The complex issue of social values in a time of change raises the very problem of how, if at all, such values are related to the society for which they serve as a guide for action. This issue is not merely a philosophical curiosity, something philosophers do when they turn away from the external world to concentrate on their own interests, but is rather intensely topical in virtue of the enormous political changes brought about by the collapse of official Marxism in Eastern Europe since 1989. It is then of practical importance to know how to approach the many practical problems that have arisen in the wake of the widespread and still highly volatile series of ongoing political transformations that were set in motion by the nearly instantaneous disintegration of the official Soviet system and the subsequent disappearance of the Soviet Union itself.

One approach to the question I am raising is to invoke an already established system of values independent of actual events in order to orient the practical response. It is widely thought that there is a single set of socially relevant values that, like reality itself, are available and sufficient to guide our lives in all times and places, including times of change. Platonism, for example, which has never ceased to influence the later discussion, consists of the view that there is an independent reality of objective values known as the true, the good and the beautiful against which all our judgments can be evaluated.

The task of this paper will be to examine this approach with respect to the unprecedented changes now underway by virtue of the collapse of the Soviet bloc. Platonism leads to the idea that our abstract ideas are more important than any aspect of concrete reality, which, at best, only imperfectly reflects the independent reality that is our real concern. I will argue, on the contrary, that it is a significant error to hold that a general approach which fails to take account of the specificity of events can possibly be sufficient to come to grips with them. I will further argue that social values are relevant precisely to the extent that they are not elaborated prior to, but rather arise out of the events under consideration. I will finally argue that, although the existence of a single set of socially relevant values is routinely invoked, there is no reason to believe that this is anything more than a false description of what we in fact do.

This paper will be guided by the assumption that values embody expressions of possible social utility, of whatever kind. The term "value" will be understood very broadly as referring to the worth of something, where worth can be intrinsic, instrumental, inherent, contributory and so forth. The idea of social value will be taken as an undefined term referring broadly to whatever values are necessary, or at least useful, within such various levels of the social context as the familial or private and the public settings, including all the main areas of daily life. In this respect, there seem to be two main possibilities, roughly that social values are either invariant or variable in some as yet undefined sense.

If one holds, as many do, that social values are invariant, or at least roughly the same in all times and places, then very obviously one also has to hold that they are not dependent on or related other than incidentally to the context that they are intended to regulate. Those who believe that social values are invariant must also hold that they are formulated in a way independent of the social context. Here the difficulty is to arrive at a single set of social values that both hold across the board for all people in all societies and are more than incidentally relevant for life in society. If, on the other hand, one holds that social values are variable, not fixed or permanent, then the problem is to show that they are more than the expression of what a particular group or subset of the population happens to think at a given time and in a given place.

It is as easy as it is uninteresting to entertain the idea of a system of stable values in a society where nothing ever happens. It is considerably more difficult to do so in a society that is the theater of real change, Such a society presents new, often unforeseen and obviously unforeseeable situations, that on occasion are completely unlike anything that has earlier existed and which may or may not be amenable to analysis through a pre-existing conceptual framework. A conceptual framework adequate to a particular situation, whatever we mean by "adequate," is not placed in doubt as long as the series of events in the future remains sufficiently like those of the past. Obviously, this presupposes the existence of causal regularity over time. But this same framework may no longer be as relevant, or even relevant at all, if it turns out that the future is simply unlike the past.

Although theoretically possible, this seems practically implausible. Our views of physical reality formulated over a period of several thousand years continue to hold since nature as given in experience remains boringly repetitive. Bodies continue to fall toward the center of the earth, fire remains hot and the sun rises and sets in an entirely predictable fashion. The laws of physical theory would obviously cease to hold if any one of these familiar situations failed to recur. Yet if the planets no longer followed regular orbits but wandered aimlessly through the universe, modern physics would need to be rewritten. An analogous situation, which presents a real test for social values, has been occurring in Eastern Europe as a result of the nearly instantaneous political collapse and subsequent disintegration of the Soviet Union.

The issue of social values in a time of change is obviously a subset of the more general problem of whether there is a single specifiable set of values, for instance, moral or ethical commands such as the familiar golden rule, which can be said to hold in all times and places. Or on the contrary, are even the most familiar social values in some sense socially variable from one historical moment to another? The simplest approach is the widespread conviction that there is in fact a single specifiable framework of social values. In modern times, the outstanding example of this approach to practical matters is provided by Kant. His critical philosophy clearly turns on the conviction that the norms for morality and culture are to be drawn out of reason itself as the absolute guide for life. Kant maintains that reason, which determines the rules that govern action in particular circumstances, is wholly independent of any particular set of contingent circumstances. It is typical of Kant, whose intellectual probity was exemplary, that he was willing to admit that there has perhaps never been a moral person since his standards are so rigorous in practice that they simply cannot be met. At the same time, however, he insisted that these standards provide the minimal conditions for a rational political framework.

Kant’s approach to the problem is a secular form of the traditional religious doctrine that justifies itself through a claimed relation to divine authority. The most economical interpretation of this model is the claim that some among us have a privileged relation to God that may be either indirect or direct. When indirect, it is a case of an authorized representative, or privileged interpreter, of a body of writings that can reliably be regarded as divinely inspired. When direct, it is a case of divine revelation, such as in certain forms of mysticism. According to this model, the problem of reliably determining a set of social values reduces to the problem of identifying those whose role consists in transmitting a series of ideas that they and those who identify with them, such as the officials of an organized religion and those faithful to that religion, regard as faithfully representing God’s views. The difficulty of knowing what to do in any particular situation lies merely in ascertaining what God would have us do. This is further ascertained either through invoking a series of general precepts oneself; or, as in orthodox Judaism, through consulting one learned in the main texts who creatively extends the doctrine to fit specific cases; or, as in Christianity and Islam, by following the authorized interpretation of the sacred texts.

The difficulty in this version of the philosophical model is that claims to know are by definition essentially private, not public, and are, therefore, not intersubjective, not subject to verification of any kind other than through the mere claim to "see." Obviously, there is no evidence for any claim to "see" reality other than the claim itself, which is finally indistinguishable from the claim of any religious believer to divine revelation. Kant improves on Plato in purporting to deduce rules for action in specific situations from reason itself. His aim is to deduce a general framework for practical action applicable to any and all particular situations. The difficulty, which Hegel quickly pointed out, is that any particular principle, such as the golden rule, is empty since it applies only in a general, non-specific manner. His counter-suggestion is that social principles are relevant to concrete situations to the extent that they take them into account.

Although a number of later thinkers have attempted to extend the Kantian line, no one to the best of my knowledge has yet answered Hegel’s criticism. Kant claims that reason, hence practical reason (his name for morality), is specifically relevant for human beings since it necessarily incorporates human goals. In this way, he restates the Platonic conviction that philosophy is indispensable for the social context, even though it is totally independent of that context since it depends solely on rational arguments. The short version of this claim is that philosophy is a necessary condition for the good life. Yet it needs to be shown and not merely claimed that philosophy is really as socially significant as some philosophers claim it is.

This claim is scarcely obvious, even to philosophers. Aristotle notoriously thought that pure theory is socially irrelevant. Marx held that it was even a form of ideology. In Marx’s wake, the Frankfurt School thinkers have suggested that some types of theory are socially irrelevant whereas other types are socially relevant. Yet the recent efforts of Apel and Habermas to provide a transcendental form of ethics fail to show either that ethics must be transcendental or that a transcendental form of ethics is socially relevant. In that sense, they fail to meet Hegel’s criticism. Furthermore, Heidegger’s view, which claims that social values are already embodied in the social past such that we only need to repeat it authentically in the future, fails to explain how to justify traditional social values.

According to the traditional model of social values, there is one and only one specifiable system that is a priori, or independent of time and place. Religious efforts to establish this view through appeals to authority, even if admissible within a specifically religious frame of reference, obviously conflict among themselves. The result is that the major religions disagree with respect to social values. Claims for universality on the part of a particular religion, such as the Roman Catholic claim to be the sole universal church, must be tempered by the factual disagreements between the different religions. It is obvious, or at least should be, that this claim is accepted only by members of this particular faith and is not even potentially acceptable to the adherents of any other major religion.

Philosophical efforts to articulate this traditional model have the advantage of relying on reason, which in principle is universal in the sense that it is the same for all rational beings. If reason is universal, and if social values can be deduced or otherwise established through reason, then at least the idea of a single specifiable system of social values independent of time and place is plausible. Here, as in so many other areas, Kant is the central figure. More recent forms of Kantianism, such as Apel’s transcendental pragmatism, are in fact weaker than the critical philosophy. Even if we grant Apel’s assertion that all communication necessarily presupposes, at least implicitly, agreement among the members of an ideal speech community, nothing whatever follows concerning particular social values.

With respect to later, more abstract efforts to reformulate his theory, the advantage of Kantian morality lies in the claim to provide practical guidelines for action in every situation. Kant’s view of the categorical imperative suggests that, based on an analogy between ethics and physical theory, there is a single way to analyze the social world. If this view is meant to support the idea of a univocal system of social values, the analogy is obviously problematic. Although critical of certain aspects of Newtonian mechanics, Kant thought that it would stand forever, like geometry or logic. Yet we now know that neither Aristotelian logic, nor Euclidean geometry, nor Newtonian mechanics is the last word on the topic. Although one may believe at any given time that a particular form of physical theory is correct, the history of science shows that there is more than one way to analyze the same external world.

The problem is even more acute with respect to the Kantian analysis of particular situations. The idea that in all cases particular situations can be brought under a single, univocally interpretable system of general rules for practical action presupposes that there is one and only one way to analyze them. Yet all, or nearly all, particular situations can be analyzed from a variety of different points of view that, as a result, yield different practical imperatives. A sick child who requires a transfusion from the standpoint of modern medical science requires only prayer from the standpoint of a Christian Scientist, whose religious beliefs preclude transfusion. This case, which is otherwise absolutely typical of the situations encountered in practice, illustrates a clash between different possible analyses that defeats anything like the Kantian assumption that there is one and only one rational analysis of concrete cases.

In the discussion so far, we have examined approaches to social values based on authority, tradition, pure intuition and reason alone, all of which fail. This short list of approaches is significant in embracing the main strategies invoked to produce social values that are regarded as a priori, or independent of the social context. Although for many observers it seems obvious that there can be no more than a single system of social values independent of time and place, in practice there seems to be no way to produce such a list.

If we are not to abandon the idea of justifying our social values, then we must seek another approach that is different from traditional but indefensible value a priorism. A clue as to how to proceed is suggested by the case very briefly examined, which suggests that, contrary to Kant, there is no interpretation as such in practice, no such thing as the only possible analysis of a concrete situation, but rather a variety of interpretations from different points of view that depend on prior presuppositions. So in the case briefly evoked above, the interpretation of the situation obviously depends on a prior commitment to modern medicine, the form of Christianity practiced by Christian Scientists, or still other points of view. The interpretation of this case is not independent of, but rather dependent on, a prior commitment, or a general conceptual framework that sanctions either or justifies a particular type of interpretation as opposed to other, rival interpretations.

In this respect, the problem is twofold insofar as it concerns the analysis of particular cases from a given point of view, as well as the formulation for a wider conceptual framework within which it is possible to do so. Now, the important thing to note is that the wider conceptual framework is not invariant, as might be thought, but rather a variable that results in practice from a process of social negotiation among the members of a given society.

Our problem is not whether there are cultural universals that do not require justification; it is rather how to justify the social values that permit us to analyze the particular situations with which we are routinely confronted in daily life. Obviously, if we cannot justify our social values in an a priori manner, either we must do so in an a posteriori fashion, or we must abandon the very idea of justification on pain of regarding values as merely arbitrary.

It would be a mistake to hold that we can justify our social values on the a priori plane, since we clearly cannot do so, as it would be to claim that they are merely arbitrary. But the alternative is not exclusive. In fact, as Hegel pointed out in his theory of spirit, our social values are the result of an ongoing process of social negotiation between members of a given society. A particular society is never static, but is rather constantly engaged in the process of defining and redefining itself through a vast participatory process in which the values it accepts as its own are constantly being revised. The criterion of justification is not that they are true, however understood, or that they are sanctioned by recognized authority, or that they are suitably derived from reason alone. It is rather that they are accepted by a given society as corresponding to its own understanding of itself at a given point in time. If this is true, social values are always temporary, never permanent, since they are always subject to revision at such time as a given society fails to recognize itself through them.

The simplest way to challenge the widespread idea that there is a single specifiable framework of social values adequate for any and all situations is to point to novel situations that have no real precedent. It has already been noted that the current situation in Eastern Europe, which simply has no precedent in recent history, is perhaps without any real precedent in recorded history. If this is the case, if we are confronted at present with real novelty unlike anything we have so far seen, it would be a significant error to believe that an adequate response could possibly be found through simply applying readily available formulas or other bromides, such as the golden rule, injunctions to rely on democracy, self-help and so forth.

It is obvious that some of the problems, such as food, shelter, basic medical care and so on, are simply too critical to await long-term solutions, but rather require urgent short-range action. Here lessons can be drawn from relevantly similar acute situations that continue to arise. It is considerably more difficult to understand how to react to a large series of longer range problems with which we simply do not have much, if any, relevant prior experience, such as rebuilding the social infra-structure, creating and strengthening a democratic political process, orderly transition between governments in a country such as Russia that has never had such a tradition, or converting from a command-style to a free market economy.

At the time of this writing, the form of unrestrained capitalism that is rapidly emerging in, say, Russia seems perilously close to undermining the very possibility of continuing efforts to achieve even reasonable political and social stability. For instance, the efforts to strengthen nascent democratic reform are clearly undermined by the difficulties of those living on fixed incomes, which have not kept pace with the rise of the cost-of-living. They often are attracted by the idea of returning to a more authoritarian but less socially precarious, form of life. Whether Russia can continue down the perilous road leading to an increasingly democratic form of politics may well turn on finding at least a provisional solution to this problem.

This paper has examined the widespread idea of a single set of socially relevant values. This approach is as widespread as it is naïve. It is further socially harmful since it leads in practice not only to false hopes concerning the existence of a single set of standards, but also to the rejection of the pluralistic approach that is probably the single most important methodological guarantee of even moderate success in any effort to address concrete social problems. On closer scrutiny, it turns out that there is no single set of social values on which all parties agree, which are socially relevant, and which are permanent or invariant. Values are a function of the sociocultural context from which they must arise if they are to be meaningful, and, in order to remain meaningful, they must change as the underlying context changes. The problem concerning social values is not to deduce inflexible standards from general principles that hold in all times and places. It is rather a question of finding a way to arrive at values that can be accepted by thinking through concrete problems in order to arrive at the widest possible consensus.

1. See Lévi-Strauss, 1958.

2. The most prominent effort to raise this question from the inside, namely, Amalrik’s speculations concerning the continued existence of the Soviet Union in 1984, was not based on a detailed analysis of aspects of the existing situation. See Amalrik 1970.

3. An important example is the examination by Carrère-D’Encausse of the probable rise in tensions due to the hugely superior birth rate in the Moslem republics of the Soviet Union. See Carrère d’Encausse 1978.

4. One of the weaknesses of Hempel’s covering law model of history is that it assumes an undemonstrated and indemonstrable basic analogy between history and the natural sciences. See Hempel 1949.

5. The most recent phase of the debate lies in Gettier’s counter-examples, which seem to have refuted the ideal analysis of Jaako Hintikka. For a discussion, see Ackermann 1972.

6. See Van Parijs 1995.

7. See Pinker 1995 for a discussion of Chomsky on this matter.

Ackermann, R. J. (1972). Belief and Knowledge. Garden City: Doubleday.

Amalrik, A. (1970). Will the Soviet Union Exist in 1984? New York: Harper and Row.

Carrère d’Encausse, H. (1978) L’empire éclaté. Paris: Flammarion.

Hempel, C. G. (1949). "The Function of General Laws in History." In Herbert Feigl and Wilfrid Sellars (eds.). Readings in Philosophical Analysis. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 459-471.

Lévi-Strauss, C. (1958). Anthropologie structurale. Paris: Plon.

Pinker, S. (1995). The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language. New York: Harper.

Van Parijs, P. (1995). Sauver la solidarité. Paris: Cerf.