Publication Details

Abstract

The theory of values which leans on the Marxist conception of practice, must necessarily object both to the attempts to hypostatize values and the attempts to reduce them to moments of an intentional act. Value as a central point of the value field — of a complex network of the relations of socially determined man to reality transformed by his practical activity, has always its potential as well as actual form. While potential value is a result of practical objectification, actual value is the result of evaluation of the potential value by means of a norm which is being projected into the resulting form of the actual value. Potential value turns into actual value only by means of norm; that is why it is necessary to distinguish the value field as the place of genesis of potential values, and the evaluating relation as the place of their actual realization. With regard to the individual differentiation of practice as well as the evaluating criteria — norms, it is necessary to take into account a nonreducible variability of potential values and their actual realization. In contradistinction to the so-called „imagined values“ — ideals which represent a norm advanced to the aim of doing, we meet with two types of values which are in the position of the object of the evaluating relation. The properties of the objects to which the former relate, are their material presupposition (e. g., such as utility values), while signs, to which value is imputed a posteriori, in dependence on the dominating norm, are the material presupposition of the latter which relate to the contexts of the unfolded value fields. Aesthetical values may serve as a typical example of this type of values. However, this criterion cannot be used for making mechanically an inventory of values because the a priori and a posteriori moments always manifest themselves in a complex mutual conditionality.