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
Our conclusions reached in previous chapters, from the standpoint of
economic theory, and from the standpoint of sociological theory, alike
forbid us to stop with the results so far obtained as to the nature of
value. From the standpoint of social theory, we are unable to consider the
individual values discussed in the last chapter as completely accounted for
on the psychical side by what goes on in the individual mind: every
individual mind is a part of a larger whole; every thing in the individual
mind has been influenced by processes in the minds of others; every process
in the individual mind influences, directly or indirectly, processes in the
minds of others. There is a social mind. And the values in the mind of an
individual constitute no self-complete and independent system, either in
their origin, in their interactions, or in their consequences for action.
In our psychological phrase, their "presuppositions" include elements in
the minds of other men, and they themselves constitute part of the
"presuppositions" of the values in the minds of other men. Finally, there
are values which correspond to the values of no individual mind, great
social values, whose presuppositions are tremendously complex, including
individual values in the minds of many men, as well as other factors which
we shall have to analyze in considerable detail, great social values whose
motivating power directs the activities of nations, of great industries, of
literary and artistic "schools," of churches and other social
organizations, as well as the daily lives of every man and woman--impelling
them in paths which no individual man foresaw or purposed. In Urban's
phrase,--
between the subjectively desired and the objectively
desirable in ethics, between subjective utility and
sacrifice and objective value and price in economic
reckoning, between the subjectively effective and the
objectively beautiful in art, there is a difference for
feeling so potent that in naive and unreflective
experience the feelings with such objectivity of
reference are spoken of as predicates of the objects
themselves.[144]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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