After considering the world, the nihilist passes this damning verdict: 'Nothing has value'.

Neither happiness nor human existence—and the same goes for everything else: it could all vanish without regret!

What are we to say? Is it possible to show him that something, at least, does have value?

It is difficult, because no one agrees: for some, order has value; for others, disorder. One loves to travel; another prefers to read. Some cry, 'Long live the fatherland', others, 'Long live freedom'. One cherishes the nature they walk through; another destroys it.

There is, then, no consensus, no common ground, in the realm of values.

Some even value violence and take pleasure in causing harm and suffering: evil, too, is an object of love!

What truly has value? How does one answer a nihilist?

Here lies the most obscure of problems: the problem of values.

How can it be resolved? How do we discover what truly matters? What method should we follow?

Perhaps by turning to a deeper, more fundamental question:

What is a value?

Let us open a book on values. There, we are likely to find something like this: 'Let us speak of values—the beautiful, the true, the good...'

Such an approach fails to grasp the radical nature of the problem, for the nihilist denies that the beautiful, the true, and the good have any value whatsoever, and so rejects them as values.

We cannot, therefore, take these as our starting point for any genuine reflection on values. From the outset, we would be assuming precisely what we seek to prove—an approach that is inherently dogmatic.

So we face a problem: how can we reflect on values without relying on anything already recognised as a value?

Yet this is the very challenge thrown down before us by the nihilist.

Likewise, such books speak of different types of value: economic, moral, aesthetic, religious...

But what I am looking for is the value of morality, religion, art, and the like.

And the value of morality is not itself a moral value, nor is the value of art an aesthetic value.

No more than courage has a courageous value, or fear a fearful one.

The plurality of things that have value does not entail a plurality of values. Value, then, only makes sense in the singular.

We must seek this singular, unique value that all these things might share.

Likewise, by value, we do not mean the qualities we attribute to objects or people.

'He is kind', 'This hammer is solid', 'This horse is fast'.

Such judgements have not moved us an inch closer to the question of value. The real inquiry must ask whether these qualities—kindness, solidity, speed—have value at all.

Value operates at another level, higher than that of qualities—a 'meta-qualitative' level.

Nor is value the same as the good, or the end.

Under the heading of supreme good, sovereign good, or ultimate end, the philosophical tradition has sought what is most valuable.

Yet this overlooks the possibility that the supreme value might not be good for us—it could even be a danger, if the supreme value turned out to be evil or nothingness. This, alas, is one possible outcome of our inquiry, in which case it would be wrong to speak of a supreme good or an ultimate end.

The supreme value may prove to be a good or an end for us—but we have no right to assume this from the outset.

In the same way, seeking value is not the same as searching for the meaning of life—for perhaps what has value is the absurd.

The fact that I find meaning in my life—through, say, an activity that fulfils me—does not mean that the value of my life rests on this in any way.

Nor is the inquiry into values a moral question: what does the value of a work of art, or a piece of fruit, have to do with morality?

On the contrary, morality itself depends on this inquiry. When we seek the foundation of morality, we are attempting to establish the value of morality—to show that good is more valuable than evil.

It is not enough to claim that morality is a duty, or that being moral makes us happy, for one might reply: what has value is the violation of duty—or even the annihilation of humanity, and with it all aspiration to happiness!

We see it: a great deal of confusion.

Words become tangled and mistaken for one another, and so the problem of values cannot be resolved—perhaps because it has never truly been raised.

So what is value?

Let us begin with a provisional definition:

To have value is to be worthy of love,

and to hold a high place in the hierarchy of all things.

This definition may evolve; the course of our inquiry might lead us to redefine value itself.

The question, 'What has value?', thus becomes:

What is worthy of love?

What holds a high place in the hierarchy?

What method should be used for this inquiry?

Some methods are roads to nowhere.

Which ones?

If you ask me, 'What is this tree made of?', I can answer: wood.

But if you ask, 'Does it have value?', I would not know what to say, nor what tool to reach for.

For cutting it with an axe or sawing it open will not magically reveal its value.

Likewise, I could run every conceivable experiment on a lamp—take it apart, pass a current through it, and so on—and still be no closer to determining its place in the hierarchy.

I might learn how it works, what it is made of, and other such things.

But it is not through experience that we can discover the value of a thing.

Experience can tell us what a thing is—its essence, its workings—but nothing about its value.

And this is fortunate: for if it were otherwise, we could not know that murder is hateful without experiencing it firsthand—by killing with our own hands—and morality could only be taught by murderers.

In the same way, identifying this or that quality in a thing will not solve the problem of values.

Trees are useful because we burn their wood to heat our homes. But all we have done is replace one ungrounded value—the tree—with another: utility.

Some argue that what has value is precisely the useless. And if we reply that utility has value because it makes people happy, we only defer the problem—for then comes the question: 'What is the value of human happiness?'—a claim the nihilist flatly denies.

The qualitative method, then, leads to an infinite regress.

So when we meet someone who loves something, we may grant that every quality is present in it—beauty, goodness, indispensability, richness, and so on.

And yet we must add, to their astonishment: 'Yes—but why is it lovable?'

What if we simply grounded our inquiry in the obvious?

Is it not obvious that pleasure is more valuable than pain? That good is better than evil?

Is anyone who denies this not simply arguing in bad faith?

In fact, any such obvious judgement dissolves the moment it is put into words.

It seems obvious that adventure is preferable to routine—yet do we see people leaving in droves for the other side of the world?

Or that wealth is preferable to poverty—yet some renounce all possessions, choosing to live as hermits in complete self-denial.

And some people find in museums nothing but tedium.

One society condemns free love; another approves. This disagreement runs through men within the same society, the same region, the same town—even the same family.

And people contradict themselves, suddenly prizing something that only yesterday bored them to tears.

This is the essential truth of relativism: there is nothing self-evident about values!

Would we fare better by consulting a specialist?

If we wished to know the value of dance, who would be better placed to answer? Someone who has never practised the art, clumsy and heavy-footed? Or an experienced dancer?

When asking about the value of a painting, would you turn to a great master or to a dauber who produces nothing but mediocrity?

What, after all, distinguishes the specialist from the novice, if not that the former has far greater experience in the field?

Yet we have seen that experience tells us nothing about the value of a thing—only what it is, its essence.

Experienced dancers know far more about dance than we do. They feel it in their flesh, knowing how every muscle must move and every joint must bend to enchant us. Through practice, they have uncovered its thousand secrets.

And yet, even at this level of mastery, they know no more of its value than we do.

If we must defer to the specialist, who better to judge values than a specialist in values?

We now see that these four methods lead nowhere: relying on experience, searching for qualities, grasping at self-evidences, and consulting specialists.

In any such discussion, we will always encounter these methods—and we will always set them aside.

We seem to have lost our way, yet certain things are coming into focus as we press against relativism.

One essential point: every value judgement is met by an equal and opposite judgement, for none are well-founded.

This is why there is a problem: the problem of values.

We also see that anything, however absurd or cruel, is loved by someone.

It is a fascinating and bewildering sight—and yet we are speaking of ourselves:

It is the spectacle of human love, of ourselves in our thousand loves!

Hence this troubling consequence:

We must suspend our value judgements, for they are unfounded and therefore lack all legitimacy.

We must stop condemning what we find contemptible and praising what we find lovable.

This calls for a rather unusual state of mind—one must become like a sponge, loving and despising nothing.

It is the exact opposite of the dogmatist's outlook, who clings rigidly to his value judgements and grows entrenched in them.

He lives in complete confidence in the ends he has set for himself. Nothing has ever shaken the substance of his life. He is at one with himself and knows no doubt.

The problem of values does not even appear to him as such. To him, it is a purely theoretical exercise, a pastime for idle minds.

There is no point in explaining our project to such people. They cannot help but be irritated by it. They cannot bear to see the value of what they love called into question, and will reject any conclusion that fails to confirm their attachment.

Dogmatists may become activists when they devote their lives—in the mode of action—to what they have arbitrarily decided has value.

Through this commitment, their relationship with the world becomes one of perpetual indignation.

They attempt to conceal their inability to establish the value of what they love by vigorously and relentlessly railing against value judgements they find shocking, absurd, or scandalous.

They will try to sway and persuade us using every irrational rhetorical device at their disposal.

They will shed tears, raise an accusing finger, their voice trembling with emotion.

Yet this indignation, though it may briefly seduce, cannot truly convince—for it rings hollow and offers no real argument.

And we will no longer be cowed by such displays.

How many tragic conclusions our inquiry might yield!

What will we do if we discover that nothing has value, or that what has value is evil?

Can we bear such a result? Will we have the courage to accept it, or will we turn away?

Every step we take must be shadowed by deep anxiety, for what is at stake is the most serious matter of all.

An anguished suspension of our value judgements—this is the cast of mind we must adopt if we are to confront the problem of values honestly.

Only in this way can we ensure that our inquiry is free from prejudice and that we remain impartial.

Relativism sheds light, but it is only a point of departure. It does not end the search for values—it begins it: for now, every value judgement is met by an equal and opposite one.

That our age is relativistic does not mean that relativism is the only valid doctrine of values available to us today.

What truly defines our age is the cacophony of competing hierarchies of values, each asserting itself loudly, with violence and noise.

Relativism, fanaticism, patriotism, cosmopolitanism... Ours does not appear to be a world of lost meaning, but one in which every possible meaning clamours for expression.

This is the root of contemporary anxiety: the uneasy, half-conscious sense that the values we believe in—and sometimes defend with weapons—are ultimately without foundation.

This lack of foundation undermines all axiological doctrines alike: relativism, subjectivism, and nihilism are no better grounded than the objectivism of values.

The failure of objectivism is not a vindication of relativism.

Postmodern impotence runs so deep that the judgement 'there are only relative values' is, for now, as unfounded as its opposite: 'there are absolute values.'

Likewise, nihilism fails to establish that 'nothing has value': the absence of proof for the value of life is not, in itself, proof of its negative value.

Above all, we observe this: the oblivion of value, lost in confusion with kindred concepts—good, end, quality.

A question betrayed, and therefore closed, from its very first formulation.

Here is another telling sign: the neglect of the pleasure that springs from a thing's value—axiological pleasure.

The existence and nature of such a feeling is unmistakable:

When I believe something has great value and is worthy of love, any encounter with it will fill me with delight.

A walk in the forest, for instance, for the lover of nature.

We might even suppose that what we call aesthetic pleasure—the pleasure inspired by the beauty of a thing—is in fact axiological pleasure, born of its value.

If I believe strength has value, I take pleasure in contemplating the square-jawed man, or the waves unleashed by a powerful storm.

If I believe joy has value, I delight in hearing it in the birdsong of this garden, or seeing it in the smile of the Mona Lisa.

What I appreciate is not the beauty of the thing, but the thing itself—or some part of it.

Since we often love not the whole object—the lion, say—but only one aspect of it, its power, its mane... we are tempted—wrongly—to posit a separate quality within it, distinct from an ontological standpoint: beauty.

Our gaze needlessly duplicates reality in a Platonist fashion.

In the end, beauty appears to be a superfluous redundancy: there is no such thing as 'beauty'—only contents of meaning that we may or may not love!

When two aesthetes disagree about a work of art, it is not because one perceives a mysterious quality—beauty—that the other does not, nor because 'beauty is subjective.'

It is because a work of art carries a multitude of meanings—its subject, period, technique, colours, conception of art, and so on. One person attributes value to one of these aspects; another denies it.

In other words, what we call aesthetic disagreement is in truth axiological disagreement—and it can be resolved, if the problem of values is solved.

You might think the colour red is beautiful—but is it not stranger still to attribute a quality to it?

This will surprise no one who recognises that everything, without exception, is loved by someone—even the cold solidity of marble or granite.

Some love matter for its own sake; others, for the spiritual qualities it evokes—the serenity of mountains, the terror of a storm.

All these pleasures and displeasures can be accounted for without any appeal to beauty or aesthetics.

Now, a work of art contains a myriad of meanings, and one can never know in advance which ones the viewer will seize upon, or which will weigh in a value judgement:

An infinite number of meanings may be selected and set against one another.

This struggle of meanings within the mind, which determines the final response of pleasure or displeasure, lies beyond our full understanding.

We cannot calculate in advance whether we will love a work of art or not.

Yet this complexity does not undermine the essential truth: it is the value—not the beauty—of the content of meaning that determines whether we feel pleasure.

Art loses nothing with the disappearance of aesthetics.

A work of art reveals itself as something that brings us face to face with contents of great value.

Museums become places where one may live experiences of value—sometimes unsettling ones!

And so value resurfaces from the oblivion into which it had sunk.

Though we cannot speak of oblivion or loss when it never presented itself as a memory or a gain.

Here, then, are the traps and pitfalls that await the unwary who set out on this perilous adventure—the search for value!

Now it is our turn to venture forth, feeling our way through the dark.

Is there any other way to pass through the deepest night?

Let us ask ourselves, then: where are we to look for the value of things?

In the object?

Our inquiry has shown it to be futile and naive to seek value in the object, as though sawing open the tree would lay it bare.

Indeed, the relativism of our age is in all likelihood the result of millennia of failure on the part of value objectivism.

Perhaps it is more fitting to look inward, and seek value within ourselves.

What if value lay not in the object but in the subject who contemplates it? Perhaps it is we who bestow value upon the world...

The theory to be examined is this:

Human beings do not falsely project the value of things onto them, as a kind of fiction, but actually create it. In other words, value becomes as real as the thing to which it is attributed.

Humans create value as a sculptor creates a statue, or a painter a painting.

Thus, the world is not devoid of value, as nihilism claims. It is empty of values that subsist independently within things themselves—but it is full of values conferred upon things by human beings.

But how is such a wonder possible?

Do you imagine that when you fix your gaze upon an object and concentrate, a value will suddenly spring to mind, pass through the air, and take up residence in the thing?

Is not this idea of the gift of values a form of magical thinking?

Even if such a bestowal were possible, it would not refute nihilism—it would concede its point, by admitting that things lack any intrinsic value.

If human beings must give value, it is because the world is bare of all inherent value—which is precisely what nihilism maintains.

The only way to confront nihilism is to contradict it directly, by showing that the world has value in and of itself.

Is this not, in any case, a sign of extraordinary human pride? Of absolute anthropocentrism?

For if the universe is devoid of all value, and it is humanity that creates values and, in its great munificence, bestows them upon the universe—if humanity is the source of all value for the world—then the human being becomes not the spatial but the axiological centre of the universe.

This doctrine combines nihilism and anthropocentrism in an original way, and need not be considered on its own terms but as part of our broader examination of nihilism.

From these various pitfalls, we return to our original question:

Where to look for value?

From what has emerged: neither in the subject nor in the object—either because we cannot confer value upon the object, or because it is not to be found there.

Is there a third way?

Perhaps value must be sought neither in the object nor the subject, but in the relationship between them—in that singular bond between object and subject in the realm of value: love.

Since we are looking for what is worthy of love, perhaps we must begin by elucidating the concept of love itself.

Until now, we have sought in vain for a solution to the problem of values, looking first in the object, then in the subject.

Let us see, at last, whether this solution can be found in their relationship—that is to say, in love.

If you wish to know what is lovable, ask love itself!

Let us follow this path, then, and discover the landscapes it opens before us.

At the turning of the path, we arrive at an ancient question—one that has accompanied the very emergence of philosophy:

What is love?

Could it be a feeling that is kindled between two souls and binds them together?

In truth, love can extend to any content of meaning whatsoever. Nature may be loved by walkers and ecologists alike. Music too, by the stumbling child or the virtuoso...

Love is not simply a feeling of pleasure taken in the thought or presence of the beloved.

Beneath this feeling of pleasure, something else lies entirely—something of a wholly different nature.

Love is also a declaration, a judgement, even a thesis, which may be summed up thus: 'this, which I love, has value'.

In attributing value to the loved thing, love says something about it—satisfying the classic definition of a judgement.

It posits a reality—the value of the being or object loved—making it a kind of theory, a thesis.

This is precisely what sets love apart from desire.

I can desire someone without valuing them. I might want an apple pie without placing it high in any hierarchy of values.

But when I fall in love, I value the beloved.

Love proves to be at once a feeling and a thesis—or rather, a thesis buried at the heart of a feeling.

This dimension of love appears to have been overlooked, or at least to have drawn far less attention than its irrational or sentimental aspects, as studied and celebrated by psychoanalysis, religion, poetry, and philosophy alike.

The question is: will we find anything of interest if we explore this hidden face of love?

First, we discover an essential condition of love, which takes the form of a law—a law of love:

To love, one must attribute value to the beloved.

If I break this law and say: 'I love you, but you have no value', my so-called love curdles into contempt—a contempt in disguise, masquerading as love.

We can no longer call ourselves lovers if we violate this condition.

We believe we love, we wish to love—but in truth we despise.

Beyond this, we find that within love's mysterious hidden face, its laws lie concealed as essential conditions.

And we are left with this question: what might this table of the laws of love look like?

A second law follows readily: the lover must defend the beloved when the beloved is attacked.

Suppose the nihilist says to a nature lover: 'Nature has no value'—and the latter stays silent, instead of coming to the defence of what he loves by showing what makes it so precious...

What kind of lover would he be? A very poor one!

Here is another example: sometimes two lovers, in an outburst of eloquence, declare to one another, 'I love you for no reason' or 'I love you without knowing why.'

This may sound admirable, but in reality it amounts to saying: 'No matter how hard I look at you, I cannot see what makes you valuable.'

An insult, then, in the guise of a compliment—and once again, a contempt masquerading as love.

We may therefore reformulate this second law of love:

To love, we must be able to show what makes the beloved valuable.

Yet what have we just seen?

That the problem of values remains unresolved.

That every value judgement is countered by an equal and opposite one.

That values lack foundation.

As a result, we cannot demonstrate the value of what we love, nor the negative value of what we hate.

For now, our loves resemble contempt in disguise—our relationship with things and beings taking the form of: 'I love you without knowing why', or 'I love you for no reason.'

The human possibility of love, then, remains to be thought through.

Of course, there are great love stories: nothing here calls into question the most tender and delicate aspects of our lives.

Great feelings are real. But love is not feeling alone.

This is simply a classical doctrine: love is conceived as an ideal, a goal towards which we have always striven without ever reaching it.

What is raised anew here is the possibility of accomplishing this task—which once seemed infinite.

Love can no longer be taken for granted.

So long as love was seen as nothing more than a feeling of pleasure, it was easy enough to know whether we loved this or that being or object.

I enjoy looking at nature and walking in it; I love nature—it is as simple as that.

But if we now accept that love, by its very meaning, implies conditions, then the question arises whether we have honoured all these conditions in our relationship with the object.

If not, then our relationship with the object is no longer love, but something else entirely.

It is no longer certain that we love the object, though we intend to.

We wish to love—but we cannot.

Love becomes a problem.

Now it is time to return to our original question:

How can this reflection on love illuminate the problem of values?

From the very beginning, the problem of values has been posed in this way:

What ought to be loved?

Yet the notion of duty or obligation is meaningless here:

Where does this so-called duty reside? In the clouds? Is it grounded in reason? In God? In the consent of the majority?

How do you answer someone who says that what has value is to defy duty, God, reason, or the majority?

So long as we frame the problem of values as a juridical one—invoking this famous law suspended in the clouds—we cannot solve it.

Here, by contrast, is a new definition of value, one that deliberately dispenses with the notion of law:

To have value is to be lovable—that is, something that can in fact be loved.

This definition rests entirely on the concept of love: the obscure idea of value dissolves fully into the clearer concept of love, and is nothing beyond it.

It can even be set aside altogether, replacing the question 'What is of great value?' with 'What is lovable?' or 'What can be loved?'

What can be loved?

Everything, it seems—and this was our starting point: everything, even the most absurd or cruel, is loved by someone.

And yet, as we have just seen, love is not merely a feeling of pleasure; it may curdle into disguised contempt the moment one of love's laws is broken.

If love becomes a problem, then 'What can be loved?' is a genuine question.

We now arrive at the heart of our answer to the problem of values:

Anything that violates a single law of love cannot truly be loved.

Why? Because breaking these laws does not lead us to love, but to contempt in disguise.

If we can only approach something through one or more forms of disguised contempt, this means it is contemptible—for we can only engage with it through contempt, with no possibility of a loving relationship.

Since it can only be despised, it cannot be loved. It is simply not lovable—there is no means by which we can love it.

Finding the value of a thing is, in principle, straightforward:

The first step is to identify all the laws of love.

Once this table of laws is established, we must examine whether the nature of the object would inevitably lead us to break one of these laws in our relationship with it.

If it does, the object has no value; if it does not, it has value.

This table of laws has never been drawn up—and so the problem of values has never been resolved.

If we wish to determine what is edible, we must first understand what eating is: providing the body with the nourishment it needs to function.

We then know that only what meets this criterion is edible, while whatever harms the body is not.

We deduce what is edible from what it means to eat.

In the same way, we will deduce what is lovable from what it means to love.

This is the meaning of the phrase: 'If you wish to know what is lovable, ask love itself!'

A method has been proposed.

Now we must apply it—and put it to the test.

Will it hold up against reality?

To read the rest of the book, you can download it in PDF format.

Axio

Philosophy of values

By the same author

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Philosophy of values (academic version)