THE
PHILOSO
PHY OF
VALUE,
THE
VALUE
OF
PHILOSO
PHY
MANUEL B. DY
JR.
OBJECTIVES:
To present a philosophy of
values with the help of the noted
phenomenologist of value, Max
Scheler.
To show the indispensable role
of philosophy in value education,
especially in the context of
national reconstruction.
OUR CULTURE OF
TODAY
Damaged culture
Moral crisis of such
paramount degree;
economic and political
instability
Graft and corruption have
become an accepted way
of life
OUR CULTURE OF
TODAY
Moral recovery must
go hand in hand with
economic and political
recovery .
requires an
understanding of
values
WHAT ARE VALUES?
Are objects of our intentional
feeling
feelings of something; they are
oriented towards values
different from the sensory
feelings of the five senses
(e.g., pain, tickling), from
bodily vital feeling-states (e.g.,
tiredness, illness, health), and
from psychic feeling (e.g.
WHAT ARE VALUES?
Spiritual feelings such as bliss
and despair are essentially
intentional being directed
towards the value of the holy,
but other feelings acts like
preferring, love and hatred
are likewise oriented towards
values.
WHAT ARE VALUES?
Values are given to us
intentional feeling.
We “KNOW” values by
feeling them, they do not
wait for our rational
justification in order to
appear in our lives.
WHAT ARE VALUES?
As objects of our intentional
feeling, values are essentially
qualities and are not to be
mistaken for goods, though
goods are carriers or bearers
of values. The misconception
of value for goods may be
due to our language.
WHAT ARE VALUES?
“Halaga” - Filipino word for value
is
“Bale“ - Spanish origin, which
may also mean "worth“
values qualify our life and do not
easily give in to quantification;
as qualities, values are objective
and immutable
IMMUTABILITY, THE
OBJECTIVITY OF VALUES
Values, especially higher values, call
upon the person and when the
person fails to respond to a value, it
is not the value that is destroyed but
the person himself
As qualities - values transcend man
Justice
"To do injustice is worse than to
suffer injustice." - Socrates
THE AMBIGUITY OF VALUES LIES IN
THEIR IMMATERIALITY.
Our life attains a quality because
values constantly present
themselves to us, and intervene in
our life as:
instigators of action
a prospect for commitment
a reason and standard for
behaviour and expression, norms
and principles of conduct
criteria for aesthetic appreciation
A value gives itself in
an object to be
desired, but once the
goal is attained it
affirms itself in the
form of another
demand.
It is in this sense that
we can speak of the
universality of
values--they exercise
an influence on the
totality and unity of
our life. Values form a
kind of horizon to our
More especially, values
generate an ought-to-be and
an ought-to-do.
For instance, because justice
is a value, justice ought to
exist and I ought to be just.
Values, in other words, ground
our obligations, beliefs, ideals,
and attitudes, without being
identical with them.
HOW DO WE
EXPERIENCE VALUES?
Found in the notion of the human
being as a person.
A person is the seat of the spirit,
which spirit transcends nature. As
spirit, the person is not part of
nature, but apart from it; he (she)
can determine himself (herself),
direct his (her) own life. - Max
Scheler
HOW DO WE
EXPERIENCE VALUES?
A manifestation of this is the
human being's capacity to go
against the drive of evolution,
the instinct for survival--the
person can willingly take his
own life.
THE PERSON IS THE UNITY OF
DIVERSE ACTS, BUT AMONG THESE
DIVERSE ACTS, THERE ARE THREE
THAT CHARACTERIZE THE PERSON
UNIQUELY:
1. the act of reflection or the act of
making oneself the object of one's
thinking
2. the act of ideation or abstraction, of
deriving an essence from existence
3. the act of loving
LOVE AND HATRED
They are movements of the heart
towards values.
They open up a hierarchy of values.
*Love directs us to higher values
whereas hatred directs us to lower
ones.
*The Pilipino word “mahal (love)” also
means “esteem” or “of high value.”
HIERARCHY OF VALUES
Lowest rank: Sensory Values (the values of
pleasant and unpleasant, technical values,
and luxury values).
Vital Values of noble and vulgar, the values
of civilization.
Spiritual values of justice/injustice,
truth/falsehood, and the Aesthetic values of
beauty and ugliness, both of which are related
to ego.
The highest values are the holy and unholy.
Both spiritual and holy values refer to our
being a person or spirit.
HIERARCHY OF VALUES
For Scheler, the moral values of good
(positive) and evil (negative) are not to
be found in this hierarchy of values but in
their realization; they, so to say, "ride on
the back of the deed.“
A deed is good if it prefers a higher or
positive value in place of a lower or
negative one. On the other hand, a deed
is evil if it prefers a lower or negative
value in place of a higher or positive one.
HIERARCHY OF VALUES
“To the extent that good is the
realization of higher values, the
spiritual and the holy which refer to
our being persons, and to the extent
that evil is the realization of lower
values, the sensory and the vital which
refer to our likeness to the animals,
then good enhances our personhood
while evil degrades our humanity.”
THE VALUE OF
PHILOSOPHY
PHILOSOPHY
The Western tradition has always associated
philosophy with wisdom, forgetting the "love"
that precedes wisdom in its original meaning.
Pamimilosopo means also to be pedantic, to
be theorizing and to juggle concepts in a dull
and narrow manner.
“To philosophize" was originally to search
passionately for wisdom, to love it because
one was not in full possession of it.
EASTERN VIEW OF
PHILOSOPHY
The Hindu word for philosophy is "darsana" which
means "to see", not just with the eyes or the mind,
but with one's whole being. What is to be seen with
one's whole being is none other than the truth or the
real, namely, what is unchanging, eternal and
universal.
The Chinese tradition terms philosophy as "cheh-
hsueh". Hsueh means learning, but cheh is a
compound character made up of a hand, a
measurement, and a mouth; that is to say, philosophy
is learning to measure one's words with one's deeds.
THE BEGINNING OF
PHILOSOPHIZING
Plato traces it to wonder, Descartes to doubt,
Jaspers to the limit situation. Whether it is in
wonder, or doubt, or helplessness that one
begins to philosophize, something of the very
nature and reality of the human situation does
impel the person to do so.
Robert Johann calls it the tension of human
experience. This tension springs from the very
nature of the person as openness to reality, as
response-ability to the other (nature,
fellowman, society, or the Absolute), as not
being identical with oneself or as self-becoming.
THE BEGINNING OF
PHILOSOPHIZING
For Gabriel Marcel, to philosophize is
secondary reflection, to be concerned with
the mystery of being, not in the theological
sense of being unknowable but in the sense
of a "problem" which encroaches upon one's
own being and that of others.
To philosophize is to be concerned with
meaning or in Pilipino, kahulugan whose root
is "hulug" meaning "fall" as one would say in
English, "fall into place". To philosophize then
is to integrate, both past and future in the act
of presenting the meaning of one's life, both
personal and social.
MEANING OF
SAGEHOOD IN THE
ORIENTAL TRADITION
“Philosophy is the person's inner
longing to achieve harmony or
unity with one's self, with nature,
with others, with God.”
PHILOSOPHER AS
LOVER OF JUSTICE AND
PEACE
Justice implies a vision of the
totality of the situation and a
respect for the dignity of the
human person.
The philosopher must also be a
peacemaker or a lover of peace,
for peace reconciles the conflicting
forces within and without one's self.
THE VALUE OF
PHILOSOPHY
Philosophy awakens us from our spiritual
slumber, our take-for-granted attitude in
the same way as does literature or the
arts.
Philosophy not only sensitizes us but also
brings us to the level of holistic, critical
and evaluative reflection.
Philosophy attempts to see the totality of
any human experience, it can provide us
with a vision.
Philosophy invites us to be integrative.
INTEGRATIVE FUNCTION
OF PHILOSOPHY
Philosophy does not impose but springs
from the responsible freedom of the
philosopher as a human being.
Philosophy urges us to be moral persons,
persons of integrity who are in self-
possessed because their speech, feelings,
thinking and action are one. This unity
derives from commitment to the value of
persons.
Philosophy invites us to be true to
ourselves and our humanity, by committing
ourselves to the value of other humans
