It is now common parlance to speak of one’s ‘values.’ Companies and even governments are keen to tell us thereof. Curiously, the habit is not as common amongst individual (as opposed to corporate) persons, but perhaps my company of friends is altogether unusual. For my part, I cannot call to mind an instance of someone saying: Hi there! My name is Timothy. My values are honesty and oregano. What are yours? My irritation, to which this article is the self-medicated balm, lies not with particular values (such as ‘diversity’ and ‘anti-racism,’ which entice me as much as the next person), but with the ‘having of values’ as such.
Until not so very long ago, few wrote of ‘values’ at all. I can call to mind no author prior to the 20th century to have employed the term. The Cambridge historian Maurice Cowling, jostling the point in The Nature and Limits of Political Science (1963), professed little patience with such language:
Values are what people parade who have neither settled habits nor religion to tell them how to act.
Cowling is a famously rude historian. His works, despite their acerbic appearance, possess a sharpness beyond their lacerating tang. All the same, I have a far simpler point to make. For reasons I shall discuss, talk of ‘values’ is inherently liberal. To be straightforward, it is nihilistic.
My issue is not, as I have said, with particular values. Not only, however, is the linguistic employment of the term ‘values’ clunky and awkward; it is also, counter-intuitively, a removal of value.
Consider the following three sentences:
“This is good.”
“I think that this is good.”
“Look! He’s helping his mother! —— Is that good?”
It is interesting that one does not hear the sentences “this is good” and “this is bad” quite as often as one might think. How often might one expect to hear them? As often as one thinks things to be good or bad? Well, how many opinions does one have? What qualifies as an opinion? Is the statement some people like football an opinion? How about some people like raw onions? It seems that the statement “in my opinion…” requires, for its normal intelligibility at least, the presence of controversy. And it is pretty unusual to like raw onions.
The matter which I am skirting is that of conditions of intelligibility. Somebody who wandered around telling people that some people like football is alike to someone who persistently bothers others with such platitudes as 2+2=4 or “helping others is good.” It is difficult to understand this sort of statement, not for any semantic reason (unlike, say, the colour blue smells especially Friday)—nor because one does not believe it, taken ‘literally’ (2+2 is indeed 4, and some people do like football—obviously)—but because one cannot conceive what on earth is meant thereby. One cannot conceive, in short, why one would waste one’s breath saying something so very obvious. Most likely, one thus concludes, they are saying such things for some extrinsic reason: either they have some kind of mental disturbance, or perhaps they are making a philosophical, political, or ironical joke. God says to Jonah “Should I not have concern for the people of Nineveh, in which the people cannot tell their right hand from their left?” In Nineveh, then, the statement ‘this is my right hand, and this is my left’ in fact means something like ‘Snap out of it! Stop sinning!’ Today one might say a man is a man is a man, and not a woman much as one might say 2+2=4 and indeed mean the former sentence. But in this sort of statement the obvious truth of the proposition is what is being expressed, rather than contended.
Before I continue, I must point out a very common type of sentence in order to avoid later confusion. Most people at the dinner table will say ‘Mmm, wonderful stew!’—much as one may say ‘Goodness! Doesn’t the bride look lovely!’ at a wedding. It would be crude to say that this is a ‘white lie’—although, of course, in some instances it will be. Better is to say, as the British philosopher of language J.L. Austin sought to illustrate with his notion of a ‘speech act,’ that it is often customary to express certain obvious truths, for the sake of complimenting, thanking, expressing devotion, or just being decent. It would be quite incorrect to say that the statement ‘Mmm, wonderful stew!’ is intended to state a truth about the world. Of course, it does state a truth, but like 2+2=4 the meaning of the sentence is not the truth per se.
I return to the matter of values. Consider, again, “Look! He’s helping his mother!” Why is it that a follow-up sentence to the effect of “Is that good?” or “I value that” seems odd, indeed verging on the unintelligible? The straightforward answer seems to be because helping one’s mother is obviously good. Put differently, the language already incorporates a moral assessment. It is neither dispassionately descriptive, nor merely moral, but—as with much ‘ordinary’ language—it is both.
If I am right, it follows that one cannot readily differentiate two people who understand something the same way from two people who value something the same way. In other words, moral disagreement—a disagreement of ‘values’—is, properly speaking, a disagreement of understanding. Compare “He’s helping his mother!” with “Look at this! He’s doing anything he can to get her to leave him money in her will!”
Immediately, one might retort, what of science? And this is a sensible retort. Consider the sentences: “He has committed adultery.”
And then: “He has engaged in extramarital intercourse.”
In response to the second sentence, it is just about intelligible to say ‘I value this’ (or, indeed, ‘I don’t value this’). It is pretty well unintelligible to respond in such a manner to the first. This is because, in the case of the second sentence, the language has been deliberately divested of evaluative resonance, for the sake—most likely—of an essay for a social science BA. The first sentence is how normal people speak, and indeed how people speak normally.
The tendency to sprinkle ‘values’ entails a tacit transition—or at least lends a hand thither—from sentence one to sentence two. Naturally, from the liberal point of view, this is a good thing, since who am I to say that leaving one’s spouse in the heat of the small hours isn’t morally neutral (and therefore something I might possibly value)? It is intelligible (albeit and because controversial) to say “He has left his wife, (and/but) I value that.” One may even hear someone say, “I left my husband, that’s good isn’t it!” However, one is unlikely to hear “I haven’t left my husband, that’s good isn’t it!” Without some further context, such as the husband being abusive and the wife deciding to stay anyway, this sentence is simply unintelligible. Of course, if one takes the view that staying with one’s spouse is a matter of personal choice alone—i.e., if one is a liberal—then the sentence “I value staying with my husband” makes some sense. It tells me your ‘values.’ But this is precisely my point: the sentence only makes sense within a liberal outlook.
The strange conclusion follows that where it is intelligible to speak of values—that is, to say ‘I value…’—it is precisely here that one may do what one likes. Where there are ‘values,’ there is no value.
Learning to enjoy things
Another way to approach this general topic is to describe it in terms of the fact-value dichotomy. This is a certain philosophical view which understands valuing to be a process independent of understanding. I dispute this.
In short, ‘intelligibility’ is implicated in the moral. When a boy learns how to use the word enjoy, attached, say, to the sentence “I enjoy apples,” he learns also that apples are something to enjoy. Apples are appropriate as an object of enjoyment. Of course, the boy learns this within a context—a ‘language-game’ in Wittgenstein’s phrase—which is to say in the course of an activity or, if one prefers, a pattern of behaviour.
Daddy at the dinner table, eating an apple, says “Mmm, I’m enjoying this.” And, given the context of his eating the apple, and his ‘mmm’ and ‘aah’—and the absence of clenched fist and furrowed brow—the boy understands. Daddy does not say “I value apples.” He says “Mmm, apples.” In my view, this applies far more obviously to ‘moral’ matters than apples. Consider the learning of ‘love’ and ‘forgiveness’ and ‘discipline’ in the family home. Still, in terms of a learning process, I do not think it differs from learning how to say “I enjoy apples.”
It is worth saying here, as an aside, that one might retort that the matter of apples is unimportant, for it concerns preferences, not values. Better, I think, is to say that values bound preferences. Certain objects (say, at dinner) are appropriate to eat. These themselves might be said to be preferences: salmon, beef, lamb, etc. The matter of the ‘appropriate’ does not always denote a necessary choice (unlike, say, certain ethical matters, where one must do X: such as be faithful to one’s wife, pray, and fondly recall the Swedish Empire). Rather, one may choose—viz. ‘prefer’—salmon to lamb, but one (morally) may not ‘prefer’ to eat concrete or human flesh.
Of course, one might say “oh, but let people do what they want on their own, that’s fine—let him eat concrete if it makes him happy.” But the matter is very clear in the case of how to treat other people, whether at a dinner party or in educating children. The liberal position seems short-sighted, not least because the learning of a language is not a private matter. In general, then, a preference does, so it seems to me, entail a valuation—which is to say, an understanding—of its object as at the very least appropriate or morally permissible. Such a case is that of “mmm apples!”
To return to my subject, one might of course argue that daddy means precisely that he does ‘value’ apples. But sense can hardly be given here to the notion of a choice to value, so much as the recognition (or the understanding) of the valuable. The apple is understood by the watching child as a good thing, by virtue of the pattern of behaviour attached to its eating, and the uncontroversially good is expressed then with ‘mmm’ and ‘aah’ and ‘apples!’
The dangers of smiling
To be a little dramatic: if one ‘has values’ one cannot value, only prefer. This is because, following my argument above, where it is intelligible for me to ‘value’ it is intelligible also for me not to value. Naturally, then, my valuing cannot be considered—of itself—reasonable or rational. My valuing degenerates, then, into mere preference. Staying with one’s wife, if it is a ‘value’ in the sense I have described, is something like ‘preferring’ salmon to lamb (or human flesh to concrete). Unless, of course, I think that one (including therefore you) should ‘value’ marital fidelity. But in that case, I think that the understanding of the object entails the valuation, such that they are inseparable. If you understand this as your spouse, you should not leave them (under normal circumstances). If a man says “I think I might leave Anna,” his friend’s first response may well be “(But) she’s your wife!” In short, valuation irreducible to mere preference is understanding.
The one who says ‘I value x’ stands on the ‘I’ and thus stands on very possibly nothing at all. This is because the basis for the I, in this case the I itself, entails the assertion ‘I am that I am’ and it is unclear to me that this grasps anything. It may necessitate a claim to divinity, which is altogether unreasonable, even for Anthony Hopkins. The matter is wholly different if they find something valuable, because then they stand on understanding. To those who say ‘I value x,’ I ask: ‘What are your values this morning?’ In other words, is there any reason for such people to value as they did yesterday? There is an immense gulf between “I think this is valuable” and “I value this,” which follows from the fact that the first sentence may be translated to “I understand this in terms of …” but the second sentence cannot. Indeed, it is closer to “I think I value this.”
One is perhaps familiar with the (liberal) injunction to smile. ‘Smile!’ means something like ‘Value!’ in the imperative sense. It is true that smiling is a pretty universal response to good. This is very far from saying, however, that smiling is a universal good. In my view, one has here, by analogy, the statements “I think this is good/valuable” and “I value this/I feel good about this.” It is no good to tell people to go round “Thinking good(ly) about things.”
Paul exhorts us, as many a Christian fridge-magnet testifies, in Philippians 4:8 to think about good things—such as, no doubt, the Swedish Empire or marinated artichoke hearts. What he does not write is think good(ly) about things. He does not, in short, encourage smiling per se. Of course, one has a duty to be cheerful, but this is best rendered as the duty to contemplate the good and the beautiful, not least because cheeriness per se—unintelligible for want of an appropriate object—is nihilistic and insane.
World Without End
How does a language change? Why is language such a political battleground? Who is pulling the levers to unmoor our happy picnic?
It might be a better question to ask “How does a language stay the same?” The answer, so it seems to me, in the English case, is something like ‘the KJV’ or ‘the liturgy.’ Most English people, probably even now, will dimly recall phrases like “world without end,”… “and be united to his wife,” “ashes to ashes,” “from the root of Jesse,” “still small voice” and other such memorabilia from The Book of Common Prayer (1662) and The King James Bible (1611). In a room full of self-styled conservatives today, one may speak—with equal intelligibility—of being ‘red-pilled.’ The point is a serious one, however. If the entirety of the public is exposed to one wide-ranging vocabulary, then it gains a shared understanding as it gains a linguistic stability. One might say—even if obvious and a touch exaggerated—that Luther built German and thus built Germany.
Religion is, in Durkheim’s apt characterisation, a good part about repetition and thereby the continual recreation of a shared state-of-mind. Unsurprisingly, his doctrine of language is that it is the reflection of a society’s religion, and he is basically right. If one wishes to build language, one had better build pulpits. In any case, the language is a battleground, and the entrance of the phrases “I value…” and “My values are…” ought be considered insidious to any conservative. In sum, I have understanding and I have preferences bounded thereby. I do not have any values.
