One of the most important differences between humans and animals is the presence of a conscious attitude to reality, as well as creative and constructive principles, spirituality, morality. Any personality is not enough to satisfy only their physiological needs. Possessing consciousness, emotionality, intellect and will, a person became more and more interested in various philosophical issues, including the problem of values, their types, significance for himself and society, humanity as a whole, as well as highlighting the most important of them for himself, creating his own system ideals. Since ancient times, people have formed worldview values corresponding to the era.
Definition
The value is considered to be the positive or negative importance of objects and phenomena of the existing reality for people, a social group or society as a whole. This term indicates personal and socio-cultural significance.
"Value" is a philosophical concept that is the realm of the human mind. Only people are characterized by the ability to evaluate, give meaning, and consciously perform actions. Describing the difference between a person and other living creatures, K. Marx noted that people, in contrast to animals, are also guided by aesthetic and ethical principles. Therefore, the term "value" includes both objects of the natural world, and the phenomena of the material and spiritual culture of man. For example, these are social ideals (goodness, justice, beauty), scientific knowledge, and art.
In ancient times, the most important human values were considered good (moral criterion), beauty (aesthetics) and truth (cognitive aspect). Nowadays, people strive for personal success, development and material well-being.
Functions
Values, acting as reference points of people in life, contribute to the stability of the world, form the basis for an orderly, aimed at achieving certain goals and ideals of activity. Thanks to them, various needs and interests are formed (higher and lower), motivations, aspirations and tasks of people, ways to achieve them are developed. Values regulate and coordinate human actions. They are a measure of the assessment of his actions, as well as the actions of others.
It is important that without awareness of values it is impossible to understand the hypostasis, the essence of man, to realize the true meaning of his life. An individual possesses the concepts of values not from birth, not genetically, but as a result of involvement in society with its specific settings, norms. Since man is a social being, he becomes the bearer of these principles and rules. Values are the subject of his needs and aspirations, a guide in his actions and position in the evaluation of various objects and phenomena.
However, value guidelines may not be consistent with each other, be diametrically opposed, and vary based on specific conditions. This is due to the constant attraction of the human soul to achieve perfection, certain standards and truths that can change over time.
National values of different peoples determine the core of their moral principles. Each nation in the course of its historical, cultural and moral development determines, sets above all certain standards, for example, heroism on the battlefield, creativity, asceticism, and so on.
But the values of each culture and peoples in any period are impossible without the participation of human consciousness. Also rooted life guidelines play an indispensable role both in society and for the individual. Perform cognitive, standardizing, regulatory, communication functions. As a result, they contribute to the integration of personality in the social system.
Thanks to values, the inner, spiritual world of a person is formed, the highest impulses, the desire for self-improvement.
Awareness Background
The very concept and types of values arose in a particular person because of the need and interest to realize, comprehend their essence, as well as the concept and laws of society.
Life processes and functions in the world of people undergo changes, members of a particular community develop certain views on life, beliefs, ideology, as well as standards, measures of perfection, the highest goal of aspirations. Through the prism of comparison with ideals, designation, recognition of value, acceptance or disapproval of something occurs.
As a result of the continuous formation and improvement of public consciousness, the people themselves were recognized as the paramount value in the whole diversity of their life activities.
Philosophical questions of understanding the significance of any person, regardless of their status, gender, age, nationality, and so on, were formed and rooted when comparing people with the highest value (deity or spirit), as well as as a result of the flow of general laws of society. For example, Buddhism began to preach the equal rights of people, the realization of their importance due to the fact that any living creature is waiting for suffering, which must be dealt with and gained nirvana.
Christianity considered the value of people in the permissibility of atonement for sinfulness and the transition to eternal life in Christ, and in Islam - in the fulfillment of the will of Allah.
Historical stages of formation
At different times in world history, specific worldviews formed their awareness and development of the value system of society.
For example, in the Middle Ages, values were religious in nature, were associated mainly with the divine essence. During the Renaissance, the ideals of humanism, the importance of each individual, become dominant. In modern times, the flowering of scientific knowledge and the emergence of new social interactions left a significant mark in the methods of analyzing the world and phenomena in it.
In general terms, questions about values primarily affected the discussion of the problems of defining a good and how to express it. In understanding this topic, the ancient Greeks put forward various points of view. Moreover, in general terms, good was understood as something that has meaning for people, important.
Initially, the problem of values was raised by Socrates and became the core of his philosophy. The ancient Greek thinker expressed this topic in the form of a discussion about what is good. In Socrates' hierarchy of values, wisdom was the highest good. In order to achieve it, the philosopher invited each person to realize, understand himself.
Democritus, on the other hand, believed that happiness was the highest ideal. Epicurus revered pleasure, sensual knowledge, and justice.
In the Middle Ages, the main value was considered good, by which they understood something that everyone wants. And in Thomas Aquinas, good is identified with God - a kind of hypostasis that represents the primary source and resource of good and perfection.
In modern times, the good began to be divided into individual and collective. In this case, the latter, as the English philosopher F. Bacon believed, is invariably appropriate to play a dominant role in relation to the individual good. The culmination of the public good, this scientist defined duty as the necessary obligations of the individual relative to other people.
The concept of the good, as well as the understanding and principles of its receipt in the surrounding reality were the core of the European tradition of understanding the problem of values.
Evaluation of ideals
An assessment is considered to be a discussion about the importance of an object or phenomenon for an individual, as well as for society as a whole. A value judgment may be true and false. Any assessment in relation to a certain factor is provided on the basis of a specific attribute. There are different views on this topic.
The most popular point of view is the perception, as a criterion, of assessing the benefits, the importance of an attribute of an object or phenomenon. But this evaluative attribute has a significant indicator of uncertainty, since the same concept, phenomenon or object can have a diametrically opposite meaning - to be either useful to a person or harmful. It depends on various circumstances and properties. For example, a medicine in small doses can cure a person, but in large quantities it can kill.
Classification
The sphere of values is very diverse and touches on materially expressed and speculative criteria, social, aesthetic and ethical values. They are also divided into "lower" (material) and "higher" (spiritual). However, in the hierarchy of values, material, biological, vital criteria are just as important for people as moral, mental and spiritual.
The processes and objects in their evaluation by the individual can be divided into neutral, positive and concepts that have a negative meaning. People can show indifference to neutral phenomena (for example, the growth of bacteria or the movement of cosmic bodies). Positive ones are objects, processes that condone the existence and well-being of people. Antiquities are considered undesirable. For example, this is evil, something ugly, murder, alcoholism.
Values are also classified according to the level of generality and, accordingly, with their owner: individual and group (national, religious, age) and universal. The last of them include concepts: life, good, freedom, true, beauty. Individual guidelines are well-being, health, family well-being. National values are characteristic of a particular ethnic community and can significantly differ in some issues between representatives of different ethnic groups. These include, for example, independence, creativity, patriotism.
Each area of human life has its own system of values. The spheres of public life distinguish between material and economic (natural resources), socio-political (family, people, homeland) and spiritual values (knowledge, rules, morality, faith).
In addition, they can be objective and subjective, depending on what and on what basis is evaluated. They can be external (what is accepted as standards in society) and internal (personal beliefs and aspirations of the individual).
Hierarchy of values
In the modern world, higher (absolute) values are shared and lower, to achieve certain tasks. Important is the fact that they are directly interconnected with each other, predetermine an integral picture of the individual’s world. Thus, there are different ways of hierarchy of life values.
In the development of civilization, various attitudes are traced, of which some came to replace the other, displaying different value systems. But contrary to different ways of separating the highest and the unconditional is the life of man, he himself.
In the hierarchy of values, the red outline passes the question of spiritual guidelines, which constitute the spiritual capital of mankind that has been formed over thousands of years of human history. These are, first of all, moral and aesthetic values, which are considered higher-order values, since they play a significant role in human behavior in other reference systems.
Moral guidelines mainly concern the questions of good and evil, the essence of happiness and justice, love and hate, the purpose of life.
Higher (absolute) values are not aimed at acquiring benefits, being ideals and meaning for everything else. They are eternal, important in any era. Such standards include, for example, values that are significant for all of humanity - the world, the people themselves, children, the victory over diseases, the extension of life. They are also social ideals - justice, independence, democracy, protection of human rights. Communicative values include friendship, camaraderie, mutual assistance, and cultural values include traditions and customs, languages, moral and aesthetic ideals, historical and cultural objects, and objects of art. Personal qualities also have their ideals - honesty, loyalty, responsiveness, kindness, wisdom.
Lower (relative) values are tools for acquiring higher ones. They are the most volatile, dependent on various factors, there is only a certain time.
Characteristic values are, for example, love, health, freedom, lack of war, material well-being, objects and fields of art.
Antiquals, that is, concepts that have negative traits and opposite ideals, include illness, fascism, poverty, aggressiveness, anger, drug addiction.
Axiology term and history
The study of the nature and significance of important phenomena, things and processes for people is the subject of the doctrine of values - axiology. It allows the individual to form his own attitude to reality and other people, to choose guidelines for his life.
One of the tasks of axiology is the identification of key values and their opposite phenomena, the disclosure of their essence, the determination of their place in the world of the individual and society, as well as the recognition of the ways of formation of evaluative views.
As an autonomous doctrine, axiology appeared much later than the emergence of the problem of values. This happened in the 19th century. Although attempts at philosophical comprehension of life values, high ideals and norms can be traced in the very first mythical, religious and worldview sources. For example, the issue of values was considered in the era of Antiquity. Philosophers have realized that in addition to knowing the world around him, a person gives an assessment of things and phenomena, showing his personal attitude to the knowable.
One of the founders of axiology is the 19th century German thinker R. G. Lotze. He gave the concept of "value" categorical meaning. This is all that is important for a person, carries an individual or social meaning. The followers of the scientist improved the concept of values, supplemented the fundamental concepts of teaching.
Significant value in the statement of axiology as a self-sufficient theory was introduced by I. Kant. He declared man the highest value, having blasted a fresh path to perfecting this new teaching. Therefore, a person must be treated only as a goal, and never as a means. Kant also developed the concept of morality and duty, which, in his opinion, distinguish people from animals and make possible the path to good, which makes sense only in the human dimension.
V. Windelband considered axiology the doctrine of a priori, universally binding ideals, and the individual's primary task was to put the values into practice.
Philosophical Approaches in Axiology
At present, it is customary to distinguish four basic axiological concepts. According to the first of them, values are phenomena of reality that are not dependent on a person. They can be identified empirically, and they are able to satisfy the natural and mental needs of people. This approach is called "naturalistic psychologism", the most prominent representatives of which are K. Lewis and A. Meinong.
The second approach is axiological transcendentalism. Its supporters (V. Windelband, G. Rickert) consider values to go beyond the boundaries of norms and experience into the realm of spirit - the highest, absolute and necessary for all.
Proponents of the third trend, the personalistic ontologism, to which M. Scheler belongs, also considered values independent of the subject, of any entity. According to his claims, value should be studied in an emotional way. Moreover, it does not lend itself to logical thinking. Also, the philosopher believes that the highest ideals and values are laid in the divine principle, which is the basis of all objects and phenomena; however, the only place for the formation of God is the consciousness of people.
The fourth approach is a sociological concept presented by such figures as M. Weber, T. Parsons, P. A. Sorokin. Here, ideals are considered as a means of subsistence culture, as well as an instrument for the functioning of public associations.
Personal values form the system of its value orientations. This is based on the most significant properties of the personality itself. Such values are peculiar only to a specific individual, have a large degree of individuality, and can integrate it with any group of people. For example, a love of music is characteristic of music lovers, singers, composers and musicians.
