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Intrinsic Value and the Notion of a Life

Jerrold Levinson

in Contemplating Art: Essays in Aesthetics

This essay explores the notion of intrinsic value. It is argued thata richly sentient life being a certain wayis the only possible subject of a defensible judgement of intrinsic value. One ... More

This essay explores the notion of intrinsic value. It is argued thata richly sentient life being a certain wayis the only possible subject of a defensible judgement of intrinsic value. One consequence of this thesis is a disagreement with G. E. Moore regarding the intrinsic value of a beautiful world devoid of sentience, a famous thought experiment from hisPrincipia Ethica. But a more important consequence is the underlining of an intimate connection between the notion of a richly sentient life and the very idea of intrinsic value.Less

Rickert and the Philosophy of Value

Frederick C. Beiser

in The German Historicist Tradition

This chapter is a close examination of the philosophy of value of Heinrich Rickert (1863–1936). The philosophy of value was an attempt to define and secure an ahistorical realm of values against the ... More

This chapter is a close examination of the philosophy of value of Heinrich Rickert (1863–1936). The philosophy of value was an attempt to define and secure an ahistorical realm of values against the threats of naturalism and historicism. It placed values in an “irreal realm,” one independent of mental or physical reality. The chapter discusses Rickert's attempts to explain the meaning of this realm and its relation to reality. It also considers Rickert's early views regarding historical explanation and the limits of naturalism.Less

The Principles of Economic Science

Athol Fitzgibbons

in Adam Smith's System of Liberty, Wealth, and Virtue: The Moral and Political Foundations of The Wealth of Nations

Laments that many economists are ignorant of Smith's ideas. It explains that Smith's objective was not to increase international trade, and briefly considers his theories of value and money.

The Nature of Goodness

W. D. Ross

in The Right and the Good

This is the second of five chapters on good, and starts by making the point that it is around the question of the intrinsically good that the chief controversies about the nature of goodness or value ... More

This is the second of five chapters on good, and starts by making the point that it is around the question of the intrinsically good that the chief controversies about the nature of goodness or value revolve, for most theories of value may be divided into those that treat it as a quality and those that treat it as a relation between that which has value and something else (which is usually some state of mind); Ross says that it seems clear that any view that treats goodness as a relation between that which is good and something else denies that anything is intrinsically good. The chapter first discusses R. B. Perry's relational view of value—in the sense of good, and other theories that also identify goodness with some relation, either as a relation between that which is good and some or all of its elements, or as a relation between some or all of its elements, or as a relation between it or some or all of its elements and something else. Next, the psychological theories of good are discussed; these, as a rule, hold that a thing being good means either that some person or persons have some feelings towards it, or some person or persons think it to be good; this is an objective view of good. The rest of the chapter looks at both R. B. Perry's and G. E. Moore's arguments on these theories, at Ross's own views, at badness as incompatible with goodness or as an element of a good thing, at W. M. Urban's work on the question of values (value often being considered as qualities of goodness or badness), and at B. Croce's arguments on value judgements. Ross concludes that the arguments in favour of thinking of value as an objective are no more successful than those in favour of treating it as a relation, and presents a lengthy validation of his conclusion, based largely on discussion of beauty and goodness.Less

Animal Rights and the Values of Nonhuman Life

Elizabeth Anderson

in Animal Rights: Current Debates and New Directions

This chapter examines some of the tensions among animal welfare, animal rights, and environmental protection ethics. It explains that while animal rights advocates object to animal experimentation, ... More

This chapter examines some of the tensions among animal welfare, animal rights, and environmental protection ethics. It explains that while animal rights advocates object to animal experimentation, this practice is acceptable to those who believe in animal welfare. The chapter shows that those who believe in environmental ethics might support the hunting of deer and rabbits when this is necessary to protect ecological well-being. It proposes an alternative approach to understanding the evaluative claims of the three perspectives, called rational attitude theory of value.Less

Desire-Based Theories of Reasons, Pleasure, and Welfare 1

Chris Heathwood

in Oxford Studies in Metaethics: Volume 6

One of the most important disputes in the foundations of ethics concerns the source of practical reasons. On the desire-based view, only one's desires (broadly construed) provide one with reasons to ... More

One of the most important disputes in the foundations of ethics concerns the source of practical reasons. On the desire-based view, only one's desires (broadly construed) provide one with reasons to act. On the value-based view, reasons are instead provided by the objective evaluative facts, and never by our desires. Similarly, there are desire-based and non-desired-based theories of two other phenomena: pleasure and welfare. It has been argued, and is natural to think, that holding a desire-based theory about either pleasure or welfare commits one to recognizing that desires do provide reasons for action – i.e., commits one to abandoning the value-based theory of reasons. The purpose of this chapter is to show that this is not so. All of the following can be true: pleasure and welfare provide reasons; pleasure and welfare are to be understood in terms of desire; desires never provide reasons, in the relevant way.Less

Nietzsche and Moral Fictionalism

Alan Thomas

in Nietzsche, Naturalism, and Normativity

This chapter assesses Nadeem Hussain's well-known moral fictionalist interpretation of Nietzsche. It also evaluates moral fictionalism as a free standing meta-ethical view. It distinguishes different ... More

This chapter assesses Nadeem Hussain's well-known moral fictionalist interpretation of Nietzsche. It also evaluates moral fictionalism as a free standing meta-ethical view. It distinguishes different forms of subjective realism about the truth conditions of moral statements. It is argued that Nietzsche's influence on contemporary meta-ethics is not that of a pioneer of a novel meta-ethical approach to our ethical commitments such as fictionalism. Instead he defends a plausible form of subjective realism in a way that connects with his primarily normative interests. Nietzsche is interested in the subjective conditions for valuation, not necessarily scepticism about value as a whole, with the ultimate aim of diagnosing a nihilism that fails to take any existing values as worthwhile ends.Less

Pains—‘Work while it is called Today’: Utility, Political Economy,Carlyle, and Trollope

Kathleen Blake

in Pleasures of Benthamism: Victorian Literature, Utility, Political Economy

Benthamites and economists acknowledge a principle of pain in work. But there is to be no self‐sacrifice that outruns self‐interest. Indeed in contemplating work, these writers communicate an element ... More

Benthamites and economists acknowledge a principle of pain in work. But there is to be no self‐sacrifice that outruns self‐interest. Indeed in contemplating work, these writers communicate an element of gratification. Heeding German Romantic influences on Carlyle, which have received much attention, the chapter explores overlooked Utilitarian‐economic influences as well. It shows how the labor theory of value comes together with Romantic ideas on creation, vocation, and everyday work (in this era encompassing industrial production) to form Carlyle's Gospel of Work. The chapter treats Sartor Resartus, Carlyle's annotations of Mill's Principles of Political Economy, and the application of a new‐forged work ethic to the topical cause of work‐reform in the Church of England, as represented in Anthony Trollope's novel The Warden. Thematically and by means of their styles, Carlyle and Trollope affirm work‐as‐pain but only so far as it serves and eventuates in pleasure.Less

Wanting and Valuing

Jeanette Kennett

in Agency and Responsibility: A Common-Sense Moral Psychology

This chapter describes Gary Watson's view of human psychology and the account of weakness which he derives from it. The chapter starts by examining an approach, rooted in the Platonic view of human ... More

This chapter describes Gary Watson's view of human psychology and the account of weakness which he derives from it. The chapter starts by examining an approach, rooted in the Platonic view of human psychology, which distinguishes between valuing and mere desiring. The chapter's thesis is that the evaluation cannot be understood in isolation from the notion of justification. In explicating the distinction between valuing and desiring, it focuses on deliberation itself. The latter part of the chapter examines how response-dispositional theories of value make the connection between these evaluative judgements and desire. It suggests a Kantian modification to underwrite the defeasible link between normative judgement and desire. The solution points to the rational centrality of the capacity from self-control.Less

Race, Nation, Equality: Olaudah Equiano’s Interesting Narrative and a Genealogy of U.S. Mercantilism

David Kazanjian

in Post-Nationalist American Studies

This chapter introduces Olaudah Equiano and examines the concept of U.S. mercantilism. It begins by suggesting that Equiano's text urges people to consider how mercantilism worked to produce and to ... More

This chapter introduces Olaudah Equiano and examines the concept of U.S. mercantilism. It begins by suggesting that Equiano's text urges people to consider how mercantilism worked to produce and to touch practices and discourses of “nation”, “equality”, and “race” during the late-eighteenth century. This is followed by a discussion on how Karl Marx's theory of value led to a critique of mercantilism's expression of formal and abstract equality with national and racial codification. The chapter then reviews Equiano's text before studying its representation of the expression of formal and abstract equality in the mercantilist conjuncture during the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries.Less

Substance Value

André Orléan

in The Empire of Value: A New Foundation for Economics

Resolving the enigma of what is called market isolation—how the activities of agents who are strangers to one another, as neoclassical theory supposes, come to be reliably coordinated—depends on ... More

Resolving the enigma of what is called market isolation—how the activities of agents who are strangers to one another, as neoclassical theory supposes, come to be reliably coordinated—depends on recognizing value as the fundamental principle of market activity. Labor and utility theories of value both conceive of it as an objective magnitude that preexists market exchange. This basic assumption, called the substance hypothesis, underlies both the orthodox refusal to acknowledge the role of money and the undervaluing of exchange itself. How order is traditionally imagined to emerge from disorder is discussed, together with the Marxian concept of the fetishism of the commodity. Finally, the singular status of economics in relation to the other social sciences, which emphasize the role of subjective judgment in determining value, is insisted upon.Less

The Value of Humanity: Reflections on Korsgaard’s Transcendental Argument

Robert Stern

in Transcendental Philosophy and Naturalism

This article considers Christine Korsgaard's argument for the value of humanity, and the role that her transcendental argument plays in this, to the effect that an agent must value her own humanity. ... More

This article considers Christine Korsgaard's argument for the value of humanity, and the role that her transcendental argument plays in this, to the effect that an agent must value her own humanity. Two forms of that argument are considered, and the second is defended. The analysis of her position is also put in the context of debates about transcendental arguments more generally.Less

Economics, Ecology, and the Value of Nature

Matt Price

in The Moral Authority of Nature

This chapter explores a specifically twentieth- (and now twenty-first) century conundrum: how to assess the value of nature and natural goods, and to weigh that value against other goods in a moral ... More

This chapter explores a specifically twentieth- (and now twenty-first) century conundrum: how to assess the value of nature and natural goods, and to weigh that value against other goods in a moral calculus. The contemporary obsession with nature's value reopens a question that John Locke thought he had solved in the seventeenth century. Indeed, modern economics begins with his all-but-categorical denial of the value of nature's works. The labor theory of value required it: Locke needed to show that human activity was the true source of all value, thereby grounding his theory of property, his liberal version of the social contract, and his arguments on political authority. If the lands untouched by human toil, and their value, had to be sacrificed on the altar of property, that was hardly controversial in an era when “wilderness” was a term of abuse. But ever since the hedonic theory of utilitarianism captured political economy from the dismal scientists, economists have rejected toil in favor of pleasure, and spaces once called wastelands are now more often named wetlands.Less

The Limits of Exploitation

Mark R. Reiff

in Exploitation and Economic Justice in the Liberal Capitalist State

This chapter examines the distinction between a gift and an exchange, explains how concerns over the commodification of goods, the legality of transactions, and the capacity of the parties relate to ... More

This chapter examines the distinction between a gift and an exchange, explains how concerns over the commodification of goods, the legality of transactions, and the capacity of the parties relate to the conception of exploitation the book presents, and explores the meaning of value and voluntariness, two critical elements of this conception. The chapter also discusses the acceptability of the labor theory of value, which up until now has been treated as the only serious candidate for an objective measure of value, and suggests that we replace the labor theory of value with an alternative objective measure based on the legal concept of consideration. Finally, the chapter explains why there is no need to root the conception of exploitation employed in the book in some notion of coercion.Less

Marx’s Economy and Beyond

Mark Harvey and Norman Geras

in Inequality and Democratic Egalitarianism: Marx's Economy and Beyond and Other Essays

This chapter presents the central argument of the book, jointly written by Mark Harvey and Norman Geras. It develops a systematic critique of Marx’s foundational theory of class division and ... More

This chapter presents the central argument of the book, jointly written by Mark Harvey and Norman Geras. It develops a systematic critique of Marx’s foundational theory of class division and inequality, the Labour Theory of Value. It presents an alternative, neo-Polanyian, framework for analysing inequalities and how they are generated at different times in different societies. It argues for a broader concept of just distribution to include both market and public goods.Less

The Originality of Saussure

Russell Daylight

in What if Derrida Was Wrong About Saussure?

This chapter attempts to establish the originality which Jacques Derrida grants to Ferdinand de Saussure within the epoch of the sign. Such originality stands or falls on the status of Saussure's ... More

This chapter attempts to establish the originality which Jacques Derrida grants to Ferdinand de Saussure within the epoch of the sign. Such originality stands or falls on the status of Saussure's theory of linguistic value. While Derrida never explicitly addresses this theory, his comments on Saussure's maintenance of ‘a transcendental signified’ would seem to neutralise the possibility of such a theory, as Saussure describes it. What is the evidence for determining Derrida's position on the originality of Saussure? From the very first time that Saussure is mentioned in Speech and Phenomena, in which Derrida suggests that the only innovation of the Saussurean signifier is to make it mental, Derrida's engagement with Saussure is frequently punctuated with the question of Saussure's originality. In Speech and Phenomena, Derrida appears to be applying a very Saussurean argument against the text of Edmund Husserl's Logical Investigations. This chapter also looks at Max Weber's views on Saussure's theory of value as well as the impediment and progress of Saussurean linguistics.Less