A Call to Virtues
on the Promiscuous Use of the Word "Values"
Many political prognosticators now pondering the health of our republic pronounce its moribundity. If its lifeblood is reasoned debate, then its health can be judged by the lively precision, intelligence, and civility of its public discourse. On these grounds, the pessimists may have the better diagnosis.
The lack of precision in our use of language is a primary source of toxins. One malignancy is the ubiquitous and promiscuous use of the word values. In order to resuscitate reasoned discourse, we need to limit this word's use to its proper range of meanings for at least three reasons: first, its misuse obscures its legitimate meanings; second, illegitimate meanings obscure the need for other words, like doctrines, principles, precepts, and virtues; and third, the obscuring of important words makes us more susceptible to propaganda.
A Need for Clarification
Several years ago, a professor at the International Institute for Human Rights in Strasbourg, France, asserted that religious believers' frequent opposition to abortion, homosexual "marriage" and adoption, assisted suicide, euthanasia, infanticide, and so-called transgender rights violates democratic values. He also insisted that the right to religious liberty impedes the progress of human rights, and so is ripe for extinction. But he did not argue for his view; rather, he simply asserted that the values of religious believers are inimical to democratic values.
Of course, this is nonsense. A democracy is designed specifically to create space for people to express and to argue for their rival ways of valuing the lives of unborn children, the right of children to have a mother and father, and so forth. There are no democratic values per se. People who value democracy actually value protecting a space for reasoned discourse over rival views. We obviously need to clarify the meanings of value.
Two Kinds of Value
Historically, the term value has two senses: an objective sense referring to the intrinsic value of, say, animate life—especially human beings; and a subjective sense referring to the extrinsic or utilitarian value of, say, automobiles. The chief characteristic of objective value is that it is intrinsic to a thing and therefore must be discerned and recognized, not merely bestowed upon a thing on the basis of its worth to oneself or others. The chief characteristic of subjective value is that it is extrinsic, a human reckoning or attribution placed on inanimate things like automobiles, computers, and wristwatches. These things are all means to ends and have only instrumental (or perhaps sentimental) worth. A thing with subjective value has only the value one gives it; it has none in itself.
This distinction should be transparent to all: consider that in the end credits of motion pictures we often see the disclaimer, "No animals were harmed in the production of this film," whereas we never see such a disclaimer concerning incinerated automobiles.
These two senses of value—intrinsic value, which is rooted in the objective qualities in things; and extrinsic (or instrumental) value, which is based on subjective preferences toward things—are based on the understanding that two kinds of things exist in the world: the things made by God, which we call nature, and the things made by human beings, which we call artifice.
In the Judeo-Christian tradition, this distinction entails a hierarchy of moral obligations—one owes a greater duty of care to things with inherent value because God declared their intrinsic goodness at creation. Things that are intrinsically good must be treated as ends in themselves. On the other hand, human artifice may or may not be good (think of idols), and its value is often ambivalent (think of the internet, which is useful for good and for evil ends). We have profound moral duties to things with intrinsic value, but no moral duties to things with merely instrumental value. Indeed, moral duty in regard to artifice is primarily to guard it from being used in a way that would harm those things (human beings, preeminently) that bear intrinsic value.
Stephen Paul Kennedy is Adjunct Professor and Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Human Rights, Trinity Law School, in Santa Ana, California. He and his wife Michele have four children and eight grandchildren. He is a member of St. Matthew's Parish, an Anglican Catholic Church in Newport Beach, California.
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