Social Value: A Study in Economic Theory, Critical and ConstructiveAnderson, Benjamin M. (Benjamin McAlester)
General
Social Value: A Study in Economic Theory, Critical and Constructive
Anderson, Benjamin M. (Benjamin McAlester)
Value
An exhaustive study of this generic aspect of value lies, of course,
outside the scope of this book. Ehrenfels, Meinong, and others,[120] have
made fruitful investigations in the psychology of value, with primary
reference to the problems of ethical value, while Gabriel Tarde,
approaching the subject with a sociological, rather than psychological or
ethical interest, has also made some illuminating suggestions. The most
comprehensive work in English, from the psychological point of view, is by
Professor W. M. Urban, whose _Valuation_ appeared in 1909. His interest is
also chiefly in ethical, rather than economic, value. Reference has been
made in an earlier footnote[121] to Simmel's views. There is, in fact, a
rich literature on the subject. The theory of economic value to be
developed in this volume, however, is relatively independent of many of the
theories treated in this literature, since, as will appear later, the
question I wish to raise is, not so much as to the fundamental nature of
value, in its psychological aspects, but rather, as to _what_ individual
values (and in what _relations_) are significant for the explanation of the
particular sort of value with which the economist is concerned. The
exposition which follows will be clearer, however, if a psychological
theory of value be premised, and the discussion of social economic value
will gain from a consideration of ethical and other forms of value, in
their sociological aspects, as treated by some of the writers named. The
rest of this chapter will be concerned with the problem of value as it
presents itself in individual psychology, and later chapters will treat the
problem of social value.
_For_ the experience, and at the time of the experience, a value is a
_quality_ of the object valued.[122] Values are "tertiary qualities" (to
borrow an expression from Professor Santayana's _Life of Reason_[123]),
just as real and objective as the "primary" and "secondary" qualities. We
speak of a gloomy day, or a fearful sight, and the gloom is a quality of
the day, and the fearfulness is really in the object--for the experience.
When we have sufficiently reflected upon the situation to be able to
separate subject and object, and to divest the object of the quality, and
put the fear in ourselves, or the gloom in our own emotional life, then the
experience is already past, and the value, as the value of that object, has
ceased to be. We are already over our fear when we can separate it from
the object. These qualities are intensive qualities, may be greater or less
in degree, i.e., are quantities.[124] And they must first _exist_, as such
quantities, before any reflective process of evaluation and comparison can
put them in a scale, and make clear their _relative_ values.[125]
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