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3. Values

Freedom and preferences

It is among options that freedom is exercised. When choosing one thing rather than another, a preference is shown. I choose this because I prefer it to that. The idea of "preferences" opens up the whole question of values.

To exercise a preference means to act according to a scale of values: one chooses this because the choice seems better than the other option(s). Life is a constant making of choices and revealing of preferences. The person for whom golf rates high in his or her scale of preferences goes to play golf at every opportunity, whereas someone with different values plays tennis or listens to music or visits friends. A person buying a house or an automobile exercises his choice according to his preferences, trimmed down by the possibilities of his bank account.

The exercise of free will can therefore be described as a response to values. The fact of having options, of being able to choose, shows the existence of freedom but does not gauge its dignity. What is the value of freedom if it is faced only with alternatives that are scarcely worth choosing? The scavenger rummaging through a pile of garbage also has his freedom, but what dignity is there to it?

So the question of values enters inevitably into any consideration of freedom, for the value of freedom itself is necessarily measured according to the value of what you can choose. There is no comparison between the concession of the free choice of whatever you want in the supermarket of a small town and the same freedom inside a jeweler's in a capital city. Or on another level, which is a better exercise of freedom: to become rich by telling lies, or to remain poor by preferring to respect the truth?

A person's free choices are the best mirror and test of his values. Even in the decision to commit suicide - which appears as the most definitive proof of the absence rather than the presence of values - there can be found a certain confirmation of this. If a person takes his life, it is not because death has more to offer but rather, so he thinks, because life has nothing to offer. He has reached the bottom of the scale, and "prefers" death because there are no values left in his life. There is nothing to "go up to"; he prefers or hopes for nothingness, even at the risk of actually "going down".

Sartre [1] held that freedom is the only given value (and that by it man "creates his own values"). This proposition does not hold water. Freedom is not so much a value as a means by which a person can enrich himself with values, or impoverish himself if his choices actually undermine his values and introduce "anti-values" into his life. A simple ability to choose has little title to be regarded as a value if the field of choice covers nothing worth choosing, or if the chooser has been so conditioned to choose that his choices diminish his life, or if he is afraid of committing himself to worthwhile, but perhaps difficult, choices that can enrich it.

But, what is a "value"? A value could be defined as an aspect of a reality that makes it seem attractive and desirable, or - and we are going up a scale - worthy of admiration. Alternatively, we can say that values are elements or goods that enrich life. This can be grasped at once on the material level. Food is a value, and so is clothing. A minimum of healthy food is essential at all latitudes to stay materially alive; the essential nature of clothing will vary the farther north or south we go. Food and clothing, then, are basic material values. There are other values that, without being essential, make important aspects of life easier and more pleasant: good housing, a healthy climate, appropriate medicine ...

Life appears as more attractive, the more it is enriched by values and especially by values of better quality. Most people welcome the possibility of eating in a good restaurant or of wearing shoes of top-class leather. When a person has more or better things - houses, cars, vacations - his or her life undoubtedly seems richer, fuller, and more fulfilled.

However, not all enriching goods can be bought. Some are possessed constitutionally: exceptional physical strength, for instance, or a fine musical ear. Others are acquired by effort, as when someone becomes an Olympic champion, a concert guitarist, or a master of several languages.

You can buy an Olympic medal if you have enough money. But you can win it only if you are in top physical form. To have sufficient money is enough in order to acquire a real museum of old medals; but you cannot win a medal without being an exceptionally gifted and trained type.

There are other values that do not consist in material goods or in bodily capacities, but in simple interior aptitudes. To possess a sense of humor or a good memory, to know how to reason well, to have special talent for mathematics or philosophy, to enjoy a strong aesthetic sense or natural appreciation of beauty, to be endowed with strong willpower and self-control ...

So, while one can grow in having, one can also grow in being. One can even grow in what one has, without growing in what one is. The latter - to grow in what one is - seems to be more decisive for measuring the value of a life. One person may have more money than another, and at the same time be less wise or truthful or generous. What we begin to note here - the difference between "having" and "being" - has no small importance for our study. The fact is that what most distinguishes man is not his capacity to possess or appropriate material values, nor even to be well developed physically, but his power to assimilate values of the spirit. As a person assimilates them, becoming the bearer of spiritual values, his life grows from within [2]. His outlook and perspectives expand. A blind man can be someone of extremely broad interior horizons. A beggar can be richer than a millionaire in artistic understanding or in appreciation of nature.

Appreciation

Chesterton insists that the aim of life is appreciation. Therefore there is no sense in not appreciating things, and less sense still in having more of them if you are unable to appreciate them [3]. It is much less what a person can buy or have, than what he can appreciate, that makes him humanly rich.

Since material values belong less intimately to the person - remaining at the surface or periphery of his existence - they are more easily lost than spiritual values. A thief can deprive me of my car, but not of my knowledge. Spiritual values, being more intimately assimilated, sink deeper roots in the person and are lost or uprooted with greater difficulty. It is easier to lose what I have than what I am; nevertheless, the latter can also be lost.

Other reasons too indicate that the way of human development lies in the acquisition of goods of the spirit rather than those of matter. If the fullness of human life is to be calculated according to the number and quality of material goods each one possesses, it is clear that, given the limited amount of these goods, not everybody can develop a full human life. In fact, since any individual material good can be possessed only by a single person, the development of humanity - if measured in exclusively material terms - runs the danger of being seen as a competition in which other people appear as rivals for the same non-shareable prize, as competitors whom each one would like to see drop out of the race.

It is different when personal realization is understood in terms of the acquisition of spiritual values. Spiritual values cannot be monopolized by a few individuals; they can be held by all. They permit limitless participation, and do not decrease when somebody obtains them. They spread "ownership"; but do not alternate it, passing just from one owner to another. In communicating a piece of good news to a neighbor, a person is not deprived of the news, but rather feels the increased satisfaction of having shared it with someone else.

When the search for material goods is a dominant ethos in a society, it tends to breed envy and separation among that society's members; whereas the more people have been reared in an ethos which inculcates the primacy of spiritual values, it is easier for them to pursue common goals in harmony [4]. Only an educational system which emphasizes such values will focus attention on the deeper meaning of democratic equality and rights, prepare young people to understand better the factors that make for social harmony, and tend to the preservation of true democracy.

Spiritual values are not consumed when they are "used" by someone who incorporates them into his own life or communicates them to others. Not only are people enriched by means of values, but we can even say that the values themselves are in a certain way enriched, at least in the sense that they increase in extension and effectiveness through the new "incarnations" given to them. Along the same line, we can say that each individual life leaves a stamp on the world, marking the lives of others strongly or weakly, positively or negatively ...

When we possess and appreciate a value, there is always the desire to know and possess it still more. A person who acquires a taste for music is motivated to increase his musical knowledge or talent. The tendency is toward fuller possession. We are led on to want perfection (even the man whose value is money wants more).

Moreover, appreciation of a value, especially if it is of a spiritual nature, normally opens us to a greater appreciation of other spiritual values. Whoever admires truthfulness or sincerity is better able to appreciate trust and understanding, along with all the other elements that go to make up friendship. This is logical since spiritual values, more directly rooted in truth and goodness, have a necessary interconnection that goes far deeper than any possible connection between material values.

Scale of values; criterion

We have said that the value of my freedom depends also on the value of what I can choose. But it equally depends on my ability to evaluate what I can choose. I may be surrounded by nothing worth choosing; but I may be surrounded by things worth choosing, without having any appreciation of their value. The American Indians who exchanged gold objects for tawdry colored beads offered by the first explorers may have felt they made a good exchange. No doubt the explorers thought they had made a better one. It is a pity if we are exploited by others. But it is also a pity if, having riches or values at hand, we fail to recognize them, or freely choose inferior ones to those that objectively are worth more.

Values themselves are not all worth the same, but stand in a certain hierarchy (when everything appears of equal value, then a person loses interest in choosing: "it's all the same to me"). Unless one has a "scale of values", one does not have values at all. A scale of values implies a criterion, a basis or standard according to which we judge between what is worth more and what is worth less, weighing the positive and the negative aspects of each choice.

A hierarchy of values exists, a scale in which certain values are worth more "in themselves", while others, although being real values, are worth less. It is true that any attempt to assign a particular position on this scale to concrete realities or experiences easily provokes different opinions: yet it should in any case stimulate a deepening in personal reflections. Which, for example, is superior as a value: economic wealth or physical health? Each one can ponder what choice he would make before the alternative: a multi-millionaire with chronic bad health or a middle-income person who never suffers from even a headache. Or, on a different level, what answer to give to the question proposed in a professional forum: "is it rational or neurotic to sacrifice one's life for one's child?" [5]

If education is to prepare young people for life, it must help them develop discernment, i.e., the critical ability to assess their choices in terms of values. Students who go through a school system that does not develop their critical sense are more likely to shape their later choices according to commercial, political, or ideological slogans, rather than to any properly thought out standards of their own.

Relativity of values

Nevertheless, it remains true that what is a value for one, because he sees special meaning in it, may often be of no value to another, because it lacks meaning for him. A visit to an exhibition by a contemporary artist may be an exceptional experience for one person, and a total waste of time for another. Meaning or purpose is at the heart of a value. What has (or appears to have) no purpose, has no value, at least to the person considering it so. Life is the greatest example. A life without conscious meaning fosters the impression of a life without value. No impression can be more dangerous.

We have already referred to suicide. However, even though one can hold that very many persons today experience a life lacking in any sense of deep meaning, the suicide rate (which is extremely low; about 12 or 13 per 100,000 in the U. S. A., with some developed countries somewhat higher, and emerging countries considerably lower) seems to indicate that the hope of finding "a better tomorrow" is a strong factor in normal human life. In the last analysis, it is not the person who just lacks values, but the one who lacks the hope of having any, who is drawn toward the nothingness of despair.

Jean-Paul Sartre, as we have seen, suggested that each person should "create" or "invent" his or her own values. This is really to hold that there is no objective value or meaning to anything in life. As he liked to do, Sartre expressed himself in a provocative, attention-getting way: "To say that we invent values means nothing else but this: life has no meaning a priori. Before you come alive, life is nothing; it's up to you to give it a meaning, and value is nothing else but the meaning that you choose" [6]. Let the reader decide whether Sartre's formula is likely to lead to a life of real richness, or boils down to a catchphrase which, if followed, leaves life bereft of any true meaning or value. It is hard to see how freedom considered as a completely irrational power can yield any other ultimate result.

An idea running through much of popular modern psychology is that, to grow and to be oneself one should be ready to try everything since every new experience adds something to the individual's personal character [7]. In this view, it matters little what one chooses because there is in fact no standard by which one can or should choose [8]. In fact, the reasoned evaluation of events and possibilities is an approach to be scorned. Subjecting yourself to "experience" rather than trying to dominate it is the best way of meeting human needs. And so, the ideal for personal fulfillment is to live "in a never-ending state of tentativeness and uprooting" [9].

This idea merits a brief comment or two. Not every new experience adds something positive to a person's character. Many experiences add a negative factor which, by closing the person in on himself, thwarts fulfillment. It is not a question of "dominating" experience, but of being open to those experiences which enrich and rejecting those that may indeed attract but impoverish. "Never-ending uprootedness" ...? Is fulfillment in life a matter of letting down roots, or of tearing them up?

We can certainly speak of "greater" values and "lesser" values. Is it possible to speak of "true" values and false values? Whoever holds that it is, will probably go on to say that the latter - "false" values - are not in fact values at all. But, is there any objective standard by which such a fundamental difference can be justified, or is it simply a matter of personal taste and preference? We leave the question unanswered, at least for the moment.

A solid foundation for the dignity of individuals is laid only when each one manages to establish an attitude of openness and receptivity toward values, above all toward truth and goodness, thus acquiring the capacity for both personal self-enrichment and a worthwhile social life.

Response to values

Values fulfill us by drawing us up; our mind rises to them and accepts them at a higher level. But our will too must respond to the attractions - or to the demands - of values. Again it seems that we must somehow be drawn out of ourselves, in order to fulfill ourselves.

The response to values should ordinarily be one of pleasure, joy, admiration, to the point that - in the case of a really exalted value - one can speak of an ecstatic reaction (ecstasy properly means going out of oneself). There are values capable of asking and obtaining the very gift of oneself: freedom, the family, a nation's independence or identity ...; and there are people who are prepared to die for such values. Whoever does not have a value in his life for which he thinks it is worthwhile to give that life itself, has a life poor in values. To say that something is worth dying for means that it is worth living for. To say there is nothing worth dying for, implies that what we are living for is also worth nothing [10].

While we would all like to find perfect values, they rarely occur. As a rule, our experience of values is partial, either because the capacity for appreciation which we ourselves possess is insufficiently developed, or because the values we encounter are limited, since even higher values are so often expressed in practice in an imperfect form; mixed, that is, with defects [11]. Hence the importance of knowing how to identify and appreciate the aspect of value in individual things or situations, without being blinded or hindered by the presence of defects on the one hand; and, on the other, without losing the discernment of what is defective. Such discernment or criterion is also a sign of a sense of values.

Values call for adequate response. To be able to respond duly to each individual value shows discernment, maturity, and depth. Such a response calls for an ability to distinguish between values, between those that really are values and those that are so merely in appearance; and, among the real ones, to know how to gauge those that are of greater worth, since not all values are equal, nor should a person respond in the same way to all. Some are superior (they are worth "more") and others are inferior (they are worth "less"). It is a matter of criterion: and, we repeat, of developing both receptivity and a capacity for response.

To respond with too much enthusiasm to inferior values can indicate superficiality, but is not normally very harmful. Is it a defect to be crazy about football? Some no doubt think so. But this also can be a superficial judgment. When all is said and done, being a Dallas Cowboys or a Greenbay Packers fan can compensate for the stress of a very demanding professional occupation.

It is worse to respond insufficiently to great values. Whatever the reason - shortsightedness, lethargy, selfishness ... - the person who is not open to a true value remains without enrichment. Such a lack of response can happen without any personal fault; for example, when a defective or inadequate response is the consequence of a lack of formation, the capacity to appreciate such values simply not having been developed. Education is defective insofar as it does not open up a person's horizons to different values and, if possible, to the awareness of a valid scale of values and to a taste for the more enriching ones. Young people are not naturally apathetic; they have an innate capacity for wonder that, if developed, is a powerful enrichment and ought to be a source of enjoyment in their future lives [12]. It is questionable to what extent most of modern education communicates enthusiasm for values, or even the capacity for simple admiration. If that is lacking, then people easily become bored and incapable of enjoying the ordinary things of life.

While the desire to find "perfect" values seems innate in us, this can create a problem if a person's expectations prevent him from seeking "partial" values, so as to recognize them and take an interest in and respond to them.

Here there is the danger that usually accompanies discernment or critical spirit. There are people who know how to appreciate great works, but are not able to discover anything in an intermediary or mediocre work or situation containing values which are not evident or fully perfected, since they are intermingled with defects. It is always a limitation if a person is capable of responding to what is exceptional, but not to what is ordinary.

There is still another possibility of which special account should be taken: that of responding negatively to real values, and rejecting them. Such a reaction can derive from malformation which not only prevents the person from seeing the value as it is, but leads him to judge it as an anti-value. But it is also true that one can possess the capacity to see and understand a value, and yet not be willing to do so because of the practical difficulties this could involve. When such a thing happens, it ordinarily derives from some rooted prejudice, and may be a (possibly unconscious) defense mechanism of a lifestyle the person does not want to change.

We repeat that the desire to find perfect values is completely human. In fact, a lack of humanity is shown by whoever does not have some desire of perfection, whether in knowledge or beauty, in joy or happiness. However, perfect values - outside of God - do not exist; great and even exceptional values, do. It would seem logical that a great value - even though it is not perfect in every aspect - should arouse an appreciation, an admiration, a response that is also great, in whoever contemplates it. It is not always so; at times, in fact, there is a reduced or even negative response to great and evident values, and this can happen in the case of a person with full capacity to appreciate the wealth of that value. There is something particularly intriguing here, precisely because this phenomenon is relatively frequent. We will return to it.

All true values should attract. This does not mean that you can speak of a moral fault (although you could posit an aesthetic limitation) in the case of a person who is not attracted by, say, classical music or baroque architecture. Nevertheless, there are other values - truthfulness, for example, or respect for other people's property - toward which no one can remain indifferent without showing a moral defect. In such cases, values and conscience stand in a particular relationship.

A person can be "blind" to values, incapable of seeing or discovering them; it is a defect that seems to reside in the intellect. A person can also be "deaf" toward them, being completely insensitive to their call; a defect rather of the will or the capacity for feeling. Mere appreciation of a value, which can remain at the stage of simply receiving it into oneself, is easier than response to the value, which always calls for a certain going out of self.

Deafness (more than blindness) to values seems connected to a free attitude of the subject who closes in on himself and "shuts his ears", so as not to feel any call that might disturb the sense (the illusion?) of a good conscience, and especially so as not to let himself be led where he does not want to go [13]. It is a curious resistance which the individual offers against the natural call that values - and precisely those that are greatest and most enriching - address to every person who wants to be of worth in life. This danger of remaining blind or deaf to values that one does not want to see or respond to is a primary and mysterious threat to human growth; again we will return to it.

A major value - without which a personality always remains incomplete - is a sense of humor, the ability to see the comic aspect of what is incongruous or absurd. This quality is an important aid to riding over the contradictions of life without excessive annoyance; and so it fosters a healthy optimism. While it is of course a great source of enjoyment as well as peace, few people possess it in full measure. The worst defect is not to laugh too much at what is not so funny, or too little at what is, but not to be able to laugh at yourself. Few people can sincerely join others in being amused at their own mistakes. This reluctance to see yourself objectively is a limitation which is not easily overcome. The point is finely made by Jane Austen at the end of Pride and Prejudice. Elizabeth Bennet's prejudices have been dispelled, and Darcy's pride overcome - though not yet completely. Darcy tells Elizabeth how she has been for him the means of salutary humiliations. She realizes that the process needs to continue, but gradually: "She remembered that he had yet to learn to be laughed at, and it was rather too early to begin" [14].

"Value judgments" are considered unwarranted today, at least when they imply an ethical assessment of personal conduct. Yet people apply value judgments constantly to material things - this car is "more comfortable, but more expensive" - and so can weigh the effect of possible choices on their bank accounts. Advantages are often accompanied by disadvantages. Does no one ever do the same when faced, for instance, with the temptation to tell a lie to a colleague? I may deceive him; but he may eventually find out, and I may lose his esteem. Or, applying a slightly different and apparently more interior criterion: he may never find out, but I may lose my self-esteem, thus going down on my own scale of values.

To pass value judgments on yourself but not on others, may show a high (perhaps an exaggerated) degree of humble exigence toward yourself and of understanding charity toward others. But it could also reflect such an absorbing preoccupation with yourself and your self-image that it leaves no time or interest to care about others. In any case, it seems to show a skepticism regarding the importance - for the fulfillment of others and the achievement of a more human society - of certain norms of behavior; or at least a selfish indifference regarding the operational presence of such values in the life of others.

Notes
[1] Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980), the best-known exponent of mid-20th century existentialism.
[2] "I begin to achieve fulfillment as a person only from the day in which I dedicate myself to values that raise me above myself": E. Mounier: Rivoluzione personalista e comunitaria, p. 94.
[3] cf. G. K. Chesterton, Autobiography, p. 333.
[4] Some people would see in a "value system" a possible replacement for a "moral system". This viewpoint confuses notions. A "value system" implies an order of goods, whether subjectively or objectively appreciated, whether derived from reason or faith or both. In itself it does not enter the field of morals, though it may lead to it. A "moral system", which must accompany any belief in free choice, implies the possibility of acting "rightly" or "wrongly", for or against a person's own system of values (however subjectively these may be held). If, say, friendship or sincerity forms part of a person's "value system", it takes only elementary self-awareness to realize that he can treat the value as it deserves, i.e., as he ought to; with that one passes from the mere intellectual awareness of something to be valued, to the moral awareness of how it can be treated well or badly, rightly or wrongly. If one has no sense of duty toward one's values, no sense that one should be a reliable friend or a sincere companion, then one cannot claim to possess any real "value system" at all.
[5] American Journal of Psychiatry, vol. 138, 1981, p. 439.
[6] Cf. Existentialism, Philosophical Library, p. 58.
[7] Cf. The Greening of America, p. 394.
[8] The "criterionless-choice", as Alisdair MacIntyre puts it: After Virtue, p. 202.
[9] Greening .... p. 89; p. 398.
[10] Here we might recall the modern concept of freedom noted earlier and the dangers of freedom in a world without values. If you lose respect for all the things you can choose, you lose respect for your own freedom; it becomes worthless to you. And once you have lost respect for the power or value of your own freedom, you lose respect for yourself. If you can choose nothing of worth, you are worth nothing. It is a view of self and a world view that makes for the suicide or for the terrorist; or for both put together.
[11] Despite the many cases (falling in love ...; the simple acquisition of a new car) where a first impression - which however does not last - is of having found perfection.
[12] The capacity for wonder is never fully developed unless in some way it carries with it a capacity for anger - whenever one sees a truly admirable value despised or mistreated. Indignation in such cases arises from admiration, as the logical - and, indeed, desirable - reaction to the debasement of values (all the more so if this leads to the exploitation of people).
[13] Cf. J. de Finance, L'Affrontement de l'autre, Rome, 1973, p. 273.
[14] Vol. II, ch. 16.