CHAPTER II

OVERCOMING OBJECTIVIST SCHEMAS AND THE STUDY OF VALUES

If it is to be efficient, the study of values must be carried out in the form of an integral, holistic and synoptic vision which clarifies as clearly as possible the connection of the many aspects of reality in the phenomenon of value. In contrast, a partial analysis, covering only certain aspects of the subject --however well this might be done--would entail serious risks for a relational mode of reality is revealed only through "thought in suspension."

Any solidly developed theory of values must include: (a) the dynamic nature of reality, (b) the existence of "objects" and "ambits," (c) the concept of play as the foundation of ambits or fields of possibilities of action under certain norms, (d) the relation between creative play and the birth of meaning, (e) the mutual enpowerment of the relations of immediacy and distance in the phenomenon of presence ; (f) the possible integration of "objective" and "super-objective" modes of reality, (g) the harmonization of objectivist and the ludic attitudes in the face of the real, (h) the connection between opening to the real, participation, love and language, and (i) the blending of ambits of reality and the blossoming of beauty.

A synoptic approach to the study of philosophy demands a commitment of one's entire being, not merely an exercise of intellective power. Only this integral mobilization of creative human resources enables one to grasp the radical unity of objects-of-knowledge which, considered hastily, would appear alien and distant: unity lies at the heart of creative activity. In order to know value and its many implications, one must employ a creative mode of knowledge which progressively and genetically reassembles the diverse aspects of the real.

If this creative attitude, which links understanding, will and feeling, is not to be dispatched expeditiously to the realm of the "irrational" but valued as strictly rational, it is necessary to elaborate a methodology suited to the more dynamic, flexible and interactional modes of reality. Lately, the theory of creativity has stressed the fact that any type of play--understood strictly as a creative activity of "ambits" or "ludic spaces" under certain norms--is carried out in a light which it itself sheds: play is a source of light.¹³ To engage values one must fulfill the demands imposed by "ambits of reality."

In contrast, inadequate approaches so disorient the thinker as not to allow him/her to engage the object-of-knowledge and thus to clarify its meaning. If the subject of values is posed at the objectivist, infra-ambital and hence non-ludic level, the possibility of total knowledge of values is cancelled at the outset. Further, as language is the medium in which human attitudes are rendered incarnate and made operative, any inadequate use of language--through strategic abuse of its expressive resources or through the extrapolated use of other  categories and schemas--has a perturbing effect on the knowledge of values.

METHODOLOGICAL EXTRAPOLATION

Objectivist mental schemas are adequate for the expression of the relations which arise between realities which are "objective" in the above-mentioned sense of measurable, delimitable or ponderable. Their application to the analysis of events pertaining to "super-objective," that is, to non-measurable, non-delimitable or non-ponderable realities restrains one's capacities for research by preventing one from understanding the creative possibilities entailed by ambital realities. This leads to their impoverishment as well as to highly dangerous reductionist attitudes.

Contemporary research on language and on the "theory of contrast"¹⁴ sheds decisive light on this point. We articulate our  mental discourse around a series of contrasts or schemas among which are the following:

 1. subject  - object

    subjective  - objective

 2. inside  - outside

 3. immanence - transcendence

 4. interior  - exterior

 5. autonomy  - heteronomy

 6. liberty - channel

 7. liberty - obedience

 8. liberty - norm

 9. liberty - values

10. action - passion

11. introspection - objectivation

12. that which belongs to oneself -

that which belongs to others.

13. the same - the different

14. the intimate - the strange

15. the intimating - the alienating

16. the near - the far

17. the former - the latter

Thinking in objectivist fashion, one tends to consider the dash which separates the terms of each contrast as a sign of distancing and, in certain cases, of opposition. If one applies the above-mentioned schemas in an objectivist spirit to the analysis of the relations between super-objective realities and ludic or relational events of all types--a person, a work of art, an ethical norm, an institution, a religious reality or an encounter, artistic interpretation or dialogue, etc.--extremely violent and perturbing distortions result.

At the level of objects, the "objective" (schema 1) means that which is projected at a distance from the subject; "outside" and "exterior" (schemas 2 and 4) are opposed to "inside" and "interior"; the values and norms (schemas 8 and 9) which channel man's freedom (schemas 6-9) are seen almost automatically as something exterior and alien (schemas 4 and 12) to human intimacy (schema 4). At this level man's conduct, when adjusted to "exterior" norms and values (schemas 8, 9 and 4) that are not only different from, but alien to, the individual (schemas 13 and 14), should logically be considered as heteronomous (schema 5) and governed by laws which the individual does not lay down for him/herself. This desire to shape one's personality according to the decisive stamp of external instances is an obvious alienation, "objectivation" (schema 11) or estrangement; abiding by the transcendent (schema 3) is thus anathematized as alienating (schema 15).

Careful analysis of a "super-objective," ludic experience--as, for example, the experience of musical interpretation,  carried out with creative spontaneity and ufettered by the submission of real phenomena to inadequate mental schemas--enables us to discover the fallacy latent in interpreting one's opening to the transcendent as an alienating phenomenon. When I sit down to interpret on the organ a previously unknown Bach chorale the chorale is different and distant, external and strange to me; it is transcendent in the sense of alien. If through groping practice I bring out its forms and gradually enter into a relationship of presence with it, it ceases to be distant, external and strange; though still different from me, it becomes intimate. At the ludic or relational level intimacy does not mean interiority as opposed to exteriority, but participation in a field of play in which the categories of "here" and "there," "inside" and "outside," "mine" and "yours," "one's own" and "others'" are not diametrically opposed, but are contrasted to each other; they strengthen each other in the manner of musical harmony. On the creative plane, delimitations which mark the individuality of beings lose their status as opaque veils that divide and become instead living places of integration.

This inversion of perspective enables one to solve the cognitive problem posed by the theory of empathy ("Einfühlung") without the risks and  aporiasentailed by applying the mental schema of "entering-into-myself" and "coming-out-of-myself" to events which fortunately overflow the empirical circumstances of time and place. My access to a musical work does not imply leaving myself, but co-founding a field of aesthetic interplay. Within this field, the ludic time and space established are festive and superior to merely empiric time and space. The relationship founded by the schemas "here-there," "inside-outside," "near-far" lose their distancing nature (schema 16) and take on a function of distancing-of-perspective that is necessary for founding fields-of-presence.¹⁵ An analogous semantic transmutation occurs with the temporal relationships of "before-after," and "the former-the latter" (schema 17).

Thanks to this fortunate circumstance, the dashes which mediate between the terms of the schemas acquire a sense of contrast indicating a counterpoint rather than an opposition between aspects of the real. The human attitude in the face of these contrasted pairs should be not one of division or dilemma, but of integration.¹⁶

Aesthetic experience is particularly helpful in clarifying these methodological questions because it does not allow one to divide human experience with a consequent conversion of contrasts into dilemmas. A musical work is "ambital" and valuable insofar as it offers a field of possibilities for aesthetic play and serves as a normative channel for my re-creative activity as interpreter. Considered statically, this channel is opposed to my freedom which it restrains, coerces and alienates. Seen dynamically in the light of my re-creative process of interpretation which takes up the work as my own, the norm of the work is not exterior but my inner voice; the work sings in my "interiority," that is, in the field of play which the work and I jointly co-found in the act of interpretation. By obeying this inner voice, I do not leave myself or allow myself to be coerced by anything alien: I am not alienated. Faithful adherence to the structure of the work introduces nothing heteronomous precisely because the work is no longer external and strange to me, but intimate. It is "more intimate than my own intimacy," for there is nothing more "intimate" to the person than that which impels one to found fields of play. This passage from the different-distant to the different-intimate marks the threshold of authentic human experience in aesthetics, ethics and religion.

In this light it is possible to establish personal relationships with "transcendent" (schema 3) realities and instances, without losing oneself in an alienating exteriority. Such loss inevitably occurs when a person delivers him/herself to superficial, valueless realities that cannot offer fields of possibile interplay and are unable to found ambits of personal growth, ludic interchange or fulfillment. This is the process of vertigo which, along with its counter-pole, the phenomenon of ecstasy, should be analyzed with the greatest rigor.¹⁷

^From this methodological analysis of mental schemas one may infer how serious are the errors deriving from the indiscriminate use of the schemas "subject-object," "subjective-objective."

DIVERSE MEANINGS OF THE TERMS:  "SUBJECTIVE" AND "OBJECTIVE"

  In thought and speech the following diverse contrasts are constantly utilized:

It is easy to superimpose these schemes upon the pattern of thought and speech, to interchange diverse meanings by repeating terms with multiple meanings, and indiscriminately to generalize the meaning they acquire within the schema. At first sight terms which are repeated appear identical and, as two terms equal to a third are equal to each other, there is the risk of identifying even counterposed terms.

The term "subjective" in schema 1 has the overall meaning of "belonging to the person who acts as a subject." In schema 2 it means what is personal and consequently is modified by diverse feelings; in certain cases this may impede corresponding to what is real. From this meaning of the term "subjective" it is easy to slip into schema 5 and, in turn, to superimpose this on schemas 1, 2 and 7. In this manner the terms "subjective" and "inobjective," without due clarification of meaning, are abruptly counterimposed to "objective" in its positive sense of corresponding to the real (schema 5). The terms subjective and  inobjective thus become tinged with a somewhat negative meaning, which has serious consequences.

Through the tendency to superimpose the terms within each column, it is easy surreptitiously to identify  objective with real, and  subjective (hazily understood on account of the above) with  unreal  (fanciful, not in accordance with the real, non-objective, non-universal, non-necessary, non-rigorous and non-scientific).

In schemas 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7 the terms of the first column (subjective, existential, arbitrary, inobjective) are easily identified with the term "unreal" (schema 8); the term "objective" which appears in the second column is taken as a synonym of "real." The repeitious identification of these terms has the effect of  semantic contamination by which the diverse meanings of the terms "subjective" and "objective" are diffused, obscured and almost annulled through a transfer of meaning. Aspects of reality whose description differs from corporeal entities come to be considered unreal. On the other hand, those aspects of the real which can be delimited in empirical time and space acquire the status of models of reality. In this respect, see N. Hartmann's theory of modality and strata, partly derived from the ontological conception of the "second Scheler," according to which "any force comes from below" ("alle Kraft kommt von unten").

By being counterposed to "real," the ideal is associated with the terms subjective-arbitrary-unreal, and loses its status of being eminently real.¹⁸ As schema 11 suggests the character of being tangible, homely and grossly verifiable, facts are often taken as model real entities. By implication, the eidetic then runs the risk of being indiscriminately included within the area of the unreal and ideal.

Likewise, the "exterior" (schema 12) is seen as akin to the factic-material-real (schemas 11, 13, 9) and is taken as the "real" par excellance. This is counterposed to the "interior," which takes on a merely subjective meaning which is not open to the real, but closed, blocked and arbitrary. (Note that the so-called "critical problem" was often posed as a problem of "going out to the exterior.")

Sometimes the terms "exterior" and "factic" are indiscriminately superimposed (schemas 12, 11) and, as delimited, easily paired with the material and the objective, so that the exterior becomes counterposed to the inobjective, the flexible-constellational and the spiritual (schemas 7, 13). One may thus consider the spiritual to be a matter of mere interiority--a serious distortion that is reflected in diverse questions of ethics, theodicy and philosophy of religion. For example, beliefs and certain moral events when exteriorized are considered by authors as alienated and lacking in authenticity. This automatic link between exteriorization and alienation occurs when one does not realize that matter, corporeality, institutionalization and external expression are, if seen adequately, elements which "mediate" the process of total fulfillment in one's personal life, and therefore, in the life of faith. Current anthropology sees the corporeal and the spiritual structurally as closely linked. A proper concept of structure suggests the need to avoid misunderstanding these "contrasts" as opposed in a contrary or contradictory fashion for reality has extraordinarily subtle modes of unity.

The influence of this extrapolation of meaning in the history of the Protestant Reformation, the pattern of "interiorization" which characterizes certain representative authors of the Modern Age, and the struggle of Idealism to link the interior and the exterior, form and matter (or content), depend to no small extent upon interpreting the dashes of the above schemas as signs of opposition. From schemas 1, 4 and 7 comes the possibility in certain cases of considering the objective as non-personal. When in schema 5 the objective is understood as adequate to the real, it becomes difficult to understand this mode of objectivity as pertaining to personal acts and, correlatively, to the so-called sciences of the spirit. Current philosophical anthropology is undergoing a wide debate on this delicate and decisive problem. Upon its correct resolution hangs the very possibility of developing rigorous knowledge of super-objective or ambital realities, among which are values.

INTERPRETATION OF THE "SUBJECT-OBJECT" SCHEMA IN TERMS OF "AMBITS" AND "INTERRELATEDNESS"

When the "subject-object" schema is used with an objectivist approach, both subject and object are "reduced" in value. The "object" is seen as a mere object, and the subject is considered as a delimited, completely finished reality which, due to its faculties for knowing, feeling and loving, is capable of relating to its environment.

When the "subject-object" schema is mobilized with a ludic, creative approach and directed not toward manipulating objects, but toward developing a co-creative relationship with ambits of reality, the subject and object appear, not as higher or lower objects, but as fields of possibilities for interplay. In this light they are not completely pre-defined, but are called to realization through the co-creative establishment of broader ambits. In ludic relations individual realities gain a special diffusion and extension. Objects of knowledge become ambital realities offering the subject possibilities of play, that is, they give one the initiative for taking up (or entering into into play with) the possibilities offered by these objects.

Viewed from this perspective, the "subject-object" relationship is not reduced to a linear, one-directional projection of one reality towards another as different and distant. Rather, it expresses quite rigorously the blending of ambits and the institution of a field of play. In this field of interaction higher modes of reality are created and more intense forms of unity achieved, in which creative "ecstatic" process the spatio-temporal categories are transformed and elevated. Relationships of immediacy and distance cease to be opposed and come together to constitute presence.

This relationship of eminent immediacy called presence gives rise, in turn, to participation.¹⁹ Understood in its full depth, this relationship implies a highly intense form of ludic unity which, as with all play, is a field of enlightenment. Values take on body within this field of interaction, in which they are brought to light and made known. Participation in values surpasses the "subject-object" opposition, without annulling this relationship in favor of one or another of the terms in which it consists. Rather, this relation is raised to its full potential for implication and meaning, placed in its correct situation and granted its proper function.²⁰

Seen in terms of the dynamism of participation, the "subject-object" relationship has the following characteristics:

1. It is governed, not by a one-directional schema of "action-passion," but by an inexhaustible, bi-directional, reversible or "circular" schema of appeal-response.²¹

2. Understood in a balanced relational way, the subject-object relationship does not degenerate into the extremist positions of objectivism and  subjectivism, but maintains a constant and fertile creative tension between the appealing reality and the one appealed to, the objective and the subjective poles. The seriously one-sided and even extremist positions we call "subjectivism" and "objectivism" arise when, through lack of creativity, one moves on the objectivist level which Kierkegaard considered to be the "first stage along the path of life." There "subjectivism" and "objectivism" give rise to each other intermittently and in pendulum fashion. The insufficiency of one drives us to seek a solution in the other, and vice-versa, in a never ending course of tense dissatisfaction. A real solution can be attained only through a change of approach: through rising from the objectivist to the ludic level, from the manipulator of objects to the co-founder of ambits. This "leap forward" (Heidegger) to the super-objective plane is a true conversion to the "existential" mode of reality which is initiated, developed and blossoms through encounter.

3. Between the subject and the object lies not distance or detachment, but perspective or collaboration, "mediating" the most intense and productive modes of union between persons and the real. Creative dynamism turns the "mediatizer," which is an opaque element that intervenes between the subject and object, into the "mediational" which is a transparent element that makes the object present to the subject.

4. A fusion of subject and object is not, as often is held, the highest or model form of unity, but a regressive step in the subject-object relationship because it nips in the bud any creative possibility. As already stated, in order to set up a field of play one must match a mode of immediacy with one of distance, for by annulling the distance of perspective between subject and object the attractive nature of the phenomena of fascination and seduction prevents creative participation, thereby giving rise to vertigo.

It is a serious error in the development of the human personality to take for granted or uncritically that, due to the advent of spirit, subject and object are bound together only at a pre-conscious level before the supposed split between man and the rest of reality.²² Since the rise of vitalism in Europe between the wars it has been asserted repeatedly and without due clarification that "the spirit inaugurates distances" and breaks the serene unity maintained by the animal as "a being of secure instincts" vis-a-vis its environment.²³ Failure to specify sufficiently the diverse possible forms of immediacy and distance has caused a great confusion in contemporary thought and has given birth to nostalgia in philosophy, art and literature for the animal, vegetable and even inanimate kingdoms. Camus makes Caligula exclaim after having abandoned authentic creativity²⁴ "Ah! If only instead of this poisoned solitude of presences that is mine, I could taste the true presence, the silence and the quivering of a tree!" The experience of the root in Sartre's  La Nausée exemplifies this yearning for the infra-creative attitude of fusional unity with the environment seen as a pure "medium" ( milieu, Umwelt ). From this experience of extreme reduction comes his intuition of the absolute contingence and absurdity of existing realities ("We are all superfluous"). Vertigo fuses one with the realities of one's environment.

Hence, today the theory of participation in values has the important task of showing clearly: 1) that this descent to the infra-creative level means a fusion of subject and object, and annuls that relationship of  closeness-at-a-distance required for the constitution and development of the human personality; and 2) that perfect unity between subject and object is attained through ecstatic experiences of all kinds--aesthetic, amorous, sporting, religious--where the limits of the individual are surpassed without diluting one's personality.

As the experience of values begins to appear ecstatic, it must be distinguished carefully from other apparently analogous phenomena: the false abandonment of oneself typical of vertigo and the projection of one's own interiority upon the contemplated object which gave rise to the aesthetic technique called empathy (endopathy- Einfühlung). The ecstatic relationship between a subject and object understood in their full ambital sense²⁵ consists in the foundation of a common field of interplay which, as relational, is ambiguous--though not indecisive and hazy as was typical of the day-dreaming of the much criticized Romantic enthusiasts ( Schwärmerei). The foundation of a field of interplay implies immersion of the subject in realities which call one to take up new possibilities.

To understand fully what is implied by participation in values one first must specify carefully the different genres of reality which appeal to the person and the diverse modes of one's active-receptive immersion in them by taking on their ludic possibilities.²⁶

     5. To sum up the above points, we could say that the authentic subject-object relationship is correlative to the autonomy-heteronomy relationship understood as a "contrast," rather than as a "dilemma." In the light of the theory of play it is manifest that the mental schemas of "subject-object," "inside-outside," "to leave oneself-to enter oneself," "interior-exterior," etc., are quite insufficient for reflection upon values. Our analysis of the logic of creative play discovered that opening to values does not mean falsely leaving oneself with a consequent loss, estrangement or alienation from oneself. Values are distinct from the person but not always distant, external or strange; they may become intimate to the human being as a sort of "inner voice." At the creative level interiority denotes not an "inside" in counterposition to an "outside," but the creative power of authentic dialogical relationships.

To enter oneself, to reflect interiorly, to retreat into oneself is equivalent to renouncing contact with superficial things and events in order to let oneself be overcome by things of value. These realities, which offer possible fields of play, oblige one to react--"ob-lige" meaning to bind a person by virtue of the values offered. This type of "obligation" neither restricts nor coerces, but promotes human freedom to the extent directly proportional to the quality of the values offered. Their appeal is an invitation to the exercise of creative freedom. This can be understood in terms of the schema "appeal-response;" whereas the schema "action-passion" obviously is inadequate for reflecting the peculiar type of "causality" between persons and those realities which, rather than being objects, are "ambits of reality": persons, works of art, institutions, languages or values of all kinds.

The object-of-knowledge proper to such disciplines as ethics, aesthetics or the philosophy of religion demands setting in motion highly flexible mental schemas which can be adapted to the interactional dynamism of creative processes. The adoption of such schemas is not an easy task, but once the mind becomes accustomed to them everything in one's intellectual life becomes clearer, more coherent, more convincing and more solid.

6. By not reducing the scope of the object man's natural field of development is not impoverished, whereas liberty, knowledge and total fulfillment of the different values is made possible. The more dense the meaning of the environmental reality with which a person enters into a relationship of creative play, the more one is appealed to and ob-liged. From this appeal  and  obligation  springs one's impulse to fulfill his/her duty, for duty is based on the value displayed by those realities which appeal for a co-creative response. To fulfill one's duty does not mean to give in to coercion from some external instance, but to oblige oneself to a valuable reality. Similarly, to know a value is not to assimilate an external object, but to blend one's own ambit of reality with the field of possibilities for creative interplay offered by the "object." In this ludic context "interiority" and "exteriority" imply, not an empirical spatial reference, but a co-creative intermingling.

7. The subjectivity to which thinkers like Kierkegaard grant a certain primacy in asserting that "truth lies in subjectivity" is not the first term of the schema "subject-object" understood as a dilemma, but the integral reality of the person immersed actively and receptively in the valuable realities which make up one's authentic environment. Here, the subjective is not opposed to the objective, but creatively counterposed to it in play. In this light, Kierkegaard and such existential thinkers as Heidegger, Jaspers, Marcel and Berdiaeff make an eminantly constructive critique of subjectivism, objectivism of things and self-interested abandonment to "immediacy" or to the cajolery of the superficial.²⁷

8. By differentiating betweem modes of objectivity and subjectivity and by verifying that certain types of objects-of-knowledge are not mere objects, but ambits or fields of possibilities for play, one is prepared for an appropriate response. In this one conceives the subject-object relationship as a dynamic and creative dialogical interchange far superior to the unity of fusion typical of experiences of vertigo. By entering into this field of play, one can surpass the "aesthetic" attitude of the "first stage along the path of life" which, according to Kierkegaard, consists of taking the human environment as a complex of manipulable objects. It is at the second or "ethical stage," characterized by a ludic, creative, dialogical attitude, that realities unfold their possibilities and clarify their total meaning.

As the living vehicle of this creative process of ambits, language is charged with meaning proportionate to the degree of creativity in the ambits it expresses. This nuclear relationship between linguistic expressivity and creativity opens rich horizons for an ethic, aesthetic or metaphysical and religious language that is full of meaning. In all philosophical disciplines it is crucial not to restrict oneself to speculating or to manipulating concepts, rather than devoting oneself to setting up eminently unitive ambits of reality. In these interactional and dialogical ambits one can understand values, for these appear where subject and an object mutually blend and promote each other. This, in turn, constitutes a field of play in which exteriority is united to interiority by the strongest link, namely, by participation in a common field of play.

Lavelle mentions this form of ludic union when he asserts that one must "idealize the object" and "fulfill the ideal" in order to make the profound transparent.²⁸ This transparency is attained when language becomes not merely a means for passing on concepts, but a place in which ambits are set up and values are born. In order to communicate values and arouse enthusiasm for them one needs a "poetic" language that creates fields of play. Only language "in its incipient state" as the living vehicle of human creativity constitutes a place of encounter, for it alone has the symbolic power to refer to profound realities and events that are super-objective, meta-sensitive and ambital. Language which has been worn out by routine usage detaches one from value by placing one at an infra-creative level. Thus, demagogic or strategic uses of language as a means to dominate people are frontal attacks on value, for they collaborate in blinding the very source or birthplace of values, namely, the event of encounter.

In order to undertake an analysis of values one must overcome the fear of going beyond the limits of "objective" reality. Such transcendence appears to launch one into an open, weightless space in which humans have no footing. We must take up calmly this awe-inspiring challenge in the spirit of Rilke's conviction that the only possible shelter for man lies in "the open" ( Das Offene), in the dialogical and the ambital. Submission to a different and distant reality, which surpasses us but could become intimate, does not alienate, but personalizes. Alienation occurs when the object which attracts a subject remains distant through lack of creativity and by failure to collaborate in the constitution of a field of interplay.

Numerous authors state that value is born when it is "identified" with man, when the object is freed of its individualistic status and "interiorized" within the subject. In this precariously objectivist language, based upon empiricist spatio-temporal, rather than upon ludic schemas, both subject and object must surpass their separateness to found a common field of play,²⁹ for at the objectivist level beings display an inseparable opaqueness which renders impossible any interaction and creativity. In contrast, at the ludic level, as has been pointed out since antiquity, the basic attitude is one of disinterested open generosity as an indispensable condition for the experience of ecstasy.

SURPASSING THE SCHEMAS: "ACTION-PASSION," "ACTIVITY-PASSIVITY," "THE ACT-THE GIVEN," "THE SET-THE RECEIVED"

 The theory of ludic participation substitutes the schema "activity-passivity" by that of "activity-receptivity." This is far more flexible because bi-directional, reversible and circular. The subject who takes up a valuable object is not restricted to undergoing actions from outside, but immerses oneself actively in the field of possibilities offered by that distinct reality, which becomes thereby an intimate co-founder of a field of interplay.

This methodological clarification enables one radically to surpass two extremist approaches, according to which: 1) value is received passively by the subject, so that the sole  criterion for specifying the existence of values is the subject's affectivity, or 2) value is the fruit of a reflection on the given object by a free, rational subject. The theory of participation sees in suspension, that is, it sees synoptically the subject's activity and the fields of possibilities offered to one by a reality. It grants primacy to neither of the two poles of the participatory event, but understands them as a dialectic of appeal-response. The subject feels appealed to by an object; the response, if it is an authentic and hence creative bond, is in turn an appeal to the object. This possibility of appealing to "objects," which are really "ambits," is heightened in the experience of musical interpretation. With its range of unlimited possibilities for aesthetic play, the piano appeals to the interpreter. In beginning to play the interpreter demands from the piano a certain response, certain quite specific subtleties of sound. By offering them, the piano once more arouses in the pianist new projects of rhythm, intensity, volume and gradation of contrasts.

This surprising interchange of repeated appeal and response is a  dialogical encounter  in which, as on a playing field, countless ambits or possibilities of meaningful action are woven. At the higher levels of existence, one receives nothing gratuitously and inactively; everything must be achieved through a dialogical, co-creative process of participation. Even contemplation is open to the realities that nourish it insofar as they offer it fields of possible intellectual and spiritual play. Hence, it is dangerous to speak of an "object" of contemplation without due qualifications.

When it is said that "only liberty transforms affection into value"³⁰ the necessarily active nature of the reception of value is inferred. Hence, the great "virtuosi" of ethics, aesthetics and religion always have been humble and grateful, but not lax--rather, they are highly demanding upon themselves. Any value is a gift which one must conquer creatively. The theory of ludic participation teaches one to overcome the apparently paradoxical nature of this phrase and to grasp its profound logic. Beethoven was fully conscious of his exceptional value as a musician and demanded to be treated accordingly. At the same time he was profoundly humble and grateful, for he saw his genius as the fruit of his bond to the ultimate roots of the real, the Creator.

When the subtle balance of the logic of creativity and participation is rent, the result is fateful extremisms which are different modes of vertigo. Values based upon mere sense feelings lack creativity for they are reduced to the vertigo of sense fascination. Values derived from coercive attitudes or inspired by the will for power are but exalted and fleeting flashes of the vertigo of ambition. In such cases it is only in a very vague and inadequate sense that one can speak of values.

However, if the equilibrium of creative processes can be maintained an extraordinarily fecund horizon of ecstatic experience is opened, in the light of which it can be seen clearly that activity and receptivity constitute not a dilemma, but a contrast. In ecstasy, one feels not just swept along, but surpassed, transformed and raised to levels of greater development and authenticity. Hence, great works surpass their creators whose innermost being is, at the same time, faithfully reflected in these works.³¹

SURPASSING THE SCHEMA "INDIVIDUAL-UNIVERSAL"

Universal validity is often demanded as a guarantee of authenticity; thus, in knowledge what is universally valid is recognized as solidly based. Does the same occur with value? As one asserts value by adhering to it through the experience of participation, value is born in personal encounters, independently of whether it be accepted as valid by other people. Is the criterion of value therefore reduced to an individualistic arbitrariness on the part of each subject?

Just as values are born in the field of interplay or encounter but are not  produced  thereby, value is objectivized  in each concrete realization of the same but is not  objectified thereby, that is, it is not subject to the empirical conditions of mere objects. A musical work does not exist in a score, but in the diverse interpretations of the score which it nevertheless transcends. In order to realize or incarnate a value a series of requirements must be fulfilled. In the case of music, one must have a musical gift, possess a rich store of technical knowledge, and take a respectful approach to the works, not attempting to adjust them to one's own criteria. As many people are far from fulfilling these conditions, it is not possible for values to obtain universal approval at each moment. Nevertheless, this does not imply that acts of evaluation by adequately disposed people are merely subjective in the sense of arbitrary, or merely sentimental or non-objective in the sense of not being adequate to the real.³²

One judges value at the same time, and insofar, as one allows oneself to be judged or "measured" by it. Value cannot be recognized from the outside by a "spectator," for it is not imposed coercively but validates itself by appealing to one's creative freedom. To acknowledge a value is always a personal act--though one which is not merely subjective, but dual. Accepting and taking on a value is more complex and rich than merely forming an arbitrary opinion; it means adopting a stance of availability to the value, seeking it lovingly, sympathizing with it and adjusting oneself actively to its demands.³³

In principle the act of recognizing a value is universalizable insofar as it can be made by all, but each must do so through a creative and personal commitment. This is not the automatic, ineluctable acceptance that occurs with objectivist objects-of-knowledge which, as Jaspers points out, are "coercively knowable" ( zwingend wissbar). The welcoming attitude to values is propagated through the force of their appeal and by the invitation which certain persons may make to others to mutual participation.

One must free oneself from the prejudice that the truth lies only in the universal, in relation to which the value of concrete individual reality is but a derivative or implication: only too often the individual is interpreted as a mere case of the universal. Certainly, the individual being takes on its meaning by entering organically into a constellationally woven whole, but this whole is concrete. In order for us as individual beings to rise to this we must gain perspective through universal concepts, but these serve not as goals in themselves but as mediators.³⁴

All incarnations of a specific value depend upon one instance which surpasses and nourishes them in the manner, not of an universal "model" from which individual beings arise through simple multiplication, but as a source. One cannot say, for example, that there is a universal "Ninth Symphony by Beethoven" of which each particular interpretation is an individual case; instead, the diverse performances are nourished from a concrete source. This explains why one and the same work may have diverse interpretations, all of which are legitimate to the extent that they enrich the original work to a certain degree. Each act of interpretation is an experience of dialogical interpretation in which a field of play is set up. The light which is shed in this enables the better endowed interpreters to discover in the work aspects and details hitherto unknown, even at times to the composer himself.³⁵

By participating in one and the same value, we unite in the common task of giving concrete expression to the multiple virtualities of an ambital reality. In this task of unity in diversity persons attain a form of untarnished union: "To love is not to gaze at each other, but for both to look in the same direction."³⁶

The criterion of value does not lie in universal acceptance, but is born in each act of participation, which is always personal-dual. In acts of ethic, aesthetic and religious participation, persons always are engaged intimately insofar as they are immersed actively and receptively in a reality which offers them diverse possibilities of action. This intimate nature of participation does not imply the subject's withdrawal into some supposed opaque interiority, but a creative opening and committed bond to a value which is not exhausted in its concrete realization but continues to reverberate. To accept a value which needs my cooperation if it is to be realized in concrete form in my life means to create a source which can light up others' creative enthusiasm.

Each person is offered values in a unique and non-exchangeable form. But this uniqueness entails, not exclusivness or primacy, but a will for communion because participating personally in a value implies adhering to a possible community of people who are willing to establish it. Universality is earned not by mere repetition, but by committing oneself to a creative task which requires putting into play one's deepest personal powers.

The origin of value then lies not in our individual being as an independent center of initiatives, but in our ambital nature  by which we surpass the limits of individuality and integrate into the common play of our universe. According to current biology and anthropology human beings are constituted, developed and perfected by means of encounter. One shapes one's personality through devoting oneself to the task of creating ambits which surpass the strictly individual.³⁷ One fulfills oneself by constantly transcending oneself ("L'homme  dépasse infiniment l'homme," Pascal), not towards the universal seen as a sort of model for the individual, but towards an ambit or field of creativity unfolding before each being. "The most profound in myself does not come from myself." (G. Marcel)