PREFACE

The study of values, both in depth and in detail, is one of the most pressing and promising tasks for current philosophy.   During the first quarter of this century the special attention paid to the subject created considerable enthusiasm for this little explored but evocative area. Max Scheler,¹ Micolai Hartman,² Louis Lavelle3 and Xoaquin Xirau⁴ marked the peak of this growing concern for axiological research. Later, philosophical investigations turned to other matters, largely abandoning the analysis of values before it had fully matured. Despite its brilliant beginnings, therefore, axiology never developed the firm foundations and appropriate methodology required to avoid serious misunderstandings.

Values are by nature ambiguous: they lack clearly defined structures and overflow set limits; as such they are difficult to reduce to precise and rigorous analysis. For lack of a clear notion of the intellectual approaches required due to their distinctive nature, one could conclude that a sufficiently refined philosophical language for reflecting upon values is not feasible. Hence, in dealing with values philosophers often use expressions which at first seem better suited to poetry or pious literature than to philosophical research. Though rich in meth odological discoveries, recentphilosophical thought still lacked methodologies adapted to the precise needs of the various aspects of reality. Hence, highly accurate observations often were expressed in mental categories and schemas so inadequate that they occasioned dangerous equivocations.

Now, however, various currents of thought challenge us to elaborate a philosophical methodology adapted to the inner richness and constituent ambiguity of values. Among the undeniable achievements of recent philosophical research has been its stress upon: the importance of "relational thought" and "inobjective realities" (Jaspers, Marcel); the links between knowledge and commitment, and being and value; the discovery of values, human creativity and personal development; the opening to the other and the notion of encounter; and, in this context, the birth of meaning. The contribution of these discoveries has been limited, however, due to the lack of a corresponding mode of thought adequate to this new vision of reality. Those held captivate by the model of scientific rationality have difficulty perceiving that the union of knowledge with existential commitment, action, and love is rigorously rational in nature and should not be considered "irrational," emotional, pseudo-romantic or vaguely sentimental.

Unless the specific nature of relational entities is clarified

--the "between," in M. Buber's words--the bond of values to human beings will continue to be misunderstood as a form of common relativism. Though many claim that values have an "objective" or "real" nature, failure to recognize relational modes of reality restricts them to considering any connection of values with the human creative processes to be a lapse into a dreaded subjectivism. For security, they settle into an objectivist realism which ignores the relational basis of values that becomes manifest in the interplay between persons and their environment. To those looking for an "objective" nature similar to "things," values appear as absolutely dependent upon the human individual, and thereby as drifting towards subjectivism.

Such extreme one-sidedness prevents adequate or even fair treatment of a genre of reality as rich in shades and contrasts of meaning as is that of values. Therefore, a critical review is needed of the methodological foundations of the study of values. In this it soon becomes clear that the relation between persons and values is governed by a logic of participation. In order to take a close look at this, the present study will treat the following:

1) the current development of interest in the subject of values;

2) its methodological progress in overcoming objectivist schemas;

3) access to values through the experiences of participation, encounter and ecstasy;

4) a relational-ludic methodology for understanding  values; and

5) the characteristics of values which appear in the light of this aesthetic-creative (or ludic) methodology.

Though the complexity of these subjects calls for the detail of explanation which is possible only by a cumulative procedure, space allows merely for the basic guidelines of a hermeneutic of values. Hence, I shall endeavor to unravel the question of value "spirally," treating the decisive methodological issues from different perspectives and at increasingly radical levels. Though implying some repetition, this will facilitate progressively sketching out a more mature and incisive approach to this rich and complex subject.