Axiology (philosophy)

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The philosophical axiology ( Greek  ἀξία axia "value"; also: philosophy of value, timology, theory of value, theory of values) is the general doctrine of values . As a philosophical field, it did not emerge until the 19th century. Your representatives - e.g. B. Oskar Kraus - find their question already in the ethics of goods of the Greek philosophers , even though one of the most influential exponents of the philosophy of values, Max Scheler , developed his theory in explicit contrast to the ethics of goods. The founder of the philosophy of value is u. a. Hermann Lotze . The concept of value penetrated general linguistic usage through the broad impact of the intense discussions around the turn of the 20th century as well as through the reception of Friedrich Nietzsche's works, in which the term often appears. The term "axiology" goes back to Eduard von Hartmann , who first used the term in 1887 in his philosophy of the beautiful .

History and theories

Historically, the philosophy of value goes back to the adoption of the concept of value in economics ; In Immanuel Kant, for example, the talk of the “absolute value” of goodwill represents such a metaphorical takeover of the national economic concept of value. The concept of value already played an important role in the ethics of Jakob Friedrich Fries , but Lotze was the starting point for later value philosophies. Since the 1890s, the concept of value has been known in the United States, thanks to Lotze's direct reception by George Santayana and others, and played a particularly important role in the moral-philosophical late work of John Dewey , so that the expression value in English-speaking countries was used in the same everyday language as in German-speaking areas.

Lotze advocated an objective philosophy of values ​​and ascribed values ​​their own mode: “validity”. Subjective value theories, on the other hand, proceed from the value judgment as the basis of value: The evaluating person establishes a relationship between his yardstick (value yardstick) and an object, which represents the value of the thing.

If the standard of value is based on a feeling of pleasure through the satisfaction of needs, then a psychological value theory emerges . If values ​​are only granted relative importance and validity, this leads to value relativism as a special form of relativism .

The most prominent value theories of the 19th and 20th centuries were:

Windelband declared the philosophy of values ​​to be a critical science of generally applicable values. This is where it differs from the exact sciences, which research and systematize natural laws and special phenomena. The philosophy of values ​​is the real center of philosophy.

The mathematically exact science of values ​​was at the center of the work of Robert S. Hartman . With the axiom of value science he developed, it was possible to build an exact science of values ​​independently of different moral and moral values.

The theory of value as a comprehensive philosophical approach, as it was developed by Lotze, Hartmann and by southwest German Neo-Kantianism, was u. a. sharply criticized by Martin Heidegger . Today it is no longer represented as a philosophical theory, although it still has followers in legal science (for example in the influential school of Rudolf Smend ) and the analysis of value judgment is still a special topic in analytical philosophy. For some representatives of the philosophy of value, however, the philosophy of value of the 19th and early 20th centuries was considered the foundation of the other philosophical sub-disciplines, since it claimed to be the basis for other areas such as logic , ethics , epistemology , legal philosophy , cultural philosophy , religious philosophy , social philosophy , political philosophy , economics and aesthetics .

Terms

If two values ​​are in conflict and they cannot both be realized without endangering one, the axiology speaks of a value antinomy . Today's everyday and non-philosophical technical language (legal, sociological ...) use of the concept of value, to which no philosophically elaborated modern value theory corresponds, has led to numerous compositions: The conflicts arising from conflicting values can lead to a decline in values ​​( Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann ), loss of values ​​( Rupert Lay ) or value synthesis ( Helmut Klages ) result (see also value change ). Value blindness describes the lack of a feeling for certain values.

literature

  • Christian Krijnen: Post-metaphysical sense: a problem-historical and systematic study on the principles of Heinrich Rickert's philosophy of values . Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2001, ISBN 978-3-8260-2020-9
  • Barbara Merker (Ed.): Living with feelings. Emotions, values ​​and their criticism . Paderborn: Mentis 2009.
  • Herbert Schnädelbach : Philosophy in Germany 1831-1933 . Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, ​​1983. (= Suhrkamp Taschenbuch Wissenschaft 401.) ISBN 3-518-28001-5
  • Folke Werner: On the value of values ​​- the suitability of the concept of value as an orientation-giving category of human lifestyle. A study from an evangelical perspective . Münster: Lit, 2002. ISBN 3825855945
  • Hermann T. Krobath: Values. A journey through philosophy and science. With a foreword by Hans Albert . Würzburg: Königshausen and Neumann 2009. ISBN 978-3-8260-4088-7
  • Andreas Urs Sommer : Values. Why you need it when it doesn't exist . Metzler, Stuttgart 2016, ISBN 978-3-476-02649-1 .
  • Friederike Wapler: Values ​​and the Law. Individualistic and collectivistic interpretations of the concept of value in neo-Kantianism. Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2008. (= studies on legal philosophy and legal theory; 48.) ISBN 978-3-8329-3509-2
  • Armin G. Wildfeuer: Article “Value”, in: New Handbook of Philosophical Basic Concepts , Vol. 3, ed. v. Petra Kolmer and Armin G. Wildfeuer, Freiburg i. Br .: Verlag Karl Alber 2011, pp. 2484–2504. ISBN 978-3-495-48222-3 .

Web links

Wiktionary: axiology  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Folke Werner: On the value of values ​​- the suitability of the concept of value as an orientation-giving category of human lifestyle. A study from an evangelical perspective . Münster: Lit, 2002, p. 42.
  2. ^ Mark Schroeder: Value Theory . In: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy .