Axiology & Agathology

“From the very beginning, attention is given to the fact that, being introduced at the very beginning of the 20th century, the axiology term, meaning the doctrine of values, almost immediately led to a boom in the development of theories of values (mainly in continental philosophy), whereas the agathology term, meaning the doctrine of goods, which was introduced in 1770 and then rediscovered in 1823, came to almost complete oblivion. for its rehabilitation, one of the commonplaces of the philosophy of the 20th and 21st centuries is reviewed, namely, the actual identification of goods and values, as a result of which the former of these concepts is absorbed by the latter. as for values, they are also usually viewed as common human needs, rather than deep and indivisible individual ‘inner possessions’. therefore, it is proposed to distinguish between universal needs and personal valuables and to stratify the world of significant things into values, preferences, and goods. as a result, the latter of these varieties is interpreted as a sphere of practical mind (both in the ancient and kantian senses), teleologically loaded and with the potential to be included in a new, the fourth of the large programmes of theoretical ethics (able to compete well with consequentialism, deontology, and virtue ethics) and, at the same time, laid into the foundation of the cluster of philosophical disciplines, which is commonly termed as practical philosophy”

“Population axiology is the study of the conditions under which one state of affairs is better than another, when the states of affairs in question may differ over the numbers and the identities of the persons who ever live. extant theories include totalism, averagism, variable value theories, critical level theories, and ‘person-affecting’ theories. each of these theories is open to objections that are at least prima facie serious. a series of impossibility theorems shows that this is no coincidence: it can be proved, for various lists of prima facie intuitively compelling desiderata, that no axiology can simultaneously satisfy all the desiderata on the list. one’s choice of population axiology appears to be a choice of which intuition one is least unwilling to give up.”

“The article analyzes the current state of ontological axiology in the context the problem of the source of values associated with being as it is relevant to the philosophical discipline. employing examples from the history of the doctrine of values’ formation, the author demonstrates that the source of values is being as whole. according to the author, ontological axiology is based on the unity of objective, subjective and transcendental levels of being, rather than on its individual components. formation of ontological axiology begins with works of nietzsche and concludes in the classical period of its history (1890s – 1930s), with developments of such outstanding philosophers of the 20th century as g. rickert, m. heidegger, m. scheler, n. hartmann, and n. о. lossky. during this period, the doctrine of the absolute character of values as ‘transcendental essences’ was developed. in this case, the values themselves are differentiated, as expressions of the subjective, objective or transcendental levels of being. ontological axiology as a philosophical discipline reaches a new level of development from the 1990s to the 2010s in opposition to the axiological relativism of philosophy and socio-cultural reality of the postmodern. from the standpoint of updated ontological axiology, the source of the objectivity of is the transcendental spirit (deitas) as the spiritual potential of the infinite universe. the life of the universe gives birth to man in the unbreakable unity of his body, soul and spirit. therefore, axiology together with the ontology and epistemology determines the specificity of philosophy and ways of its further development. refs.14.”

“AXIOLOGY or theory of values is a relatively newndiscipline although valuational issues have been with usnthe moment man began to reflect upon conditions of hisnlife, the structure and uniformity of nature, and the questnfor the good life. valuational preferences are notnartifacts one can dispense with. inquiries into theirngenetic conditions, their truth and validity claims arenessential for any, reflective, principled conduct. man notnonly is engaged in valuational preferences, but he is alsonconscious of a scale of values, which scale rests with thendegree and quality of satisfactions. the great interest innaxiology at present has many reasons: the divorce ofnontological and valuational questions, the cultural gap,nthe gap between physical and humanistic studies, and thenliterary influence of brentano, ehrenfels, and meinong. thenarticle on ‘axiology’ deals with the major axiologicalnschools of thought: platonism, intuitionism, emotivism, andnnaturalism.”

“It is notoriously difficult to find an intuitively satisfactory rule for evaluating populations based on the welfare of the people in them. standard examples, like total utilitarianism, either entail the repugnant conclusion or in some other way contradict common intuitions about the relative value of populations. several philosophers have presented formal arguments that seem to show that this happens of necessity: our core intuitions stand in contradiction. this paper assesses the state of play, focusing on the most powerful of these ‘impossibility theorems’, as developed by gustaf arrhenius. i highlight two ways in which these theorems fall short of their goal: some appeal to a supposedly egalitarian condition which, however, does not properly reflect egalitarian intuitions; the others rely on a background assumption about the structure of welfare which cannot be taken for granted. nonetheless, the theorems remain important: they give insight into the difficulty, if not perhaps the impossibility, of constructing a satisfactory population axiology. we should aim for reflective equilibrium between intuitions and more theoretical considerations. i conclude by highlighting one possible ingredient in this equilibrium, which, i argue, leaves open a still wider range of acceptable theories: the possibility of vague or otherwise indeterminate value relations.”