Introduction
When it comes to values, everyone has something to say. Some people for example call freedom or diversity values. Others name honesty, tolerance, or respect for others as important values. Again others call belief in the bible or the prophet Mohmmed values.
But one of these is a state of the world / society, one is a prescription for human behavior, and the third is a matter of religious belief and collective tradition (again a state of the world, in a very specific sense). Calling all three “values” without distinction is a bit like mixing apples, oranges, and bananas — and then wondering why the fruit salad is confusing.
This confusion is what I want to fix in this article. I will introduce a clear definition of what a value is and categorize its different variants. This will take much of the confusion out of ‘value-talk’ and let us address political and societal differences much more clearly and directly.
A Working Definition
Considering the above mentioned confusion, I came to call some of these values state-values and others behavior-values. This distinction immediately wiped away most of the reigning confusion.
Of course it also immediately prompted the question: what other categories of values exist? Object-values were an easy next find (things like a tasty meal, clothes, a house, money, and gold).
Soon after I realized that virtues are also a form of values. Virtues are just behavioral patterns or characteristics that are individually valuable or useful, i.e. conducive to a good life.
From this initial overview a general definition began to take shape:
A value is anything that is conducive or beneficial to a good life.
This definition has respectable philosophical backing. Aristotle held that the purpose or goal of life is eudaimonia — living and faring well. If we accept that a good life is the implicit goal of all human action, then a value is simply anything that contributes to it. Thus, to find out what a value is in the broadest sense, we can simply ask: “What does a good life require?”
A Note on Circularity
This definition of ‘value’ can be criticized as circular: values are defined as what makes life good — but a good life is then identified as one that contains many of these very same ‘values’. This objection, while worth taking seriously, is not a problem when it comes to definitions.
Consider a tree: asked “what is a tree?”, we say: “it is a living thing with roots, a trunk, branches, and leaves.” And asked “how do you know that x is a tree?”, we say: “because it has roots, a trunk, branches, and leaves.”
This is not a flaw — it has to be so. All definitions describe what we observe in reality, and all identifications check whether x fulfills the criteria to fit into category X. In the end, a definition just matches a word with something observed in reality. There is no Archimedean point outside of reality from which to define things.
A Categorization of Values
With this definition in hand, we can now map the territory. Values — understood as “things conducive to a good life” — fall into several distinct categories. For each, it is worth distinguishing between its individual dimension (dependent only on the individual) and its collective dimension (dependent on one’s fellow human beings).
1. States
These are conditions, properties, or circumstances — of a person, a society, or the world — that are broadly beneficial for the individual.
Individual: Personal freedom, health, wealth, inner peace
Collective: National autonomy, national security, national abundance, justice, peace, social trust, unity, a functional political organization
2. Behavior Patterns
Ways of acting — of a person or the group — that are valuable to the individual.
Individual: Courage, temperance, prudence, perseverance, self-discipline, integrity
Collective: Honesty, tolerance, fairness, a sense of duty, respect, civic responsibility
The individual dimension of behavior-values is what classical philosophy calls virtues — behavioral patterns conducive to personal flourishing. The collective dimension describes conduct of which it is beneficial to the individual if all other members of society show it.
3. Material Things
Physical things whose possession or use contributes to a good life.
Individual: Food, shelter, clothing, personal tools, savings, valuables
Collective: Public infrastructure, common resources, common goods, the treasury
The necessity of these material goods is so self-evident that we often simply forget them and fail to include them when speaking of values.
4. Relationships
Other people — and the quality of our connections with them.
Individual: Friends, family, a partner, mentors, teachers, colleagues
Collective: Community, social cohesion, a sense of belonging
Relationships are similar to material goods in this regard. They are so obviously important for our wellbeing that we often forget to include them when speaking of values.
5. Knowledge
Knowledge is also definitely necessary for a good life.
Individual: Professional expertise, self-knowledge, practical skills, understanding of the world
Collective: Libraries, universities, a skilled pool of workers and crafters
6. Habits
Certain habits or automated routines are also definitely conducive to a good life.
Individual: Brushing your teeth before going to bed, jogging every Friday morning, etc.
Collective: Voting every four years, diverse political institutions and processes
7. Experience
Certain experiences are widely regarded as important parts of a full human life.
Individual: Travel, creative expression, challenge, adventure, spiritual practice, personal milestones
Collective: Cultural traditions, shared rituals, communal celebrations, religious practice
8. Further Categories?
This list may not be conclusive — there may be additional categories of values that have yet to be identified.
Meaning and Purpose, for example, might be another category, though it could also be included under Experience: an individual sense of meaning or purpose is an experience, and a collective sense of direction or significance could be seen as part of the culture.
Beauty and free time are further values that I could not easily place in the framework presented above.
In the introduction we also mentioned religion. Religion, however, does not require a separate category. In my view it partly belongs to Experience, partly to Meaning, and partly also to collective state-values. At the individual level, religious practice provides certain experiences and a sense of meaning and purpose. At the collective level it is part of the state of society, provides shared experiences such as common rituals and celebrations, and can also give a sense of a common goal, vision, or narrative.
Cross-Influences, Tensions, and Category Overlap
Values do not exist in isolation. They influence, reinforce, and sometimes constrain each other. Honesty (a collective behavior-value) and social trust (a collective state-value), for example, are mutually reinforcing: widespread honesty produces a high-trust society, which in turn makes honesty easier and more rewarding.
Individual freedom and individual security, on the other hand, exist in genuine tension — more of one often means less of the other. Many more such cross-influences and tensions exist between different values and categories. Mapping, analyzing, and understanding all of them belongs to this field that I have termed value theory, but it goes beyond the scope of this article.
Also, some words are used identically across multiple categories. Honesty, for example, can be both a virtue and a collective behavior-value. An honest individual benefits himself through gaining a good reputation, self-respect, and clear relationships — and at the same time contributes to the collective good. But the emphasis between a virtue and a collective behavior-value differs, and the distinction is worth keeping.
Conclusion
We have now seen that ‘values’ in the broader sense are not one single, undifferentiated category but a diverse family of states, behaviors, material goods, relationships, etc. Their key defining characteristic is that they all contribute to a good human life.
Getting clear on this matters. Without a categorization, value-talk collapses into noise — a place where everyone simply calls whatever he or she desires a value, and confusion is the inevitable result.
It is true that most people only ever mean collective behavior-values or collective state-values when they use the term ‘values’. Thus one could fault me for having presented here a theory not of ‘values’, but of ‘all valuable things’.
But I find it useful to view values in the broader context of all valuable things. This, together with the definition of value, allows us to map out the whole territory, and then we can revert back and ask: what part of this territory do people usually mean when they speak of ‘values’ in the context of ethics?
We will thus have a much better understanding of the general territory in which we move, which will let us address political and societal differences much more clearly and directly.
An Interesting Sidenote
Why do we even call values ‘values’? Why not have a distinct word for them, like virtues or relationships? I think calling certain behaviors values grew out of the understanding that it indeed has a value for the individual if all others behave in a certain way.
In a second step, collective states or goals were then also increasingly called ‘values’, because collective goals / states and collective behaviors are so tightly related (as mentioned above). We observe the same phenomenon at work when we call some things material ‘goods’, indicating that they are good to have.