On Inner Relation Between Social Fact and Three Types of Values

Gong Qun

   Professor of Dept of Philosophy, RNEMIN University of China

[Abstract] Social fact is the type of fact which human can recognize and experience. The basic distinction between social facts and natural facts lies in the values embodied by the social facts. Therefore, vales either lies in social facts,or determines its different features. To be specific, according to the relation to social facts, values can be classified into three categories: the first is the value which is implied by social spiritual affairs, the second is behavioral value related to spiritual social facts (i.e. ought), and the third type is the value which lies in social facts embodied in social material affairs.

[Key words] social fact, value

Introduction

A considerable number of philosophical works have been published discussing the relation between fact and value since 1900. Is fact totally separated from value, or is there any intrinsic or inner relation between fact and value? To answer the question is an important issue in philosophical research in the 20th century. Generally, people consider the division of “to be” and “to ought” that David Hume suggests demonstrates the approach to the issue. Though a lot of people have worked and have gotten a lot of good ideas and opinions on this subject, we still need further research in this field. My opinion is that in order to discuss the issue -- the relation between fact and value-- first we need to divide “fact” into “natural fact” and “social fact”. If we put this division into consideration, we can find fact and value are not totally divided. There is one kind of intrinsic entangling relation between social fact and value.     

                    1,

What is fact? And what is social fact? Fact can be defined as the existence which human being can know and feel in human sense and experience (the object in human sensibility )and in human mind (the object in human mind, thinking). There are two types of facts: one is natural fact, and the other is social fact. Natural facts exist in nature, such as mountains and rivers. Social facts existed and exist in social field or social world, so there are historical facts and present fact in real society.

Social facts can be divided into two types: spiritual fact and the fact carried by material objects. However, it is impossible that any fact is purely spiritual, even the spiritual fact has been carried by language, and any language needs a certain kind of physical shell which we term as “material object” in natural physics. Thus we must recognize social facts carried by material object do have the spiritual content. Otherwise, the fact is not a social one, or it is only natural object in the world. We need also to define the conception of value. “Value” means the meaning of human spiritual culture. The term “value” may refer to all conventions, moral ideas, religious ideas, or wild spiritual cultural ideas embodying human pursuit, the understandings of spiritual existences and the relationships between human beings, between human and nature. In other words, only the notions which are kept, respected, and pursued by human mind imply value. We can say this is Value I. Value I is the conception that indicates human spiritual meaning. Second, value for human action, namely, “to ought” value which distinguishes itself from “to be”, is Value II. Third, value elements in those things in which we can find the seal of human spirit have cultural meaning, such value elements we can call “Value III”. The three kinds of values have different relations to social facts.

Cultural phenomena of human society include the spiritual fact and the fact carried by physical matter. In some sense, value is the central conception of culture. What makes human existence distinct from natural existence? We think it is culture. The existence of human being is cultural. What is culture? Different thinkers have different conceptions of culture. However, I think the conception that Samuel P. Huntington holds is just what I have in my mind. Huntington puts,“civilization and culture both refer to the overall way of life and people, and a civilization is a culture writ large. They both involve the values norms, institutions, and modes of thinking to which successive generations in a given society have attached primary importance. A civilization is, for Braudel,‘a space, a ‘culture area’, ‘a collection of cultural characteristics and phenomena.’ Wallerstein define it as a ‘particular concatenation of worldview, customs, structures and culture (both material culture and high culture) which forms some kind of historical whole and which coexists ( if not always simultaneously) with other varieties of this phenomenon.’ A civilization is according to Dawson the product of ‘ a particular original process of cultural creativity which is the work of particular people,’ while for Durkheim and Mauss, it is ‘a kind of moral milieu encompassing a certain number of nations, each national culture being only a particular form of the whole.”[1] From quotations above, we can see clearly Huntington’s definition of culture, and also other definitions of culture and civilization given by other thinkers’. In any kind of culture, institutions, rules, moralities, conventions or customs are necessary factors. Culture is the living space and living field of human being so that there are objective (material) elements in it, such as churches, temples and so on. If the facts in culture can be divided on the basis of different levels, the spiritual fact can be put as the first level, the fact carried by material object is the second level. Why the spiritual fact is the first level? It is because the spiritual fact appears directly as value. In different kinds of spiritual facts conventions and moralities are pure phenomena, so does religion. Religion is the important cultural phenomenon whose internal center are religious ideas and whose external forms are such symbolic things as religious organizations, religious communities, churches and temples. In some sense, religious ideas are typical value because religion holds belief to be a holy thing which is above anything else. Human beings live with the belief, which indicates that they take their belief as the most valuable thing in their life. The pursuit of belief and ideal gives the meaning to the existence of life. Conventions and moralities keep order in life. In H. Rickert’s eyes, value is the root of life, “ without value, we were not life. In other words, without value, we would no longer have desire and action because value gives us direction for our will and action.”[2]    

However, religious values and value of moral notions have intrinsic relation between themselves. In terms of the value of religious interpretation, transcendent existence is its value focus. But if you go into the depth of any ideas of religion, you may find that the transcendence of values is in fact such situation, it takes a transcendent super existence as protecting and supporting tool for real social norm. The point that I hold here does not have any signs for looking down on it. We may know one of their secular missions religiously justifies secular morality, or in other words, let human morality have holy light ring and teach human beings. Those secular behaviors should be moral in the form of commandment of God if we consider the emphases of worldly main religions for secular morality, such as Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism and Islam. We all know the Ten Commandments, Love your neighborhood said by Christ, Eight Prescripts in Buddhism, and so on. I think if there were no secular moralities as its foundation, the religious belief would be in the danger of being suspended in the sky. Recently, Hans Kung primarily promotes A Global Ethic from the common secular morality implied by different religions. If there were no such secular morality, Hans Kung could not possibly put forward his proclamation.

Morality not only is enforced by religion, and but also rooted in real society. Moral phenomena in human history and factors of social institutions are always integrated and we can hardly separate them into two distinct things by saying that this is morality, not institution norm, or that is institution norm, not morality. Any kind of moral system involves parts of social system. Your duty, mission, task, by which people can evaluate your performance to determine whether you are good or not, all come from the social responsibility that you take. What we can have as our social duty is determined by social system and our status in this system. Behind morality, we can find the deep factors that are of social institutions, or institutional norms. 

All institutions of human society are composed by norm systems that define human beings in particular social status, rights, duty and obligation. Juergen Habermas argues, “ social world is composed by the context of norm （Eine soziale Weltbeseht aus einem normativen Kontext）, which determines what interactions belong to the totality of legal interpersonal relation, and all actors whose behaviors corresponding to norms ( actors who accept the ask of norms) belong to one same social world.” [3] Norms that Habermas says involve, for actors or social actions, legally valid systems, rules, principles, which construct the context of norm by which society “determines what interactions belong to the totality of legal interpersonal relation”, and shows interrelation of intersubjectivities and social world. Or in Heidegger’s words, it is the relation of Ereignis in both subject and social world. Therefore, Habermas says, social world belongs to the totality of all interpersonal relations. However, if there were not norms in the social world, there would be no definitions of value in personal interaction. What is normal action? We can understand it as “the conception of the action regulated by norm involves not only the action of other actors in our own world, but also the members of a social community who determine their own behaviors by common values. Any one actor should follow the norm (or offense the norm), if it is possible for using the norm under circumstance. Norm expresses the condition of agreement with each other. For the whole members of a social community, they can demand each other to do so or give up the action defined by varied norms.” [4] Norm is social existence that universally constrains members of social community. The central content of norm is the constraint, “ it is the point constructs its valid hypothesis.”[5] If a norm has no constraint, or the norm is getting to be thrown by people, or it is eroding the effect of social life, it cannot be regarded as a norm. All institutions, rules, conventions that constrain social action can be called norm, in this sense, norm has the significance of social mechanism which involves not only behavior, but also the context of social behavior.

From the social action, norm plays the role of constructing social life. For instance, norms (moral norms) in family and clan system determine social order that how man and woman combine themselves and which way is reasonable for the relationship of male and female.  Norms, such as duty, mission, and conscience in human mind embody the individual morality of social duty. Conscience is the protecting god of social legal order in human heart and embodies the effect constriction of social norm. In terms of legal order, the norm is a kind of institutional with its effect of communal constraint. For the number of society, the existence of norms is universal, valid, and legal. The norm inside and outside human mind is in its essence one thing. What is more, in relation to social institution. Habermas argues:“ in Weber’s words, we can say in some way, sociology assumes the value interpretations of hermeneutics. However, we can say that they as such care for cultural tradition and value system only if they have normal power in regulating action. Sociology only cares for institutional value. ” [6]

It is not only that institution is value, but also that all conventions, customs, religions, moral norms and the inward parts of all cultural spiritual phenomena are values. For the existence of human being, or the existence that corresponds with human respect, those values are basic elements. Therefore, to define the conception of value first should be according to the characteristic of human existence. What is more, those facts implying values are “natural” facts composed of the human world, which come into our practice areas as the context of our social practical activities, underline practical activities, to effect into  our practical activities. We can undoubtedly evaluate them as “good” or “bad” by some social standard, but, each type of social institution or basic construction means duties, missions and certain tasks originated in them for people under them. In other words, it is the social institution or basic construction that regulates the subject of social behavior, and gives the reason of “ought”, namely, the reason why subject of social behavior should do so. The power of imperative sentence “you ought to……” comes from value implied in social fact. In fact, the route goes from factual value to behavior value and the former generates the latter. We can call value of the former as “Value I”, and value of latter as “Value II”. The distinction between Value I and Value II is the distinction between “to be” and “to ought”, which people often say. The value of “ought” comes in norms of institutions and ideas of norms. The moral conception of “ought” may be used in two kinds of senses: one is that we order people in social practice, such as “you ought to do that, because you are ……”, or “you ought to do that, because this is moral”, according to the institutional fact (norm), or duty and mission by social institution, or general norm of morality. The other is that we can use those presuppositions above or general demanding, and evaluate people’s conducts in morality, to point out whether some particular actions ought to be carried out or not. For example, a policeman, we can say he ought to do so in his work, and he ought not to do such things as striking others, or, ought not to lose manners or to be rude or tough. In this sense, “ought to” includes right. The proposition that Stealing conduct is not “ought” conduct implies that one moral man ought to respect property of others. Therefore, to understand the value of “ought” can not be divided from social facts of institutional norms and moral norms as generally cultural facts. In other words, it is impossible to cut the relation between the value of “ought ” and Value I. Value I not only implies the demanding (ought ) for human behavior, but is the root of behavioral value. Why can those facts become the root of behavioral value? Just because there are values or factors of value implied in those facts. Of course, it is not the uses of “ought” in all circumstances that we can say it’s equal to value. But we cannot deny the characteristic of “ought” as an evaluating word if we can say “you ought to…… because you are ……”. In this sentence, this “because” introduces the root of value. The omitting content after “you are” always is some kind of social facts implying value and the fact defining value of action. In other words, the ideas of values, evaluations, and value judgments are never only one kind of psychological, emotional or spiritual need, but one kind of notional things rooted in social convention, morality, and institutional background. Value notions, whose appearances in human motivation, attitude, intention, can be sought out their sources in certain cultural background, social context or system context. If we think the sources of action value are attitudes, desires, or motivations of acting agents, we cannot answer the question of changes of attitudes and desires in history. Social basic construction and other cultural context are the deep sources, whose changes necessarily affect desires of acting agents. Before and after Open and Reform in China, there are totally different values ( before the period, people respected the spiritual values, and now, people no more do this and respect utilitarian values), which can be found in the historical cause from the change of social context.       

How do we interpret what people say in general concerning the distinction between “to be” and “to ought”? In order to answer the question, first we need to know what Hume said. Hume argued in Treatise of Human Nature: “I can not forebear adding to these reasonings an observation, which may, perhaps, be found of some importance. In every system of morality, which I have hitherto met with, I have always remark’d, that the author proceeds for some time in the ordinary way of reasoning, and establishes the being of God, or makes observations concerning human affaires; when of a sudden I am surpriz’d to find, that instead of the usual copulations of propositions, is and is not, I meet with no proposition that is not connected with an ought, or an ought not. This change is imperceptible; but is however, of the last consequence. For as this ought, ought not , expresses some new relation or affirmation,’tis necessary that it shou’d be observed and explain’d; and at the same time that a reason should be given for what seems altogether inconceivable, how this new relation can be deduction from others which are entirely different from it. But as authors do not commonly sue this precaution, I shall presume to recommend it to the readers and am persuaded, that this small attention cou’d subvert all the vulgar systems of morality, and let use see, that the distinction of vice and virtue is founded not merely on the relation of object, nor is perceivd by reason.” [7] People almost all consider that Hume was arguing that there are two kinds of judgment, one is factual judgment; the other is evaluating judgment, and neither has logical connection to the other. People think Hume drew an important conclusion and it is an important finding for moral philosophy. We know Hume indeed proposed the question of the difference between “to be” and “to ought”. But by his research for writings of moral works the distinction he found is not equal to the distinction between factual judgment and evaluating judgment and also not equal to the conclusion that the two kinds of judgments are incompatible in logic to each other. It is because what Hume had only said was that propositions in writings of moral works in his age were no longer to use “ to be” to connection, but use “to ought” to. Though this new relation was entirely different from last one. 

How do we understand Hume’s finding? Or, why had description in moral philosophy had such change? We consider that it should be observed by the way in which we should first observe the milieu of social culture and thought that Hume lived in. As we know, the political conception of divine power had been definitely challenged by the theory of natural law. Though the influence of Christianity was still very strong, people had no longer viewed secular state in the eye of God. Secondly, Hobbes and Mandeville before Hume had ever two times stirred up big augments about egoism. Therefore, though there were some very famous theological moralists, such as Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Joseph Butler, who still advocated moral principle drawn from ethics of Christian benevolence, God’s status of moral authority had been serious attacked. Hobbes and Mandeville had explained moral phenomena totally not by God, but by egoism of human being. For Mandeville, the deep motivation of social development was not morality advocated by Christianity, but egoism in human nature. However, during the Middle Ages, ultimate origin of moral value was nowhere but in God. What people could directly infer from God before the time, now, though the existence of God still had not been radically challenged. Puritanism in England had very strong social strength. But development and change of social notions was so great that for moralist or common persons what human being could not directly infer from existence of God, or, could not know what was the “ought of action” from the good characteristic of God. Because the evaluating relation between human being and God had broken. Hence we have seen what Hume said as the transformation from “to be ” to “to ought” in such cultural context. Therefore, what Hume said is one kind of historical change, it is transformation from the action value inferred from the presupposition of “to be”, existence of God, to the action value which is not infer from the presupposition. And it shows, in that historical period, God’s authority as value source had been shaken. 

Even with no God as the value source, by no means could people shake off social conventions, institutions, and their norms and rules. To take ought value (Value II)of behaviour as the driving source from social conventions, institutions and so on, is the viewpoint of neo-naturalism. Philippa Foot argues that we can get evaluate conclusion from factual presupposition. John Searle points out that conventional fact and social institutional fact and value are intrinsically connected. Just as what has previously been put above, the sentence of “you ought to do that, because you are ……”omits the position or duty of agent which is institutional fact that can not been separated from relative value. For example, “He is the head of the ship”, we can effectively drive the evaluating judgment from the factual presupposition: “he ought to do the thing that the head ought to do.” Any subject carries certain role or roles, his duty or mission (Value I) determines his value of action (Value II).If the institutional duty, or cultural values carried by one social subject were taken away from him or her, subject of value would become one specter, with no characteristic, no self-identity, no personality. Therefore, human being is not only one psychological existence, but also social existence. What is more, his psychological contents are not merely pure individual ones, and also elements of historical culture, and embody background of social history. Further, we can only understand any normal person by social communicational actions. Human being can be understood in social action, not in abstraction of notion,. In other words, we understand human being as existence in social life, it means that individual is never an isolated one, he or she is in integrated into social interpersonal relation. And at the same time, the intersubjective relation as such is one kind of life-world relation in greater social context. When we look at the background composed of social institution, cultural construction, and the characteristic of subject action in the background, Value I behind subject-object relation will appear in front of us. It is real source of action value. The root of value of “ought” or “not ought” can be found from the factors of social institutional background or cultural background. Therefore, if we recognize the real nature of social subject of conduct, we can know what is an ought value.  

                          2.

Spiritually social value is not only the root of Value II, but also the root of Value III. In the social life, the spiritual pursue of human being is embodied in some kind of physical form, or coagulated in the physical norms. Some kinds of physical things made by human being always embody the ideas of cultural value. Max Weber argues that, the phenomena of social culture are the significant ones. Why is so ? “because it is the very kind of significance to suppose the relation of cultural phenomena and value phenomena. The conception of culture is value one. Reality in experience for us is ‘cultural one’ because only if we relate it with value, it can include and only include those real elements that are significant for us by this relation. Our interests constricted by our value conceptions let us observe very little part in individual reality, and make the little part have color. The part covered by color is significant for us: why it has significant? Because it shows those relations are very important for us due to the relation between those and values 。”[8] the viewpoint of Weber has the role of illumination for our recognition of value III. The nature of Social fact carried by physical material in human experience, in the perspective of natural physical world, is only physical and a part of rich natural world. There are varied social facts, such as varied buildings, productions and natural things by humanization, which are natural existences, though they cut the seal of human strengths and wills. However, natural characteristic of those objectives are not research object of social science. It is only that the very little color part (implied value) in the elements of reality has special significant for our research. Implied value in reality has significant if we need to understand or recognize cultural meaning of social object in question. Furthermore, we must pay attention to its relation of values for researching cultural meaning of social fact carried by physical material in the perspective of culture, in other words, we can understand and recognize them only when we put them in the context of value. But when we put them in the context of value, we will find value in the cultural things. We call this kind of value “Value III” due to its implied in social fact carried by physical material. 

Compared to spiritual social fact, we can know Value III better. Spiritual fact stays and is contained in human mind or human heart, and existence of conception, in other words, it exists in the way that human consciousness or conception takes it. Of course, people in some society cannot avoid experiencing some kind of convention, social system, and in general, people have deep experience and knowledge because those factors regulate or constrict people’s action, and determine what is good and what is bad. Therefore, they are the factors that construct social world. Of course, we need to borrow some visual objectives (such as king crown, power stick) in order to get some ideas for them. But the knowledge we get mainly is consciousness. Spiritual fact presupposes spiritual relationships of human beings, and the spiritual relations lie in intersubjectivities in social life. The relationship is different from different nation, culture, and period of history.         

Value III lies in social facts carried by physical materials , or Value III defines the nature of the social fact. Of course, existence of the social fact presupposes natural object or materials of natural world. In other words, it is physical substance. But, how we can call it “social fact”? We think so just because there are little color things, as Weber said about it, namely value factors. Therefore, we can distinguish it from natural fact. However, though it is very little part in social fact, it is very complicated, and the degree of its complication is not lower than that of materials. What’s more, that substantial nature of social fact and value nature of social fact lies in one fact is not one corresponding relation by law. What kind of value it is, and how big value in what kind of natural things, do not depend on natural things as such, but on its status in the context of social culture. In other sense, the very little part in reality or in social fact, its color, significance, for different individual or different culture and civilization, are very different. Living organism of human beings, physical nature of buildings are very common in this globe. The physical nature of materials of architecture do not change due to different nations and different cultures. The system of blood circulation in human body, for all human beings, is common, or, blood circulation has universal law for all people. The things which have value can not in such way correspond to law, because the nature of elements of social fact which have special significant for social science do not be determined by its shared relationship with other majority elements.            

In fact, value significance of social fact is defined by its position in the context of social culture, or by agent’s position in all social relations. Social fact carried by physical materials has not only intrinsic physical construction, and radically, but also some factors of social value construction. Physical social fact takes the form of physical existence, such as love letter. Its existence in this world needs some material as its physical foundation. It is important that it has the construction of value significance. The value of a love letter, for a particular individual, is unvaluable. It is testimony for love. Only if the love is respected by lovers, does the love have its value. Love is one kind of conception, so it is Value I, the love letter is testimony for love and has its physical foundation. We can see both in relation: Value I produces Value III.       

Value factors (Value III) of social fact carried by physical materials are one kind of social meaning construction. If we want to exactly know Value III, we must relate it with relative context of institution, culture, and relative people’s values and their purpose. In other words, we can understand its value significance, its rationality of existence in background of social culture and context of interpersonal relation. Alfred Schutz points out: the common world in which we live ,“from the beginning, is a cultural world of intersubjectivity. Why it is intersubjective one? Because we as one group in others live in others, and understand them, and to be understood by others, with common influence and working relation. Why it is a cultural world? It is because this common living world from the beginning is a meaningful world, namely, it is a texture of meaning. If we want to find our position in it, and in accordance with it, we must interpret it. However, this meaning texture originates from human action--our action and our companion’s action, contemporary people’s action and senior people’s action--and is always defined by human action. It is this point that distinguish cultural field from natural field. ”[9] We still need to point out that texture of meaning no doubt reflects texture of social relationship of people. However, we understand social relationship, not only from the respective of ontology of social existence, but also from value respective. Therefore, we can interprete its value meaning, find rich value implied in social fact.

The construction of Value III forces us to take the social fact in texture of intersubjectivity, if we want to understand Value III in life world. In our Chinese life world, gift as social fact is very famous. As a social fact, and social reality, the implicaitons of gifts can be udnerstood only from the perspective of the particular interpersonal relation. Any gift, it only holds the status of a thing or a goods before it becomes a gift, such as a cartoon of cigarette, a car and so on. It, as one kind of object reality, does not contain any other implicaition except its use. However, when it becomes a gift, which functions the role to express someone’s feeling, or has value significance of exchange (take the gift to change materials, status, or power held in the hand of some person in high social status). Chinese gifts move in two kinds of contexts: one is in horizontal or traverse direction, it is among classmates, friends, relatives; the other is vertical direction, namely, between high social status (leader) and lower social status (to be led), or leader and common mass. The common mass or lower officers send gifts to their leaders when the latter have great events such as holidays celebration, or disease suffering, mourning, or marriage, and so on, “ lower officers or the common mass give leader gift, by the way that they express their respect and loyalty, which reflects leader’s power and authority in the eyes of lower office and common mass. Cadres often compare the numbers of guests in the important activities of family, and they feel that greater number of guests embodies their authority and achievements. Therefore, if some lower officer did not send a gift when his leader or his family had important event, his behavior could be understood as an offence to his leader.”[10] If gift do not contain such and other value implication, can we call it a“gift”? Of course not. Social value that gift implies in fact is one kind of social construction. Value significance takes the role of constructing social relation. It is because there is such social construction, by the movement and transference, a common thing becomes a significance gift. Can we say that gift is not a social fact, or a pure objective reality?   

The existence of Value III and its constructing role often embody in symbolic things. What can be called “symbolic thing”? Symbolic thing is bestowed on special meaning of cultural value. For example, a gravestone or a church has such symbolic value meaning. Meaning construction of Value III is the intrinsic function of certain value system (cultural meaning system). In other words, it comes from Value I. It means that, without no relative knowledge of culture or background knowledge of human spiritual life for some society, we cannot understand value implying in some symbol thing. What’s more, the feelings stimulated by symbolic thing are very different when you are in the net of some interpersonal relation or in the net of spiritual relation, from when you are not. Before a gravestone which does not belong to his dead relative, he as an observer maybe has no feeling about it; but if the gravestone belongs to his dead relative, the feeling in his heart would be totally different. The feeling for church in the heart of one person who does not belief Christianity is same one with other buildings, or, he will feel at most some different in its shape. If he hates Christianity, his will is to destroy the church, even all churches in the world. However, for an external man who lives out side of the earth, what is church? He does not know it because he has no any knowledge of cultural value in the earth. He cannot distinguish value meaning of church from that of any other buildings. We all know that church is not an ordianary building in the commonsense, because we know about the history of Christianity, and we are moved by Christ, and we are touched by Christians and understand action of Christian. Of course, the type of symbolic things in Christianity is the cross. But if we do not know the death of Christ and Christian interpretation of it, we cannot understand very rich symbolic implication of the cross. If we found some ruins of Maya civilization, maybe the position of the ruins is equal to that of church in Western countries. We also met something like cross, but we did not know it was a sign of some religion because we can not get any information about the religion. Therefore, we would have no any feeling about their cultural meaning and have no feeling about the ruins and the like,for they are only some materials (the memory of civilization they carried disappeared in past time). They indeed exist, but they lose all the cultural meanings, in this sense, we cannot take it as ruins, the symbolic thing is too little to show any significance.   

The significance of Value III carried by physical materials may change with the change of social cultural system, and some holy meaning may lose in the transformation of history. The construction and transformation of social value (Value III) is among intersubjectivities, and meanings of Value III need to be read by some subject. Furthermore, the change of subject necessarily reflects the understanding of value. There is an example of earth temple in the countryside of China. Before 1949, we could see earth temples in almost most villages and earth temple was the most holy thing so that nothing could challenge the divine authority. Peasants worshiped god of earth and prayed god of earth for his blessings and protection, and a greater harvest. The meanings Ill is hereby illustrated in the collective ceremony of worship, reverent activities for earth god, and devout attitude to earth god. In some sense, earth god was the center of farm and spiritual activities. Peasants believed that a good harvest soly depended on their reverent attitude toward earth god. It was its meaning construction. If I would wrongly move one light in the temple and villagers punished me, it was not because I had wrongly recognized its objectivity, but rather, for those who participated in the meaning community and identified the construction of social meaning, what I did, offended value meaning which they constructed and it was rebellian activity against its holiness. Therefore, my action was not only unreasonable, but also illegale in the context of value system. However, if we study the situation during the period from 1950’s to 60’s, the implication of earth god was totally different. Communism and atheism reconstucted a new value system. Now if someone thought the earth god was divine, people would take him away, just like taking away the earth god and pulling down the earth temple. Because old value system no longer functioned. The new value system people rebuilt left no position for earth god and thus the earth god had no value significance. It is just as Haebemas says:“ The reconnection of Verstehen to the initial hermeneutic situation is linked with value-interpretation, which has to direct itself to historically objectivated cultural meaning from within the irreducible value relationships of its own situation.”[11]The cultural values not only serve to regulate social system; they also function as goals within the system, goals that are not reflected in the values themselves, but reflected in cultural values.[12]Cultural values are the values of meaning-contents objectivated as such.

Values system that people live by has its objective undoable meaning for the people. The meaning or its significance that we can experience not only by Value I in social world, but also by order for action (ought value), and by Value III in objective things of human world. The three kinds of values construct the system of value life. Human being lives in the world, and takes part in the construction of value meaning. The system of value meaning maintains human being’s life spirit. The system of value meaning gives his meanings to life, goals and ideals. In his eyes, the value meaning is real one, which cannot be denied because he lives in such system of value meaning. In the sense, to understand any text or social fact is to understand self. To get self-understanding must take the form of understanding value world. Meaning construction embodies some kind of value direction. If meaning construction is different from the value direction held by some particular person, value understanding will make the person unable to identify with the outward value system, resulting in the crisis of existence. In other words, if some value system identified by persons have been destroyed, the destruction is equal to that of his spiritual life. For example, Wang Guowei’s death in the transformation period of China from Qing dynasty to modern time. Human being bestows rich meanings on this world, and at the same time, he is the interpreter of meanings of this world. But when society has changed the construction of value meaning, new interpretation is needed. People living in the system need to change his understanding of social reality. Otherwise, the social system that has new coordination or new construction can not involve you as a member of it. Because the very life construction of the interpreter is a meaning construction. Whoever can understand can know how to plan his future at his possibility. To plan self is to plan history and social future. To construct himself means to construct value meaning of his society. People never end to construct the value meaning if human history does not come to an end. The meanings of this world bestowed by people, and the bestowing activities and the meanings are in no case not real events, they are meaning of human existence as such. We can find the point from the ontological meaning of human being. The bestowing activities are no ultimate point only if there is still human being in the world. Life is one rive of meaning. If the rive of meaning stops on some point of universal time, it only signifies that  one value meaning world is closed by the past. If the river continues to flow, it means that life-world continues to advance. We are continuing to build and rebuild things of meanings. We can end our discussion by Hans-Georg Gadamer’s words:“What is at issues is not only the well-known distinction between fact and value that is especially dominant in southwest neo-Kantianism and the way it influences the social sciences (Max Weber). The present-day discussion shows that this distinction is pointless on the level of reflection we have reached today-especially after the dogmatism of the concept of ‘fact’has been critiqued by theory of science, hermeneutics, and ideology critique.”[13]

 (Address of author: Gong Qun, Dept. of philosophy, RENMIN Univ. of China, Beijing, China)