Fernando Kaskais posted: " Everyday beauty. A Mother Delousing her Child's Hair, Known as 'A Mother's Duty' (c1660) by Pieter de Hooch. Courtesy the Rijks Museum, Amsterdam The ultimate value of the world can be discovered if you are sensitive to what is beautiful Tom Co" WebInvestigator.KK.org - by F. Kaskais
We care about more than our own lives. We care about our families and friends and our local communities. We care about the political scene, and regularly check the news about the latest travesty. Every so often, something truly horrific happens; the kind of calamity that makes one despair of the world. Every so often, a child is murdered. It does not matter how far away it is. It matters to us. It weighs on us.
Moral evils have a way of calling into question the value of the world. Can the world really be a good place if such things happen? Classically, this is a problem for theists. Yet anyone can wonder what value, if any, our Universe has. It is closely related to wondering what the point of it all is.
But perhaps we shouldn't worry about it. Perhaps we should regard the Universe as evaluatively blank, and find value only in our own lives, or in the lives of our loved ones. After all, many would say that value itself is something that we make up. However, I'm not asking whether value is purely up to us or not. I'm asking what we value, or should value. Even if we think that value is something that we do, or is in some sense made out of pleasure, we can still wonder what those valuing activities should be directed at, or in what things we can take pleasure.
Suppose that in response to moral evil someone says: 'Yes, well that is obviously regrettable, but it doesn't really affect what I value. I just focus on my own life and my friends and family.' This seems an extraordinarily small-minded attitude to take. I suspect there are very few people who would be fully satisfied if they and their loved ones were secure while the rest of the world burned. Instead, most of us prefer to set the value of our limited lives within a larger context. We want to say that we are part of a good world, and even contribute to its goodness. And if we can say this, the value of our own lives is considerably more robust. Indeed, if our own lives are going badly, being able to look to the value of the world can be an important buffer against nihilism and despair.
Furthermore, what we seek is a kind of ultimate or final value; a value that requires no further rationale or justification. Without this, we are always prey to the further question: but what is the value of that? Note that final value is not the same as intrinsic value, which is value independent of context. While final value can be intrinsic, it can also be fully contextually sensitive. This is exactly what we seek when contemplating the world at large.
Why think this? Alongside aesthetic value, I suppose there to be two other general kinds of value: moral value and prudential value. Yet these other values cannot offer an ultimate positive value for the world. To value something prudentially is to value it in relation to one's personal status or those with whom one is personally affiliated. Yet this value is limited and fragile. It cannot justify the world beyond the narrow borders of one's personal sphere. It is also constantly vulnerable to intrusions from the (dis)values of the wider world, as the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated only too well. Moral value, meanwhile, is broader. Here we concern ourselves with the relations between all morally significant beings...
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