CHAPTER IV

METHODOLOGICAL CLARIFICATIONS ON THE KNOWLEDGE OF VALUES

      A methodology adequate for an analysis of the genesis of values places upon the knower several requirements which have emerged above and must now be expounded systematically and concisely. If these are borne in mind one will be able adequately to treat the basic topics in a theory of values.

1. Thought structured in terms of an appeal-response schema is the most suitable for expressing creative events.

2. In order to grasp the interaction between appeal and response, we need to adopt a relational and "analectic" thought style,⁵² with equal attention to the horizontal and vertical links between the various aspects of the real and value: objective and super-objective realities, objects and ambits, craftsmanship and aesthetic creation. Creative, ludic processes always are impelled and sustained by concrete realities as both "objective" and "super-objective" or "ambital." This, rather than an aversion to the universal, is the basic reason for the return to the concrete in contemporary thought.

Because value becomes incarnate in the concrete realities through which it is expressed, while surpassing the place of its expression or incarnation, one must catch it in flight or in suspension, as it were. In each valuable reality, value is at the same time both present and absent; like meaning in language, it is objectivized but not objectified. Hence, thought in suspension is needed in order to grasp values as realized concretely and to take account of their different degrees. If, in order to overcome the precarious character of the objectivist level of reality, we escape to an abstract universal place, we miss the super-objective or ambital level of reality; this is the place of the phenomenon of creative play in all its modalities: sporting, aesthetic, ethical and religious.

3. To adhere to the super-objective, ambital aspects of reality implies an attitude of commitment by the aware individual in his or her entirety. It is not sufficient to look at or to listen to an ambital reality in order to know its truth. One has to create an ambit of interaction or "deal with it." In this sense the most profound realities are made present to the person if one adopts a receptive, active attitude, that is, if one takes up the possibilities for interaction offered by the reality by which one is confronted, appealed to and invited to creative encounter.

The means of access to such super-objective, ambital and dialogical realities must be ludic and "experiential," which integrates knowledge with love and committed action. This bond must not be superficial, for authentic unity is had only in depth. The radical unity of aspects of human reality, studied by such different philosophical disciplines as the theory of knowledge, ethics and metaphysics, is not a spurious extrapolation, but the natural integration of multiple human dimensions converging in a common task: creative activity engages all dimensions of the human being.

Far from being irrational, experiential knowledge displays eminent rationality, for it reveals the highest aspects of the real in adequate conceptual forms. "Rationality" has diverse modes and degrees; the tendency to restrict it to scientific knowledge discredits diverse philosophical disciplines, relegating them to the field of the "irrational." In the face of science philosophy and particularly ethics need be under no inferiority complex. Strictly understood, philosophy has its own mode of rationality with its own specific rigor which establishes intelligible forms that reveal distinctive aspects of the real.⁵³

4. Experiential knowledge is not attained through mobilizing infra-intellectual, merely sentimental or affective resources. Hence, the adjective experiential denotes one's active-receptive immersion in realities which offer fields of possibilities for creative play and invite one to give a committed response. This event of ludic creativity involves authentic knowledge attained by following the configuration of the object of knowledge from within, whence the human experience of value occurs. In this, high modes of unity are attained which by their great potentiality for contributing to the development of human personality show the great importance of the events of participation and ecstasy. Values base modes of authentic proximity-at-a-distance between persons and the real.

The theory of ecstatic participation as the intensive encounter of the most profound aspects of reality brings to light those aspects which Scheler stressed in his theory of "affective perception" or "emotional intuition" of values. This protects his position from being interpreted as mere backsliding into irrationalism. Valuable realities by their highly tentative character demand that the knower adopt an attitude of commitment and creative interplay. Yet, this sympathetic reverberation of one's whole being by no means annuls the rational nature of knowledge; rather, it endows one with power to penetrate realities which cannot be rendered objective, projected at a distance, or understood as indifference on the part of the knower.

According to Scheler, the emotional aspect of the human spirit entails  a priori content which does not come from thought and which endows ethics with a clearly defined independence from logic. "A priori" is an ambiguous expression, normally used to indicate that a reality is different and independent from those realities given to us as objects and able to be known by non-committed, "spectators" (G. Marcel) and non-ludic knowledge. The fact that such knowledge does not discover values, does not mean that they elude all forms of human experience. They are not given as objects because they are born in the dialogue of ludic interchange. But they are the object of the creative experience of fields of play. This form of creativity, which is dialogical in nature and realized by taking up fields of ludic possibilities, in turn entails an elementary measure of  love ; hence Scheler's statement that in order to know values one needs to love. This bond between ethics and knowledge brings us to the important issue of the nexus between value and feeling.⁵⁴

5. Ecstatic participation brings about feelings of joy and, at its limit, of enthusiasm. There is a pressing need for a balanced and soundly realistic revaluation of emotive feelings in order to surpass the reductive tendency to consider as the sole modes of feeling forms of pathos which prevent the serene exercise of thought. The irreflexive, contemporary tendency to disqualify any form of feeling as mere romantic day-dreaming undermines the bases of a sound methodology for knowledge of values. The indifference or even aversion in diverse artistic circles today towards the emotively beautiful, the awe-inspiring, the sublime, the profoundly expressive and that which is dense in meaning implies a frontal attack, whether conscious or subconscious, on the world of values. Nothing is more urgent than to denounce the methods presently in use for radically subverting values, for today the ideological struggle concerns what is most basic. The nineteenth-century dilemmas of "faith or science," of "religion or its denial," have been substituted by a more radical issue: "to build or destroy the human." Only an extraordinarily refined methodology will enable a full and convincing grasp of values in a socio-cultural climate which, through language, attempts to nip in the bud any endeavor at axiological revitalization on the grounds that it is childish and retrograde.

This reductionist strategy can be fought efficiently only in terms of a creative ludic interrelation between values and feeling. The highest forms of human feeling are subjective, but they are also relational-dialogical because they consist of the particular emotion produced by ecstatic immersion in valuable realities. These offer a field of possibile interplay to those to whom they appeal. If the latter responds positively and creatively, a common field of play is founded in which the inviting reality becomes present. In this presence one feels emotions of transcendence, joyful excitement and festive exultation. The person immersed in the valuable reality is moved to inquiry into values in order to fulfill his/her personality. The awareness of this fulfillment generates a sense of joy. This joy and fulfillment arise in the meeting of value and person. The climate of vital exuberance based upon that meeting is the fiesta, an event which overflows with symbols and inspires enthusiasm and love.

All these feelings are linked to each other by the logic of ecstasy--one of the highest human events because it founds the  highest and most valuable ambits of encounter. As the spiritual resonance from a blending of ambits, feeling is a luminous expression of value. Because this is not hidden within the individual, attempts to be strictly realistic by drowning one's feelings, as if they were hedonistic subjective evasions, will not support serious methodological analysis. We are interested in feeling, not because it is satisfying to the individual, but as a herald of value.⁵⁵ Feelings have a peculiar "intentionality" which refers back to a reality, or rather reflects the result of the creative blending of two or more realities. They are governed by the logic of creativity, and are not alogical, amorphous, arbitrary, or "subjectivist." Their peculiar logic is adjusted to a process which creates new and more comprehensive modes of reality. Hence a "metaphysical" function is exerted in contemporary philosophy by feelings of fidelity, love, joy, enthusiasm and their opposites: rupture, hate, sadness, tedium, nausea and despair.

This intentional nature of feeling as open, dialogical and ludic requires that we conceive knowledge of values in a relational, bi-polar and ambital manner. The feeling which collaborates in this knowledge consists in responses to the invitation or ludic appeal to co-found fields of play and enlightenment. The responses are modulated according to different appeals manifest in the field of play. This is by no means a matter of arbitrary evaluation by the knower in view of his or her individual preferences.

As a criterion of value feeling has its particular mode of rigor as interior to the creative encounter with reality in a manner similar to musical interpretation. As this cannot adhere to external norms, it always entails some ambiguity and risk. A person may feel that something is highly valuable and obtain a closer knowledge of this value. If, however, one wishes to pass on this knowledge to others, he or she may be puzzled to observe that it cannot be demonstrated or universally verified. In order to know it, each human being must create with it a field of play and enlightenment. The feeling which reveals values is not universalizable because it springs from a process of ludic participation. Paradoxically, this "limitation" is its greatest glory.      It is, therefore, misguided to state disparagingly that in ethical, aesthetic and religious matters evaluation is a matter of "mere feeling." The authentic modes of these feelings entail such a complexity of nuances and bear with them such an accumulation of demands that the adjective "mere" is quite out of place. Feeling arises as the fruit of a ludic encounter in which value is born, but this does not mean that the value depends entirely upon such an event. One must "see in suspension" that, though values are not created by humans, they cannot be established or take on expressive form without human collaboration. The value of a musical work is revealed in the field of play between it and a good interpreter--to a great extent it depends upon this ludic event--but this value is not exactly engendered by it. We are on a relational, not a relativistic level of thought: value is revealed in ludic events of encounter, but as transcending each act of revelation.⁵⁶

6. Because they are "atmospheric" and hence not de-finable or delimitable in any precise way, values appear to be hidden from intellect, which seeks exact knowledge on the level of objects. As arousing particular feelings in the aware individual, values often are considered to be peculiar, "originary" phenomena revealed only as an "affective perception" or "emotive intuition." This bond of value with feeling raises suspicions that values are "irrational" and cannot be known in any rigorous manner. As inability to be known would discredit values--especially in view of the "talisman"-like nature which  reason and the rational have had for centuries--certain authors following Pascal eagerly pointed out that there may be a peculiar rationality in faculties other than understanding.

In order to avoid misunderstanding this form of rationality as a mere sentimental projection of a subjective human act, values were attributed an "objective" nature. Against the risk that someone might interpret this "objectivity" as mere "formality," values were held to have a "material" nature, that is, a concrete content. This could be reduced to a mere sensorial stimulus which in each time and place has an automatic sense response, but such subjection to particular time and place would rule out any universal validity for values. It is in order to reject this reductionist version, that values here have been considered  a priori entities.

All these proposed and rejected interpretations reflect a linear conception of the human-reality and the subject-object schemas. As this does not allow for the richness of the possible interaction entailed in "object" and "subject" taken as ambits, there is a tendency to grant primacy to one or the other, resulting respectively in an objectivism or subjectivism.

     A ludic methodology of values does not attack the interpretations it considers erroneous, but simply makes a point of posing the subject of value in an authentically realistic manner. This approach enables one to point out the following characteristics of values:

- They are real or "extra-subjective," but this does not mean that one should go to the other extreme of considering them "objective." In fact, they are  relational, super-objective and ambital.

- They are not merely formal or reduced to mere norms of behavior without content, but neither should one classify them as "material," for then one runs the risk of placing values too close to the "objective" and the "non-spiritual." The void of formalism is filled by the relational-ambital without risk of slipping back into the rigidity of the "objective."

- They are not mere sense stimuli, subjected to the narrow field of present action, but have a far wider radius or validity. Yet they do not possess this breadth in an "a priori" manner which frees them from adherence to experiential discourse, but gain it through the creative experience of ambital interchange. This experience supposes empirical modes of space and time and hence submission to an objectivistic here and now. It does this without falling into an imprecise  a priori  realm or risking loss of losing contact with the real. Values can be protected against reduction to the sensible level by acknowledging their power for founding special modes of reality, ludic spaces, which increase the reality of human beings and of the entities in their environment.

This co-creative, dialogical action has reverberations in the whole person. There is no sense in attributing the knowledge of values to "pure emotional intuition" in order for access to value to be independent of the organic structure of the knowing individual. This Schelerian residue of Husserl's fear of psychologism disappears of its own accord by merely noting that all the elements which mediationally intervene in the foundation of the fields of play in which values are born become transparent and turn into places for the living presence of value. One should not fear the realities taken on in a creative, expressive process, for they are thereby redeemed of their objectivist character and endowed with amazing flexibility and a correlative capacity for linking up with other realities.

For example, the heart is attributed a decisive role in one's access to value and is said to have "reasons" that reason does not understand (Pascal). In contrast to a cold, detached, non-committed knowledge of mere objects, "heart" means here the vibration of the whole human being which occurs upon entering into creative play with a reality which invites one to found together an ambit or field of companionship and light. If one does not situate the origin of knowledge in encounters, one tends to place it unilaterally within either the knowing individual or the object. Then a recognition of "heart" or of any form of feeling in the process of knowledge appears to be a spurious intervention on the part of the individual that perturbs the accuracy of the knowledge in question. Thus, the logic of the heart is opposed insolubly to the logic of understanding.

On the contrary, once one observes that objects of knowedge very often are not totally delimitable, but are constituted through creative encounter with the individual, it becomes apparent that the only manner of knowing them is integrally to commit oneself to them in the interplay of existence. The logic of the heart shows itself to be a logic of creativity and participation, which is not opposed to any rational knowledge. It is counterpoised to the knowledge of objects only as a richer, more complex form is contrasted to one that is simpler and more elementary. The experience of encounter does not lie outside the scope of understanding, but it does surpass the possibilities of a spectator's understanding (Marcel) for which objects of knowledge are mere ob-jects or external realities submitted to non-committed analysis.

"The task of the 20th century," wrote Merleau-Ponty, "consists of integrating the irrational within a broadened notion of reason." It consists in showing that it is possible to know realities which cannot be rendered objective and therefore have been considered erroneously to be irrational by those who abusively restrict the scope of human intellective power. This task requires the clear elaboration of a phenomenology of creative events, which must not be hindered by "critical" prejudices or limited to knowledge of pure essences. It must concern realities which are formed and developed as constellations and revealed only to the individual who enters into their interplay. Such a phenomenological orientation transcends as inadequate the diverse and disruptive mental schemas of "rationalism-irrationalism," "a priori-a posteriori" (experiential), "universal-singular," "formal-material" and "the set-the given." This transcendence is attained through the conviction that knowledge attains universal value, not by leaving to one side the empiric individual, but by intensive participation  in creative events. To be universally valid, knowledge should be "pure" in the sense of being independent of the private conditions of one or another individual. "Pure" knowledge is acquired when one enters into a relationship of presence with the object: This relationship is annulled, however, when the expressive elements, which should make it possible, instead stand in its way. Here we come to a crucial point, for if it cannot be seen how the expressive elements of a complex concrete experience, such as the interpretation of a musical work, can mediate the work and make it present without blocking its expressive power it will not be possible to integrate knowledge of essences and experience.

Due to the transparency derived from the dynamism of their creativity, the mediational elements do not come between the individual and the expressive reality, but act as a luminous place of revelation.⁵⁷ This is an immediate-indirect mode of giving oneself. "Immediate" implies not speed or instantaneity, but profundity. From the moment one comes into contact with a reality, one is present to the whole of it, but not to all its  aspects and nuances. "Indirect" means mediated. Reality is present to us through diverse expressions and after fulfilling numerous difficult requirements. But here  "through" and  "after"  do not indicate a lapse of time or a spatial distance which would remove men from the reality sought. At the level of ludic interaction these adverbs have an analectic nature; they imply not detachment, but the perspective appropriate to a field of play. Thus, when a great musician performs a work, he/she enters into the work through the score and the technical elements of interpretation. This is a mediated, albeit immediate, form of presence because all the mediational elements sink into the background and become transparent vehicles for the presence of the work. Nobody adheres more faithfully to the technical details than the good interpreter, while seeming to do without them and to concentrate their energy in the immediate dialogue with the work.

If the categories of immediacy and mediation, distance and presence are not properly articulated, it is understandable that, on the one hand, "material" objects as endowed with content will be avoided in favor of the formal in order to insure the universality of knowledge. On the other hand, one would resort to "pure a priori intuition" for the multicolored richness of the concrete and to attain knowledge of essences in person ("leibhaftig-gegenwartig," Husserl). Such methodological failures give rise to unavoidable inadequacies which justify the repeated criticism of phenomenology.

By using certain more or less novel terms, philosophers often try to solve problems which arise from an initial misunderstanding of basic experiences. I realize that when I listen to a musician I am made present immediately to the work, to its essence and to the essence of the style to which it belongs, and that I can disregard all the mediational elements because they are transparent. Hence, I do not need to state that my access to such essences is a priori  and independent of the experience itself. This access comes through a highly complex experience, which it transfigures and makes into a translucid vehicle of my presence. The expressive reality becomes present analectically during and through the experience, but as detached from--and hence not contaminated by--the elements which constitute the experience. Meaning is expressed in a phrase, it is "objectivized" and becomes the object of attention; but it is not "objectified," that is, it is not reduced to the objective state of the phonic elements of the phrase.

If the logic of creativity is properly analyzed, one realizes that what is most profound is most mediated and made intensely present to whomever fulfills the rules of play. The decisive factor in the theory of knowledge is not to shun mediation, but to know how to make the mediators truly mediational. Such a conversion frees knowledge from submission to the empirical conditions of time and space proper to "objective" realities. This was precisely the goal in considering the knowledge of essence to be a priori. Yet this is a somewhat negative and fallacious approach for it is based on the supposition that by disregarding the mediation of experience one automatically obtains immediacy of knowledge. The theory of creativity enables one to distinguish diverse modes of immediacy, and shows that higher modes are not attained by the mere annulment of distance; they are the fruit, not of negation, but of careful creative work. This means that in elaborating a methodology for the knowledge of values, it is more fitting to speak of creativity than of affectivity and emotivity whose function is integrated within creativity.

From the foregoing it may be inferred that to clarify the possibility of knowing values, one should point out first that human intellectual intuition is not, as is usually asserted, an immediate-direct, but an immediate-indirect vision of an object of knowledge. The adjectives "immediate" and "indirect" are not opposed to each other; in finite knowledge they are mutually required. Indirect intuition may be at the same time immediate thanks to the "mediational" and not "mediatizing" nature of the expressive elements: the mediational elements do not come between the object and the knowing subject, but are their place of encounter. Fear of mediation blocks the dynamism of philosophical research, above all in the field of ethics and aesthetics; it leads thinkers to extremist, unilateral positions in which they are unable to do justice to the complexity of the objects of knowledge.

7. Because of its many links to the different aspects of man and reality, value must be studied with a spiral method. One begins by contemplating as a block the constellation of concepts connected to value: being, ambit, disponability, creativity, existential commitment, play, participation, encounter, birth of sense and beauty, truth and goodness. Secondly, the analysis is broadened in ever widening circles, each tied to the subjects already considered at the outset and to others which arise during the personal experience of values. This spiral method insists upon what is already known, but places it in a different and more comprehensive perspective, without for a moment losing sight of the bonds which link the subjects studied constellationally. The human manner of delving deeply into matters is to proceed spirally in attaining the "ring of concepts" postulated by Heidegger and which marks the beginning of true philosophizing as a synoptic mode of knowledge. We are able to know in detail diverse facets of reality, but until we grasp genetically from within the profound bond which links these, we do not cross the threshold of authentic philosophical experience. This is particularly relevant as regards value because of its intensely relational nature.

This synoptic and analectic mode of reading value phenomena is possible due to the human power to think with perspective, soaring above each of the contemplated realities to situate them dynamically in the constellational webb in which they acquire their full meaning. Synoptic knowledge may be achieved by analyzing the experience of values reflected in philosophical and literary texts, a co-creative reading of which can be a source of light for discovering the constellational webb of the phenomenon of value.⁵⁸

8. Values should be sought, co-established with care, and respected as always transcendent, that is, as unable to be possessed as an object. The creative attitude which co-establishes values is always allied to the attitude of "reverence" which, according to Goethe, nobody is born with but which is required in order to become fully human. This elevates empiric time and space to the level of ludic interchange so that the distant becomes intimate and what is far off in time and space becomes near. This transformation is at the basis of the phenomenon of the symbol, which is a key to the configuration of diverse cultures. It makes historical discourse, beyond its flowing and evasive nature, a field of play and enlightenment with all that this implies for the establishment and knowledge of values.

9. From the foregoing, it may be concluded that the establishment and understanding of values does not take place automatically, mechanically or infra-creatively whenever certain circumstances are had, but that it demands human collaboration. In order to accomplish this, persons must fulfill certain conditions, among which are the following.

9.1 One must overcome the attitude of indifference and avoid whatever brings about the dreaded phenomenon of "blindness to value": devotion to satisfying immediate-sensitive desires, the will to manipulate and control surrounding realities, confusion of the exulting with the exalting, of vertigo with ecstasy, and of fusion with integration.

9.2 One must overcome the tendency to inactivity and encourage desire for self-improvement through the different modes of creativity.

9.3 One must cultivate  sensitivity to values , allowing oneself to be appealed to by their inner force, that is, by their power to arouse admiration and inflame one's creative capacity.

9.4 One must learn to listen to the "voice of conscience," that is, to the resonance produced by the blending of ambits. As in any kind of play, this produces light as well as sound; it makes itself heard by the expressive power of its capacity to create new ambits and give birth to meaning.

9.5 One must refine one's sense of "responsibility" or capacity to "respond" to appealing realities and ob-lige oneself with them in a common creative task.

9.6 One must sharpen the awareness that it is in this type of ob-ligation that true human freedom is developed, namely, liberty for creativity.

9.7 One must make a habit of constantly bettering oneself by transcending the closed boundaries of individualism and attaining creative openness. The creation of new modalities of reality and the birth of an integral meaning for man as a "possible existence,"--that is, as a reality which is not quite completed but must be accomplished through time--takes place in the phenomena of encounter.⁵⁹ In order to place oneself at the level at which this encounter takes place, one must overcome the tendency to gravitate towards objectivist attitudes and "spring" upwards to the level of ludic encounter.⁶⁰

All this demands that one should both withdraw and be awed.⁶¹ To withdraw does not mean to encloister oneself in a solitude of seclusion and rootlessness, but to enter into a dialogue with what is valuable and appealing. This surpasses alienation in irrelevant and non-valuable beings which are incapable of appealing to man or co-founding fields of interaction, intimacy and interiority. Hence it is logical that philosophies which seek the authenticity of the ego in relation to transcendence should demand the practice of interiorization. Saint Augustine asks people to seek truth in "interiority," understood as the capacity actively to transcend oneself in search of the Infinite. One withdraws to free oneself from the temptation of fusion with the immediate and common, and thus is able to be awed by the profound which, as different and distant, may become intimate.

To be awed is to ob-lige or com-mit oneself to the realization of a field of play which promotes human liberty. As we already stated, ob-ligation to a valuable reality does not imply coercion, but is a response to the appeal which appears as an inner voice inasmuch as it comes from a reality that is both different and intimate. In awe as a field of intimacy, one who is open to values feels at one and the same time both withdrawn and transcended. This endows the human being with a singular relevance and plenitude, an ecstatic fulfillment, awareness of which arouses, in turn, a sense of spiritual enthusiasm.

Enthusiasm or--according to its splendid etymological meaning--"immersion in the divine" occurs when one feels ob-liged to all that mediates the total fulfillment to which one is basically called or "sent." As X. Zubiri points out, man's life is a "mission"; and in these terms value is that reality which serves as a mediational element in this process of enthusiastic fulfillment.

9.8 To understand value one must see it in close connection with meaning. A reality or event has meaning as ordered towards the unity in which it attains fulfillment. A human action has meaning when it is carried out, not in view of the whole as sometimes is asserted, but within those valuable realities whose ambits are blended with those of man to perfect his creative capacity and set him on the path to personal fulfillment. In order not to cling to the immediate and to be open to the valuable, one must have the distance and hence perspective needed for the foundation of fields of play. This distance mediates creativity and enables one to unite with ambital realities. For ethical values this mediational task is carried out by norms of conduct which distance one from the immediate so strongly condemned by Kierkegaard. These norms leave one unfettered for what can be given only in the union-at-a-distance characteristic of  creative play.

9.9 One must probe deeply into the bond of being and value. If, as current science and metaphysics teach us, reality is structural and relational and is dynamically constituted as a constellation of mutually dependent notes, then it is clearly axial or dense in meaning and relevance.⁶²

Within this radical bond of being and value lies the possibility for considering all elements in the human environment as ambits by situating their objective aspect in a common creative field of play. Living experience of the nexus between being and value is had by persons when they encounter and are present to reality through ludic participation in values. In creative play reality is heightened and value is born, for both are implied in the dynamic-creative processes inasmuch as value demands to be fulfilled: it is a "has-to-be."⁶³ In this fulfillment one is established both in one's personal and in one's communitary aspects. By adhering to value, human beings experience their individuality as caught up in a webb of relationships which opens them to all manner of transcendent realities. This enables them to ascertain something which is as ambiguous and difficult to specify as it is pregnant in consequences for one's life, namely, that the human being is both surpassed and configured by the values which they take on and fulfill.

There is no sense in trying to specify the place in which value is to be found: super-objective realities are not subject to  empiric, spatio-temporal conditions. What is important is to experience the reversible relationship between realities which mutually need and enable each other: persons shape language, while language nourishes spiritual life; the player plays the game and the game offers the player the possibilities of ludic action; the interpreter "masters" the musical work insofar as he "lets himself be mastered" by it.⁶⁴ This experience enables us to see that the complementary aspects of reality sustain a mutual relationship which is both ambiguous and efficient.

To have an integral experience of values one must neutralize the impeding influence of ideological prejudices in order to attend to the appeals of reality at all their strata or levels.

10. The methodological demands for knowledge of values can be fulfilled only if one begins with a relational conception of reality, along with a well-refined theory of participation and play capable of clarifying the different possible modes of union between persons and their environing reality.

The methodology for knowledge of values questions many traditional philosophical premises. It was not without profound reason that those contemporary thinkers most interested in the subject of axiology carried to the extreme their desire to make ontology more flexible by stressing both the nature of "act" displayed by being and the dynamic, open nature of personal reality.⁶⁵ As far as the former is concerned, sound steps are currently being taken with a view to inserting dynamism, relatedness and historicity within the very  ratio of reality, but without reducing its definiteness and falling into a  facile historicist relativism. As for the second, current science, above all biology and anthropology, are pointing out more and more energetically that man is a "being of encounter"--a being who is shaped, developed and perfected by founding ambits of rigorous encounter with other personal beings, institutions, cultural realities, landscapes, traditions, and languages. The encounter does not imply mere juxtaposition or physical proximity; it demands the blending of ambits, the integration and mutual facilitation of fields of possibile interplay, for it is in play as a creative event that higher modes of unity are attained.

When human life is viewed spontaneously, without the blindness of philosophical prejudices, one realizes that its  fundamental value is the mode of unity founded in the encounter, which in turn responds to an attitude of love; hence, at their ultimate root love and value interpenetrate. As the living vehicle here is language, a word spoken without love destroys itself and becomes anti-language; the word spoken with love founds the value of friendship. Love, value and language are bound in a single nucleus.

        11. From the above specifications one may infer unequivocally that a methodology for the knowledge of values demands above all an adequate use of language. Rather than being a means for communicating what is already known, human language is a medium for creative interplay of the ambits which make up the webb of human existence. As a field of play, authentic language is a field of enlightenment or of the birth of meaning. If, in order to manipulate or defeat others without needing to convince them one uses language strategically, then one annuls its capacity to give birth to meaning and to clarify values. Currently, values are artfully subverted by using the resources of language so subtly and surreptitously to distort the meaning of realities and events that people are given the impression of being raised to high peaks of freedom when they are being submitted to the worst type of bondage: that of the intelligence.⁶⁶ If there is no efficient counterpoint to this solvent effect of the strategy of language upon ethical, aesthetic and religious values, it will not be possible to offer today's person a plausible and convincing experience of values. The subject of values is highly complex; it obliges one to refine one's concepts, to perceive diverse elements as an ensemble, and to catch the meaning of integral phenomena. In principle the demagogic spirit of those who use language strategically avoids attending to the nuances of meaning in terms and concepts. Instead, they use them opaquely and unilaterally to create dilemmas which prevent people from grasping the meaning of complex phenomena as integrating contrasting elements in an original unity of meaning.