There is one word in common parlance that has increasingly become like nails on a chalkboard to me: Values. “We value…”, “With people who share the same values…”, “Family values…”, “Christian values…” This word, “value”, is an incredibly wishy-washy word, as it can refer to just about anything. Some people value hard work, others value “work smarter not harder”, some value tolerance, others value the strict enforcement of their community’s norms. Yes, some things might be more worthy objects of value than others, but the word “value” tells us nothing about that worth any more than the word “like” tells us, if I were to say, “I like a hand-packed patty on the grill” and you were to say “I like a McDonald’s Big Mac, which burger is the proper object of appreciation. Using the word “value” says something about the one valuing, but nothing about the object of value. There is certainly something important about learning what others value, but to use the word in a cultural or political context (family values, American values, conservative values, Christian values, etc.) is to subjectivize something that ought not be.
Note that for me, and the continental/post-analytic tradition I find myself in, “subjective” is not always a bad word, but, in some instances, can be in certain areas. When it comes to personal relationships, the most important part of most peoples’ lives, the word “subjective” is appropriate. When it comes to scientific discovery, “subjective” is also appropriate because the interplay between the act of observation and observed datum. When it comes to virtue, which we will come to, “subjective” is appropriate to describe our relation to virtue, but not appropriate to discuss the virtues themselves. The word “value”, which is typically used to describe virtues, subjectivizes not only the relationship to virtue, but the virtues themselves. Before discussing the subjectivation, let us briefly define what a virtue is.
Quoting from Robert and Wood’s Intellectual Virtues, a book I highly recommend to those interested in the question, “how do we know things?”,
“The classical idea is that, like other biological species, the human species has a set of potentials and developmental parameters that must be respected if the individual is to become an excellent specimen of its kind. If the DNA of any species is or contains a set of instructions for what the mature individual is supposed to be like (no guarantee that it will be like this, since many influences from the environment have their effects on development; the environment can fail to cooperate with the instructions, so to speak), then human nature is a sort of psychological DNA, a DNA of the personal life (no doubt conditioned by the physical DNA). The instructions are an internal disposition or tendency of an organism, tuned to the kind of environment in which the organism will live out its life. As psychological, the instructions have to be honored in a process of education…if the education is right, the human nature will be realized, within the limits particular to the individual; if it is poor, the development and outcome will be poor too, no matter how excellent the instructions in the nature of the person.”1
This psychological DNA, the instructions for what a mature human being is to be like, is virtue. A human being that is good at being a human being is courageous, just, temperate, humble, magnanimous, liberal2, loving, faithful, and has hope. When I say that “a human being that is good at being a human being is courageous, just, etc.”, I mean it in the same way that a pencil that is good at being a pencil is sharp, has a full eraser, and is not broken. Virtues are excellences, they are what a thing is if that thing is good at being that thing. We could say that a car’s virtue is having a functioning engine, having fully inflated tires and functioning brakes. None of these are “values”, but descriptions of how a good car should be. Now, I value a good car more than a bad car—a bad car is car that lacks these virtues—but to describe a functioning engine as a “value” is misguided, because it implies that someone might value a car that does not have a functional engine. If there is such a person, as there might be a person who value cowardice over courage, then we would say that the person in question is confused.
What about this “education”, that Roberts and Wood speak of? Unlike pencils or cars, humans can choose to be other than they are supposed to be. I can, out of cowardice, which is the lack of courage, fail to help someone that needed me (maybe a friend fell and got seriously injured, and the blood scared me), or I can choose to be gluttonous, which is the lack of temperance, and drink or eat more than I should. In both of these instances, I am failing to be a good person in the same way that a dull pencil fails to be a good pencil or a car with flat tires fails to be a good car. However, let’s say that I struggle being courageous or I have a hard time being temperate, with time I can habituate myself to being courageous or temperate, I can make courage and temperance a habit. With time, practice, and prayer, I can train myself in these virtues in the same way that I can train myself to ride a bike or learn a new language. Practically, this looks like doing small acts of courage and temperance and gradually moving on to bigger and bigger acts of courage and temperance. Habituation of virtue is what we call a moral education. The really cool thing about a moral education is that I am never condemned to being cowardly, gluttonous, or unloving, but I always have the opportunity to become courageous, temperate, and loving. What is more is that I do not have to “flip a switch” and make a complete 180, which can often scare people away from trying to get better, but I can gradually develop virtue with practice, starting small and moving on to bigger acts.
Now that we have an idea of what a virtue is, note how different it is from a “value.” A value is something you, the next-door neighbor, or I, hold in high esteem, but that is all that it is. “Christian values”, “family values”, or “conservative values”, at best tells me what Christians, families, or conservatives value. I say at best because often in listing these values, there will be Christians, families, or conservatives that would take this or that value off the list or add this or that value that was not previously present. Some Christians value high liturgical practices, as do Orthodox, Catholics, and Anglicans (some Lutherans too!), while others prefer simple worship revolving around the movement of the heart, as Baptists do. Some families value strict discipline and enforce rules like a soccer referee, making sure every play is according to the books, but other families value self-expression over discipline, taking after a hockey referee that only stops the game if very serious harm is on the table. Some conservatives value the free market, allowing market forces to dictate culture, whereas other conservatives value a Christian culture (and then there is a debate over what that means) over the market and would interfere in the market to prevent things like pornography from being available.
A virtue, in contrast, is simply a human acting how a human should act. Now, there is the debate over what human nature is, but there is typically an agreement, even between those with radically different views of human nature, that courage is better than cowardice, that temperance is better than gluttony, and that justice is better than injustice. Even those who exhibit cowardice, gluttony, and injustice know that they ought to change (speaking as someone who struggles with gluttony). It is another question whether they change or not, but I have never met someone who has not recognized that these are virtues. Agreement does not make truth, even if everyone in the world agreed that courage is a virtue, that alone, would not make courage a virtue, and I only bring up the general acknowledgment of virtues to illustrate that people with different “values” can recognize virtue and its opposite, which we call “vice”, as students can recognize a good pencil, or a car buyer can recognize a good car.
Let us not talk about “values” anymore but let us talk about virtues. Yes, we have values, we all appreciate things, but what we need to speak about on a cultural and political level is virtue. Do not say that a pornographic show (Game of Thrones, or Shameless) “goes against family values”, but say “it is gluttonous in its show of sexuality”, or maybe that its portrayal of sexuality is “selfish and unloving.” Do not say that the e-celebrity that posts thousands of selfies a day and flashes how much money he makes, or shows herself, is “an attention seeker” or “lacks values”, but “lacks humility and is self-indulgent.” Will this change of language change culture? I do not think so, but a more rigorous and precise language will allow the right to talk intelligently about the culture without getting lost in subjectivist chatter.
Roberts, C. Roberts, Wood, Jay. Intellectual Virtues: An Essay in Regulative Epistemology. Clarendon Press, Oxford. 2009. 65.
By liberal we do not mean the political persuasion, but the tendency of those who have to give to those who do not. Etymologically, using “liberal” to describe one’s political persuasion is the same as using “just” or “temperate” to describe one’s political views.
I share your dislike of the word. It’s part of Nietzsche’s awful legacy.