of these collected materials, a very
extensive typed manuscript with the appropriate title "Studies on the
Structure of Consciousness."2 The second of its three studies, which carries
the title "Value Constitution, Affective Consciousness (Gemiit), Will," is
devoted to the structures of emotive and volitional consciousness. As
Langrebe admits in his Preface to Experience and Judgment, 3 he drew upon
the above mentioned manuscripts in the preparation of Experience and
Judgment.
Husserl's often minute analyses in his investigation serve the
philosophical project of working out a phenomenological theory of reason
and of rational validity, as well as its correlative doctrine of categories and
a theory of true being. A phenomenological theory of reason is constructed
in two-steps. The dicta of reason in the pertinent spheres of acts do not
happen arbitrarily, rather are carried out according to principles. The
corresponding doctrines of principles make up the superstructure of the
theory of reason. These doctrines of principles are then to be rationally and
critically grounded through a phenomenological description of the forms
and networks of acts that fall, along with the noematic correlates, within
the jurisdiction ofthese principles and, above all, through a description of
the teleological relations of fulfillment that exist in these networks of acts.
The number ofthe forms of reason depends upon the classification of
the forms of acts. However many basic forms of acts there are, so will
there be as many basic forms of reason; for, according to Husserl, a specific
form of justification and rational validity belcngs to every basic act-form.
2Landgrebe's typescript is to be found in the Husseri-Archives in Leuven under the signature M III
3 1-111.
3 See Edmund Husserl, Erfahrung und Urteil, Untersuchungen zuer Genealogie der Logik, edited
and published by Ludwig Landgrebe (Hamburg: Claassen Verlag, 1964); Experience and Judgment,
ed. Ludwig Landgrebe, trans., by James Churchill and Karl Ameriks (Evanston: Northwestern
HUSSERL 'S PHENOMENOLOGY OF WILLING 171
Husserl abides by the Kantian classification of types of acts into
intellective acts, valuing acts, and acts of will. Accordingly there are for
Husser! three types of reason: logico-cognitive, axiological and practical
reason.
The insight into the phenomenological apriori of correlation is bound
up with the accomplishment of the phenomenological reduction.
According to this apriori of correlation, rational validity and objective
being are inseparable correlates, so that one can say that there are just as
many basic types of rational consciousness as there are basic types of
objects.
Axiological and practical characteristics and objects like value, goods,
behavior and goals are the objective correlates of the acts of feeling and
willing. As Husser) often puts it, one can see in valuing-feeling acts and
willing-behaving acts that new predicative levels are constituted in the
mere natural object, levels which are those of cultural determination. In his
lecture course of 1919-1920, entitled "Introduction to Philosophy," Husser!
says "Everything we in one way or another include under the title 'culture'
is related to a sphere of creation that is understandable only as the correlate
of the valuing and practically formative consciousness."4 Our quotidian
life-world is a cultural world and not a world of mere natural objects. So,
in Ideas II Husser! says "In ordinary life we never deal with natural objects.
What we call 'things' are actually paintings, statues, gardens, houses,
tables, clothing, tools, and so forth. All these are various types of objects
of value, objects of use, practical objects. They are not natural scientific
objects." 5 In everyday life we only rarely attend to objects in a purely
observational, purely theoretical way. Our quotidian worldly behavior has,
in the first place, an emotive-practical orientation. But for Husser), even
our valuing and willing admit of the question of reason, the question of
truth and validity.
In connection to his Logical Investigations, which appeared in 1900-01,
Husser! first worked on the groundwork of a phenomenological theory of
'Ms F I40, 113a. Here I would like to expreess my thanks to the Director of the Husser! Archives
in Louvain, Professor SamueiiJsseling for permission to quote from the unpublished manuscripts.
5Edmund Husser!, ldeen zu einer reinen Phdnomenologie und phdnomenologischen Philosophie,
Zweites Buch, ed. Marly Biemel, Hua IV (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1952), p. 27.
172 ULLRICH MELLE
theoretical-logical, which means, cognizing and judging-speaking reason.

In his axiological-ethical lectures of 1908-9, 1911 and 1914,6 he then turns
to the theory of axiological and practical reason. In these lectures what he
is trying to show is that there are formal-axiological and formal-practical
principles analogous to the formal-logical principles, such that alongside
the formal logical disciplines stand the parallel disciplines of formal
axiology and practice. The lectures on ethics do not contain any
systematically carried out phenomenological description of emotive-
valuing and volitional-acting consciousness. As Husserl said in his lecture
of 1911, here one winds up in a "true jungle of difficulties," a jungle with
"lurking behemoths."' However, the lecture course of 1914 contains a
short section on the phenomenology of willing. 8
The descriptive analyses of emotive and volitional consciousness
during the time of the lectures on ethics have an exploratory and extremely
fragmentary character. The terminology is still not fixed. The following
explication restricts itself to the main themes of Husserl's analysis of
willing-acting consciousness. 9
II. Historical Background to the Nachlass Texts on the

Phenomenology of Willing
Extensive analyses of volitional consciousness were performed in January

of 1910. There are about twenty manuscripts of various lengths. Husserl
put these texts together with a smaller number of analyses of emotive
consciousness into a collection with the title "Phenomenology of Feeling,
Desiring, Willing." 10 One cannot tell whether this collection was to form
"See Edmund Husserl, Vorlesungen iiber Ethik und .Wertlehre (1908-1914), ed. Ullrich Melle, Hua
XXVIII (Dordrecht, 1988).
7 Hua XXVIII, p. 205.
8Hua XXVIII, pp. 102-125.
"Needless to say with regard to my presentation ofHusserl's analyses of emotional consciousness

I have not been in any way exhaustive. For more detail cf. my "Objektivierende und nicht-
objektivierende Akte," in Husserl-Ausgabe und Husserl-Forschung, ed. Samuel IJsseling,
Phaenomenologica 115 (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1990), pp. 25-49.
'"At the top of the margin of the title sheet (Ms. A VI 7, 2a) there is to be found in blue pencil the
Husser! ian signature "Ph." The Ph-sheets were later paginated consecutively by Landgrebe. At the
(continued ...)
the basis of a publication. A few suggestive presentations of a

phenomenology of willing can be found in an extensive manuscript with
the title "Valuing and Value," a manuscript generated during this same
period and devoted above all to the analysis of feeling-valuing
consciousness. 11
In 1911 the short essay on the psychology of willing, "Motive and
Motivation" by Alexander Pfander, appeared. Pfander was the leading
representative of the so-called Munich Phenomenology. 12 Husserl accorded
great significance to this work. He not only prepared a very thorough
excerpt of it, but was also inspired by it to carry out a series of analyses of
volitional consciousness. Later Ludwig Langrebe compiled the resultant
manuscripts as the so-called Pfander-collection. 13 One of the texts in this
collection has the character of a beginning of an introduction, which would
suggest that Husserl composed these manuscripts with the view to
publishing them. In this introductory text Husserl writes ofPfander's work
that through deep and careful analyses, it leaves all that the previous
literature offered in terms of a description of the sphere of willing in its
wake. Yet it does not completely overcome the extraordinary difficulties
of the material and constitutes the beginning of a fundamental investigation
of the sphere of willing rather than its end. 14
A further series of manuscripts were produced at the beginning of
1914, manuscripts which, like the texts in the Pfander-Collection, are
(...continued)
present time we have been able to retrieve about about one-hundred Ph-sheets. Nevertheless the proper
place of several sheets is not clear. Originally there may have been well over one-hundred manuscript
sheets. Most of the Ph-sheets are to be found in Mss. A VI 7 and A VI 12 II.
11 This research manuscript bears the Husser! signature Q II. It encompasses exclusively appendix
sheets and one sheet with a partial table of contents for thirty-six sheets. With the exception of the last
and of the appended sheets all the sheets are to be found in Mss. A VI 7 and A VI 30.
12 Alexander Pflinder, "Motive und Motivation," in Miinchener Philosophische Abhandlung:
Theodor Lipps zu seinem sechzigsten Geburtstag gewidmet (Leipzig: 1911); for the English, see
Alexander Pfllnder, Phenomenology of Willing and Motivation, trans. by Herbert Spiegelberg
(Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1967), pp. 3-40.
130fthis Pflinder-Folder, which encompassed probably about sixty sheets, only forty sheets could
be retrieved. As a result, of course, the proper ordering of some pages is questionable. The pages are
to be found in the three Mss. A VI 3, A VI 30 and A VI I2 I. With regard to the Pflinder Folder, see
Karl Schuhmann, Die Dialektik der Phiinomenologie 1: Husser/tiber Pftinder, Phaenomenologica 56
(The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1973), pp. 94 ff.
14 A VI 3, 5.
174 ULLRICH MELLE
occupied with the problem of the relation of willing and inclination and
which, once more, were put together into a collection and given the title of
"Tendency" (Tendenz) by Landgrebe. IS An edition of these manuscripts on
the phenomenology of willing would yield a volume of the Husser/iana
with about 170 printed pages. Shorter presentations of the phenomenology
of willing can also be found in many other manuscripts that are related to
the general analysis of intellectual and emotive consciousness. The
presentation I offer here ofHusserl's analysis of volitional consciousness
will draw principally on the three collections mentioned and the section of
the phenomenology ofwilling from the 1914lecture course on ethics. But
first a few more remarks about other philosophers with whom Husser) was
in conversation.
Husserl's investigation of consciousness develops through an
engagement with Brentano's descriptive psychology. In his psychology
Brentano distinguishes three basic classes of psychic phenomena.
Representations belong to the first class, judgments to the second, and
feelings and acts of willing belong to the third. Brentano does not deny the
differences that obtain between feeling and willing, but between the
phenomena offeeling and willing there are, according to him, continuous
transitions, and these phenomena possess a common basic characteristic:
They relate to their objects either lovingly or hatefully. According to
Brentano, important analogies obtain between the second basic class of
judgments and the third basic class of phenomena of affective
consciousness and willing. A judgment is a recognition or rejection of the
object of representation with regard to its being, the motive and volitional
acts being a loving or hating of the object of representation. In the acts of
loving and hating, an analogical characteristic of insight corresponds to the
judgmental evidence. 16
In the Fifth of the Logical Investigations Husser) embarked upon a
penetrating critique and revision of Brentano 's doctrine of representation
as the foundation for all other acts of consciousness. Husserl's new
1'0fthe estimated fifty sheets of this collection (Konvoluts) at the present only about half of them
have been retrieved in Ms. A VI 12 I.

16For the classification of psychic phenomena see the rich explications in Franz Brentano, Vom
Ursprung sittlicher Erk2nntnis, ed. Oskar Kraus (Hamburg: Meiner, 1969), pp. 17-19.
fonnulation of Brentano' s psychic fundamental law stands at the end of a

complex argument. This new fonnulation goes: All non-objectifying acts
are founded in objectifying acts. 17 For Husserl, these objectifying acts are
representations and judgments; non-objectifying acts are emotive and
volitional acts as well as intellectual acts like questioning. 18 Accordingly,
for Husserl non-objectifying acts are secondary intentions. As valuing,
willing, and suggesting, these acts relate to objects and states of affairs that
are given to them through the founding acts of representing and judging.
In his later investigations of consciousness, Husser} does not rest content
with the detenninations of the Logical Investigations. Rather the later
analyses are developed and carried out as a substantive critical discusssion
with the basic descriptive detenninations of the Logical Investigations.
The distinction between objectifying and non-objectifying acts remains, for
Husserl, a basic problem of the description of consciousness.
In his descriptive investigations of emotive and volitional
consciousness, Husserl is guided by the idea of an analogy between the
structures of the basic types of consciousness. In his lectures on ethics
Husserl speaks of a "method of analogy."~ 9 Taking as the point of
departure the already investigated structures of the intellect, the parallel
and analogical structures of affective and volitional consciousness are to be
discovered and described. However, the parallel and analogy between the
basic types of consciousness is tied to manifold interlacing of types of
consciousness, and it this interlacing that poses great difficulties for
description. This is particularly true of volitional consciousness, not only
because it is in many ways founded in other acts, but also because the exact
demarcation of the sphere of willing already proves to be a difficult
problem.
From all of this it should be clear already that Husserl had no doubt
that willing could not be reduced to intellectual and emotive phenomena of
consciousness. At the very least, Husser} was quite familiar with two
reductive psychologies of willing: that of William James in the Principles
17See Edmund Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen, Vol. II., Part I, ed. Ursula Panzer, Hua XIX/I
(The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, pp. 513 ff.

111This last point is often overlooked. See for this Edmund Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen, Vol.
II, Part II, ed. Ursula Panzer, Hua XIX/2 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1984), p. 737 and 781.
'"Hua XXVIIl, p. 347.
176 ULLRICH MELLE
of Psychology,2° and that of Christian von Ehrenfels. Husserl took from

James the concept of fiat, a concept that plays an important role in
Husserl's own analyses. James' analyses have a clearly reductive
tendency: The will is reduced to prevailing representations and attention.
"The impelling idea is simply the one which possesses the attention." 21
"Will is the relation between the mind and its ideas."22 "The willing
terminates with the prevalence of the idea."23 "We thus find that we reach
the heart of our inquiry into violition when we ask by what process it is that
the thought of any given object comes to prevail stably in the mind." 24
Husserl underlined the following passage and alongside it in the margin
placed a nota bene: "The essential achievement of the will, in short, when
it is more 'voluntary,' is to attend to a difficult object and hold it fast before
the mind, the so-doing is the fiat; and it is a mere physiological coincidence
that when the object is thus attended to, immediate motor consequences
should ensue."25 And again on the following page he says: "Effort of
attention is thus the essential phenomenon ofwill."26 And two pages later
James gives a new formulation: "This strain of the attention is the
fundamental act ofwill."27 Yet James' volitional-psychological discussions
are not free of contradictions. Thus James also defines ''fiat" as "consent,"
as the following passage, which Husserl also underlined, shows: "There is
indeed the fiat, the element of consent, or resolve that the act shall ensue.
This doubtless, to the reader's mind, as to my own, constitutes the essence
20 William James, Principles of Psychology in two volumes (London, 1890). In Husserl's library
there can be found also the German translation of Principles of Psychology: William James,
Psychologie, trans. Marie Dllrr (Leipzig, 1909). The translation has no traces of having been read.
Husser) had read carefully the comprehensive review of Anton Marty in Zeitschrift for Psychologie
und Physiologie der Sinnesorgane, Vol. III, No.4, 1892, pp. 297-333. In Husserl's library there is an
annotated offprint of this review. In Husserl's copy of Principles of Psychology one minds numerous
references to the review by Marty.
21 Principles of Psychology, Vol. II, p. 559.
"Idem.
21 Ibid., p. 560.
24Ibid., p. 561.
25 Ibid., p. 561.
26Ibid., p. 562.
"Ibid., p. 564.
ofthe voluntariness of the act." 28 According to James, this "act of mental

consent," occurs when the antagonistic alternatives of behavior that are
represented mutually neutralize themselves. We will see that this
definition of the fiat as the "act of mental consent" is the one to which
Husserl orients his own definition of the fiat.
A second reductive volitional psychology that Husserl studied
intensively is that of Christian von Ehrenfels who, above all, is known as
one of the original proponents of Gestalt Psychology. As innumerable
underlinings, citations, and annotation show, Husserl read closely von
Ehrenfels' 1887 Habilitationschrift, which had the title "On Feeling and
Willing."29
Von Ehrenfels denies the existence of a basic psychic phenomenon of
desire, whereby desire is von his general concept for volitional phenomena.
For von Ehrenfels, desire is nothing but a special sort of process of
representation. For von Ehrenfels, as for James, desire consists in the
strength and power with which representations impose themselves on
consciousness. According to von Ehrenfels, representations struggle for
room in consciousness. Thus, pleasant representations get a boost. Von
Ehrenfels calls this the law of the relative increase of happiness and defines
desire with the help of this law:
Desire is a representation which is accompanied by a relative

demand of happiness and thereby is an accentuated representation
of the causal connection of an object with or separation of an
object from the present subjective reality. 30
III. Husserl's Analysis of Willing
For Husserl, practical acts, acts of willing, are indeed necessarily founded
in intellectual and emotive acts; they are in need of representing and
valuing acts as a basis; but these alone will never produce willing. For
28 /bid.,p. 564.
29Christian von Ehrenfels, Ober Fuhlen und Wollen: Eine psychologische Studie (Vienna, 1887).
30 /bid. p. 75.
178 ULLRICH MELLE
Husserl, practical intentionality indeed is a dependent, yet irreducible basic

type of intentionality.
In what follows I would like to take up four main themes in Husserl's
analysis of the will:
1. The founding of willing.

2. The types of willing.
3. The objectivities of willing.
4. The relation of will and inclination; in connection
with this I will touch upon the problem of the
demarcation of the sphere of willing.
Obviously these themes are connected to each other; therefore they cannot
be treated as completely separate from each other.
a. The Founding of Willing
In the ordinary sense, willing is directed toward something in the future

that is to be actualized through a creative act. Willing can only be directed
towards something in the future that is, ontologically speaking, real. It is
necessarily founded in the consciousness of what is practically possible, in
the consciousness of the "I can." The realm ofthe ideal as well as the past
are closed off to willing. 31 Willing presupposes a consciousness of what is
willed, and thus is founded in the representation of a future event, a
representation that is bound up with the consciousness of the "I can."
Indeed willing excludes a belief in the actuality of what is willed, but it
implies the belief in its actual becoming. Whoever wants something to
happen thereby also believes that it will happen, namely, that it will happen
through the creative, actualizing act. 32
What is willed must not only be represented, but it must also be given
a positive value. Willing is always directed toward an intended value.
Value is the motive of willing. According to Husserl, values are given to
31 For a discussion of the impossibility of willing the ideal, see the nuanced analyses in Hua XXVIII,
p. 106.
32 "The will is the will's certainty of the creating of the future." See the Pfllnder Folder, A VI, 3, 19a.
us in emotive acts. Therefore, willing always implies the emotive act of

valuing of a future event that is represented as practically possible. Thus
willing is itself the practical positing, the volitional positing of a creative
"So be it!"
Husserl devoted special attention to the relation between wishing and
willing. The question is whether wishing is a necessary constituent of
willing. In the 19141ectures on ethics Husser! thus writes: "Mere wishing
contains nothing of a willing; it contains nothing of the practical modalities
and is not itself a practical act, an act of the will in the broadest sense.'033
As is the case with willing, so wishing is also necessarily founded in
intellectual and emotive acts. But in contradistinction to willing, wishing
does not include the consciousness of practical realizability. Thus it can
even direct itself towards something that is known to be completely
unrealizable.
If what is wished for has the property of being practically possible,
wishing can become a willing- it can, but it need not. According to
Husser!, wishing must be distinguished from volitional urge, volitional
inclination. When what is wished for is represented as practically possible,
often all that emerges is a tendency, a propensity toward willing. But this
may eventually be blocked by an opposing inclination, or the ethical
conscience exhorts that I ought not follow this inclination. Husser! sees
here important analogies between willing and judging. In judgment too an
inclination to judge, a tendency to reach a judgment, often precedes the
concluding of a judgment.
Now, it seems certain that I cannot will something that I do not wish
for or desire. (Wishing and desiring are, for Husser!, often synonymous
expressions.)34 But according to Husser! this need not mean that an act of
wishing is contained in every willing as a founding component. It would
be, as Husser! says in the 1914 lecture, "irrational to will somethingthat is
not desirable, whether in itself or for the sake of something else. Thus an
J 3HuaXXVIII, p. 103.
the Pfllnder folder we find in one place the following determination of desire: "Desiring is a
J 4 ln
longing, a yearning, for something futural, indeed a wish that I have something, that something
pleasant or good might occur for me." (A VI 3, 31a)
180 ULLRICH MELLE
implication of reason is present."35 But that something is wished for need

not mean that it is presently wished. It can also mean that it is desireable.
Yet, in his earlier manuscript of 1910 on "Valuing and Values," Husser}
had still put it this way: "Thus the will is founded in wishing and through
wishing it is directed to something [held to be] good, and it is directed
toward this in the manner of a making or doing."36 And in an addendum to
the 1914 lectures on ethics Husser) again seems to assume such a founding
of willing in wishing and desiring: "The will does not belong to the series
of desiring acts Goy, wish), acts of reaching for ... But here something is
missing. The will is also a reaching for ..., but it introduces something
new that presumes a reaching for ... but is not itself a reaching for ...
(desiring, wishing): the fiat, the practical "it ought to be!'037 Moreover, an
interesting question not posed by Husser) is that of the type of act to which
the acts of wishing and desiring belong. If they are not acts of will, then in
the rubrics of classification they could only be feelings or emotions.
b. The Forms of Volitional Positing
Husser) distinguishes three essentially different types or forms of volitional

positing: the resolution or resolve, the fiat, and will-activity or will-action
(Handlungswille). We will first look at the last two forms in the case of
simple action, of the simple "I will and I do." As with every action, we
have an original impulse of the will, the fiat which is supported during its
entire course by a willing, a willing activity. So, we may ask, does the fiat
precede the action, and must it be distinguished from the beginning of the
action? The fiat would then be founded in a mere representation of action.
"It just so happens that in real action, the fiat imparts practical agreement
to this representation."38 According to Husser} it is difficult to decide this
question descriptively. He finally comes to the conclusion that willing as
fiat immediately and constantly passes over into willing as action, and that
both are only able to be abstractly separated from one another. There is no
15 HuaXXVIII, p. I05.
16A VI 7, Sa.
HHua XXVIII, pp. !56 fT.
38See A VI 3, 2la.
further inaugural moment lying between the fiat, on the one hand, and the
unity of will-action and the perception of the process that proceeds from it,
on the other hand. Thus there is no presentation of action at the basis of the
fiat, but only a presentation of a process, which does not yet have the
character of an action.
The fiat is an empty intention of the will that immediately passes over
into constant fulfillment by the acting will. 39 But this willing is itself a
constant relation of fulfillment. 40 In every phase of action we have a
creative moment that gives to its correlative phase of an action the
character of a creatively realized present. Every such creative moment is
always surrounded by continual perspectival profiles, profiles of the past
creative moment and of the volitional moments that are directed toward the
material of the action that lies in the future.
The deed is in each moment (in each phase of the deed) in a certain
manner directed to the corresponding phase of the action. In the creative
moment, in the practical positing, this moment is posited. But the willing
goes through this positing and, in so far as it penetrates it, it is directed to
the subsequent positings and through these to the furrther ones until the end
of the action. 41
Thus the practical positing that occurs at every moment also traverses
the adumbrations of the future volitional moments and is directed, until the
activity ceases, toward the future phases of the action. Living in the
consiousness of action, the prospect of the will traverses the phase of
action, which has the character of the creatively actualized present, toward
the to-be-realized future of the process. Thus during an action we have an
intention ofthe will that constantly maintains itself as an empty intention
that simultaneously constantly acquires the fullness of satisfaction through
a constantly creative positing. 42
39 "Mit dernfiat setzt die Handlung ein und in seinem Sinn l!!uft sie ab, immerfort von dem sich
forterstreckenden und erfilllenden Willen getragen." (A VI I211, l59a)

'"For an analysis of the will-action (Handlungswi/lens) see Hua XXVIII, p. I 09-112.
41 SeeA VI 1211, l99b. SeealsoHuaXXVIII, p. 110.
42 "Das Wollen ist injedem Moment des Tuns Willensintention: Dasselbe sagt das Wort Streben.
Das Streben ist die leere Willens intention; das kreative Wollen, das praktisch-schilpferisch setzende,
ist das volle <Wollen>. der blossen Intention im stetig vorangeneden Moment and der stetig
vorangehenden volunt:tren Form Uberhaupt. Die Willensintention erh!llt sich stetig (sofern sie
(continued ... )
182 ULLRICH MELLE
Yet we now confront the question of that towards which the intention
of the will and the positing of the will are directed. On the noetic side, the
fiat is immediately followed by the willing that carries along the action and
by the perception of the action as an objective process. This process
appears and constitutes itself in perception. But then, does not the willing
primarily produce the perception of the process, and is not the intention of
the will thus directed toward a future perception, or even toward the future
willing of the future perception?
In a manuscript from the collection titled "Tendency," Husser) takes
up this problem with a dramatic example.
If I want to give someone a slap in the face, then the actualization

of the will calls as an end-point for the perception of the
accomplished slap in the face. But the will is not directed toward
a perception as its goal (perception founds the fulfillment of the
will with which the goal is reached, but is not itself the goal). The
goal is the slapping someone in the face. 43
Of course, instead of being directed to a process that is to be creatively

actualized, the will can be directed to a perception and cognition of some
objective thing.
There is also a form of the positing of the will that can be directed to
a future willing and acting. It is the third essential form of the positing of
the will along with the fiat and volitional activity: the plan or resolve or
making of a resolution (Vorsatz). Planning and making a resolution are not
actually creative positings of the will; they are directed to a future event
that is to be creatively actualized. With plans and resolutions it is a matter
of completely unfulfilled intentions of the will that are fulfilled in a future
action. 44 But in following Husser! we must now "sharply distinguish the
(... continued)
unrealisiert bleibt) als Intention und erhlllt zugleich stetig FOlie der Befriedigung im stetig kreativen
Setzen." A VI 12 II, 200a)
43See the Folder "Tendency," A VI 12 I, 168b. The proper place of this page within this folder is
not fully certain.

44 "Der fiat ist wil!entlich der Anfang der Handlung, leitet sie notwendig ein, gehllrt zu ihrem
willentliclum Wesen. Es ist der 'Springpunkt' der Handlung und ohne Springpunkt keine Handlung.
(continued ... )
relation of the will to the future event and the 'Become!' which is directed
to the future event, from the relation of the will to future willing or future
acting."45 A plan would thus be based only upon the representation of the
future process toward which the practical positing of the "So be it!" would
then be directed. But, as Husserl must admit, things here are not so simple.
The "So be it!" of the plan can only mediately bring about the future
process, namely by means of the future fiat and volitional action. Yet,
according to Husserl, it nevertheless remains that the volitional positing of
the process is directed toward the desired process and not toward the
willing of the process. "It is only through reflection that we learn that the
creative aspect in willing which is directed toward a future stretch of time
necessarily goes beyond the proper theme of willing."46 As Husserl
correctly remarks, here we find "very difficult relations that one must ever
again think through."47
When it is a matter of an action that fulfills a plan or resolution, a
recollection of the plan preceeds the fiat. "The recollected will (as resolve)
undergoes a 'fulfilling' identification through a newly posited creative will
that is posited as having the identical meaning."48
According to Husserl, the relation between simple action and action as
the fulfilling of an intended plan has its analogy in intellectual
consciousness: simple intuitive judgment just says "It is!" But on the other
hand, if the intuitive judgment steps forward as the confirmation of an
originally empty intention; it says affirmatively "It really is thus."
However, as opposed to simple judgment, simple action is already the
constant fulfillment of volitional intentions that inhabit action itself. The
analogue is here rather the self-developing perception in which the object
constantly shows itself from all sides.
(...continued)
Der blosse Vorsatz ist das Gegenbild der Handlung, es ist der 'leere' Entschluss, der in der wirklichen
Handlung seine Erftlllung findet, und somit vor allem in dem einleitendenjiat, dem nun die Handlung
zu folgen hat." (A VI 12 II, 202b)
45Hua XXVIII, p. 108.
46/bid., p. 109.
41Jdem.
A VI 12 II, 206a.
48
184 ULLRICH MELLE
The distinction between simple action and action as the carrying out of
a plan is an initial, important distinction in the typology of action. In his
manuscripts, Husser! took up still other distinctions, like that between
simple and composite, mediate and immediate actions. A very important
distinction is between the arbitrary and non-arbitrary. I will come upon this
distinction later when I will speak about the relationship between will and
tendency. According to Husser!, the distinctions among the various types
of actions are based upon the distinctions in volitional orientation and not
just different gradations of attentiveness.
c. Objectivities of the Will
One of the most difficult problems in the phenomenological analysis of

constitution is the problem of non-natural, or, as Husserls says, extra-
essential determinations of objects, their various types, and how these are
constituted in consciousness. These include doxic qualities, temporal
modes, axiological determinations, emotional colorings, the sign and image
character of an object, and even wish and volitional characteristics.
According to Husserl all these are determinations of what is objectively
given and can be validly or invalidly predicated of it. Thus, e.g., an object
may be phenomenally-objectively characterized as a tool or a process as an
action. Apparently they are immediately perceived as so characterized, just
as the colors of an object are. Nevertheless these characteristics are
radically different from the natural qualities of the object. They originate
from different constitutive sources than such qualities. An object is
originally constituted as having natural qualities in receptive, sensuous
perception. How are the non-natural determinations of an object
constituted? "What is that new noetic element that belongs to the
consciousness of appearing, to the consciousness of the perception? What
is woven together with it when a process becomes action?" 49
In his general analysis of intentional acts in the Fifth Logical
Investigation, Husser! distinguishes between the matter and the quality of
an act. The matter is the part of the act that gives the act its objective
reference, and indeed in its complete material definiteness. The matter not
"A VI 3, 23a.
only establishes that the act grasps the object "but also as what it grasps it,
the properties, relations, categorial forms, that it itself attributes to it."50
The qualitative part of the act determines then in which manner the act
relates to what is objectivity given through the matter in the 'how' of its
determinations. "Quality determines ... whether what is already 'made
presentable' in definite fashion is intentionally present as wished, asked,
posited in judgment etc."51
Later, instead of material and quality, Husser) most often speaks of
apperception or apprehension on the one side, and positing, thesis, and
taking a position on the other side. In the Sixth Logical Investigation he
introduces a concept of representation in which material in the sense of
apprehension is only a part. At the same time there belongs to
representation the apprehended content of sensation and the form of the
apprehension which determines "whether the object is merely signitive or
intuitive or represented in some sort of mixture. The differences between
perceptual representation and fantasy representation also belong here."52
The apprehensional sense, the form of apprehension, and position-
taking are three different forms of intentionality and constitutive activity
that have correlatively different sorts of object-determinations. So,
according to Husserl's analyses in the Logical Investigations, the
characterization of an object as a sign or image is the objective correlate of
a specific form of apprehension of a perceptual act; the qualification of a
represented object as being probable is the objective correlate of a doxic
position-taking.
Still another basic form of constitution must be mentioned, namely that
of the creative production of a state of affairs in judging. As is well-
known, in the Logical Investigations Husser! did not make a very
convincing attempt to subsume the categorial acts under the schema of
content and apprehension. But it already becomes clear there that involve
categorial acts an essentially different form of intentionality and
constitution than perception. In an explicitly accomplished predicative
judgment a new object is produced in the form of a ramified state of affairs.
"'Hua XIX/I, p. 430.

51 Jbid., p. 429.
52 Hua XIX/2, p. 624.

186 ULLRICH MELLE
Judging is a creative constituting which, however, is, in the last instance,

referred to the receptive constitution of perception.
Husserl found no definitive answer to the question ofthe constitution
of axiological or volitional determinations. Do these determinations stand
on the same level with sensible-perceptual qualities, or are they new, non-
doxic thetic characters; or are they related to the creative production of
thinking? On the one hand, Husserl sought to grasp what concerns the
constitution of axiological determinations by means of analogies to
sensible qualities. Correspondingly, there is supposed to be an evaluating
perception (Wertnehmung), a value-taking, which is analogous to the
perception (Wahrnehmung) upon which it is founded. On the other side,
he also understands emotive valuing as a new form of position-taking over
against the doxic position-taking, a new form of position-taking whereby
the axiological determinations would be thetic characters. 53
The constitutive analysis of volitonal-practical determinations and
objectivities is particularly difficult. In the first place, there are obviously
different sorts of practical objects: tools, goods, means and ends, actions.
For the most part, in his manuscripts, Husserllimits himself to the analysis
of the constitution of action. Can one put the character of action on the
same level with axiological determinations? Husserl asks, "But is it not
clear that the character of action is of a completely different sort in the way
it depends 'on' the object than the character of beauty, pleasantness,
etc. ?"54 It seems to be quite impossible to understand willing in analogy
with perception and valuing as the apperception of specific volitional
sensations whereby a process would then be given and characterized as an
action. Therefore, Husserl always understands willing as a specific sort of
positing and position-taking. Willing takes a position vis-a-vis a
represented process; it posits a process as an imperative and a creatively
evolving process. But is the character of action thereby constituted?
In the manuscript on "Valuing and Value" Husserl contrasts his older
understanding in the Logical Investigations with a new understanding. In
the Logical Investigations the acts of will belong to the non-objectivating
acts, to secondary intentions. As such, they convey materials for
53 For this see Ullrich Melle, "Objektivierende und nicht-objektivierende Akte," op. cit., pp. 41-47.
54 A VI, 30, p. 25b.
objectivations, but are not themselves objectivation. The character of

action is ultimately a determination of reflexion. First we have the
empirical apperception of the process, then the willing that produces the
process, and finally a new apperception directed to the will and the process,
an apperception that grasps the process as proceeding from the will. The
alternative understanding to which Husser) feels drawn, even when, as he
says, it goes very much against the grain, is as follows:
The consciousness of a creative effecting is built upon a sensible,

empirical apperception through which the process is constituted,
a consciousness that voluntarily animates the process. And this
consciousness is a consciousness of action, of deeds. I have no
need of a further objectivization. Here is the element in which
intending lives, and it suffices in order to say then, in a logical
apperception, 'This is an action.' 55
It is not clear here whether Husser) is speaking from the point of view
of the person acting or of the person externally observing the action. In his
analyses, Husser), by the way, does not go into this difference any further.
For Husserl, action is originally constituted in acting. That means it is
constituted in the fiat, in the action-willing, and in the perception of the
action-process. According to the new understanding, when I will and act,
the process is immediately given to me as an action without any reflection
on the willing. For the external observer, this means that in order to see a
process as action, he does not need to feel his way into some alien willing
or to perform a reflection in empathy. Nevertheless, there remains the
question of how the observer comes to the consciousness of a creative
effecting and how he is aware of what kind of consciousness this is: Is it
an apperception, or an apprehensional form of the founding perceptual
apprehension, or is it a position-taking, a positing?
55 A VI 30, p. 235b.
188 ULLRICH MELLE
IV. Will and Tendency
At the middle of the analysis of the will found in the "Tendency"-

Collection and the Pfander-Collection is the question ofthe relation of will
and inclination. In the two manuscript pages that perhaps represent a
beginning of an introduction to the Pfander-Collection, Husser) observes
that the difference between spontaneity and receptivity permeating, in a
parallel manner, all types of acts is the difference that "ever anew gives rise
to confusions and especially makes more difficult our penetrating into the
essence of the specifically rational will. " 56 As Husser! writes later on, in
every type of act there are "possible different mixtures of spontaneity, and
everywhere spontaneity can pass over into receptivity, and vice versa."57
Receptivity then leads still further back into "the hinterlands
(Hintergriinde) where we really can no longer speak of either spontaneity
or receptivity." 58 Along with the opposition between receptivity and
spontaneity, Husserl also speaks of an opposition between sensibility and
understeanding, between passivity and activity, between latent and patent
consciousness, between unthematic and thematic consciousness. These
oppositions, which are by no means identical, serve Husser! as the
fundamental principles for his analysis of consciousness. Discovered,
developed, and contentually concretized, Husser! first used these
oppositonal schemata in the description of intellectual consciousness.
According to the method of analogy, he then used these schemata as the
guiding thread in the analysis of axiological and volitional consciousness.
Until now we have only occupied ourselves with the wholly conscious, the
spontaneous, active and patent will and its forms. But are there also forms
of the unconscious or preconscious, passive will?
Husser! opposes drive and activity of a drive as the passivity of the
will to genuine and free willing.
When it is a question of the activity of"drive," one can speak of a mere
drive, and of a being driven toward an end if the end is represented along
with it. . . In voluntary activity, in action, the very same doing is made
56A VI 3, p. 5b.
57/dem.
'"Idem.
present in the resolve; but it functions as "resolution"; an "I will"

proceeding from the I achieves an active thesis .. .59
The instinctive deed occurs unintentionally; the I does not accompany
it. Husser! often mentions breathing as an example of such an instinctive
deed. Breathing is a non-voluntary, yet subjective happening. "It is not a
mere process, rather in playing itself out it is a relaxation of tendencies and
a new exertion, a blind drive that works itself out and does so without
involving my will." 60 An act of the I can then direct itself towards
breathing in a twofold manner: The I can attentively take note of
breathing, or the I can arbitrarily and consciously breathe; it can also
intentionally intervene in breathing: It can slow or accelerate breathing.
The difference between passively-following-a-drive without really
willing and willful resolution is of great significance for the question of
volitional reason. Thus, the genuine will is a purporting or "meaning to
do ... " that can be demonstrated as rational, as correct.
As a purporting or 'meaning to do ... ,' willing indeed is directed
toward the deed, and it implies that it is esteemed as good and that it exists.
As a willing it itself aims at a being in the mode of realization. But it has
its motives. The motivating evaluing can be incorrect. And the
fundamental judgment of the circumstances itself can be incorrect. In that
case the will taken purely in itself would not be called into question but
rather the total phenomenon, the willing with its founding stratum. But the
willing, in that it directs itself, itself thereby assumes something. The
directing-itself concerns the willing in its "interior." Willing fulfills itself
in the action, but it corrects itself through the evaluation of its motives. 61
The will must affirm itself over against the drives, tendencies, and
stimuli. So Husser) says that the will itself can be carried out in various
degrees of strength and depth. A weak will does not maintain itself against
drives: It is subjected to them; they drag it along and it lets itself be
dragged along. Husserl called the passive following of a drive a passive
willing. Husser! makes the terminological distinction between mere deed
as following from drives and activity as the carrying out of an intention.
"Pfllnder Folder, A VI 12 I, p. 129a.

60 Jbid., A VI I2 I, p. 130b.
61 lbid. A VI 3, 42b.
190 ULLRICH MELLE
"Drives are directed, but they have no intentions."62

The question is whether the understanding of drives as a passive
willing makes sense. Elsewhere Husserl even speaks of drives as blind
desire. But as we learned above, desire is not a willing, but it rather at most
it tied up with a willing.
According to Husserl, there are still other forms of inattention that lie
between the so-called complete volitional passivity of drives and the active
will. When I am occupied with a theoretical task, I can, in the background
of my consciousness address my fiat or non-fiat to an impulse, as for
example, the impulse to smoke a cigarette. In contradistinction to the
drive, the will is here already present, albeit latently, in the background.
The transition from a latent act of the will into a patient act of the will is
therefore also of a completely different sort than the introduction of
volitional impulses into an instinctually occurring event.
As the description of consciousness now shows, the mode of tendency,
oftendential striving,63 belongs to consciousness in all its basic types such
that according to Husserl we must distinghish a double concept of
intentionality: There is intentionality in the sense of consciousness-of and
there is intentionality in the sense of striving, of tendency. 64 This double
concept of intentionality corresponds to a double concept of fulfillment:
fulfillment through the satisfaction of a striving, and fulfillment by passing
over to evident givenness. Tendency is not only a phenomenon of the non-
ego logical, passive life of consciousness. In every accomplished act qua
accomplishment, an inclination is set in motion, an inclination lives itself
out and is fulfilled in a further accomplishment. As Husser! notes in a
manuscript from the Pfander-Collection, "The central question is now the
question of the relationship of the will and tendency." 65 Is every tendency
a volitional mode? "If so, then willing would lie in every act. Willing
would have no content peculiar to it, it would be a general mode of
62 From the Folder, "Tendenz," A VI 12 I, p. 230a.

630'1n each act-achievement there lies an achievement, a tendency is released." ("Tendenz" Folder,
A VI 12 I, p. 208a)
,,."We have therefore intention as position-taking and intention as tendency, a tension to be released
[Spannung zu scheiden]. ("Tendenz"-Folder, A VI 12 I, p. 29b.)
65 Pfllnder-Folder, A VI 12 I, 152b.
consciousness."66 This would obviously have far-reaching consequences

for Husserl 's concept of consciousness, his classification of types of acts
and his analysis of founding relations.
Yet here one must, as did Husserl, distinguish drive as blind impulse
from the tendency towards accomplishment found in an act. The tendency
that lives in an attentive orientation and is strivingly directed toward a
deepening of the orientation is still not a desire toward the deepened
orientation. Likewise, the tendency that, in the achievement of a judgment,
is strivingly directed toward completing this achievement, is not an impulse
toward the completion of this achievement. But is this not tendency also
an unconscious striving? And is not the relation of willing to tendency the
same as that to drive? Elsewhere Husserl himself often uses the
expressions "drive" and "tendency" as synonyms. Indeed, the will can
dispatch its volitional impulses into events stemming from drives as well
as tendencies and thereby transform these events into willful actions, or it
can address its willful negation in order to inhibit the course of the
corresponding activities and accomplishements.
Now, even if tendency is an unconscious striving, the achievements in
which tendency works itself out need not be an unconscious striving. The
explicit orientation and/or articulate achievement of a judgment are free,
spontaneous and active deeds of the I. How does this spontaneity fit in
with an unconscious striving, and how does this spontaneity fit in with
genuine willing? Is all reason, as is said in Experience and Judgment, also
practical reason? In §48 of Experience and Judgment Husserl draws a
parallel betwen cognitive activity and practical action. He thereby
establishes that cognitive striving has, "structurally, a precise analogy with
an action that is externally realized." 67 Even in Ideas I,§ 121, Husser! finds
it necessary to recognize that every thesis has the character of a free
spontaneity and activity, and that its point of initiation is thus something
like the fiat, the point of initiation of willing and activity. But then again
Husserl says: One must not mix up the universal and the specific.
Spontaneous resolving, the voluntary deed that is carried out is just one act
among other acts; its syntheses are specific as compared to others. But
,,."Tendenz" Folder, A VI 12 I, 206b.

67 Edmund Husser!, Erfahrung und Urtiel, p. 235; trans., Experience and Judgment, 200-201.
192 ULLRICH MELLE
every act, whatever sort it may be, can arise in the mode of spontaneity of
the so-called creative beginning in which the pure I has its commencement
as a subject of spontaneity. 68 Husser) tries to stick to his classification of
acts of consciousness, but it in fact becomes evident, as Husser) writes in
the introduction to the Pfander-Collection, that "the general investigation
of the possible structures of willing is in need of the difficult investigations
of the general structures of consciousness, since the correct demarcation of
the shapes of consciousness that the word 'will' is supposed to characterize
is hardly an obvious matter." 69
The problem of the relationship between will and tendency and the
problem of the demarcation of the sphere of will are of great significance
for Husserl's concept of consciousness. The description of consciousness
found in the Logical Investigations suggests a static-geological image of
three mutually founded levels of consciousness: at the depest level is
representation and judgment. Upon this is built the level of valuative
feelings and then upon this level is the level of willing. But if all
consciousness has the character of a striving-willing intentionality, then
this obviously signifies a basic modification of this static concept of
consciousness. Instead of being rendered in the geographic or geological
images of a terrain or as strata lying on top of one another, consciousness
would be better viewed through the biological image of life. In the
fragmentary analyses of the manuscripts here in question, one does not find
such a voluntaristic concept of consciousness formulated and worked out.
Instead Husser) tries, in accordance with the above citation from Ideas I,
to prevent the infiltration and occupation of intellectual and emotive
consciousness by willing. But it is perhaps in these analyses that one finds
the first seeds ofHusserl's later ethical-metaphysical voluntarism.
"'Edmund Husser!, /deen zu einer reinen Phiinomenologie und phiinomenologishcen Phi/osophie,

Erstes Buch, new ed. Karl Schuhman, Hua III.l (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1976), 281 ff.
69 A VI 3, Sa.
Chapter 11
The Summum Bonum and

Value-Wholes: Aspects of a
Husserlian Axiology and Theology
James G. Hart
Indiana University
I. Introduction
For Husserl, values are noematic correlates of acts of evaluation, i.e., acts
which often are encompassed under "emotions" and "feelings." These acts
and their value-correlates are founded in the sense that they rest on
ontifying acts, acts in which a categorial determination of the things in the
world is constituted. Appreciation of something requires that there be
something to appreciate. Whether Husser) held finally that we frrst engaged
things denuded of all value properties and then slapped value properties
upon them seems quite unlikely. Rather he came to emphasize a kind of
primacy of a sense of will which caused him to maintain that nothing
crosses our experience which is completely value free or indifferent to this
elemental sense of will. At this level we have a coincidence of the
elemental nisus of passive synthesis and the pre-categorial. Thus, within
the existential context of this elemental sense of will, what I have
elsewhere called the "general will," he gave up the theory of"adiaphora,"
i.e., value-neutral experiences. This sense of will, which is the teleological
nisus of passive synthesis, must be contrasted with evaluation as well as
will in the proper sense of the Fiat, i.e., doing (or ceasing to do) something,
as an action, promise, decision, resolve, etc.
Formal axiology is an eidetic reflection on the formalities of the
relationship between the values and the evaluating acts, between the values
193
J. G. Hart and L. Embree (eds.), Phenomenology of Values and Valuing, 193-230.
194 JAMES G. HART
themselves, and between the acts themselves. It, as aformale Praktik, is

analogous to formal logic. 1 Thus axiology prescinds from any particular
actual agent or will and regards the ideal possibilities and what is apriori
necessary in terms of what is good or what is not good, the relationships
between the good and what would be the practically best, etc. 2 It is not
that people, like logic machines, always evaluate and act unfailingly
axiologically; but rather that if people are attuned to the motions of their
heart, they would in fact acknowledge that axiology expresses the
formalities of purity of heart-even when it comes to the inherently
obscure and complex dimensions. Furthermore, formal axiology arises out
of the material evaluing, the first-order Besinnung and Selbstbesinnung,
which is the ethical reflection and what might be called a material axiology.
II. Value-comparison, -Increase, -Summation
Values as typically enjoyed are unique (and difficult-to-determine)

properties of objects experienced within world. World in this sense is
neither a property nor an object. As the horizon of horizons it does not have
an external horizon; and as horizon of all things it is not a thing and
therefore does not have an internal horizon or apperceived, meant, but not
given sides. The sense in which it itself may be or have value will be
postponed. Because world is the indeterminate horizon of experience our
experience of values is always within this open-ended infinity. An
elemental principle of axiology is that "It is reasonable to prefer what is
regarded as good to what is regarded as bad." (Hua XXVIII, 91)3 Our
experience of values is often, if not always, a comparative experience in
1For a sketch, cf. my "Axiology as the Form of Purity of Heart," in Philosophy Today (1990) and
The Person and the Common Life (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1992), ch. II, §6 and ch. IV, passim. I would
like to thank Professor Samuel Usseling, Director of the Husser! Archives in Louvain, for permission
to quote from Husserl's Nachlass.
2See Edmund Husser!, Vorlesungen uber Ethik und Werlehre (1908-1914), Husserliana XXVIII,
ed. Ullrich Melle (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1992). Hereafter Hua XXVIII. Cf. also Alois Roth, Edmund
Husserls Ethische Untersuchungen (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1960).
3See Hua XXVIII, 90-91. At the outset we may note that Husser! openly acknowledges his debt to
Franz Brentano's "geniale Schrift," Vom Ursprung sittlicher Erkenntnis (Hamburg: Felix Meiner,
1955. The Origin ofOur Knowledge ofRight and Wrong, trans. Roderick M. Chisholm and Elizabeth
Schnewind (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1969).
THESUMMUNBONUMAND VALUE-WHOLES 195
which the possibility of increase and decrease is acknowledged as well as

the possibility of comparison with other values. Of course we cannot
compare all values in the broadest sense and in every respect nor can we
admit a relationship of increase between all of them. What we can
compare at least are values which belong to the same value-region, i.e.,
those that admit to a certain kind of homogeneity. An example of the
heterogeneous is the case of comparing what exists and is good with an
aesthetic good which does not really exist, but exists only as, e.g., a fiction.
To say that one of the goods was more desireable than the other or one of
the goods delighted more than the other (Hua XXVIII, 90-91) is to compare
what does not admit of the necessary commonness of kind.
This point of Husserl is strengthened when one considers his view that
there is an important distinction between values which he calls goods and
values of beauty. The positing of the value of beauty is indifferent to
whether that to which beauty is ascribed exists or not. Thus it is irrelevant
for the value of the beauty of a portrait whether the represented person who
is intended by my gaze exists or not, ever existed, or is merely a fiction.
This stands in contrast to the value of goods in which case the existential
positing is essential to the appreciative attitude. For this Husserl uses the
example of a kilogram of radium. This radium which I make present might
well seem, because of its enormous capacity for energy, of great value. But
if its existence is posited in phantasy in a modified way then its value
appreciation is modified also. In which case we would say, "'A kilogram
radium would be a great value-good.' We have a good when the good
thing exists" (F I 12, 40a-40b ).
We experience values of the same value region in relationships with
three possibilities: they are "equal," "more," or "less." In general, if we
have values belonging to comparable or the same value-regions, if some of
these are equal to, greater than, or less than other comparable values, then
they are equal to, greater than, or less than those values with which their
comparable values stand in (comparable) relationships. Thus if A is greater
than B, and B greater than C, then A is greater than C. If A is equal to B,
and B equal to C, then it is equal to C. And if A is less than B, and B less
than C, then A is less than C. (Hua XXVIII, 21 ff.)
196 JAMES G. HART
Husserl, in modifying Brentano's principle of summation, 4 states that

"The existence of a good [G] alone is better than when, at the same time,
there exists this good, and in addition, that of an evil [U]." And, "The
existence together of any two goods whatever is better than the existence
of one of them alone." And, "The existence of a good and an evil at the
same time is better than that of the evil alone." Or more formally, where E
designates an existential proposition, G a good, and U an evil:
E (G)> E (G + U).
E (G + U) > E (U).
E (G + G,) > E (G) and> E (G 1).
Formal Axiology also dictates that the existential sum of two equal-value
goods is worth twice as much as the existence of one alone. Further, the
collective existence of four equal-value goods is worth twice as much as
two of them, etc.
In making these considerations we weigh goods which are
contemporary with one another. We also can consider goods which exist
not merely at the same temporal point but at different points of time. In
addition, Husser! notes, we can consider goods which can be joined by
considering how they cause or derive from one another. And this is an
analogous form of summation. Let us look at these briefly. A good (G) can
have the effect[-+ (F)] of something evil (u) and something evil can have
the effect of something good (g). Thus we can have:
E (G -+ Fu, and E (U)-+ Fg.

E (G) -+ Fg > E (G) -+ Fu.
E (G) -+ Fg > E (G).
Or: An existing good with a consequence of good is greater than this

existing good with the effect of evil and it is greater also than merely this
existing good. 5
'See Franz Brentano, Von Ursprung, 27 and 37; trans., 28,40-41.

5For what precedes, see F I 24; and Roth, 93-94; and Hua XXVIIl, 93-94.
THE SUMMUN BONUM AND VALUE-WHOLES 197
In general we can say that the value of something is determined in a

manifold way with respect to its own value-grounding moments as well as
with respect to its connections to the other things, results or consequences
which derive from it. Thus there is a kind of value-contextuality and
relativity in as much as contexts and consequences are factors which figure
into the "axiological whole."6
III. Value-Wholes and Their Components
This leads Husserl to discuss the distinctive relations between value-wholes

and their components. Value-wholes would initially seem to be ways in
which the law of summation is evident. Yet, as we shall see, there are some
value-wholes that are not cases of summation. In general, "the value of a
part confers a relative value on the whole" (Hua XXVIII, 77). Husser!
observes that there are parts whose value-properties emerge only when they
are separated from the whole. In such a case the whole gains its value only
with the possibility of the part being separated from the whole. If there is
not this possibility, then the whole is deprived of this (possibly) transferred
value. Husserl gives an example from a fairy tale: The gold on the sun
does not give to the sun any use-value because it is not separable from the
sun and not applicable to the ends on account of which gold is valuable.
(Hua XXVIII, 77)
It is clear that parts or properties can confer on wholes a value. "If a
property is valuable, so also is each object having it valuable because of
this property" (Hua XXVIII, 77). And the parts need not be independent
parts (pieces), but they may also be non-independent parts (moments).
Thus properties like a lovely color or a pleasing shape, which are moments
which cannot exist independently of the whole, can confer on the whole
object a value. In general, of wholes that are mere sums, i.e., where their
values are derived solely from the value of the parts, it can be said:
"Derived values lose their derivation-value when the value-grounding
characters or parts have lost their value-grounding character through
change" (Hua XXVIII, 77-78).
6 See F I 24, 296; in Roth, 97.

198 JAMES G. HART
The chief distinction Husser) makes in regard to value-wholes and their

components is the following: On the one hand, if the components of a
value-whole themselves are of value, and not of a value merely by being
parts of the value-whole, then they may, as parts of a whole, contribute to
the formation of a whole the value of which is the unity and sum of the
parts. In which case we have the general laws of summation: A sum of
goods is better than an individual good of this sum and any summational
lessening of this sum. Or the summational partial good is less value than
the summational whole comprised out of these goods. (Hua XXVIII, 97)
On the other hand, if the parts of the whole are bound into the whole
in a unique way, so that they reciprocally influence one another, then we
have the result that the whole is not merely the sum of the parts, but a
unique product that is more than the sum of the parts. In this latter case we
have a whole that is dependent and founded on the parts-as of course, is
the whole which is the sum and unity-but it is not simply composed or
made up of these parts as a sum or unity is. Rather, the whole is
"composed" of the parts in the way we speak of a musical composition. In
this latter case we may say that the value of the whole is not simply
transferred from the value of the founding parts to all of them taken
together, i.e., to their sum, but rather the value of the whole is a new
production. That is, it is not of value merely thanks to the parts' value, but
because of their unique interworking and working together there is a new
value produced which exceeds the good of the parts merely summed
together. (He also names this the "law of production.") In the case of the
whole of the mere sum we have a value-whole which is completely derived
from the pre-existing value-units of the parts. In the case of the value-
whole which is a new product, the value-whole is, of course founded in the
parts, but it is not accounted for merely as a derivation from the pre-
existing parts. Husser) insists that in this latter case we have an axiological
unity which in no way is a result of the parts being brought together
through summation (Hua XXVIII, 96). The reasons are manifold but the
obvious one is that in this case of a novel axiological unity the whole
exceeds the value of the parts simply taken all together. Here the whole is
more than the sum of the parts.
Husser) believes that the harmony of sounds and of colors in musical
compositions and paintings provides us with fitting examples. These
hannonies make it clear that the (novel) value of the whole is not merely
a transference of the parts to the whole. Components, such as sense-values
and feeling-values necessarily contribute to the total value but they are not
the sufficient conditions for the value-whole. They, he notes, do not put it
together. They found it only as something which stands over against them
as essentially new. Consider the elements that are capriciously thrown
together. In that case, each keeps its content and its intrinsic value-
character. Such a whole would, indeed, have a kind of summation-value,
but this stands in contrast to the whole of, e.g., a musical composition.
Clearly the latter loses its distinctive value if the parts are chaotically
thrown together. In contrast, The beautiful and the ugly, the good and the
bad can ground an axiological unity, indeed they can ground a positive
value which is not banned by the co-givenness of the bad. The leaving out
of an unpleasant element or complex of elements can lower rather than
elevate the positive value of harmony. And, similarly, the elimination of
what is in itself beautiful, or the substitution of what is less beautiful, can
elevate the value of the whole instead of lowering it, etc. Thus we have a
case of:
G+G 1 <G,
G + U > G, instead of< G (Hua XXVIII, 96).
IV. Personalities of a Higher Order as Unique Value-Wholes
For the purposes of this paper, an important exemplification of what

Husser( means by a unique value-whole is the community in its proper
sense. Human associations like nations, ethnic groups, nation-states, cities,
crowds, fellow travellers, professional colleagues, villages, kin, friendships,
families, etc. are frequently referred to as forms of "community," but
Husser( reserves a special sense for this term. The kind of social
arrangements which best exemplify what he means by community are
friends, teams, families, certain kinds of small social-political assemblies
as towns and villages, and certain kinds of religious orders and communes.
There is here, in Aristotle's words, a "life in common" pursuing common
goods. Furthermore, it would seem that members of such a group have a
200 JAMES G. HART
special entitlement to say "we." In such a grouping there is a reciprocity of

agency and perception such that my act and his activity at the same time
are a complex act which only in part is immediately from him and only in
part immediately done by me or to be done by me. In a higher founded
sense the total action and achievement is mine and also his, even though
each acts for himself immediately "in his share" of the matter and achieves
a primary action that belongs exclusively to him; but this is also part of the
secondary action that is founded and that has its completeness from both
of us. So it is with all communal works (Hua XIV, 192).
From out of the founding acts of the individual personal agents there
emerges a new whole which is a new agent and, of course, potential
recipient, expressed grammatically by the first-person plural nominative,
dative, accusative as well as possessive pronouns. The result of this
interaction is not a mere plurality but rather is a united whole which is
founded on the plurality and which itself becomes a kind of substrate for
acts which "we" do. And what ''we" do is not merely what you, and I, and
he, and she do-all severally and separately or even taken as a sum, but
rather there is a unity here and quasi-agent and person which may be said
to act. When, e.g., the Amish build a bam for a prospective married couple,
although each may say, in answer to the question, "What are you doing?,"
answer, "I am building a bam," that is an abstraction from "We are
building a bam." The reason is, as Husserl notes, that although each acts
for himself immediately in his/her share of the matter and thereby achieves
a primary action belonging exclusively to him/her, each's action is part of
the larger whole and has its completion therein. My hoisting the lumber
that you have brought me for him to nail and for them to cover with the tar
paper and roofing materials which you will have brought and I will have
hoisted, are each acts which find their logical completion not only in what
the other does but also what he or she intends. In such cases we each want
a good which is such that each by him- or herself cannot achieve it and the
same good is wanted by each as what is wanted by the other. (Cf. Hua XIV,
170.) Thus the will of each is part of the sense of the will of each other as
well as part of the sense of the good which is willed. In such instances, as
Husserl notes, my will penetrates his will and his mine and the goal is a
common goal for both of us. Therein we find implicite that each of us
wants, at the same time and correlatively, the bond between us, or, as the
case may be, the personal union itself (Hua XV, 511 ).
It is important to see this not as a sum or as a mere aggregate. But we,
of course, think of"we" as permissible in so far as it collects a property, "I
am F," "you are F," etc.; as in I am an Indiana University faculty member
and so are you, so is he, she, etc. Therefore we are these things and we do
such and such. But this sense of"we" is not the proper sense proposed here.
We can imagine waged skilled workers, scholars, technocrats, etc. doing
their finite tasks, all of which are parts of a whole-which may or may not
be known and experienced by the workers, but perhaps only by some
manager. In which case each would do his or her task and that is what he
or she is being paid for, and that is all that he or she intends to do. Whether
the others do their part is of interest only in so far as it may or may not
hinder the prospects of him or her continuing to receive the wage for the
job, hurt one's reputation, etc. Upon completion there would result from
the summation of the labors a whole. And in a loose sense each might say
''we" did that; but it is more appropriate to say that "I did this, along with
him and her, etc." This "along with" is merely indicative that the others
also worked on the project. But each's task was not part of the other's task,
nor each's will part of the other's will, nor the good sought the same good
nor sought as the other sought it.
Similarly the sense of"we" employed as a stylistic or "editorial" form
in, e.g., this paper, is more a matter of presumption, rhetoric, and hope. It
is not an actual achievement, until you go along with what I am saying. A
fortiori the regal "we" is not eo ipso an achievement of this proper sense
of"we."
However, one might imagine individuals whose identity or will is
displaced to the will of the sovereign, in which case, e.g., the king might
say, as does the representative government, "We bombed Lybia," "We do
not tolerate subversives, etc., and the subjects appropriate this initiative
"from above." Here the representation of others by the ruler is not
dependent on an apperception of their empowerment or agreement. Here
"we" is not a "quasi-indexical" as it is in the case "from below" where the
202 JAMES G. HART
speaker of "we" ascribes to the others a definite conviction and has the
belief that the Others ascribe the conviction to themselves. 7
"We," in this proper sense is thus what Husser) calls a personality of
a higher order. It is an analogous "I" made up of"l's," but not merely their
sum or collection. It is an "organic unity," i.e., it is not merely the mere
collection of individual lives and individual achievments but rather a single
unity of life penetrates the individual being and individual life-even
though it is founded in the individual lives and achievements (Hua XXVII,
48). It even, Husser! claims, may be said to have a kind of self-
consciousness, self-willing, and self-esteem of its own (Hua XXVII, 48).
Certain ceremonies, narratives, and rituals make the truth of this claim
palpable. 8
On the basis of this kind of analysis Husser! claims, of the life in a
community, that the total value-level of individuals depends on that of
others and correlatively the community itself does not only have-after the
manner of a summation of value-changing and perhaps growing values
through the changing value of individuals and the increasing number of
valuable individuals, but rather the community has a value as a cultural
community and as a region of founded values that do not dissolve into
individual values but which are founded in the work of the individuals in
all their individuality and these values bestow on the individuals a higher,
indeed an incomparably higher value. (Hua XXVII, 48)
Thus Husser) clearly regards the community in the proper sense as a
unique value-whole and this is to be contrasted with a mere summation.
Further, although the value of the whole, the community, is founded in the
virtuous individuals, nevertheless "the eminence of value of the individual
humans and that of the concrete community stand in a reciprocal
7See ch. iii of my The Person and the Common Good; also,"!, We, and God," in Husserl-Ausgahe
und Husserl-Forschung, ed. Samuel !Jsseling (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1990).

"For an elaboration of a Husserlian theory of community and "we" see my The Person and the
Common Life, especially ch. iii.
relationship" (Hua XXVII, 48). 9 We will return to some of the issues raised
here soon.
V. G.E. Moore on Organic Unities and the Ideal
It is to our advantage to include here a consideration of G.E. Moore's

rich analysis of the topic encompassed by Husserl's "value-whole."10 The
example that Moore uses to illustrate that a whole's value may be other
than the value of the sum of the parts is the consciousness of a beautiful
object. Consciousness does not always confer great value upon the whole
of which it forms a part. We can be conscious of ugly and painful things
and the sheer awareness of these things does not transform the ugliness and
evil. Thus Moore concludes that we cannot attribute the superiority of
consciousness of the beautiful over the beautiful thing to the value of
consciousness of the beautiful thing. 11 Whatever the intrinsic value of
consciousness may be, observes Moore, it does not give to the whole of
which it forms a part a value proportioned to the sum of its values and that
of its object. Rather, in the case of the whole that is the consciousness of
a beautiful object, we have a whole possessing a different intrinsic value
from the sum of its parts.
The existence of the part of such a whole is a necessary condition for
the existence of the good which is constituted by the whole. We must
distinguish, however, these parts from means. Means are necessary for the
causation of the whole whereas the parts are necessary for the constitution
ofthe whole. A means is not a constitutive part of such a whole. It is also
9At the conference, Tom Nenon and others made the proposal that there might well be "dysvalue-
wholes," i.e., wholes which are worse than the sum of their parts. Although this might well be difficult
to imagine, I believe that Lewis Mumford's and RudolfBahro's proposal that the modem exterminist
"megamachine," which uniquely brings together elements such as urbanization, megalapolis,
militarization, capitalism, and technology might well serve as an example.
11Moore believes that Brentano's Origin of Our Knowledge of Right and Wrong has greater affin-
ities with his own views than any other writer. But he maintains that Brentano by implication denies
the principle of organic unities, i.e., the equivalent of what Husser) calls unique value-wholes. See
G.E. Moore, Principia Ethica (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1903/1968), x-xi.
11 Moore, 27 ff.
204 JAMES G. HART
important to note that the part may itself have no intrinsic value-and in
this respect it may resemble a means. 12
Moore claims that a part of such organic wholes retains exactly the
same value when it is and when it is not a part of the whole. Thus, for
example, if it has little or no value by itself, then it has little or no value
when it becomes part of the whole. Of course it may be desireable that it
exist in certain circumstances or contexts, e.g., as parts of certain wholes,
and not in isolation from these. But this part itself then will not have more
intrinsic value. It will be, like a means, a necessary condition for the
existence of the organic whole that has itself greater intrinsic value. And
unlike a means it will form a part of the more valuable being.
It is clear that Husserl would disagree with Moore on several of these
issues. One might well attribute value to something because it belongs to
a certain whole, and the value that it has is due to this being part of the
whole rather than being a mere condition for the whole. For example, I thus
can conceive of a musician or basketball player being particularly esteemed
because he/she belongs to a particular group or team, "has good
chemistry," plays well, etc. with this group, and, when the team dissolves,
finding that his/her unique value was as a member of this group; when
being part of other groups he or she is not as good as when a member of the
unique group. In Husserl's example, there is a more provocative claim. The
ethical value of individuals is elevated by reason of their being parts of a
higher ethical community. ·What he means, I believe, is that because
authentic community is indeed the telos of individual life, living in a
higher-value community eo ipso increases the value of the individual life.
This point is made clear, I believe, in an explication of what Husserl
understands by moral authenticity or a life lived according to the "absolute
ought." Such a life is characterized by a universal ethical synthesis in
which each I lives in an effective ethical manner and thereby realizes his
best possible life in such a way that this life concomitantly realizes the best
possible life for the Others; and in such a way that this life is lived not
external to but within the Other (that is, that each life wills its own will and
makes its estimations through the will and estimations of the Others) and
12Moore, 28-29.
in the unity of will and joining with Others it effects a community of

agency in which the joined I' s as a joined subjectivity become a "synthetic
pole" of community action. We have then an ethical personality and one
of a higher level, and included therein a communal life of a synthetic
personality as an ethical personality, and we have an individual ethical life
of subjects, but both interwoven with one another. It belongs to the
categorical imperative of the individual subject to strive for this higher
form of community and for this higher form of individual existence and life
as a function of the ethical community. In so far as it is practically possible
this communal form is itself of an unconditional higher value than the
individual life of living next to one another and passing one another by. (F
I 24, 132-133)
In short, an individual's life outside of an ethical community cannot be
as rich in value as a life in a genuine community because one is deprived
of the conditions for the fuller ethical life which is in the community.
Concretely this means that once one is within the community one enjoys
the conditions for communal life, but in a better community one's own life
is enriched by sharing in and enriching the lives of others who are good or
better and having these others sharing in and enriching one's own life. One
is not only realizing more value by having the opportunity to enrich the
lives of others, but one's own life, i.e., one's values, goals, goods, etc. is
enriched by its being the pursuit by good others as one's own. Obviously
how this transpires is going to differ according to one's inclinations and
talents, but Husserl believes that formally it would involve an enrichment,
regardless if one's dominant passion is, e.g., research or gardening.
Surely there is basic agreement between Husserl and Moore on the
claim that the value-wholes or organic unities are to be distinguished from
summations. That Moore, however, can speak of intrinsic values or
disvalues apart from consciousness, of course, requires considerable
clarification. I will just touch upon some of the issues here. Husserl holds
with Moore that with the realm of values and goods we have a non-natural
quality, i.e., with the realm of value we have a totally new dimension which
is categorially distinct from real thingly predicates such as "hard," "heavy,"
and "colorful." The realm of value is also to be contrasted with
psychological predicates such as "angry," "pleased," "moved," etc. With
Moore, Husserl argues that the naturalism and psychologism in the realm
206 JAMES G. HART
of ethics and value-theory has hindered the thematization of the unique

realm of objects with which axiology is concerned. Thus Husserl can say:
As things are unities of sensible experience and not themselves sensible
experiences, and as things are what they are whether they are experienced
or not, so is a value a unity which constitutes itself in the evaluing
experience and is not itself a valuing. And a value is what it is whether it
is evaluatively grasped or not. To be a value, to be beautiful or good, is not
to say that someone holds something to be of value; nor is it to say that in
a community there is a pervasive disposition to value something, to love it,
or to take delight in it or desire it. (F I 12, 41 b) But to this Husserl adds:
" -this is evident to the only authority that here can decide these matters
here, the authority of consciousness itself and the sense which inhabits
consciousness." 13 Thus we see that this statement is not in the natural
attitude, but rather the transcendental attitude. And when we take this into
account we can understand why Husserl can also say that "a mere thing
(blosse Sache) does not have any value, it can have value only in
relationship to what it 'means' (bedeutet), what it means for the subjects
according to its actuality and possibility in a possible esteeming" (F I 24,
133). In the transcendental attitude consciousness is the diaphanousness
of value and being, the necessary condition for their disclosure.
There would be a kind of agreement between Moore and Husserl in so
far as transcendental consciousness would not be for Husserl one value
among others to be juxtaposed, summarized, or taken up into higher-order
unities. But, in the natural attitude, which is that of Moore, the relevant and
decisive whole is that whose parts are a beautiful object and a
consciousness intending it. Clearly the consciousness of a beautiful object
is a value surpassing the mere summation of a consciousness-whatever
else it might be aware of-and a beautiful object. The more fundamental
philosophical whole, i.e., of transcendental subjectivity as that to which
everything appears and without which there would be no manifestation of
any values, is not a relevant theme.
13 " - so nach der einzigen Autoritllt, die bier entscheiden kann, nach der Autoritlit des
Bewusstseins selbst and des ihm innewohnenden Sinnes" (F I 12, 42b).
We will return to these issues and some other important claims by

Moore soon in conjunction with the issue of value-wholes; but first we
wish to attend to axiological reflection on willing.
VI. Law of Absorption
Axiology studies not only the logic of values, but also that of evaluation
and willing. Thus, e.g., if the willing realization of a lower value hinders
the realization of a higher value, which itself is a possible choice, the
realization of the less valuable is not only less valuable but something
negative. (F I 24, 313; Roth, 102) Husserl sees life as a realization of values
to which we are called. "A will directed to a positive value is, as so
directing itself, 'correct.'" To say it is correct is to express a special
"fittingness" (Konvenienz). A will directed against the positive value lacks
this suitability or fittingness. To say one is objectively required to perform
a certain deed, or that one ought to do it, are ways of expressing this
fittingness (Hua XXV, 135-136).
For Husserl, as for Brentano, it is evident and fitting that the good is
the foe of the evil, the better the foe of the good, and the best the foe of the
better. 14 Husserl amplifies this theme and that of fittingness as the sense of
"required" or "ought" when he claims that the best absorbs the better and
the better absorbs the good. The sense of "absorbs" requires us to think of
the fittingness of the will being directed to an evident good rather than an
evil, i.e., its rightness in being so directed. If I stand before the choice of
either A or B, and B appears evidently of more value than A, then I ought
to go from A to B, and thereby (the willing of) B absorbs A. That is, B
takes into itself all the rightness/goodness, fittingness of (the willing of) A.
Husserl argues that the very sense of asking the disjunctive question
regarding the will, i.e., Ought I choose A orB? means nothing else than, Is
it right/fitting to choose Band not A or C? To say it is right to choose B is
to say that as far as what is right or what I ought to do, (the willing of) B
takes into itself or absorbs all the rightness of (the willing of) A (Hua
XXVIII, 135-136).
14 Brentano, Ursprung sittlicher Erkenntnis, 23; see Husser!, e.g., Hua XXVIII, 140; F I 24, 115.
208 JAMES G. HART
We see that the law of absorption has to do with the correct will and
values in relationship to such a will. This contrasts it with the laws of
summation and production which have to do with values and kinds of
wholes they may form. In so far as this is the case, value-wholes do not
absorb the parts nor does the correct choice sum up the not-chosen good,
nor is it a novel production vis-a-vis the not-chosen good. (Yet it must be
said that Husserl's formulations do not always maintain this distinction.)
We will return to the phenomenon of absorption in the next section.
VII. The Categorical Imperative and the Absolute Ought
A good that absorbs the oughtness of the others is not the core or most
central problem of axiologial reflection (see Hua XXVIII, 137) when it
takes a properly ethical tum. Rather because we typically do not live
wantonly, i.e., are not collapsed into the importunities of the present
moment, and because the entire sweep of the past and an adumbrated future
are pre-thematically given to us, the evaluation of life aspires to a synthetic
encompassing unity. Indeed, the universality of life is an encompassing
implicit theme in the ongoing flux and evaluation of life. There is a kind of
tacit awareness of this ongoing evaluation that is an attunement with our
lives, the world and ourselves which is the fruit of anonymous passive
syntheses and "general will." 1' This proto-will is the basement for the
properly egological acts because it provides the original unities of the
primal hyletic flow, all of which are tied to the elementary constitution of
inner-time consciousness. This bottom stratum has many scattered
formulations throughout Husserl's writings, such as: We have a pre-being
in the "pre-doxa," which may be regarded as a pre-delighting in the manner
of a primal-feeling, in the passive dimension which is not properly a
"regarding as beautiful." This is a passive dimension of a primal striving
and original doing which is not properly an activity, not properly a willing
and acting. (A VI 34, 34b)
Husser] calls this pre-doxa and pre-delighting also, variously,
satisfaction and even self-satisfaction. As an ongoing synthesis it
See my The Person and the Common Life, Ch. II and IV.
15
constitutes an undercurrent of awareness of the tenor of life in terms of

levels of satisfaction with the world, others and ourselves. 16 There is a
natural nisus for us to make this implicit undercurrent a theme and to make
the passive synthesis an active one. There is a latent tendency to an "ethical
reduction" whereby we take stock of the totality of our lives. 17 Here we
seek out what we truly want in life and determine what is the best among
the widest field or horizon of our life. The best which encompasses the
widest circles of life is no no longer able to be absorbed by any other good
and therefore is not a relative best. Here there is no longer possible a
further horizon that would contain a practical good that could be better.
This is what Husserl calls "the categorical imperative." (See, e.g., Hua
XXVIII, 145.)
In Husserl's reflections the categorical imperative, as a reflection on
the will's oughtness (as a fittingness) and that good which absorbs the
fittingness of the other goods, leads in later meditations to a reflection on
the absolute ought. This rich meditation, which I have sketched elsewhere,
terminates in the view that the absolute ought is a universal ethical love, an
engagement in each phase of one's life for the godly person of a higher
order, a value-whole which is the idea and telos of the universe of monads.
Thus "the universal humanity as developing itself under the idea of the
Good" is something one must love- even though the filled intention of
love can only obtain as the piece-meal realization of the ideal. This is the
the good that aborbs all other willing and which, it would seem, is a unique
value-whole.
This love is infinite, absolute and universal, and is of such a nature that
I cannot think of anything that I could love more, namely in the sense that
I could sacrifice what is loved for the sake of it. If I live in this direction of
will, if I live for me in a willing of my authentic life and as member of
humanity in a willing to a developing genuine humanity, then is this will
absolutely motivated. (E III 4, 20)
16See F I 24, 126-127 and 140-l SO for this rich topic. He calls this self-esteem/self-satisfaction, the
"condition for the possibility of any further satisfaction... The struggle for an ethical life is the struggle
for myself, that I can have respect for myself." F 124, ISO.
17 See Ch. I, The Person and the Common Life.
210 JAMES G. HART
Thus what is intended by the absolute ought of universal ethical love

is a good which is not able to be absorbed into a further horizon of goods.
We saw in the preceding discussion that the law of absorption clearly
applies to the realm of the will's correctness but it also makes reference to
the goods as well as the will. As it turns out this is an important issue for
Husserl's meditations on the summum bonum. The absolute ought, like the
categorical imperative, has to do with living the best possible way
throughout all of life. It is giving to life the best possible form and style, in
regard to which we will have no regrets. Thus it is also living a life that one
can unconditionally affirm. That means there will be certain values or
goods without which one cannot live: To give up these goods is to give up
the defining life-will which is inseparable from oneself, one's personal
identity. The "absolute ought" is inseparable from what Fichte called "the
blessed life."
Yet we face tragic conflicts, i.e., conflicts between values that are
inseparable from our life-will. In this sense there is a conflict of absolutes.
When I renounce such a good "I am in conflict with myselt in that I
sacrifice such a good I sacrifice myself; and the pain of the sacrifice is not
able to be surmounted" (A V 21, 108). An example dear to Husserl is how
a parent might have to sacrifice a son in the army for the good of the
country. Husserl' s view in such matters is that if I do the best under the
circumstances the practical decision is absorbed but not the absolute value
itself. It is sacrificed-in the tragedy of the sacrifice, but in such a way that
I can and must, nevertheless, love myselffor the sake of the tragedy in the
absolute love, the correlate of which is my absolute value, if I am and
remain steadfast in accord with the norm [ofthe absolute ought]. (E III 4,
15)
Husserl here is not explicitly concerned with tragic events that happen
apart from our agency or horrible acts others might do to us. It therefore
does not have anything to say about, e.g., the problems of a theodicy
wherein all things work together unto good, e.g., in a "higher harmony" as
proposed by Alyosha in The Brothers Karamazov. Rather it merely holds
that the authentic will, the absolute of universal ethical love, absorbs lost
lower goods in the sense that it absorbs the will-acts of rejection, denial,
sacrifice, etc. In other words, there is the possibility of tragedy in some
choices because there is possible an eternal loss of some goods and yet our
agency need never be such as to be simply tragic because we are capable

of an absolute ought which, as an action, absorbs, subsumes, the lost
good. 18
VITI. Moore on the Summum Bonum, Heaven and Utopia
G.E. Moore's reflections on the Ideal may serve as a good introduction to

what might be called phenomenological eutopian eidetics. Moore
concentrates on a sense of the ideal which he names the ends of man or
· goods in themselves in a high degree. These as a rule are value-wholes or
"organic unities." Thinking about these carefully can help in the thinking
about other senses of the ideal, such as the summum bonum, heaven, and
utopia.
By the summum bonum Moore means the best state of things
conceivable or what is absolutely perfect. In so far as we mean by this the
supreme practical good for humans Moore suggests we are dealing with
what has been known as heaven. Moore does not treat the summum bonum
explicitly as the divine. For Brentano the divine is the supreme "practical"
good only in the sense that the divine is the supreme good and the supreme
practical good is the love of God, not the realization of God. Strictly
speaking, the divine is the supreme good, not the supreme practical good,
i.e., not something we realize. In so far as the summum bonum is an organic
unity or value whole which is dependent on its parts, then there might well
be another reason not to identify it with the divine. For Husserl, as we shall
see, there is a sense, not the exhaustive sense, of the divine which is such
a value-whole that we can realize; indeed, this sense of the divine is a godly
person of a higher order.
Moore thinks of the summum bonum as the heavenly in contrast to the
utopian. The former theory has to do with the supernatural and may
disregard the laws of nature, by which Moore seems to have in mind the
18See Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov (New York: New American Library, 1958),
Book Two, "Rebellion," 218-226. See also Edgar Brightman, A Philosophy of Religion (Westport,
Conn.: N.D.; originally Prentice Hall, 1940), Ch. VIII. There is much more to be said about the
problem of tragedy and surd evils; for a start, cf. my "The Study of Religion in Husserl's Writings,"
in Phenomenology of the Cultural Disciplines, ed. Mano Daniel and Lester Embree (Dordrecht:
K1uwer, 1994), 289-296.
212 JAMES G. HART
laws articulated by the natural sciences. The utopianist, who deals with the
best possible in the world of our experience (Moore: "this world"), in
contrast to the theologian, may not disregard the laws of nature. Thus we
can distinguish the utopian dimension, as the best state of affairs that we
could possibly bring about, from the heavenly, as the best state of things
conceivable. 19 This latter description suggests that eidetic necessities are
not suspended either in the theological or utopian meditations.
Moore makes the claim that the best state of affairs conceivable may
be composed of qualities that we cannot imagine. And this claim is tied to
the important view that what is best does not necessarily contain all the
goods that there are. 20 The argument for this is the following. Organic
unities exist and therefore the intrinsic value of a whole is neither identical
with nor proportioned to the sum of the value of its parts. But an organic
unity can be greater than a whole that contains positive goods, i.e., an
organic unity that omits certain positive goods can be greater than a whole
which contains them. But if a whole that does not contain all positive
goods may be better than one that does, it follows that the best may be a
whole which contains none of the positive goods with which we are
acquainted. And from this it is therefore possible that we cannot discover
what the Ideal in itself is. But although the possibility cannot be denied that
we cannot discover what the Ideal is, i.e., that the Ideal is unimaginable and
undiscoverable, no one can assert that this possiblity is realized, i.e., that
in fact the Ideal is unimaginable. We cannot judge the comparative value
of things unless the things we judge are able to be made present before the
mind's eye. This means that we are not entitled to assert that something
which we cannot imagine is better than some of the things which we can
imagine; although we are not entitled to deny the possibility that this may
be the caseY
Thus the philosopher may not deny what a believer holds regarding the
transcendence or supematurality of the summum bonum, even though both
admit that it surpasses the realm of the imaginable and comparability of
presentable values. The philosophical search for the Ideal is thus limited to
''Moore, 181.
2"Moore, 184.
21 Moore, 184-185.
the search for the whole known to us that seems better than all the rest.
This is perhaps not perfection itself, absolutely considered; but it is better
than any other which may present itself as a rival. This search for the ideal
then is for the eu-topos; it is for the "eutopian." Heaven for Moore, as the
ultimate end oflife, could possibly be disconnected from the horizon of our
desires. As such it would be greater than anything imagined; but it would
still have to conform to eidetic necessities. As being somehow beyond the
scope of the horizon of the mind's intentionality in terms of values it would
transcend all that we experience in terms of the goods and values, as well,
perhaps as the laws of nature; but it would, as the best conceivable, not
transcend eidetic necessities. This later qualification would seem to help
little if it conceivably exceeded the horizon of desire. That is, there would
be no sense in which it would be "heavenly" or supremely desireable.
Utopia (or eutopia), on the other hand, is not only really possible but
is pre-eminently the telos of the horizon of desire. Furthermore it is
confined both to natural necessities and eidetic ones. But it surpasses the
actualities that we now know and perhaps many of the practical
possibilities and necessities we now know. For example we can imagine
and work for a world free of violence and crime. Yet we have every reason
to believe that such a life is not possible until virtue and amiable
dispositions prevail for all but the small anomalously sick parts of society.
And we have good reason to believe that such positive goods cannot prevail
until society is free of structural violence such as absence of good work,
economic injustice, urban anonymity, and other disorders that cause the
destruction of family and community life. And we have good reason to
believe that such structural disorders cannot be removed without a long
struggle and eventual transformation at all levels of social life. And we
have reason to believe that such will require several generations. Thus
utopia transcends what is practically possible even though it is merely
"really" possible, i.e., not eidetically or logically contradictory.
We may here note that the Husser!ian points of critique of this view
would be found in connection with calling the Ideal or summum bonum
"ideal" or "bonum" if it absolutely transcended the horizon of our desire.
This seems to be implied in a sense that we might give to a supreme value-
whole which "may contain none of the goods with which we are
acquainted." Clearly such a good may contain none of the goods of our
214 JAMES G. HART
acquaintance in the sense that it transcends them all and the sum of these
would not equal it. But what of the issue of "acquaintance?" What of the
kind of knowledge we have of the empty intention of the ideal? Is this not
being acquainted with the ideal? And if the intention of the ideal is the
"latent will horizon" (Hua XV, 378-379) implicit in all acts of willing and
all enjoyment of particular goods can Moore's ganz anders doctrine be
sustained?
Clearly this problem is connected to Moore's thesis that because a
value-whole may exist without containing some of the goods we
experience, we may consider a case where it may exist without any of the
goods we experience. The problem here is that we are not only talking
about wholes but value-wholes and it is hard to see how it would be
experienced as a value-whole, and not just merely a whole, if it contained
no connection with our prior sense of good. This goes back to the issue of
the acquaintance with good. Granted it is not superiorly good merely
because it sums up the other goods, still we may ask how it could be good
if it transcended all sense of good as, for example, the way my delight in
Husserlian distinctions is out of the reach of my cats' sense of good. To
appreciate such a "completely transcendent" good as good, I would have
to cease being me in a fundamental sense - just as my cats would
seemingly have to cease being cats to appreciate Husserl. This, of course,
is precisely what certain super-naturalist theories wish to maintain.
For Husser) the proposal that the Ideal might be some noumenon which
could render nugatory our reflections on the good has symmetry with the
earlier issue we discussed, namely, a notion of a beautiful object apart from
or independent of consciousness. When one holds that they are not
independent of one another, one is not saying they are the same or they
cannot be parts of a whole. Nor is one saying that the beautiful object has
no significance apart from consciousness~ if this is taken, as Moore takes
it, to mean a self-contradictory notion. 22 Moore can say this and must say
this of values intended in the natural attitude. As Husser) says: "A value
is what it is whether it is evaluatingly grasped or not." But this is the sense
of the intended object, and this, i.e., the sense, is disclosed in the
22Moore, 31-34.
phenomenological attitude. And when this context is established, a new

whole emerges in which the beautiful object (or any object) cannot be
considered apart from consciousness. Fot the natural attitude the
functioning of consciousness is anonymous and irrelevant. We might say:
As the anonymous medium of the manifestation of being and meaning,
consciousness is a condition and not a part of a whole of relevance or
interest to the evaluating consciousness in the natural attitude, i.e., of the
(non-transcendental-phenomenological) agent.
IX. Early Husserlian Eutopian Eidetics
In the early writings on axiology Husserl makes room for a kind of

eutopian eidetics within philosophy by distinguishing what he calls
systematic disciplines from the constructive teleological disciplines (Hua
XXVIII, 171-172; see also F I 12, 50a ff.). 23 (Neither of these disciplines
as such encompasses philosophy in so far as they prescind from the
transcendental founding dimension.) The former studies first of all the
general features of any objectivity or region of objectivities. It has to do
therefore with formal ontology, formal logic, formal mathematics, etc.
Each of these may have more specialized and regional divisions which
admit new categories. The other constructive, teleological discipline
constructs, on the basis of the work of the formal-ontological discipline, in
an apriori way the idea of the most perfect world, a world perfect in every
respect. The regional ontologies, e.g., those of being as such or of nature
and spirit, explicate the essential laws and theories of the objects and
regions with which they deal. On the basis of and within the essential
parameters of these discoveries one can explore the axiological possibilites
of the world or even various worlds. (And, Husserl goes on to claim, such
a reflection can reveal the more complete and therefore truer ontological
account of these regions. See below and Hua XXVIII, 180.)
Utopian reflection for Husserl has to do with relative and absolute
utopias. In both we can move in different directions from what is factually
given and pass over into the implicit ideals latent in what is given, and then
231wish to express my thanks to Ullrich Melle for showing me the connection between these texts
and making possible this discussion.

216 JAMES G. HART
to the thematization of the ideals themselves. In the relative utopia we

move from a certain type of social and political existence and ask, given
what life for a citizen is in such a state, such a level of culture, etc., what
is the ideal as it is emergent within this context, e.g., what is the ideal
practical mode of action? I think we get a sense of what Husserl has in
mind here when we think of what counts for the ideal person in a certain
culture, e.g., Aristotle's great-souled or high-minded man, and when we
consider how this ideal person reverberates the culture of the Athenian city-
state founded on free men who disdain subsistence labor and whose
freedom from subsistence work is tied to their being masters of households,
i.e., of slaves and women. There is a definite logic in the way the great-
souled man explicates the Athenian city-state's ethos and ideals; and how
it is in tension with the ethos in which, e.g., Jesus, is a formative influence.
Of course, how these Judao-Christian cultures can have evolved, or how
the insertion or lamination of Jesus never succeeded in extinguishing the
ancient warrior or gladiator, becomes a theme when one recognizes that for
many Jesus exercises little attraction when competing with such heroes as
Rambo and The Terminator.
The absolute utopia would be a different task. This is the attempt to
construct axiologically and practically perfect social wholes and to address
the issue of whether there is one beyond which one cannot go or whether
rather there would be an infinite progress in levels of value achievement.
But, of course, to do this we must be be familiar with the elementary
regional-ontolgical foundations. (F I 12, 49b ff.) Husser! believes that such
a reflection moves from essential considerations, to the ideals emergent in
the essentials, and then to the ideals themselves.
Clearly for Husser) we need not be discouraged by the historical
contingencies of the reflecting philosopher's culture. Of course, the sense
of historical necessities in human affairs is pervaded by the cultural-
historical perspective of the philosopher. Indeed, they weigh so heavily that
they often appear to be natural necessities. We can think of the general
perception of the present economic order and Aristotle's discussion of
natural slaves. Thus the issue of eutopian eidetics faces the alleged
necessities as well as the uncovering of true necessities. Both are equally
notorious: the assertion of natural necessity for what is contingent, and the
silent, even stubborn, functioning of natural necessities in all efforts at
relativization and contextualization. Thus, often eutopian thinking is

criticized because it does not take account of what is naturally necessary.
Yet doubtless a fruit of rigorous eutopian eidetics is to uncover what is
truly necessary and actually unchangeable and what therefore must be
honored as good.
But eutopian eidetics can also raise the question of whether what is
morally hortatory, from a teleological-cosmological perspective, does not
merely have a kind of claim over stubborn contingencies appearing as
necessary but, more precariously, also exercises a pull in redefining or
reinterpreting necessities. Indeed, Husserl's position is that the ideal telos
of something, e.g., science or humanity, is the entelechy or true actuality
of that something. Therefore it belongs to it in a formal, necessary way,
even though its full actualization is contingent. It is not contingently the
ideal telos, therefore one can render it the status of necessity, even though
its realization is not necessary, i.e., is contingent. This is the sense in which
it is the "ought" of that something. In a unique way the ideal is what this
something will be, if it ideally unfolds. The "ought," as the teleological
necessity of something and in this sense its moral meaning, is not tied to
merely what something "de facto" is but to what it is in terms of its ideal
future as determined by its form or eidos.
Thus, on the one hand, it is not the case that the "ought" is
disconnected from what "is" and existing in another realm; it is tied to its
eidos and its telos. On the other hand, the "ought" is not simply derived
from and dependent on what actually is. This is because what actually is
cannot be determined without taking account of the necessary ideal telos
which is not something actually existing but rather is the formal frame and
ideal purpose, i.e., entelechy, of what actually is. As we have seen,
Husserl's basic ethical principles explicate this ontological reflection.
Recall (see Section VII above) that the categorical imperative is the
ultimate horizon wherein lies a practical good that could not be better and
a good which absorbs the fittingness of the other unchosen goods. And the
absolute ought has to do with the "unum necessarium," that without which
the individual person cannot realize his or her true self. Both these are ways
the entelechy manifests itself in an agent's awareness.
This is important for eutopian eidetics because thinking about the
changeability of human things exclusively in terms of what is actual and
218 JAMES G. HART
possible as detennined by existing laws and politics, i.e., in tenns of what

the "powers that be" penn it, is to suppress the issue of what ought to be.
The eutopian eidetic question of what is changeable should be founded not
primarily in what is actual and possible, which often represses what ought
to be and hides behind the interest of maintaining what is actual, but rather
in terms of what ought to be. With the explication of what the ideal telos
of something is, its entelechy, a unique necessity, emerges which may
serve as the parameter for thinking about what is actual and possible both
in tenns of theory and practice.Z4
Nevertheless, even granting the existence of natural kinds and
purposes, sorting things out in the eutopian dimension of politics is often
a murky affair. The discussion of Aristotle (in Book Two of his Politics)
with the defenders of Plato's eutopian "communism" is exemplary in
showing the uniquely nebulous necessities of eutopian poetics. Here we
have a wrestle between, on the one hand, what appear to be natural
necessities, e.g., it is natural that one only takes care of what one personally
owns, one cannot have equal affection for all the children of the polis, etc.
and, on the other, the lure of a state of affairs in the polis in which members
would be capable of practically the same affection for all the citizens as for
dear friends and members of the family. Whereas it is evident with a strict
necessity that one cannot be friends, in the sense of sharing a life together,
with everyone, because of both seemingly necessary physical and
psychological limitations, is it impossible, in the same sense, to have a
profound benevolence toward the fellow-citizens and neighbors, so that in
effect one would treat their children and property as one's own? The kinds
of evidence, necessity, etc. functioning here are nebulous. What
complicates matters is the factual or legendary presence of figures like
Jesus, Buddha, Gandhi, etc. providing the exceptions to what is typically
the rule and challenging senses of necessity as well as awakening new
ideals about humanity and social intercourse. Doubtless it is the task of
eutopian reflection to unloosen the historical necessities that masquerade
24I deal with Husserl's ideal telos of humanity inCh. IV of my The Person and the Common Life.
The sense in which the ideal as entelechy is uniquely necessary was not pursued there; I am indebted
to Rudolf Unger, The Imagination of Reason (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1952) for helping
me to see this point.
as natural ones and to stretch the self-definiti.on of human capacities and

possibilities. That the historical predispositions of a great thinker like
Aristotle occasioned that he would often fall so short in his eutopian project
of circumscribing the nature of, e.g., domestic economics, slaves and
women, is less an occasion for the modem reader's superciliousnes than for
caution about our own naivety and prejudices in thinking about our own
circumstances.
What early HusserI has in mind (in F I 12, 50a ff. and Hua XXVII, 171-
172) primarily is the general consideration of how we can ask what
properties a world must have in order not only to correspond to cognitive-
theoretical ideals but also aesthetic, ethical and all other possible ideals or
forms of excellence. Husserl notes that Kant's transcendental philosophy
made a similar move. It could proceed from what is given in terms of the
value of scientific knowledge and ask, by way of reversal, what properties
an object must have in order that it be in accord with these theoretic ideals.
Or it can ask what properties a consciousness must have if it is to determine
objectively a nature which is manifest through appearings. Or, proceeding
from the given of nature's appearings and its seeming teleology we can ask
how consciousness must be constituted, what orders and forms of
categorial laws must be assumed, in order that the ideal of the predelineated
teleology can be fulfilled. (See F I 12, 55a.) In short, the Kantian procedure
is one of proceeding from what is given and asking the tum-about question
about the correlate which is not given in the same way. For Husser1, this is
one of the ways in which he appreciates the Kantian theory of postulates of
reason.
But note that Husserl's procedure is of eutopian eidetics. He is not
pursuing the apriori transcendental conditions in subjectivity given a
certain kind of nature; rather, but also in accord with Kant, he is asking us
to see that this move has certain eidetic features so that we can appreciate
correlate regions as having correlate necessities. Thus we can see that the
move from the correlate of a given kind of nature to the correlate
consciousness, or the move from a certain kind of subjectivity to the
necessary conditions in nature which enables this kind of subjectivity to
flourish is a move of fleshing out a regional, noematic eutopos with
postulations and constructions which procedes analogously to Kant's
transcendental postulates.
220 JAMES G. HART
Note that the suggested procedure here resembles and contrasts with a
utopian fiction writer's procedure, e.g., that of Ursula LeGuin, William
Morris, and Marge Peircy. The novelist takes advantage of the present
standpoint of the writer and reader which has vectors that point to better
possible futures which are emptily intended. The author presents these
intended better future possibles as filled, as realized. The difficulty is that
the better future, to be believable, has to have continuity with the present.
Here is where the constraints of the implicit eidetic spaces make
themselves felt. The existence of the persons in the better future has to be
recognizably the same as that of the present reader in order for the eutopian
reality to have the doxastic assent the project of the utopian novel requires.
A future blessed human being so absolutely sated with filled intentions that
he or she would exist without an open horizon of agency and theory, i.e.,
without desire, expectation, curiosity, apprehension, etc. approaches
unrecognizability. Not only would such a person be essentially boring but
unrecognizable as normally functioning humans. People who live in utter
contentment and for whom desire is missing resemble somewhat the people
who have overdosed on "soma" in Huxley's Brave New World: both elude
our interest, the latter because they are manifestly deficiently functioning
human beings, the former because there is nothing to hold our interest. In
William Morris' News from Nowhere the contented people, although not
deficient, indeed they are in many respects exemplary, almost elude our
interest because there is scarcely any distance or contingency between their
empty and filled intentions. The drama of life, the contingency between
desire and its fulfillment, is almost eliminated in Morris' presentation.
Therefore they stand in contrast to the characters in Ursula LeGuin's The
Dispossessed and Marge Peircy's Woman on the Edge of Time. Thus the
task of the novelist is to present the eutopian future as a filling of the
reader's present intentions, but in such a way that there is a hint that this
"totally other" existence is essentially the same, i.e., exists with its own
horizon of desires and hopes, indeed, its own adventure.
But for Husserl, the utopian novelist constructs only ''teleological
novels," and does not pursue a ''teleological discipline." (See F I 12, 56b-
57a.) Utopian novelists do not have the rigorous basis of the regional
ontology that can make of this kind of reflection a science. Their work is
the edification of the spirit and the creation of hope (cf. Hua XXIII, 541-
542). Early Husserl is convinced that their project, as well as that of ethics
and politics, can be immeasurably enhanced if it is rooted in the regional
ontological necessities.
The frequent employment of devices such as "time-travel" in fantasy
literature illustrates a basic difference between the "teleological novels"
and "teleological discipline." On the one hand, they seem to most readers
capable of the fictional allegiance of "as if they were true," yet they are
eidetically incoherent for the regional ontologist. (We can imagine time-
travel in a way we cannot imagine sounds apart from pitch and timbre or
a will-act independent of a perception of what is good. Yet a teleological
eutopian reflection which was rooted in such an incoherent device would
seem to be bankrupt from the start.) Nevertheless, the ability of eutopian
meditations or presentations to inflame and edify the heart is independent
of its factual basis. A fictional presentation can do this as well as a record
or perception of an historical fact. (Cf. Hua XXVII, 65-66, 100-102.) But
the fictional presentation of the ideals cannot violate the eidetic-regional
necessities.
As we noted, Husserl' s procedure is unconcerned with the contingent
vectors of the reader's and author's present toward a better possible future.
Rather he posits the present realm of cognition and action and sees therein,
regardless of the cultural formations, a necessary teleology in terms of both
theory and agency. (However, Husserl would not be committed to saying
that, e.g., the ideal of science was equally powerful lure in aboriginal
societies as in Newton; but it is important for him that it be there in a latent,
obscure, implicit form.) The teleology is necessary not in the sense that the
telos must be realized; rather its emergence (as an implicit ideal) out of the
practice of theory and agency is necessary. He then proposes that we ask:
Given, e.g., that the realm of moral action has this infinite ideal of the
infmite realization of values, what would an ideal nature have to be like to
support such an endless realization of value? Or, to use another example he
does not give us nor one to which he ultimately would be drawn: if the
realm of action has as its telos a goal which is infinite in terms of its
goodness or capacity to still the infinity of human desire, but a goal whose
attainment is finite in the sense that it is ne plus ultra, what kind of
"nature" or "supemature" would support such a pilgrimage? (We return to
this in the final section.) Or one more in accord with St. Augustine and
222 JAMES G. HART
Maurice Blonde! and not explicit in Husser!: If the divine telos of human
action always exceeds each achievement and if human agency,
nevertheless, is drawn to seeking its telos in the finite achievements, what
kind of agency is most proper in order that human agency undo this
inauthentic propensity and recognize its authentic destiny?25
In Hua XVIII Husser! formulates the task of eutopian eidetics in terms
of main "value directions" or orientations. By the main value directions or
orientations Husser! means how our value-interest can be directed to I)
theory or the value of knowledge, 2) the value of nature or actuality
(Wirklichkeit) or one of the regions therein, or 3) the activity of valuing
itself, i.e., desiring, willing, action. Consider how, in the first case, we may
conceive of nature in terms of its capacity to become a perfect object of
perfect theory. In the second case, we may attend to nature or actuality in
terms of its being maximally pervaded by values. The most perfect actual
world or nature will have as its correlate a most perfect valuing
consciousness. And so we can, in the third case, attend to the realm of
valuing consciousness and thus regard a world in so far as it provides the
most favorable field for valuable action. (Hua XXVIII, 173-174)
Again, Husserl's mode of procedure is not transcendental but eidetic.
One grants a certain given value-realm or orientation and then pursues how
the other correlative ones would have to be for the first given value-realm
or orientation to flourish. This is a mode of eidetic variation but of an
eutopian sort. We are not dealing with the mere eidetic necessities but with
value possibilities which build on the regional-eidetic ones. The given
value stands within a value field which is not given explicitly. The task is
to flesh out what this field of values is that is implied by and nurturing of
the value which is given. All such considerations, Husser! claims,
culminate in a pair of ideas, a) the idea of the apriori most perfect of all
possible "worlds" and b) its correlate of a most perfect personality, a most
perfect life. This latter demands as its correlate a most perfect conceivable
life-content and reality as the field of most perfect knowledge. (Hua
2'Biondel 's answer is mortification: Mortification, radical self-abnegation, is the supreme
metaphysical experiment, i.e., the choice of a kind of style of living through which one's metaphysical
destiny becomes evident. See Maurice Blonde!, Action (1893), trans. Oliva Blanchette (Notre Dame:
University of Notre Dame Press, 1984), 353 and 404. Cf. my "Blonde! and Husser!: Continuing the
Conversation," forthcoming in Tijdschrift voor Filosofie (1996).
XXVIII, 175). This eutopian eidetics leads to theological meditations

wherein there is an axiological meditation on Being (Sein) in its most
perfect form, which is inseparable from its diaphaneity, consciousness,
Bewusst-sein, in its most perfect form. (Hua XXVIII, 176.) The indwelling
teleology of the life of knowledge raises consciousness to a clear awareness
of its goals in terms of regions of being, for which there are corresponding
disciplines. Each region is regarded as looming with a regulative idea,
incapable of adequate saturation, but beckoning to progressive realization.
Physical nature, life, the world of persons, and objective spirit or culture,
with their manifold historical-cultural formations are not only teleological
data of a theoretic consciousness, but also of an evaluing and willing
consciousness. Husserl here makes the intriguing Platonic claim that these
regions acquire there proper, i.e., more complete, ontological sense in
conjunction with the teleological-axiological perspective. "Philosophy of
nature as a theoretical philosophy of nature is not philosophy of nature in
the highest and ultimate sense." (Hua XXVIII, 180.) Thus the ultimate
philosophical meaning of nature requires that the regional-ontological
nature be considered as a correlate of desire and will. Thus, and again very
much echoing Plato, the teleological-theological ideals not only complete
but interrelate the regions and give them their fuller sense. The regions
require therefore also normative relations to the axiological and practical
principles and demand to be measured in accord with the ideal of the most
perfect Being and Consciousness. Therefore they demand to be brought to
closure with the absolute theological ideal. (Hua XXVIII, 180)
Now this is a purely formal, eidetic meditation. But it leads to a basic
sense of metaphysics, i.e., a discipline which answers the question of the
factual reality of the ideal possibilities postulated by the pure, ideal
teleological constructions. (Hua XXVIII, 182.) And we here, in relation to
the factually given reality, which we have been thinking about as
recognizably theoretical, come to an ultimate ontological problem, which
humanity from earliest times had to face, namely the problem of the real
meaning of the idea of God, or the problem of creation, the problem of the
realizing power of absolute ideals. Can an idea, indeed an idea of God, as
the highest normative idea of possible reality of the world in general
regulate factual existence of reality (factual being, being-such, self-
development) not only normatively but in terms of actualization? Can such
224 JAMES G. HART
a regulation have any meaning whatsoever and what kind can it have? And
when it has meaning, can one, and with what method can one decide,
whether this factual world factually is a godly world (Gotteswelt). (Hua
XXVIII, 180-181) Husserl goes on to speculate on various possible
understandings of the divine. The tentative conclusion, in the form of a
leading question, is that we must conceive the divine as a godly entelechy,
or agent intellect, or a central monad out of which all monads fulgurate.
(Hua XXVIII, 181-182)26
X. The Divine and the Highest Practical Good
We live situated within a horizon in which an infinity of value is

adumbrated. The better is always within the horizon of the good and the
bad. Reflection on agency culminates in a good that cannot be absorbed by
another good, the greatest practical good. We have also claimed that this
"absolute ought," also rendered as universal ethical love, intends a godly
person of a higher order. In terms of Moore's categories, this theory of the
summum bonum is a synthesis of both the heavenly and the utopian. This
is the supreme practical Good. Note that this differs from Brentano and
early Scheler, as well, of course, from classical theology. For Brentano,
God exists actually with a perfection proper to the divine, and the supreme
practical Good is not God but the love of God. Brentano's God is the
eternal creator who is in an eternal process of becoming, but this becoming
is not realized through human agency. The divine is eternally and
essentially a divine essence and, as the creator of the universe, enjoys a
substantial and independent mode of existence. Similarly for early Scheler,
the divine "according to its very idea" cannot be conceived as a personality
of a higher order. But neither can It be conceived as an individual person.
Rather It can conceived only as the uniquely singular, not numerically one,
26 This relatively early (19ll) text of (Hua XXVIII, 181-182) is very important for Husserl's
theology and receives a paraphrase in the important late E 1114 MSS (a slice of which we present in
the next section) without, however, any major change, except that in the later text he sees the divine
ideal as a godly person of a higher order. For more on metaphysics and entelechy, see my "Precis of
a Husserlian Philosophical Theology," in Essays in Phenomenological Theology, ed. By Steven W.
Laycock and James G. Hart (New Albany: SUNY, 1986 and "Entelechy in Transcendental
Phenomenology: A Sketch of the Foundations of Husserlian Metaphysics," American Catholic
Philosophical Quarterly Vol. LXVI (1992), No.2, 189-212.
infinite person in whom the division between individual persons and

collective persons ceases to be. 27
Husserl's position would seem to be in accord with the later Scheler,
that is, divinity itself, at least in certain respects, is in a process of evolving
through the agency of finite monads or spirits. Further, divinity as Idea is
entelechy, i.e., Zweckidee, formal and final cause, of the absolute whole.
The absolute whole is transcendental subjectivity. Its constitutive moments
are the divine idea/entelechy and monadic hyle. Out of this constitution
come the parts, moments and pieces, which are bound by the weave of
intentionality. The outstanding parts are the subject and object poles. The
supreme object-pole of agency, the supreme practical good, is a eutopian
godly person of a higher order. It can be the supreme practical good to be
achieved because it is not an actual being but an infinite ideal to be realized
infinitely.
We see here that world and/or the object pole is an intersubjective
monadic community. Considered abstractly, i.e., as a whole apart from
transcendental subjectivity, the world as a phenomenological theme, in
particular as the field of praxis, itself may be seen as a value-whole. It is
not the sum of its parts because the parts, like the profiles of spatial-
temporal objects, mutually and reciprocally influence one another to
"produce" something that is more than the sum. But the world as the
horizon of experience is metaphysically fleshed out to be the apperceived
pole of the all of apperceptions, and these are achievements of both human
and non-human monads. The endless "more" that the horizon predelineates
is comprised of monads. (Although Husserl never settled on an
unequivocal panpsychic position-indeed, he found objections to it-he
nevertheless tended to think of the everything ultimately as comprehended
under the All of monads. 28 ) The monad as a psychophysical unit itself is a
value-whole in so far as we take the "besouled" stratum to be physical
nature, each profile of which, as an expression of the soul, mutually
27Max Scheler, Formalism in Ethics (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973), 525. It is
not clear to me to what extent the late Scheler's philosophical theology admits of a personal God. The
reasons for the unclarity have symmetry with issues in Husser! which raise the same question.
28For reflections on monadology, see, e.g., Hua IX, 216, Hua XIV, 290-02; Hua XV, 378-402, 593-
626;
226 JAMES G. HART
influences the other profiles and renders the "soul" or Other as more than
the sum of the parts. We have already seen that a community of subjects is
a personality of a higher order, and as such a value-whole. The teleological-
theological ideal for Husser! is this ideal of the monadic All as a godly
eutopian person of a higher order, an ultimate value-whole. This is a, but
not the only, sense we may give to the text in Ideas I, §58, where the divine
is referred to as "transcendent in a totally different sense than the world."29
But the divine holds sway (wallet) not merely over the object-pole but
also over the subject-pole and therefore is "absolute" and "immanent" in
a unique way, i.e., in a way which contrasts sharply with the absoluteness
of consciousness and the immanence of experience (see Ideas I, §58).
Divinity therefore is bi-polar, as in Whitheadian theory, and this bi-polarity
is suggested by the notion of entelechy as both a formal and final cause. 30
The primordial nature of God is the divine as Idea informing the primal
unbegun and unending hyletic material constituting monads and the
ongoing life of monads; the consequent nature of God is the approximation
by the monadic All of the divine form holding sway in terms of its
approaching a godly person of a higher order.
There is a sense in which "that than which nothing greater can be
conceived" for Husser! is part of the world and part of the whole which is
transcendental subjectivity. Therefore it is one with the world's telos as a
godly person of a higher order. For a theist perspective such as that of the
Thomist there is another trans-worldly perspective. (Cf. especially the rich
work of Robert Sokolowski and Thomas Prufer. 31 ) From this faith-
perspective, God plus the world is not greater than God alone. "That than
which nothing greater can be conceived" is a creator ex nihilo, not on the
basis of transcendental phenomenological or eutopian reflections, but on
the basis of religious faith and the philosophical justification of its not
being contradictory. In this case the supreme good, although not a value-
2'Cf.my "A Precis of a Husserlian Philosophical Theology," 134-142.

Cf. my "Entelechy in Transcendental Phenomenology: A Sketch of the Foundations ofHusserlian
30
Metaphysics," 189-212.
31 See Thomas Prufer, Recapitulations (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America),
especially Ch. 5-7; and Robert Sokolowski, The God ofFaith and Reason (Notre Dame: Univ. ofNotre
Dame Press, 1982); and Robert Sokolowski, Eucharistic Presence (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic
University of America Press, 1993), Ch. 5.
whole, might well, in Moore's terms "contain none of the goods with which
we are acquainted." It therefore is not a result of, and clearly is able to be
disconnected from, an axiological reflection. For Husser), "that than which
nothing greater can be conceived" is, in a certain respect, i.e., as the object-
pole and consequent nature of God, a godly person of a higher order and
therefore is essential to the meaning of the world, even though the infinitely
transcending Idea of the world. Indeed, if we take the whole to be not the
world, but transcendental subjectivity of which the world is a part, the
divine is a constitutive moment of the whole, and in this sense also a part.
This holds true also for the divine as also the immanent form and
egological principle of the all of monads. Thus the suitability ofthe notions
of entelechy and Idee, which suggest the immanence and transcendence, a
unity of the bi-polarity. What seems to be the last, and certainly one of the
richest, statements by Husserl of these matters is the following:
This ideal pole-idea is of an absolute in a new transworldly,

transhuman, supra-transcendental-subjective sense. It is the
absolute logos, as the absolute truth in the complete and full sense,
as the unum, verum, and bonum toward which each being is bound,
and toward which all transcendental subjective life, as vital being
living toward constituting truth, tends. This idea is borne by every
transcendental I, and in a socialized way by every transcendental
We, in its transcendental personality as an ideal norm for all
relative norms. Thereby does the individualized and
communalized transcendental subjectivity bear in itself an ideal of
its true being toward which it is predisposed in its factual personal
being. However, this ideal is but a ray of the absolute ideal, of the
idea of an all-personality that is infinitely superior to everything
actual, to all becoming and to all development toward the ideal by
what is factual. The idea stands over all development toward it as
a pole that lies infinitely removed. This pole-idea is the idea of an
absolutely perfect transcendental universal community. At the
same time it is the idea of a life that holds sway in the midst of all
modes of finitude and facticity. This ideal realization of absolute
perfect life penetrates all factual life and urges it toward infinity.
And the idea of this life of absolute universal community is
228 JAMES G. HART
normatively regulated from out of an ideal capacity which is

nothing other than the unity in the totality of absolute norms which
comprise the absolute logos, which itself is capable of being
explicated in the absolute life. (E III 4, 60-61)
Because the summum bonum "stands infinitely over all development

toward it as a pole that is infinitely removed" moral agency as a realization
of values may be said both to realize and not realize the divine as the
supreme good. As the infinite idea of absolute perfection it cannot be
"realized" but only endlessly approximated.32 But as the medium of the
divine's self-realization, authentic agency may be said to realize the divine.
The divine is realized however not as something finally reached.
Everything which is attainable is finite, claims Husserl. All being as
temporal is in finitude and thereby is only on the way to infinity, that is, it
stands under the critical judgment and beckoning lure of the idea of
absolute perfection. Thus everything realized in the course of things is
relativized by becoming something definite which awakens further
possibilities which are adumbrated by the infinite implicit horizons of the
idea of perfection. (E III 4, 26)
Given these considerations, it would seem that Husserl would find
congenial for his own understanding of the summum bonum the axiological
determination Charles Hartshorne gives to the "divine": "maximal in value
in every respect logically permitting such a maximum; and in those
respects of value (and there are some) that do not permit a maximum, it
means unsurpassable except by itself."33
This last qualification, i.e., "unsurpassable except by itself," is an
explicit possibility that, in several MSS., lured Husserl. On one occasion
(c. 1911) he wrestled with the issue of whether the idea of God requires a
God who is and therefore is at rest, and therefore the absolutely still point
of all development; or whether it belongs, rather, to the being of God that
it advance from one value level to another such that an absolutely ultimate
32The only place I know where Husserl calls into question the meaningfulness of the pursuit of
infinite ideals is in Hua XXVII, l7S, n.l.
"Charles Hartshorne, "Believing in God's Existence," in Meaning Truth and God, ed. Leroy S.
Rouner, ed. (Notre Dame: Univ. ofNotre Dame Press, 1982), 19.
gradation of value is not thinkable. In such a case, he notes, we would

move in the direction of Aristotle's entelechy, but in this case there would
not be a finite goal, as in the case of the completed tree vis-a-vis the acorn,
but rather the development would be toward an infinite ideal goal. The
theological-axiological direction of this somewhat early text (Hua XXVIII,
226Y\ as hesitant as it is, finds confirmation in many other later ones
where the chief notion ofHusserl's theology becomes the divine entelechy
or Idee.
I wish to register a final caveat against this reading of Husser! wherein
the divine is envisaged as a part, albeit a constitutive part, of the world, and
therefore where moral agency is the vehicle of the divine's self-realization.
And it is precisely this problem which perhaps explains Husserl's hesitancy
in committing himself unequivocally to what is called "process theology."
Consider that whereas "entelechy" clearly contains the bi-polar moments
of telos and the immanent form or ego logical principle, the unification of
these two moments is captured in the Idee as what is said to be trans-
transcendental and trans-worldy or objective. For Husser!, it is always
important to take account of the source of the evidence for claims and
thereby the standpoint from which one is making the pronouncements.
Clearly the notion of the divine as infinite intersubjective ideal or even a
Platonic Idea could be made present from within the natural attitude. That
sense is shattered when we see that the divine is also immanent in a way
that surpasses the immanence of the I-pole because it is constitutive of the
elemental identities which found the I-pole. But the divine is not just one
or the other, it is both. And the phenomenological attitude at this level of
reflection cannot be directed merely in one of the polar directions; it must
look to the constitutive considerations of transcendental subjectivity in
terms of the unity of these directions. Thus the divine as entelechy may be
said to "constitute" in a way in which the very being of intentionality, the
primal hyletic flow, inner-time consciousness, constituting, etc. themselves
require to be constituted, i.e., by an Idea holding sway. It is therefore said
to be a trans-existing, trans-idea, trans-real. It is an essence (Wesen), not an
eidos, which is beyond the relativity of situation and in no horizontality.
34Cf. F I 24, 86-87; here, Husser! speaks of the divine life as "one which would continuously posit
true goals and would progress from true goals to true goals."
230 JAMES G. HART
And as such it bears, is a substrate for, all actuality whatsover. (E III 4, 62-
63)
In such a description the divine has ascribed to it, especially in its being
beyond any eidos, i.e., any possible meaning-space, and, further, free of
any horizontality whatsoever, a "mode of existence" that precludes endless
self-realization. And this is the problematic feature of the very notion of the
divine entelechy: As entelechy it is essentially related to the world, is even
a part of the world or part of the ultimate whole that is transcendental
subjectivity; but can we speak of it "in itself," as Husserl does when he
calls it a trans-being-in-itself, i.e., presumably a substance in a quasi- yet,
''trans"-Spinozan manner?35 May we think of it as an Idea which need not
"besoul" the world, need not be the entelechy of the world? Could the
availability of the divine ideal and the immanence of the divine be merely
a contingent, gracious matter? The motivation for thinking this way would
seem to be beyond the necessities which motivate the theme of the divine
for transcendental phenomenology.
lSI do not think so because the analogous "substance" is "transcendental subjectivity" as the
absolute concretum. This is the absolute for transcendental phenomenology. But perhaps religious
meditations might give rise to another possibility. cr. the letter he wrote in 1932 to his dear friend
Gustav Albrecht, to whom he confessed that he would very much like to have written a philosophical
theological systematics and where the being of God seems to be called a "second" absolute juxtaposed
to the first, i.e., transcendental subjectivity. Such a work would deal with "the highest ranging of all
questions which not every one can grasp and understand in terms of their proper rigorous and genuine
sense. But these are the metaphysical questions. And they have to do with birth and death, the
ultimate being (Sein) of 'I' and 'we' as objectified humanity; with teleology which ultimately leads
back to transcendental subjectivity and its transendental historicity. And it has to do of course with
what is primary (oberstes), the being (Sein) of God as the principle of this teleology and the sense of
this being in juxtaposition to the being of the first absolute, the being of my transcendental I, and in
juxtaposition to the transcendental all-subjectivity disclosing itself in me; this all-subjectivity as the
true place of the divine 'effecting' (Wirlcens) to which the 'constitution' of the world belongs as 'ours'
-but from the standpoint of God is the constant world-creation in us, in our transcendental ultimate
true being." Edmund Husser!, Briefwechse/, vol. IX, ed. Karl Schuhmann (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1993),
83-84. Here we see Husser! referring to transcendental subjectivity as juxtaposed to a second absolute,
that of God's own being, having its own standpoint, to which Husser! has access from the first absolute
standpoint. How this is possible is unclear.
Chapter 12
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240 H PETER STEEVES
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Notes on Contributors
Philip Blosser (Ph.D., Duquesne University, 1985) is a Professor of

Philosophy at Lenoir-Rhyne College in North Carolina. He is author of
Scheler's Critique ofKant's Ethics (1995), and co-editor of Japanese and
Western Phenomenology ( 1993) and Of Friendship: Philosophic Selections
on a Perennial Concern (1989). His current interests are in moral
philosophy, philosophical anthropology, and philosophy of religion.
John Brough (Ph.D., Georgetown University, 1970) is a Professor of

Philosophy at Georgetown. He has written a number of articles in
Husserlian Phenomenology and in aesthetics, and is the translator of
Volume X in the Husserliana series, On the Phenomenology of the
Consciousness of Internal Time (1893-1917). He is currently translating
Husser Iiana Volume XXIII, Phantasie, Bildbewusstsein, Erinnerung (1898-
1925).
Lester Embree (Ph.D., New School of Social Research, 1972) is the

William F. Dietrich Emiment Scholar and Professor of Philosophy at
Florida Atlantic University and President of the Center for Advanced
Research in Phenomenology, Inc. He has authored, translated, and edited
a number of books and articles chiefly in Husserlian Phenomenology. His
current interests are in the history and philosophy of science (cultural
sciences specifically, archaeology in particular), ethnicity,
environmentalism, gender and technology.
James Hart (Ph.D., University of Chicago, 1972) is a Professor in the

Department of Religious Studies at Indiana University. He is the author
of The Person and the Common Life (1992) and, with Steven W. Laycock
co-edited Essays in Phenomenological Theology (1986). His current
interests are in political theory, peace studies, philosophy of religion and
German Idealism.
245
246 PHENOMENOLOGY OF VALUES AND VALUING
Robert Welsh Jordan (M.A., New School for Social Research, 1970) is
an Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Colorado State
University. He is the author of several articles on topics in his principal
areas of interest: Phenomenology of the moral sphere, value theory,
Edmund Husserl, Alfred Schutz, Nicolai Hartmann, and Giambattista Vico.
His current interests include the relation between work on these topics in
the phenomenologies ofHusserl and Martin Heidegger.
Steven W. Laycock (Ph.D., Indiana University, 1982) is an Associate

Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toledo. He is the author of
Mind as Mirror and the Mirroring of Mind: Buddhist Reflections on
Western Phenomenology and Foundations for a Phenomenological
Theology. With James Hart, he is also co-editor of Essays for a
Phenomenological Theology. He has published widely on issues at the
interface between Phenomenology and Buddhist thought and for many
years has been a practitioner of Buddhist meditation.
Don E. Marietta, Jr. (Ph.D., Vanderbilt, 1958) is the Adelaide R. Snyder

Distinguished Professor of Ethics and Professor of Philosophy at Florida
Atlantic University. He is the author of For People and the Planet:
Holism and Humanism in Environmental Ethics (Temple, 1994) and of
journal articles and book chapters on issues in ethics and environmental
ethics. His ongoing interest is a phenomenological approach to metaethics.
A book on philosophy of sexuality is in production by M.E. Sharpe
Publishers.
Ullrich Melle (Ph.D., Heidelberg, 1980), is a Professor of Philosophy at

Catholic University Leuven, Belgium. He is editor of Husserliana vol.
XXIV and XXVIII and author of a number of articles on Husserl. His
current interests are in environmental philosophy and philosophy of
technology.
Tom Nenon (Ph.D., Universitiit Frieburg, 1983) is an Associate Professor

of Philosophy and Director of the Humanities Center at Memphis State
University. He co-edited volumes XXV and XXVI of the Husserliana; is
the author of Objekitvitiit und Erkennmis, as well as numerous articles on
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS 247
Dilthey, Gadamer, Heidegger, Husserl and Kant; and has translated Werner
Marx's Is There a Measure on Earth? and the Philosophy of F. W.J.
Schelling in to English. His current research interests include questions of
personhood and subjectivity, especially in Husserlian phenomenology;
issues in the philosophy of the social sciences; and Heidegger's concepts
of untruth.
Karl Schuhmann (Ph.D., Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, 1970) is a

Professor of History of Post-Medieval Philosophy at Utrecht University.
His is author of Die Fundamentalbetrachtrmg der Phtinomenologie (1971 ),
Die Dialektik der Phtinomenologie (2 vols., 1973 ), Husserl-Chronik ( 1977)
and Husserls Staasphilosophie (1988). He edited and co-edited Husserl's
Ideen I (2 vols., 1976), Herbert Spiegelberg's So/len und Diirfen (1989),
Adolf Reinach's Siimtliche Werke (2 vol., 1989) and Husserl"s's
Briefwechsel (10 vols., 1994)
H. Peter Steeves (Ph.D. Indiana University, 1995) is an Assistant Professor

of Philosophy at California State University Fresno. His teaching and
research interests include phenomenology, ethics (especially environmental
and animal), and social and political theory. His most recent project
involves editing and contributing to an anthology on "Animals and
Continental Philosophy" (Rodopi Press, forthcoming , 1997).
Kenneth W. Stikkers (Ph.D., DePaul University, 1982) is a Professor of

Philosophy at Seattle University. He edited and authored the Introduction
to the English translation of Max Scheler's Problems of Sociology of
Knowledge (1980) and has authored numerous articles on Max Scheler,
American pragmatism, and philosophy of the social sciences. He presently
is completing a volume, Economics as Moral Philosophy, that examines the
philosophical-especially ethical-foundations of economic science and
attempts to rethink those foundations especially in light of contemporary
continental philosophy.
Index of Names
Ahern, John, 41, Dickie, George, 30, 33, 47,

Aquinas, St. Thomas, 8, 113, Dilthey, Wilhelm,
Arnheim, Rudolf, 13, 120, 149,
Aristotle, 106, 113, 132, 133, Donatello, 45,
Augustine, St., 221, Dooyeweerd, Herman, 159,
Averroes, 8, 160, 161, 163,
Bergson, Henri, 87, 120, Dostoevsky, Fyodor, 210, 211,
Birmelin, Robert, 45, Duchamp, Marcel, 29, 33, 34,
Blanchot, Maurice, 35, 36, 37, 35, 36, 38,
38, Eaton, Howard 0., 96,
Blonde!, Maurice, 222, Emad, Parvis, 139,
Blosser, Philip, 138, Embree, Lester, 15,
Brentano, Franz, 2, 95, 96, 99, Ehrenfels, Christian von, 2, 95-
100, 102, 104, 108, 125, 116,176, 177,
174,175,194,196,203, Escher, M.C, 45,
207, Fabian, Reinhard, 96,
Brightman, Edgar, 211, Findlay, J.N. 1, 64, 143, 144,
Buber, Martin, 3, Frings, Manfred, 138, 156,
Buddha, Buddhism, 75-76, 77, Frondizi, Risieri, 157, 167,
78, 80, Galileo, 113,
Chisholm, Roderick, 6, Gassendi, I 02,
Christo, 42, Geiger, Moritz, 95,
Clark, Kenneth, 43, 45, 48, Gober, Robert, 35,
Cobb, John, 5, Grassi, Wolfgang, 113,
Croce, Benedetto, 89, Hamlyn, D. W., 157,
Daly, Herman E., 5. Hanson, Duane, 39, 40,
de Andrea, John, 39, 40, Hartmann, Nicolai, 2, 81, 82,
Delbruek, Max, 144, 83,144, 166,
Derrida, Jacques, 69, 78, 138, Hartmann, Robert, 2
152-153 Hartshorne, Charles, 228,
Descartes, Rene, 122, 124, 129, Heidegger, Martin, 6, 88, 117-
249
136, 138-141, 146, 147, Meinong, Alexius, 2, 95, 99,

14~ 149, 150, 151, 154, 106, 109,
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 13,
Friederich, 89, 69, 73, 77,
Hibbard, Howard, 40, Mill, John Stuart, 87,
Hildebrand, Dietrich von, 2, Morris, William, 220,
95, Moore, G.E., 2, 156,203-207,
Hilliard, Nicholas, 42, 211-215,227,
Hobbes, Thomas, 114, Moosa, Imtiaz, 157,
Hosokowa, Ryoichi, 132, Mulligan, Kevin, 98,
Husserl, Edmund, 4, 30-48, 49, Natorp, Paul, 131,
63, 68, 71, 72, 79, 83-87, Nenon, Thomas, 203,
92, 95, 96, 100, 125, 126, Neumann, Otto von, 2,
129, 137, 140, 144, 167- Nietzsche, Friederick, 6, 85,
192, 193-230, 140, 141,
James, William, 85, 120, 141, Piercy, Marge, 220
142, 175, 176, 177, Perry, Ralph Barton, 2, 68, 159,
John of St. Thomas, 8, Pfaender, Alexander, 103, 173,
Kant, Immanuel, 3, 82, 83, 102, Plato, 43, 134,
122, 162, 171, 219, Plotinus, 8,
Kisiel, Theodore, 131, Prufer, Thomas, 226,
K1ee, Paul, 70-71, Puolimatka, Tapio, 166, 167,
Kripke, Saul, 76, Ray, Man, 35,
Landgrebe, Ludwig, 170, Reinach, Adolf, 95, 104,
Lask, Emil, 119, Reiner, Hans, 138, 156, 165,
LeGuin, Ursula, 220, 166, 167,
Lotze, Hermann, 125, Reinhardt, Ad, 45,
Luckmann, Thomas, 85, Rembrandt, 37,
Mahayana Buddhism, 78, Rescher, Nicholas, 157, 158,
(Buddha), Ricoeur, Paul, 82, 84, 87,
Marbach, Eduard, 44, Rickert, Heinrich, 119, 123-
Marks, Lawrence, 157, 126,
Marty, Anton, 176, Rolston, Holmes, 22,
Marx, Karl, 1, Ross, W.D., 2,
Maslow, Abraham, 15, Ryoho, 73,
Matisse, Henri, 44, Sartre, J.-P., 70,
INDEX OF NAMES 251
Scheler, Max, 2, 81, 83, 138-

154, 155-167,225,
Schopenhauer, Arnold, 85,
Schuhmann, Karl, 173,
Schutz, Albert, 86, 83-90, 93,
Sidgwick, Henry, 167,
Simons, Peter M., 96,
Smith, Barry, 96, 98, 100, 107,
Sokolowski, Robert, 226,
Stella, Frank, 45,
Stieglitz, Alfred, 35,
Struth, Thomas, 46,
Twardowski, kasimir, 99,
Unger, Rudolf, 218,
Urban, Wilbur Marshall, 2,
Van Buren, John, 131,
Weber, Max, 111,
Whitehead, Albert North, 4,
Windelband, W., 119,
Wollheim, Richard, 34, 37,
Index of Topics
absence, 63-80, categorical imperative, 208-

-and telos of consciousness, 209,
70ff. choice, decision,fiat, 83, 87,
-and presence, 69 ff., 88, 90, 92, 93,
-and emptiness (sunyata), -serious vs. fancied, 86,
63, 75, -and in-order-to-motive, 90,
-and ideal, 67-70, -and valuation, 93,
absolute, first and second, 230, community, see personality of
absolute ought, 204-205, 208- a higher order
211, consciousness, latent and
acts, 174 ff. patent, 188,
-matter and quality of, 184- constitution, 13-17,
185, constitutional phenomenology,
-objectifying, 184 ff. 49,
-non-objectifying, 175, 177 creation, ex nihilo, 226-227,
ff. 229,
affects, 81,82, 92, 93, 94, 95, Dasein, 127, 135, 138-154,
adverbs (and values) desire, 100 ff., 177, 179,
ancient (Greek) ethical theory, -desire dispositions, 103 ff.
3, difference, differance, 138,
appearances (phenomena), 37, 151-154,
ff., 77 ff., ecological perspective, 55 ff.
attention (see also interest), 82- -and values, 57 ff.
83, 86, 87, 92, eidetic and utopian reflection,
-distinguishes voluntary from 215 ff.
involuntary, 83 emptiness, 63-80,
art, 29 ff. ethics, and value-theory, 1,
-and images, 40, eutopia, eutopian (see also
-institutional theory of, 30, utopian), 215 ff.
axiology, 2, 193-194, eutopian eidetics, 215 ff.
bonum, see summum bonum, facticity, 132-133,
253
feeling, 108 ff. -phantasy-image, 42,

-feeling dispositions, 108 ff. -physical image and image
fiat, (see also) choice, 176- object, 41,
177, -physical substrate of, 41-42,
-as empty intention of will, interest, 64, 65, 67, 159,
181, intersubjectivity, 13, 14,
free market, 4, -and objectivity, 14,
functional modalities of judgments, 122-126, 174,
meaning, 160, knowing, 67,
God, the divine, 211-214,224- life, 127-128,
230, -and action, 132,
-and the summum bonum, -and Dasein, 127, 135,
224-230, life-urge (Lebensdrang), 142,
-as Idea, 225-230, 144, 145,
good, 166, love, universal ethical, 209-
goods (as bearers of value), 210,
160, 164, motive,
habit, habits, 81, 87, 93, 95, -in-order-to-motive, 89, 90,
heavenly, 211-214, 92, 95,
ideals, 67-70, 226, nature, (see also ecological
-and absolute ought, 204 ff. perspective), 55,
-and eutopian reflection, 215 noetic-noematic correlation, 50
ff. ff.,
image and images, 30 ff. necessities and ideals, 215 ff.,
-and art, 40, ought and is, 217,
-and appearances, 37 ff. organic unities, 203-204,
-and Duchamp's readymades, passive-synthesis, 64, 65,
33 ff. personalities of a higher order,
-and existence, 31, 199-204,
-and face-to-face, 37, pharisaism, 166,
-and illusion, 39, phenomena, see appearances,
-and liberation, 45-46, phenomenology, 49 ff., 143-
-and nothing, 43, 144
-and perception, 32, positionality, position-taking,
-and seeing-in, 34, 50-51, 186,
-and subject, 44-45 possibilities, 83,
INDEX OF TOPICS 255
-attractive problematic, 83- -and act-correlates, 171, 169-

86, 88-92, 94, 192, 193,
--open possibilities, 83, 86, -and agathon, 141,
90, -and community, 205,
presence, 63-80, -and desire, 100 ff.
projects, 84, 86 -and differance, 138,
-choosing between, 93, -and ecology, 53 ff.
-hierarchy (system) of, 90-91, -and emptiness, 79,
psychic phenomena, -and essences, 158,
classification of, 174, -and existential interest, 66,
relevance, 85, 89, -and Gestalten, 157,
readymades (Duchamp's), 29, -and goods, 160, 164
33, -and ideals, 67-70,
resistance, 142-154, -and ideas, 155-156,
self-esteem, 209, -and interests, 64, 65, 67,
significance, 120, 135, 159,
stewardship, 59, -andjudgments, 122-126,
suffering, 151, 154, -and objects, 97 ff.
summum bonum, 211-213,224- -and position-takings, 123-
230, 126,
tragic, tragedy, 210-211, -and preference, 142, 162,
utopian, 211-213, 163
-utopian reflection, 215, ff., -and properties, 157,
-absolute utopia, 216, -and qualities, 99, 155-156,
valuing, evaluation, 53-54, 97 -and ressentiment, 140-141,
ff., -and significance, 120,
-and preferring, 142, -and subjectivity (see also
-as blasphemy, 139, Dasein), 127, 128, 158,
-as desire, I 00 ff. 205-206,
-as functional modalities of -and states of affairs, 100,
meaning, 160-161, -and will to power, 140,
value, values, passim -artistic, 29 ff.
-absolutism of, 112 ff., -comparison, 142, 146, 163,
-absorption of, 207-211, 194-197,
-access to, 121, 122, 129-130, -constitution of, 13-14,
~riterion of (moral), 161- -habitual, 81,

162, -life-defining, 210,
-facts and, 15-16, 18, -objectivities of, 184 ff.
-functional, 25, -positing, forms of, 180 ff.
-hierarchy, 166, 167, -temporality of, 181-183,
-intersubjectivity of, 26, 187,
-increase, 194-199, "we", 200-202,
-independent, 21-26, 156,
-intrinsic, 20-26, 206,
-non-moral, 161-163,
-objectivity of, 7, 11-28, 112
ff., 119,205-206,
-ofbearing, 165,
-of direction, 165,
-realization of, 161-164,
-relations, 99,
-relational theory of, 68,
-subjectivism of, 11, 28,
-summation, 194-199, 205,
-wholes (see also, organic
unities), 197-207,
volition, willing, 81, 83
-active and passive, 188 ff.
-and attentiveness, 82, 83,
190,
-and cognition, 82
-and desire, 179,
-and ego engagement, 81,
169-192.
-andfiat, 176-177, 180, 181,
193,
-and objectivation, 81,
-and passive synthesis, 193,
-and tendency, 188-192,
~ommunal, 199-202,
-founding of, 178-180,

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PHENOMENOLOGY OF VALUES AND VALUING

John Drummond, Mount Saint Mary's College

The purpose of this series is to foster the development of phenomenological philosophy

SPRINGER-SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, B.V.

ISBN 978-90-481-4826-4 ISBN 978-94-017-2608-5 (eBook)

Printed on acid-free paper

All Rights Reserved

The basis for this book is a conference on the Phenomenology of Values

Value-Theory and Phenomenology

As with most areas of philosophy and with philosophy itself it is a disputed

J. G. Hart and L. Embree ( eds.), Phenomenology of Values and Valuing, 1-9.

connected to phenomenology do value-theory in this rich sense.

Again see Findlay's Axiological Ethics for a sketch of these matters.

give way to "family resemblances" or to the unknown hidden context

that "through which" we experienced. And in this sense we may be said,

The Concept of Objective Value

Don E. Marietta, Jr.

When philosophers, and many non-philosophers, wish to claim that a value

None of our knowledge is objective in the sense of being caused only

The wide extent of intersubjectivity goes a long way toward

constituting them, we extract something from our original awareness of the

2Abraham H. Maslow, "Fusion of Facts and Values." American Journal of Psychoanalysis 23

product of a kind of abstract and theoretical reflection which is quite

claim lacks grounds for being accepted.

assigned definite meanings to these new terms. 3

someone is valuing an object. We speak as though the object possessed the

It seems to me that talk of objective value, often labeled intrinsic or

significance sought in objective value.

highly in certain adverse circumstances. Health is valued because it enables

It seems that we have not been very successful in trying to give

agreement about physical features of things than we have about value.

Image and Artistic Value

What is one to do, philosophically, in the face of such developments?

I. Husserl's Conception of the Image

My understanding of the image will follow the general outlines ofHusserl's

'Edmund Husser), Phantasie, Bildbewusstsein, Erinnerung (1895-1925), Husserliana XXIII, ed.

II. Readymades, Cadavers, Broken Utensils, and Images.

Press, 1987), chapters two and three.

Peterson (London: Thames and Hudson, 1975), 141.

snow shovel is supposed to appear to the spectator as a pleasingly formed

Blanchot carries this reflection further by comparing the strangeness

a readymade; 15 and, in the other direction, he imagined a kind of

"Marcel Duchamp, ed. d'Hamoncourt, 196-197.

face in bone structure and epidermal pigmentation; I am simply seeing a

III. Wax Museums, Some Contemporary Sculptors, and Images

physical substrate coexist, with the image-apprehension dominating but not

IV. The Image-Object at Work in Art

A. The Physical Image and the Image Object

B. The Image as Nothing and Everything

I will look briefly in the next section at a few of the presentational

C. Image and Subject

of a person or an event of a particular kind.24 Art abounds with both sorts

D. Image and Liberation

American Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. I, No. I, 1964, 56-66.

vestige of erotic feeling, even though it be only the faintest shadow-and

Problems of the Value of Nature

The perspective of this essay is phenomenological, by which is intended the

cal method is fundamentally reflective, theoretical, and, in a broad significa-

Problems of the value of ecological nature include, to begin with, questions

The terms distinguished in the taxonomy above will be employed in

the latter focusing on relationships and interactions among psyches rather

terns and species extinctions and various unsustainable practices less

over illness intrinsically, there seems a problem of valuing these snakes