INTRODUCTION

The purpose of this paper is to explore the meaning of "social values", their different forms and interrelations, and their implications for ethics. These reflections will begin with some of the main trends of phenomenological value-theory, and then attempt to extend these trends in the new directions stimulated by contemporary linguistic thought. This choice of the phenomenological approach is prompted, first, by the realization that the phenomenology of value theory is a rich vein which as yet has not been worked very actively, at least in the area of social values. Beyond that, phenomenology has an openness and adaptability to other traditions, such as existentialism and personalism, that enables it to maximize its fundamental sensitivity to the richness of descriptive data. Most important, perhaps, phenomenology focuses equally upon both the modes of givenness and the "given" itself. Based directly on the thesis of intentionality or act-object correlation, it strives in all its considerations to incorporate the "subjective" along with the "objective". This sensitivity to the subject is especially important in value-theory, particularly when the social is being challenged in the name of anxiety over the fate of the individual.

Were we to attempt anything like a comprehensive survey of value-theory in early phenomenology, it would be necessary to treat such seminal figures as Brentano and Husserl, as well as such ancillary philosophers as Pfander, Reinach, and von Hildebrand.¹ Max Scheler, however, seems to have epitomized the phenomenological approach in the area of values and ethics.² In addition, more than others at that time he stressed the social dimension of ethics. It seems appropriate in the first part of our essay, therefore, to trace the broad outlines of Scheler's axiology and then to detail some of the specific factors of his approach to social values. In the second part, we will do the same with Paul Ricoeur's philosophy of value.

SCHELER'S APPROACH TO VALUE

It might be worth noting, at the beginning, that many consider Scheler to have been only a "quasi-phenomenologist". His ethical theories were already well developed before 1900, that is, before he came under the influence of phenomenology. Written under his neo-Kantian master, Rudolf Eucken, his doctoral dissertation had stressed the themes of the primacy of value and the centrality of the emotions. Then, reacting against Kantianism in favor of intuitionism, and enthusiastically espousing the phenomenological method, his philosophy took on a scope and cogency that made his main book, Formalism in Ethics, a seminal work for the times.³

Scheler derived his notion of phenomenology from Husserl's early work, Logical Investigations. To this he gave a realistic emphasis, openly rejecting Husserl's later developments, particularly the transcendental reduction and the trend toward idealism. Consequently, he stressed the two major themes of intentionality and the intuition of essences. With respect to the former, he did not follow Husserl's noesis-noema doctrine or theory of constitution. Instead, he simply stressed the idea of a "correlation between the essence of the object and the essence of the intentional experience".

Particularly as a tactic in his struggle against Kantian formalism, Scheler's basic strategy in ethics was to discover intentional acts that would have as their correlates objective, material (non-formal) values that are or can be given in full phenomenological self-evidence. Since he had already committed himself to an emphasis upon affectivity, he directed his attention to acts in the area of feelings: to "feelings of . . ." (Fuhlen von . . .). Specifically, he was concerned with acts or functions that are neither representational, conceptual, or propositional, but cognitive intuitions of particular values, regularly coupled with allied acts of "preference" or "subordination" which reveal the hierarchy of values. These "feelings of" are best seen in contrast with "feeling states" (Gefuhlzustande); these are static contents or phenomena only indirectly and causally connected with their objects through the mediation of representations, associations, or symptoms. Anger would be an extreme example of a non-intentional "feeling-state" that has only an indirect relation with a value. We get angry "about" something but only by dwelling on values or disvalues already perceived. Other examples of "feeling-states", viz., "response-reactions", are more closely connected with the "feelings of" because they share the orientation of the latter and are "called for", so that, indeed, we are saddened if the response is not forthcoming. They are thus referred to as "correlated", even though they are not intentional, that is, as such they do not "mean an object and in their effectuation make an object appear".⁴ It might be noted here that Scheler gives no precise examples of "feeling of", except perhaps for the aesthetic instance of "feeling the beauty of a snow-covered mountain".⁵ In all other instances, he speaks rather of the correlated "response-reactions", which, unlike the "feelings of", can be objectivated. This leads one to suspect that, in the absence of phenomenological description, the "feelings of" are more postulated than exhibited.

Although they are secondary, the importance attached by Scheler to the response-reaction forms of feeling-states is manifest from the fact that he devoted a separate discussion to them in the section entitled the "stratification of the emotional life", considered a model of his use of the phenomenological method.⁶ Here, the aim is to show why any attempt to "manage" happiness--which Scheler considers the real meaning of eudaemonism--is self-defeating and leads inevitably to hedonism. To do this he distinguishes four levels of feelings: sensible, vital, spiritual, and absolute which is the level of bliss and despair. Though given a priori in our experience, these levels also are detectable by several criteria: localization, duration, the degree of controllability by the will (sensible feelings are controllable whereas bliss is not), and, of special interest here, the aspect of intentionality which distinguishes the higher two levels from the lower two (joy is "about" something whereas pain is not).⁷ In effect, Scheler is here extending the role of intentionality to non-cognitive feelings and suggesting that there is a new dimension of intentionality involved with responses. He does not highlight this response intentionality, though he does develop concerning it such rich insights as his nuanced distinction between happiness and bliss.⁸ However, the exploitation of response-intentionality in a specifically ethical direction was the work of von Hildebrand.⁹

Love

Another instance of Scheler's extension of affective intentionality beyond its original role in the cognition of values can be found in his discussion of love and its opposite, hate. At least in his earlier period, love is the capstone of his whole system. Since it plays a crucial role not only in his ethics, but in his theory of community, it is of necessity a highly complex, stratified, and many-faceted reality. Some salient aspects stand out: although intentional, love is non-cognitive; and while it is directed to such goods as persons and things, it is a presupposition for the cognition of values. Thus, it is both "pioneer and guide" for the "feelings of", that is, for value-perception.

Love also has movement as a distinctive characteristic, which Scheler considered to be derived from Plato and which he emphasized in some contexts. "Love is that movement of intention whereby, from a given value "A" in an object, its higher value is visualized, and this vision is the essence of love."¹⁰ Here, the notion of value "B" raises some questions, for Scheler never really explains the precise relation between values "A" and "B". It is not sheer discovery of a new value for that would be simply a case of greater attention to "feelings-of"; nor is it a case of improving the beloved for this would be pedagogy, not love; nor finally is it a matter of sheer creation of higher values, since this would make of love an illusion, whereas he insists that only the distortions of love are blind. Rather, resorting to a heavy-handed simile, Scheler speaks of "love itself . . . bringing about the continuous emergence of ever-higher value in the object--just as if it were streaming out from the object of its own accord, without any sort of exertion (even of wishing) on the part of the lover."¹¹ It is hard to avoid some degree of a "creationist" interpretation with respect to this passage and others like it, but I think Dupuy is correct in insisting that creativity in these cases is confined to the improvement of the conditions that favor this function of love.¹² The person is basically passive before values, even in the case of love in which man most closely participates in the outpouring of creative spirit.

Values and Their Hierarchy

By insisting that there is a structure to our life of feelings, organized and energized by love, Scheler has expressed one side of his thesis that ethics is basically an ordo amoris. The other side is that the intentional correlates intuited in our feelings are also structured, in this case in the form of values and the hierarchy of their modalities. Individual values are referred to as essences, qualities, and ideal entities. They are independent of goods, purposes and tendencies inasmuch as they are presupposed by these latter as their foundation, but they require "bearers" in order to be "realized". Thus they are "a priori" in the material or nonformal sense, which Husserl had already specified, of being necessary, universal, and, though given in experience, prior to "inductive" experience and causal explanation. Consequently they are presupposed for any understanding of their respective regions of experience.

For example, the value of "the just" is presupposed for all awareness of just deeds and laws, but it is experienced only in some embodiment or "good", Goods, composed of things and values together, can change, but not values themselves at least not on the higher levels.¹³ The question of the ontic status of these values, beyond their "free-floating" status as intentional objects, is a problematic issue which is complicated by the shifts in Scheler's never-completed metaphysical views. Interpretations range from attributing to them a minimal sheer validity, compatible in some respects with a relational view of value, to a virtually fideistic metaphysics of values as correlates of the divine mind.¹⁴ A solution to this issue is not within the scope of this essay, but it should be pointed out that Scheler repudiates "an ontologism of the real and an objectivism of value-essence" which he finds in Hartmann's interpretation, and which many have attributed to Scheler himself.

The correlations between values are also a priori. The most basic of these is the hierarchy of value-modalities, which is given intuitively but with confirmatory criteria. This is structured on four levels, running from the lowest to the highest: the pleasant, the vital (e.g., the "noble", the "healthy", etc.); the spiritual including aesthetic and scientific values, and the sacred involving primarily personal value.¹⁵ On each of these levels there are additional correlations involving the "derivative" values of feeling-states and responses and a variety of further interrelations, such as the superiority of personal values over thing-values, of values of the other over one's own values, of acts over functions, and of spontaneity over response.¹⁶ The basic value hierarchy is referred to as absolute, but it still involves two types of "relativity": first, the internal dependence of the vital and sensible levels on the higher levels, and second, the external dependence of values on historically changing goods.¹⁷ In this context Scheler partially dissociates objectivity from generality. An intuition of value may be revealed to one person alone or it may be a single value (Eigenwert) pertaining only to an individual (a good for me). In each case, however, the value would still be objective in the sense of being independent of subjective conditions. Indeed, the knowledge of such values represents a "higher wisdom" and is rooted in individual conscience.¹⁸ Scheler's intent here is to undercut Kantian formalism which identifies objectivity and generality, though he considers this view of their coincidence to be correct in the case of the basic values.

Moral Values and Obligation

Moral values, as such, do not appear in the hierarchy of values, but are found generally in persons and their will-orientation. Specifically they exist "on the back" of those acts which follow the order of objective preference, that is, which realize higher values over lower (ceteris paribus, Scheler occasionally adds). The reasoning here is that it would be phariseeism to will the moral good directly, e.g., being "benevolent" in order to become good rather than primarily to help the other person.¹⁹

In Scheler's theory, obligation is based directly on values. Although neutral in itself with respect to existence, every value carries with it an ideal obligation, an "ought-to-be" (Seinsollen), according to which every value should be. Normative obligation or duty. however, is found only in the form of an "ought-to-do" (Tunsollen). In order to justify the step from value to ideal obligation, Scheler invokes such axioms as "the existence of a positive value is itself a positive value", implying thereby that some values at least are not indifferent to existence.²⁰ To explain the step from the ideal ought to the normative ought, he specifies three conditions: 1) a

volition, 2) an imperative or tradition, whether explicit or implicit, and 3) a reference to a tendency, particularly any tendential opposition or resistance to the value concerned.²¹

Clearly, these conditions all have to do with the meaning of the ethical situation. Scheler says very little about this, except to insist on the role played by the personal "disposition" (Gesinnung) or general attitude in delineating the field of projects to be considered and undertaken by the will.²²

Thus, according to Scheler, all obligation is essentially negative. This is so, first of all, in the case of the ideal ought-to-be simply by reason of the presupposed inexistence of the value involved. It is also the case with normative obligation, since one value may have different normative expressions and thus each normative statement is inadequate to the value expressed. Moreover, in every case of normative obligation or duty there is a negative element of repression or constraint. Finally, this negativity is compounded both because every sense of duty implies a self-regard rather than a full awareness of value; and because in obligation there is always a certain depersonalization that resembles a flight from responsibility or a hiding in necessity. To the negativity of any ethics based primarily on obligation, therefore, Scheler opposes his own approach as an ethics of "discernment of the good", while still allowing the need for a sense of duty to cover cases where value-perception is feeble.²³

Social Values

Social values, as such, are not given a formal treatment by Scheler, but are referred to only in passing and usually by way of an example of the general theory. For example, the values of the "just and unjust" are illustrations of the "spiritual" as a "third modality" of values, and are described as constituting "the ultimate phenomenal basis for the idea of an objective order of justice which is independent of the idea of `law' and the state and also from the idea of a life-community which grounds the state."<sup>24</sup> Law, Scheler explains in a footnote, is "solely a derived value from the primary value of the `order of justice'; the positive law (of a state, for example) is the derived value from the `order of justice' valid (objective) for him, which lawgivers and judges must attempt to realize."²⁵ Apart from such examples, it would seem that values are "psycho-socially indifferent". They do not participate in the social order but, as in the instance just given, are its foundation. At the same time, since they are absolute, all values for Scheler are "universal", with the exception of the "Eigenwert" which designates the unique value of the person and his special vocation.

Value Perspectivism

Because Scheler was also concerned with the realities of social change, his problem was to reconcile the absolutism of universal values with the varieties of value attitudes and conduct, while avoiding any suspicion of relativism. He did this by means of what he called "emotional perspectivism". According to this theory, all value awareness is "mediated", "filtered", or "refracted" through five levels of social existence which provide the parameters of social relativity. These five levels are ranked according to their proximity to the absolute values, that is, their degree of variation which increases as we go from higher to lower. These levels are: 1) the ethos or variations of the feelings of values (value-cognition) along with the structure of preference and of love and hate; 2) "ethics" in the widest sense ("of a time") or variations in value judgments; 3) variations of types of institutions, conducts, and goods; 4) variations of practical morality or actual behavior; and 5) variations of customs and habits, whose execution is rooted in the tradition, and whose changes require will-acts (e.g., fashions).²⁶ Concerning the world of values, each historical period represents one "viewpoint", that is, stratified perspective which can be improved, replaced by another "closer" to the world of values, or debased; but no single period can ever exhaust the world of values. This is not "relativism", Scheler argues, but an essential requirement of an absolute ethics that attempts to reconcile the changing with the unchanging. In fact, he argues, relativism is an absolutism in disguise, since it fixes on the ethos of one period and dismisses all others.²⁷ Nor is his perspectivism some kind of simplistic meliorism, Scheler insists, since it recognizes the possibility of retrogression. Indeed, in his Ressentiment and other writings, he proffers a strong indictment of the deformations contained in the modern ethos.²⁸

While not proposed as such, Scheler's perspectivism can be considered a theory of social values. In the category of ethos, particularly, a wide variety of value-phenomena can be delineated. For example, if the ancient Romans considered usury to be worse, whereas the ancient Germans thought rape morally better than theft, such judgments correspond to fundamentally different rules of preference with respect to such vital values as courage and virility and to utility values.²⁹ These differences are not to be confused with differences in the definitions of the acts involved, that is, of what theft, or usury, or rape are, for these questions are on the level of types. Nor should the changes involved in the growth of an ethos be confused with the different forms of illusion revealed in history, or with forms of falsification and subversion founded on such illusions (as, for example, in "ressentiment").³⁰

As a close corollary of the ethos, the ethics (of a time) depends upon and cannot transcend it. However, a distinction must be made here between the applied "ethics of practico-natural intuition" as it is expressed in a natural language, for example, and a "scientific" or philosophical ethics. The latter compares applied ethics with the ethos in order to refine and correct it accordingly, but it cannot transcend the ethos. In fact, the ethos can be transcended only by the "moral genius".

The third level of variations or of types, Scheler explains, covers those forms of behavior usually emphasized by ethical relativists to make their case. For example, theft, adultery, and murder have been regularly cited as categories marked by constant change by virtue of which the same conduct can be good, and then evil, or vice versa. Sufficient attention is not paid to the fact that the change here is in the institutions, not the values. The essence of murder, that is, what gives a unity to all the different possible definitions of murder remains a disvalue and therefore evil, despite the long history of human sacrifice, infanticide, and abortion.³¹ Murder was not predicated of these acts because no personal life was recognized as given. Either it was felt that personhood was found only in the tribe as a whole rather than in its members, or in the members of one tribe rather than of another; or else with respect to abortion, the fetus was not considered a person but simply part of the mother's body and subject to her disposition.³²

The underlying assumption of this "perspectivism" is that an intuition of absolute value yields the point of reference with respect to which all the variations can be judged as perspectives. In turn, this assumption raises the question of whether the "perception" or feeling of value can really be an intuition in Scheler's sense of a "phenomenological experience" in which there is a "coinciding of the `meant' and the `given'". Such an intuition implies overcoming a perspective or transcending one's historical condition, which possibility is denied by the theory of perspectivism itself.

Theory of `Models'

A partial solution of this difficulty appears to be available in Scheler's theory of "models" or "value-person-types". It is the model who has access to the world of values, and who effects changes in the ethos and the other perspectival levels. "The law of all axiological progress or decline is not obedience to a norm, but the action of personal models (or counter-models)."³³ Ontically considered, Scheler explains, the model is "a determinate and structured value-quality". The efficacy of the model is found in its exemplarity; that is, the model is the "unity of a requirement of duty founded on its constituents".³⁴ This efficacy is actually experienced not as a duty but as a powerful attraction-models draw the person. We do not go toward them by our own volition; rather, our response is

pre-logical and precedes choice. The attraction of the model is not a blind constraint, like "the power of suggestion"; rather, it carries with it a fundamental awareness of being obligatory and right. Thus, the relation of "discipleship" or of the follower to the model is one of fidelity "founded on love for the constituents experienced in the formation of his being as a moral person": we do not imitate the model but respond to its "creative power".³⁵

Active in all Scheler's discussions of this question, though not always explicit, is a distinction between the model as ideal and as concrete: to remain a model it must be ideal, but to be efficacious it must be concretized. "The model is contemplated more or less adequately . . . through the person who is supposed to fulfill the function of exemplar."³⁶ A hierarchy of such value-person-types deduced from the hierarchy of value-modalities runs as follows: saint, genius, hero, leader, and connoisseur or artist of the sensual. Historical figures illustrate the different levels: St. Francis, that of a saint; Augustine, a combination of saint and hero; Frederick II, a melange of hero and genius, etc. Scheler warns, however, that we must be careful not to hypostatize these value-person-types into historical figures, since this is a source for rigid and false traditionalism which places the values of the past above those of the present or future.³⁷

Is Scheler, then, displacing all other forms of influence upon value formation by his emphasis on the theory of models? Strictly speaking he is not, since he discusses other factors such as education and authority. However, these are basically different forms and vehicles of exemplarity; their real efficacity is based on that of the model, which alone ethically transforms a person or society. Scheler finds a particular and practical ethical meaning in this theory, in that it enables each person "to be authentic in his situation" and develop his own ethical life, not by attempting the impossible ideal of possessing all virtues and avoiding all vices, but by finding (insofar as that term is applicable here) his own adequate model.³⁸

Scheler's Social Philosophy and Sympathy

Presupposed by much of the foregoing, although not strictly part of his value theory, is Scheler's approach to society and community. A general "sociality" is constitutive of every person; man is not just a part of society, society is a part of man.³⁹ There are four fundamental or a priori levels of this sociality, beginning at the lower limit with the "mass"; this corresponds to the "herd" on the animal level. Next in order is the "life-community" (Lebensgemeinschaft) which combines individuals into deep and long-lasting solidarities in stages from family, to tribe, to nation. This

is the first consciously experienced social group and the first instance of a collective person (Gesamtperson), as contrasted with the individual person (Einzelperson). It is unreflective in its choice of values, which are basically "thing-values" rather than personal values.⁴⁰ The third form of sociality is "society" (Gesellschaft). This presupposes community and is a planned or artificial unity, organized by rules, laws, and constructs in order to promote certain ends. As these ends are based on such sub-personal values as the pleasant and the useful, there is no personal realization in society as such.⁴¹

The person-community (Persongemeinschaft) is the highest form of community--the "kingdom of solidarity in love". Here, solidarity implies both the co-responsibility or collective guilt and salvation, as well as the irreplaceability of its members. It also presupposes the "formal principles" of "essential reciprocity" (Gegenseitigkeit) and of "value-reciprocity" (Gegenwertigkeit). These principles are found to belong to the essence of certain communal acts, such as consideration, love, and promising. When another is considerate or promises something I can refuse to respond, but I cannot fail to recognize the call for a response or act as if no such call existed. Such forms of reciprocity must not be mistaken for some kind of "quid pro quo" bargaining arrangement; rather, they require a genuine self-giving or self-transcending mode of response.⁴²

This self-transcending mode of response is designated as "sympathy" by Scheler, and it represents a fundamental presupposition of his theory of community. Sympathy comes to the fore as the overcoming of our "natural egocentrism". Although we are born into an undifferentiated life-stream, we gradually separate ourselves from others in the direction of a quasi-solipsism which can be overcome only by deliberate acts of sympathy.⁴³ Sympathy is oriented to the essence of the person of the other; it institutes in us both a recognition of his point of view and of a value in him that is comparable to our own. By sympathy we accept the feelings of others. Though we understand them, we do not really live them, and hence we maintain a strong sense of our own existence as well as of that of the other. This "psychic distance," which distinguishes sympathy from "psychic and emotional identification contagion," is crucial.⁴⁴ In addition to being a foundation of community, sympathy has different levels of moral value, depending both on the other emotions involved and on the values of the persons so related. Its greatest importance, however, is in being a step to the higher act of love, which in addition to having a special role in value-cognition, is more profound, more stable, and a more individualized and spontaneous mode of participation in the other.⁴⁵

The overall moral thrust of Scheler's philosophy of society and community is to encourage the promotion of "person-community" as the

aim of our social efforts. We cannot live without life-communities of different forms, and we need the organization and continuity provided by society and its rules. The full realization of ourselves and others, however, is achieved only in person-community.⁴⁶

PHENOMENOLOGY OF VALUES AND EXISTENTIALISM

Though it is not our purpose here to review the critical response to Scheler's axiology, it is noteworthy that this criticism covered a broad spectrum of endorsements and rejections. The most crucial reaction for the future of Scheler's theories came, perhaps, in the context of the existentialist movement, which in joining with phenomenology absorbed, transformed, or rejected many of its theses. Rejection is perhaps most evident in the case of value-theory, for with Heidegger and Sartre the notion of "objective value" becomes a serious deterrent to authentic existence. In other cases, however, the reactions of existentially oriented thinkers have been rather mixed, if not ambivalent.

Here, Marcel is particularly instructive. He does not, of course, accept any of the standard labels. He is not an "existentialist" but a "neo-Socratic," yet he has worked insightfully on the meaning and quality of human existence. He is not a phenomenologist in the technical sense, yet his careful and nuanced descriptions have given him a distinct rapport with that movement.⁴⁷ He is actively interested in the question of value, but his dread of the "spirit of abstraction" makes him equally suspect of it. In Homo Viator, ethical value is taken as the equivalent of "absolute transcendence"; value operates as a "promise of immortality" and "puts the seal on life".⁴⁸ In the later work, Man Against Mass Society, however, Marcel emphasizes the dangers which are inherent in the fact that philosophies of value draw the term value from an economic and utilitarian context where it functions primarily as modes of instrumentalization and depersonalization.⁴⁹ It is true that in Homo Viator values in an honorific sense are contrasted with "pseudo-values", and one might therefore conclude that, in the later work, "value" is simply substituted for "pseudo-value". But the difference is still more fundamental, as can be seen from the fact that his remedy for "value-judgments" in Man Against Mass Society omits the notion of value altogether, stressing instead the notions of "intersubjectivity", presence, openness, and freedom.⁵⁰

Ricoeur's Philosophy of Value

Paul Ricoeur continues the work of Husserl, Scheler, and others in the phenomenological movement, but he also shows the influence of exis

tentialists such as Heidegger, Marcel, Merleau-Ponty, and Nabert, and of

such historical figures as Plato, Kant, and Hegel. His own work has not focused at length on value-theory as such, since his major undertaking has been a philosophy of the will, including questions of freedom, fallibility,

and the meaning of man. The projected final volume of the philosophy of the will deal with the questions of value and ethics in a "poetics of the good". In the interval, however, it is possible to pick out some of his views on values and ethics while recognizing the incomplete, tentative and possibly temporary nature of these views.

In the context of his discussion of motivation, Ricoeur expresses partial agreement with Scheler's notion of a material a priori of values connected with individual affectivity. However, values are "historialized" according to Scheler's term, that is, they reveal themselves only in terms of the unfolding of history in the sense that "there are no moral constants, alongside of or above various judgments, feelings, and mores, but that, rather, varying history is a mode of appearance of a moral a priori."⁵¹ In other words, values are not "contemplative essences" but are recognized only through the mediation of action and history. For this reason, Ricoeur does not totally oppose Sartre's conception of value as deriving totally from individual choice. "lt is no exaggeration to say that we decipher the good by our own devotion: an a prioristic interpretation of values will stretch that far."⁵²

Ricoeur's initial concern is to show how values are derived from motives within the basic project that embodies man's freedom. A project is "an opening of possibilities in the world and especially the possibilities of imputation of myself as self-determination". Motives are these possibilities, provided they are distinguished from causes (as determinists and Sartre do not do): a cause is "knowable and understood prior to its effects", but a motive does "not have a complete meaning apart from the decision which refers to it".⁵³ Like causes, motives include an element of force or receptivity. Nevertheless, they are not received in a merely passive stance, since in being motivated the will also finds "meaning" or reasons "because of" which it can act, which provide it with "an impulsion and a legitimization".⁵⁴ Thus motives are the "lived reasons" that solicit my action in the context of the project; as such, they also represent as the object of implicit evaluation a "feeling contained in the project itself." Consequently, "it is the project which has a value", though only implicitly. When I question the legitimacy of my project, "and thus my own value, because the project is myself," the moment of reflection arises in a "dialectic of thrust and reflection". This is the explicit moment of formal valuation or value judgment when values emerge "as such". If there is no immediate return to the project, that is, if the project and its action are

suspended for further reflection, value judgments lose the future orientation of the project that characterizes motives and, instead, "express present value, as `this is good'."⁵⁵

Value and Ethics

At this point of reflection, according to Ricoeur, ethics begins, but first of all only in the negative sense of "abstracting away the thrust of the project in which prereflexive valuation is embedded". Ethics then takes the positive form of value judgments of comparison which, in turn, as the basis of comparison, presuppose a horizon of "non-revaluated values as a constellation of fixed stars".⁵⁶ The anguish involved in this on-going questioning eventually pushes reflection to question the ultimate values themselves, and hence also the project within which they have meaning. This anxiety is a symptom of the truth in Scheler's "emotional revelation of values", though not in the specific sense in which Scheler makes this revelation independent of the individual's project, dedication, and loyalty. That is, if we encounter values in "motivating a project", it is "of the essence of value not to appear except as a possible motive of decision". Hence, the "emotional a priori" has a meaning only if it is not expelled from history, but replaced in its "context of dedication".⁵⁷ In this context the a priori will be manifest in the interrelationships of values, but certain values will predominate in particular historical epochs (honor is feudal, tolerance is 18th century, etc.). These retain the quality of that period, so that we must properly speak of a prioris in the plural. Thus, "with Royce and Marcel", Ricoeur will say that values are not "timeless ideas", but "supra-personal existences" whose appearance is "tied to a certain history".⁵⁸ Paradoxically, Ricoeur insists, in this view value is not invented but recognized, respected, and discovered. Yet ethics will "founder in bottomless anxiety" unless it returns constantly to the thrust of the project, and the "generosity of freedom".⁵⁹

Organic Values and Social Values

Some of the further implications of Ricoeur's remarks about value in general and its relation to ethics are brought out in his development of the organic (bodily) and social dimensions of value. The body is described by Ricoeur as "the most basic source of motives, revealing a primordial stratum of values: organic values. All other values assume a serious, dramatic significance through a comparison with the values that enter history through my body."⁶⁰ Here, the body is the existential or lived involuntary that calls for and bodies forth the voluntary. Ricoeur's analysis is especially intricate here: the body generates the need for pleasure, which lack characterizes the content or "matter" of desire. Desire, in turn, has a form, which is the imaginary anticipation of pleasure that adds "overtones of value" to what would otherwise be sheer representation of absence.⁶¹ Then, on its own, so to speak, imagination builds on instances of satisfaction of need already experienced, thus taking on the role of "virtual

knowledge of value", which is "latent valuation at the fringe of judgment".⁶² But pleasure and pain, though central, are not the only motivations on the organic level; they set the pattern for motivation, but do not exhaust it. For example, the "useful" which is not as such organic can "enter into conflict with pleasure and pain, on the same level of life, for the sake of pleasure and pain". In this way "the difficult" can take on the aspect of "good".⁶³ Consequently, there is no such value as "life" itself, Ricoeur argues, except insofar as it is unified under the threat of death or in relation to other values which are chosen through "sacrifice".⁶⁴

The real advantage of a consideration of organic values, however, is that it opens up the "total field of motivation". Specifically, the level of the body must be compared with the "level of history", i.e., social values. The body is the "affective medium of all values; a value can reach me only as dignifying a motive, and no motive can incline me if it does not impress my sensibility".⁶⁵ This point is only reinforced by the various attempts of the sociological school to show that collective representations penetrate into the individual through effects, feelings, etc., which showed at least that social values enter into competition with vital need. Unfortunately, the tendency of the sociological school has been to see this influence of social values as a mechanical imposition or causation, thereby losing sight of the crucial role played by the will and its freedom. In actuality, Ricoeur argues, the role of the social can be understood by analogy with the organic, but in neither of these is the motive a cause: "just as I have not chosen my body, I have not chosen my historical situation, but both the one and the other are the locus of my responsibility." Furthermore, neither the body nor history is an object, except for an unsituated spectator.⁶⁶

What primarily differentiates the social from the organic is the encounter with "something superior, with a transcendence", viz., an authority above me. This is the "specific appeal [prestige] which presents the good of the community in which I participate to my sensibility".⁶⁷ This prestige is experienced as a "decentering", which can be exemplified by his example of the demand of justice which "consists in principle of a decentering of perspective by which the perspective of the other--the need, the claim of the other--balances my perspective."⁶⁸

Prestige has two contrary aspects: obligation and attraction. In obligation my "own life is humbled by the values put into action by institutions and structures jointly constituted by the diverse demands of individual men". The lower limit of obligation is constraint, which is experienced as an anonymous dead weight, and is a sign of the dehumanization of values. Obligation ceases to be constraint "when the values illustrated by mores assume someone's face, . . . are embodied by genuine persons."⁶⁹ True justice is a form of this level of obligation.

Attraction is more basic than obligation because it is more concrete or real. It has an upper limit in the form of "appeal", which is a fundamental structure of intersubjectivity. Community does not merely fulfill my need nor does it constitute an ideal value; "in community it is the other as a thou, as an alter ego, to whom and whose welfare I respond and with whom I become a whole within a `we'."⁷⁰ Appeal or vocation, notes Ricoeur, actually transcends the order of motivation (just as constraint falls short of it):

There are some encounters which do not simply present me with reasons for living which I can evaluate and approve but which truly function as a conversion of the heart of willing and have the force of genuine spiritual rebirth. Such encounters create freedom. They set me free.⁷¹

As creative, such encounters belong to the order of "poetics" which will be dealt with in Ricoeur's final volume of the philosophy of the will. They include certain instances of friendship or love which are not public or social, but essentially private relations that transcend the rule of justice.

Consequently, we must say that the range of social values is restricted to a "middle zone" between the upper limit of appeal or vocation, and the lower limit of constraint. In this middle zone, the other is not the "thou" of friendship but a "socius," a fellow citizen, the subject of right. The value of the other here is always seen indirectly, "through a labyrinth of social situations in which it becomes fragmented into incommensurable values: equality and hierarchy, justice and order, etc."⁷² Thus, the "thou" or "neighbor" is reached only in the interstices of the relationships to the socius, so that the institution would often seem to be an obstacle to the "neighborly" by reason of its "objectifications", depersonalizations, subtle exploitations, and inertia.

This opposition between community (I-Thou) and society should not be taken in an ultimately antinomic sense, for the two are mutually dependent. They are dialectically related and require one another to such a degree that they cannot be extricated or ultimately judged in history:

The ultimate meaning of institutions is the service they render to persons . . . [but] no one can evaluate the personal benefit produced by institutions . . . [charity] is hidden in the humble, abstract services performed by post offices and social security officials; quite often it is the hidden meaning of the social realm.⁷³

The Scientific and the Technological

As fundamental forms of the "utilitarian" or instrumental dimension of social values, the technological and scientific as such cannot be a threat to the personal, for, in the mind of Ricoeur, they share the "innocence" of means. By the same token, however, they are not and should not be made the controlling values in the social. Nevertheless, in an essay on the survival of national cultures Ricoeur observes that they have a special importance today. Such cultures are built around an "ethical-mythical nucleus" which is a system of social values embodied in a set of attitudes toward life that "valorize tools" (values are goals, tools are means).⁷⁴ This concept resembles Scheler's notion of the ethos and the other levels of variations; but for Ricoeur, there are only four levels of attitudes forming the "deposit of values". The most superficial of these is that of customs, which share in the inertia of tools. Less superficial is the second level, that of institutions which are the reflections of the attitudes represented by the images and symbols constituting the basic ideals of a nation, the "awakened dream" of a historical group (the third level). But these ideals must always be interpreted in terms of a fourth level, that of a fundamental creativity, found, e.g., in the artist, which shares a different temporality than that of tools since it is not a matter of "accumulation and progress" but of innovation and renewal.⁷⁵ Ricoeur's question is, "under what conditions can the cultural creativity of a nation continue" in the face of the erosive influence of the universal, scientific, and economic civilization? His answer is, survival can be achieved only by "a culture capable of assimilating scientific rationality". This, in turn, depends upon a faith that "integrates a desacralization of nature and brings the sacred back to man" in order for a nation to take up the technical exploitation of nature.⁷⁶

Formalism and Ethical Rules

Though the above references to cultural levels and to the importance of the sacred indicate a resemblance between Scheler and Ricoeur, they should not blind us to the important differences which focus around the term "creativity" and the incommensurability of values revealed in "the affective indistinctness of motives". Does the consideration of regions of value and cultural levels yield some device for ordering the ethical--some simple, formal ethical rule such as Scheler's prescription that ceteris paribus one should always act to realize the higher over the lower? Ricoeur's answer would seem to be negative, even if a hierarchy does stand out in affectivity, it is not necessarily an absolute hierarchy. Because choice is concerned with an evident good, an a priori value has to be tested as the actual meaning of an affect in order to become this specific value. In turn, this means that any comparisons of better or worse are always shifting, incomplete, and subject to replacement. Hence, any hierarchy is at best precarious.⁷⁷

In addition, we must always be concerned with the gap between the rule we accept based on a value and our concrete decision--for bridging this gap requires an element of invention with its concomitant inexactness. In addition, the urgency of many situations imposes improvisations and cruel options. Finally, some values simply resist systematization. While, abstractly considered, "life" is subordinated to other values in a hierarchical scale, the value of "my life", to which I am primordially attached and which is the condition for the realization of higher values, is "extra-systematic" in the concrete situation.⁷⁸

This same "disorder" is even more active in the area of social values. As Ricoeur describes it, values tried out by others and illustrated by different historical epochs "accumulate within us in sedimentary levels":

There is within us a feudal conscience, gravitating around honor and knightly heroism, a Christian conscience centered on love and forgiveness, a bourgeois conscience whose tone is set by ideas of liberty and toleration, a modern conscience, enamored of justice and equality.⁷⁹

The individual conscience reflects this "disorder". From the outside society seems to be a homogeneous milieu in the form of concentric circles of humanity, nation, profession, and family, with the individual at the center. As lived, however, "these multiple circles represent claims, obligations, pressures and appeals which infringe upon one another and demand from us incompatible actions." The most anguishing of these conflicts, Ricoeur points out, is the conflict of love and justice which arises when the "intransigence of our principles encounters tact, the consideration we owe those we love." It is precisely from this conflict of duties that the person emerges. "A person has to create his own unity, his independence, his originality, and to dare his own style of life."⁸⁰

Does the Kantian categorical imperative, the rule of the universalization of our maxims, resolve the problem of the disorder of values and the conflict of duties? Though Kantian formalism has much more value for Ricoeur than for Scheler, the formal principle remains secondary and derivative, its prestige being "purloined from the `material' value of the other". Nevertheless, it still has the basic but subordinate function of submitting the authenticity of our feelings to the critical test. "A project cannot be noxious to the other if it is universalizable". This formal criterion is one of control in that it is "subordinate to the eruption of the concern for the other as other into my life, . . . it presupposes a surge of Mitsein into Selbstsein".⁸¹ In addition to the controlling function it also has a function of being a substitute, a temporary expedient, whenever I cease to live spontaneously, "passionately", the "material" values of social life. "Lacking fidelity to another, I content myself with remaining constant, with living in harmony with myself." Yet, the formal principle is still irreducible to collective imperatives or material values. It does not produce a motive, at least not a reason for doing something, but simply a "reason for reasoning". Ultimately, this means to "create a zone of silence so that the respect for the other can speak as strongly as the devotion to my life".⁸²

Respect

It is in this notion of "respect" that Ricoeur finds the most fruitful contribution from Kant, and he uses it to criticize Scheler's emphasis on sympathy.⁸³ Ricoeur argues that respect more effectively accomplishes the function Scheler assigned to sympathy of discovering the other and his value. Scheler's approach involved not only an unwarranted privileging of sympathy, but also a series of equivocations that spoiled its hoped-for "revelatory clarity". Respect is more adequate to the sense for the other because it includes a more marked sense of "phenomenological distance" required for the recognition of otherness. This is done by including a moment of "negativity"--the opposition of consciousnesses as irreducible to a means. Furthermore, in contrast to sympathy which proceeds by steps, in respect both the value ("ought-to-be") and the existence of the other are posited simultaneously. These are summed up in the notion of "humanity" or "objective end" considered as the "supreme restrictive condition of all subjective ends".⁸⁴

Because it is both affective and historical (social), respect can both subsume and correct sympathy by integrating it into the practical or ethical. Indeed, in so doing, respect coordinates sympathy with its opposite, "struggle". Where sympathy is private, intimate, and emotive, struggle energizes those human relationships which are less vital and more marked by work, the appropriation of things, and the "brick of power", that is, the forces that move history.⁸⁵ Struggle therefore historicizes sympathy, while sympathy "intimizes" interhuman relations. By its critique respect corrects one by the other.

The moment of recognition of the other is not speculative but practical; it is a consenting of the will and positing of the existence-value of the other. As Ricoeur interprets the implications of the Kantian notion of respect, the person is neither an experienced plenitude nor a substance, but a projected self or "is-to-be": "the person is a way of treating others and of treating oneself".⁸⁶ This places respect at the "moment of adhesion" (Camus) as "the testimonial of an I am beyond factual being". In this light my dignity is in reciprocity with the being and dignity--the existence-value--of the other.⁸⁷ Dignity thus gives one's sense of value a firm integration with being. This point is particularly important for Ricoeur since he has taken a position in very strong opposition to any hypostatization of Value or "the idols of Value" and in very firm support of the Heidegerian "obedience to Being" in which value and fact are unified. Only such a position, he feels, will enable one to surpass the "ethics of prohibition and punishment" and reach an "ethics of the desire to be or the effort to exist".⁸⁸

Values and Symbols

We must ask ourselves now whether it is possible to extend the phenomenological approach to values and ethics beyond the point it has reached in Ricoeur. More specifically, we must ask whether the light of his tentative and unfinished reflections might illumine indications for further development from other dimensions of his thought.⁸⁹ Two such indicators suggest themselves: the closely connected concepts of symbol and language.

We might pose our question this way: Ricoeur has not developed a very specific notion of the ontic status of values beyond his objections to assertions such as those of Scheler which understand value as objective essences or qualities. Certainly, in the context of motivation, we can say that values are "meaningful possibilities", or simply "meanings", but beyond that context what is the status of these meanings? Ricoeur has given extensive consideration to the notion of meanings as symbols, but in a way that diverges from much contemporary theory on symbols. For many today, symbol is simply another word for "sign" understood as a one-dimensional reference or a single intentionality. For Ricoeur this simple and transparent aiming-beyond-itself as in the symbols of mathematics and logic is characteristic of "technical signs". But the symbol, for Ricoeur, conceals in its aim a "double intentionality": a first or literal one, and a second or analogous one that is built upon the first. Thus the literal meaning of the symbol "defilement" or "impurity" is stain. But upon this first intentionality there is erected a second, which, through the physically "unclean", points to a certain situation of man in the sacred which is precisely that of being defiled or impure. Furthermore, the second meaning is given only through the first.

This capacity or depth of the symbol is crucial for Ricoeur's theory since it distinguishes the symbol from the allegory with which it is readily confused. In the allegory the secondary meaning is external enough to the primary to be directly accessible. Hence, the relation between the two is not one of interpretation, but of translation, and the allegory can be dropped as useless once the translation is made. With symbols the two levels of meaning cannot be separated: "it is by living in the first meaning that I am led by it beyond itself".⁹⁰ An important implication of this "plurivocity" of the symbol is that, unlike a comparison which we "consider from the outside", the symbol "is the movement of the primary meaning which makes us participate in the latent meaning and thus assimilates us to that which is symbolized without our being able to master the similitude intellectually". Thus, the symbol is "donative" inasmuch as it gives its analogical meaning.⁹¹ This is also why the reading of symbols is hermeneutics, rather than translation or explanation.

Ricoeur devoted his main reflections on symbols to the "symbolism of evil" which is a species of "cosmic" symbol and to oneiric or dream symbols. The first of these analyses is so rich in ethical implications that one might be tempted to read off a theory of the symbolism of value as the "reverse side" of the symbolism of evil or disvalue. However, Ricoeur's reflections on the "figure of the prophet" seem to suggest a more direct route. These reflections occur in a lecture, "Modern Criticism of the Sense of Guilt",⁹² whose purpose is to show that the "most virulent" of modern criticisms of the feeling of individual guilt--those of Freud, Marx, and the existentialism of Nietzsche and Sartre--are also, when read correctly, the most helpful instruments for the transformation of guilt-feeling from the inauthentic and neurotic to the adult and authentic. The thrust of this critique is summed up and embodied in the figure of the prophet, who consequently is the most efficacious "face" of the good--who not only condemns me but "personalizes" me as well. There are many possible biblical and non-biblical examples of this figure, but they all have the character of being both "far and near"--of speaking from a "distance, of being the absolute stranger", as well as appealing to my most interior motivation, "my love for the other". In this figure we find a central symbol of social value as concretized in affective personal response. It is analogous to Scheler's notion of "models", though with important differences, for Scheler's models are instrumental in implementing growth that reflects the already constituted "world of values", whereas the prophet for Ricoeur inspires personal response in such a way as to promote new value-awareness based on the creation of new possibilities. The "prophet" fits into the category Ricoeur has called the "prospective symbol"--"creations of meaning, which, taking over traditional symbols with their available polysomy, convey new meanings".⁹³ The special helpfulness of Ricoeur's approach is that, in a few sentences, he gives us "criteria" for distinguishing the "true" prophet from the "false", for the prophet not only challenges the institutional frameworks but is "recognized as a word that comes from the `law written in men's hearts'".⁹⁴ We might also note the "double intentionality" of Ricoeur's prophet: he not only addresses current ills in the "patent" meaning of his message, but evokes a generalized concern for future problems and possible solutions in the "latent" meaning. The prophet Nathan, Ricoeur tells us, challenged not only David's mistreatment of Uriah and Bathsheeba, but also the general pattern of injustice found in sexual relations at that time, thereby helping to sensitize against future exploitation.⁹⁵ Or we may think of a Martin Luther King who, in attacking the specific evil of bus discrimination, mobilized a whole pattern of concern that (hopefully) continues to revolutionize national attitudes on racism.

Social Values and Language

If values are "symbols" in Ricoeur's sense, we can readily note that they are usually not approached that way in ordinary discourse. Rather, they have very often become what Ricoeur has called "sedimented symbols"--"the debris of symbols, stereotyped and fragmented, less usual than used, which have only a past." At other times, however, we can say that they are "symbols in their ordinary function": "symbols in use, useful and utilized, which have a past and a present and which in the synchrony of a given society, serve as the gauge of the group of social pacts."⁹⁶ But values are not often understood in the "prospective" or creative sense mentioned above. Hence our present question is how these different levels of value-meanings/symbols can be integrated or at least reconciled.

Ricoeur's reflections on philosophy of language approach the question of levels of meaning by beginning with the deliverances of contemporary linguistic science, primarily the complex and powerful structural analyses on the phonological and semiological levels from de Saussure, Hjelmslev and others. On the semiological level, the structural model entails a radical rethinking of the basic semantic unit, the word, in terms of its "oppositive" relations to other words. Within these interrelations, the word is not a "sign" or a "pointer", but an element in a system defined by its differences from other elements. In essence this is a refined version of the "lexical" meaning of a word as it is defined by contrast with other words.

The crucial question posed by Ricoeur is how this semiological entity leaves the system and becomes a component of the speech act. This occurs through the intermediary of the sentence or "speech event". The sentence gives the word a semantic function, by referring it to its object in the world. Enriched by this moment of "use", the word returns to the system, and "restructures" it by adjusting it to its newly acquired nuance of meaning.⁹⁷ Of course, this "restructuring" is imperceptible, except in the broad picture formed by the diachronic "drift" of a language of which it is the source.

If we continue the analogy here, we can say that values are "available meanings" that light up a region of action and provide the possibilities among which motivation will make its path. As such, they are structured in a lexical sense, that is, each value is defined in terms of other values and in levels of generality. They might even be said to form a hierarchical pattern by reason of their greater or less power to combine or reconcile other values. In this system, they have a "factuality" that can be described, they are in the "indicative mood" and they are susceptible of a "contemplative" attitude and of appraisal. During the course of action, however, they leave the system and become concrete motives, thus submitting to the governance of decision, the thrust of the project, and the "irruption of the subject". Action in the area of values, then, is like the sentence in speech: it involves choice, reference to the object (motives), new combinations, and self-expression of the subject.

This implies the question of what it is that keeps our actions from becoming arbitrary and inconsistent. Pursuing the analogy between word and value further with Ricoeur, we can note that every word is "polysemic", that is, that "at a given moment a word has more than one meaning, that its multiple meanings belong to the same state of system." Every word is, in principle, analogous, metaphorical, plurivocal. How then do we achieve univocity (or plurivocity)? This is accomplished by the context: in univocal discourse, the context "hides the semantic richness of words . . . by establishing an `isotopie,' a frame of reference, a theme, an identical topic for all the words of a sentence." If the context "sustains several isotopies at the same time, we will be dealing with an actually symbolic language, which in saying one thing, says something else." The full scope of symbolic language is found in the poem in which "the polysemy of our words is then liberated", and "allows all the semantic values to be mutually reinforced".⁹⁸

We would suggest that in the context of value-activity, commitment is analogous to what has just been said concerning the context of speaking. This will be a lived commitment, embodied in a communal or individual "style" of life and at times virtually on the level of passive acceptance. Ordinarily, commitment establishes a context in which values are seen univocally, with clearly defined "parameters", where conformity and consistency are general norms. At other times, when no one is really living these commitments, the values involved become "sedimented symbols"--ossified and stereotyped remnants of the past. Normally, however, they will be lived. In the course of action they will take on accumulated use-values and manifest gradual alterations similar to the "drift" of a language, with efficiency, utility, and economy as guiding rules. Here there will be a definite predictability of value-change and even a "science of values" would be possible.⁹⁹

There are also times when our commitments have to be questioned, and when a social, political, or marital bond would be loosened--at least enough to allow the consideration of the possibility of new loyalties, allegiances, and fidelities, or some deepening of the old. In such cases, the context allows the polysemy of our values to come to the fore, and we are seriously and anxiously searching out new possibilities, new meanings by way of the old. These "crisis-situations" may or may not come up against the sanctioned institutions of our society, but when they do, there result the various forms of ethical social conflict and disputes, as distinguished from the varieties of unreasoned and compulsive deviation from social values. On this second level, there would appear to be a certain continuity and stability, but also more contingency and unpredictability than are found on the first level and therefore less likelihood of a "science of values". But radical social change on a broad scale--revolutions or fundamental renewals in social values--would seem to presuppose something more profound and dramatic--something in the order of "creation", of the "poetic". This third or highest level of symbolic awareness would correspond to a case where the fuller implications of an action are examined, accompanied by a deeper sense of self-origination or spontaneity in the reexamining and revising of prevailing value-patterns. But it would also seem to require a greater power of communication, authenticity of expression, and force of conviction--in a word, "charisma". Thus, here again we encounter the figure of the prophet "who speaks to my inmost being". Moreover, this level would also seem to include the moment of "adhesion to being" referred to above, wherein the "ontological weight" of values is felt most fully, and thus represents a singular "openness to the absolute"--a rare but important moment in human events.

Some ethical implications of this symbolic-linguistic model are discernible. In ordinary life situations, we are justified in conforming to the pattern of social values prevailing in the culture of our birth or loyalty, just as we conform to its language, so long as we do not debase its value system by hypocritical and slavish "conformism". However, we should also be constantly alert to the possible relevance of symbolic dimensions revealing new or unexpected aspects of meaning in our accepted social values. This is the traditional moment of conversion or readiness for change. In addition we should be listening for the prophetic principle in whatever way it might announce itself, and for the enlightenment and energy that come only from this highest of personal dimensions.

In order to illustrate this ethical approach, we might instance Ricoeur's analysis of the ethical dimension of sexuality. Sexuality was born under the sign of the sacred in human experience. Perhaps its most fundamental change has been the diminishing of this sense of the sacred, or rather its transmutation into a new ideal of marital sex as interpersonal expression--the "ethic of tenderness." Because the impulse behind sexuality, i.e., eros, is ambivalent, this ethic of tenderness is constantly threatened by "the restless desire for pleasure" which is eroticism. Consequently marriage is not primarily a norm or an ideal, but a task, the "cardinal wager of our culture in regard to sex".¹⁰⁰ Because this wager is never entirely won, especially today marriage as a value--or as a valued institution embodying a constellation of values--must be reexamined, and transformed by tenderness in order to amplify its promotion of the interpersonal.

At this point of our civilization, therefore, it should be part of our personal project to respect the past without simply repeating it, to accept the possibility of change, and to undertake this reexamination and "wager" as part of our commitment. Although Ricoeur does not speak of this, it may well be that only a new manifestation of the prophetic principle, a new cultural dramatization of the importance of marriage, can enable us successfully to navigate the present crisis.

CONCLUSION

Our review of two approaches in the phenomenological tradition to the question of social values and ethics has inevitably been compendious and incomplete. All the parts have not fitted neatly together, for there is no smooth continuity from Scheler to Ricoeur. Nevertheless, the differences between them are not always as sharp as the varying styles and terminology would seem to indicate. We could say that Scheler puts much more emphasis on value as object and Ricoeur on the evaluating subject; yet Ricoeur does not deny the "objectivity" of value, and Scheler tries to bring out the role of the personal subject in his individual and social perspectives. By grounding our evaluations in the matrix of action and motivation, however, Ricoeur has given the phenomenological approach a greater sensitivity to both the spontaneity and the receptivity of our value-experience, and to the dynamic character of its articulations with the historical context. He has, in short, made us more aware of how our individual project is integral with the social project of our world. It has been our overall intention to indicate how phenomenology can do justice both to the broad sweep of the value-ethics question and to its particular complexities, and to suggest some further directions in which it might be developed. In so doing it has been implied that phenomenology can make its contribution to avoiding the dead-end that Ricoeur has detected in modern philosophy of value by which we are condemned to oscillate between an "impossible fabrication of values and an impossible intuition of values".¹⁰¹

John Carroll University,

Cleveland, Ohio

1. For a survey of figures in the phenomenological movement, see H. Spiegelberg, The Phenomenological Movement, 2 vol. (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1960).

2. Ibid., p. 232. See also, F. Olafson, Principles and Persons (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1967), p. 65.

3. M. Frings and R. Funk (trans.), Formalism in Ethics (Evanston: Northwestern Univ. Press, 1973).

4. Ibid., pp. (Eng: 255-259)

5. Ibid., p. (Eng: 259).

6. Ibid., pp. (Eng: pp. 328-369).

7. Ibid., p. (Eng: 342).

8. Ibid., p. (Eng: 343).

9. D. von Hildebrand, Christian Ethics (New York: McKay, 1953), ch. XVII.

10. M. Scheler, The Nature of Sympathy, trans. by P. Heath (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1954), p. 153.

11. Ibid., p. 157.

12. M. Dupuy, La Philosophie de Max Scheler, Vol. II (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1959), pp. 487-89.

13. Form., pp. (Eng: 19-20).

14. Ibid., p. (Eng: xxix).

15. Ibid., pp. (Eng: 86-100).

16. Ibid., pp. (Eng: 100-104).

17. Ibid., pp. (Eng: 97-100).

18. Ibid., pp. (Eng: 508-512).

19. Ibid., p. (Eng: 27).

20. Ibid., p. (Eng: 203).

21. Ibid., pp. (Eng: 210-232).

22. Ibid., pp. (Eng: 138ff).

23. Ibid., pp. (Eng: 186-188).

24. Ibid., p. (Eng: 108).

25. Ibid., (Eng: n. 85).

26. Ibid., pp. (Eng: 295-317).

27. Ibid., p. (Eng: 302).

28. Ressentiment, trans. by W. Holdheim (New York: Free Press, 1961).

29. Form., p. (Eng: 299).

30. Ibid., p. (Eng: 301).

31. Ibid., p. (Eng: 309).

32. Ibid., p. (Eng: 314).

33. Ibid., p. (Eng: 572).

34. Ibid., p. (Eng: 578).

35. Ibid., p. (Eng: 578).

36. Cf. M. Dupuy, op. cit., pp. 558-61.

37. Form., pp. 129-30. The "deduction" might not seem to be very exact, since there are four value-modalities but five types of "models". The explanation is that a fifth modality is introduced in Part II of the Formalismus, viz., the "useful" to which the "leader" corresponds as "spiritual pioneer of civilization". Cf. Dupuy, op. cit., p. 559n.

38. M. Scheler, "Vorbilder und Fuhrer", Schriften Aus Dem Nachlass, Band I, Collected Works, Vol. X (Bern: Francke, 1957), pp. 262-63.

39. Form., pp. (Eng: 519-524).

40. Ibid., pp. (Eng: 525-527).

41. Ibid. pp. (Eng: 527-532).

42. Ibid., pp. (Eng: 532-586).

43. M. Scheler, The Nature of Sympathy, trans. by P. Heath (New Haven: Yale, 1954), pp. 8-36; 243-64.

44. Ibid., pp. 14-26.

45. M. Dupuy, op. cit., pp. 428-29.

46. Cf. E. Ranly, "Ethics of Community", Proceedings of American Catholic Philosophical Association, XLII (1968), 152-57. It is quite understandable, therefore, that Scheler would see a specifically religious dimension in "person-community", even equating it, at its highest, with the Christian notion of "mystical body". But in referring to it as a "collective person" (Gesamtperson) he raised the spectre of an overarching collectivity that would absorb its individual members in a way that goes contrary to his personalistic intentions. This may well be why he appears to have discarded the notion of collective person in his later works. Cf. E. Ranly, Scheler's Phenomenology of Community (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1966), p. 101.

47. Cf. Spiegelberg, op. cit., p. 423.

48. G. Marcel, Homo Viator (Chicago: Regnery, 1951), p. 141.

49. G. Marcel, Man Against Mass Society (Chicago: Regnery, 1962) pp. 168-72.

50. Ibid., pp. 184-92.

51. P. Ricoeur, Freedom and Nature: The Voluntary and the Involuntary, trans. by E. Kohak (Evanston: Northwestern Univ. Press, 1966) p. 72n.

52. Ibid.

53. Ibid., p. 66.

54. Ibid., p. 68.

55. Ibid., p. 73.

56. Ibid., p. 74.

57. Ibid., p. 76.

58. Ibid., pp. 74-75.

59. Ibid., p. 79.

60. Ibid., p. 85.

61. Ibid., p. 89.

62. Ibid., p. 104.

63. Ibid., p. 110.

64. Ibid., p. 121.

65. Ibid., p. 122.

66. Ibid., pp. 122-25.

67. Ibid., p. 126. The French text has "prestige" which the translator, otherwise generally judicious, has rendered "appeal" and thus made it difficult to distinguish the use here from the more specific meaning occurring below.

68. Ibid.

69. Ibid.

70. Ibid., pp. 127-28.

71. Ibid., p. 128.

72. Ibid., p. 129.

73. P. Ricoeur, "The Socius and the Neighbor," History and Truth (Evanston: Northwestern Univ. Press), p. 109.

74. P. Ricoeur, "Universal Civilization and National Cultures," History and Truth, p. 276.

75. Ibid., p. 278.

76. Ibid., p. 282.

77. P. Ricoeur, Freedom and Nature, p. 146.

78. Ibid., p. 147.

79. Ibid., p. 148.

80. Ibid.

81. Ibid., p. 132.

82. Ibid., p. 133.

83. "Sympathie et Respect," Revue de metaphysique et de morale, LIX (1954), 391.

84. Ibid., p. 389.

85. Ibid., p. 394.

86. P. Ricoeur, Fallible Man, trans. by C. Kelbley (Chicago: Regnery, 1965), p. 110.

87. P. Ricoeur, "Negativity and Primary Affirmation," History and Truth, p. 323.

88. P. Ricoeur (and Alasdair MacIntyre), The Religious Significance of Atheism (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1969), pp. 71-75. These basic points in Ricoeur's ethics have received development but not radical alteration in his article, "The Problem of the Foundation of Moral Philosophy", (Philosophy Today, Fall, 1978, pp. 175-192). Here there is a sharpening of the critique of legalism (norms, rules, imperatives), an amplification of the intersubjectivity stage of moral experience, and a greater emphasis on the "institutional" character of value. The critique of Scheler is sharper, yet the basic agreement is maintained: Just as no one begins language, Ricoeur says, so "no one has been able to demonstrate either that that someone ever invented a value, in the way that one creates a work of art through the free play of the imagination and understanding." (p. 180)

89. We do not wish to imply, in any way, that our suggestions here anticipate or parallel the further development of Ricoeur's concepts; they are simply made under his inspiration.

90. P. Ricoeur, The Symbolism of Evil, trans. by E. Buchanan (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), p. 15.

91. Ibid., p. 16.

92. Unpublished monograph.

93. P. Ricoeur, De l'interpretation (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1965), p. 486.

94. "Modern Criticism of the Sense of Guilt".

95. Ibid.

96. P. Ricoeur, De l'interpretation, loc. cit.

97. P. Ricoeur, "Structure--Word--Event," trans. by R. Sweeney, Philosophy Today, XII (1968), 120.21. Ricoeur's hermeneutics has gone well beyond the theory of symbol and language into theories of metaphor and narrative. But there is no radical alteration in this development, it seems to me: it is still based on a structural construal of the elements of the "textual" system involved and an interpretative stance grounded in the existential spontaneity of the subject but guided by the distancing demands of the "world of the text". (Gadamer). To be sure, there are new metaphysical emphases, e.g., time, (cf. Temps et recit (3 vols.) (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1984-85). This work also includes new insights into the (valuing) subject, e.g., "narrative identity" and "horizon of expectation".

98. Ibid., p. 127.

99. As proposed, for example, in K. Baier and N. Rescher (eds.), Values and the Future (New York: Free Press, 1969).

100. P. Ricoeur, "Wonder--Eroticism--Enigma", Cross Currents (1964), 136.

101. P. Ricoeur (and A. MacIntyre), The Religious Significance of Atheism, p. 71.