Value as ontological difference

Kenneth W. Stikkers

pp. 137-154

in: Lester Embree (ed), Phenomenology of values and valuing, Berlin, Springer, 1997

Abstract

this world is there for me not merely as a world of mere things, but also with the same immediacy as a world of objects with values, a world of goods, a practical world. I simply find the physical things in front of me furnished not only with merely material determinations but also with value-characteristics, as beautiful or ugly, pleasant and unpleasant, agreeable and disagreeable, and the like. Immediately, physical things stand there as Objects of use, the “table” with its “books,” the “drinking glass,” the “vase,” the “piano,” etc. These value characteristics and practical characteristics also belong constitutively to the Objects “on hand” as Objects, regardless of whether or not I turn to such characteristics and the Objects. Naturally this applies not only in the case of the “mere physical things,” but also in the case of humans and brute animals belonging to my surroundings. They are my “friends” or “enemies,” my “servants” or “superiors,” “strangers” or “relatives,” etc.1