Abstract
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 Göttingen followers Moritz Geiger or Adolf Reinach (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”.2 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
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References
E. Husserl, Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie,Bk. I, Halle 1913, p. 50 (=Husserliana III/1, p. 58).
E. Husserl, Vorlesungen über Ethik und Wertlehre 1908–1914 (Husserliana XXVIII), p. 323
Cf. Franz Brentano, Vom Ursprung sittlicher Erkenntnis,Leipzig 1889, no. 24.
Cf. A. Meinong, Psychologisch-ethische Untersuchungen zur Werth-Theorie,Graz 1894, p. 15: “All values go back to thepsychic fact of valuing”. Even the formalization of the doctrine of values which Husserl under the name of “formal axiology” considered to be his single major contribution to value theory, was to a large degree worked out already by Meinong.
See my “Probleme der Husserlschen Wertlehre” Philosophisches Jahrbuch 98 (1991), 106–113.
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.
Barry Smith, “The Theory of Value of Christian von Ehrenfels”, in Reinhard Fabian (ed.), Christian von Ehrenfels. Leben und Werk, Amsterdam 1986, p. 169.
For a survey of Ehrenfels’ theory see Howard O. 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 Grassi and Barry Smith (eds.), Austrian Economics. Historical and Philosophical Background, London–Sydney 1986, pp. 67–75.
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 This incomplete description of the phenomenon is a source of value-absolutism, as will be seen later.
Because 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.
In 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 and Ehrenfels: Über Gestaltqualitaten and das Problem der Abhängigkeit”, in Reinhard Fabian (ed.), Christian von Ehrenfels. Leben and Werk,pp. 106f.
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 Inhalt and 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
Ehrenfels speaks of their “non-temporal or supratemporal mode of existence” (261), which terms only paraphrase the notion of subsistence developed later by Meinong.
In 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.
Cf. E. Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen,Halle 1901, pp. 416f. (=Husserliana XIX/1, 461f.).
This has been underlined by Barry Smith in his “The Theory of Value of Christian von Ehrenfels”, p. 155.
Since it is important to stress this idea which indeed anticipates the notion of Wertverhalt 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 “Über Fühlen 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).
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.
ne 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.
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.
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
This threefold division Ehrenfels had already arrived at in his “Über Fühlen and Wollen” (Philosophische Schriften,vol. III, p. 25).
According to the phenomenologist Alexander Pfänder, 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” (Phänomenologie des Wollens,Leipzig 1900, p. 83). This obviously is close to what Ehrenfels says.
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 Münchener Philosophische Abhandlungen,Leipzig 1911, p. 221f.). 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 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.
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 of Ehrenfels’ basic thesis that values are there only for individuals.
t 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 modern 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.
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).
Franz Brentano, Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkte,pp. 307ff.
One 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 position he had already advocated in “Über Fühlen and 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.
I.e., when presenting.
Über Fühlen and Wollen“ states still more succinctly: ”Feelings are phenomena of pleasure and displeasure“ (Philosophische Schrii ten,vol. III, p. 24).
It 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 certain values derive, and not insofar they are dispositions, i.e. psychic states of the subject.
In 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.
Wolfgang Grassi, in his introduction to Philosophische Schriften,vol. 1, p. 16 is right in pointing out that Ehrenfels has at least one powerful ally in his struggle against value-absolutism: 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.
Über Fühlen and Wollen, Philosophische Schriften,vol. III, p. 84f.
Or, 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).
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Schuhmann, K. (1997). The Notion of Value in Christian von Ehrenfels. In: Hart, J.G., Embree, L. (eds) Phenomenology of Values and Valuing. Contributions to Phenomenology, vol 28. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-2608-5_7
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