Values are goals which behavior strives to realize. Any activity that is oriented towards an end is a value-oriented action. To the ancient Greeks, their culture was guided by an attainment of ‘the good life.' In the early days of Christianity, the ‘good life' was shifted from this lifetime into the next. Newtonian science and the modern era brought values under rational scrutiny, and a desire for empirical order. Modern capitalism introduced the value of ‘good' as more production per capita, and ‘better' as even more production. There is nothing in the sphere of culture which would exempt us from the realm of values-no facts floating around, ready to be grasped without valuations and expectations.
Ervin LászlóRelated topics
action attainment caput desire early end era exempt floating good lifetime newtonian next nothing order production ready science under value days factsRelated quotes
I used old comic clothes stuff in the early days. I had the big shoes, I had the tight clothes, in fact I played several different characters. I played one called Willie Work; he used to have wide shoulders, a little cat mustache, a high hat. Another one was called Lonesome Luke, and his clothes were tight with a little funny hat; he had a funny little mustache. But when I adopted the glasses, it more or less put me in a different category because I became a human being. He was a kid that you would meet next door, across the street, but at the same time I could still do all the crazy things that we did before, but you believed them. They were natural and the romance could be believable.
Harold Lloyd
Even when altruism is allowed (as, for example, in Gary Becker's model of rational allocation), it is assumed that the altruistic actions are undertaken because they promote each person's own interests; there are personal gains to the altruist's own welfare, thanks to sympathy for others. No role is given to any sense of commitment about behaving well or to pursuing some selfless objective. All this leaves out, on the one hand, the evil passions that early theorists of capitalism contrasted with self-interest and, on the other, the social commitments that Kant analyzed in The Critique of Practical Reason and that Adam Smith discussed in The Theory of Moral Sentiments.
Amartya Sen
For as soon as the distribution of labour comes into being, each man has a particular exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape. He is a hunter, a fisherman, a shepherd, or a critical critic and must remain so if he does not wish to lose his means of livelihood; while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, to fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, just as I have in mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic.
Karl Marx
There is a school of Philosophy still in existence of which modern culture has lost sight. Glimpses of it are discernible in the ancient philosophies with which all educated men are familiar, but these are hardly more intelligible than fragments of forgotten sculpture,-less so, for we comprehend the human form, and can give imaginary limbs to a torso; but we can give no imaginary meaning to the truth coming down to us from Plato or Pythagoras, pointing, for those who hold the clue to their significance, to the secret knowledge of the ancient world. Side lights, nevertheless, may enable us to decipher such language, and a very rich intellectual reward offers itself to persons who are willing to attempt the investigation.
Alfred Percy Sinnett
Hundreds of thousands of rouble notes are being issued daily by our treasury. This is done, not in order to fill the coffers of the State with practically worthless paper, but with the deliberate intention of destroying the value of money as a means of payment... Experience has taught us it is impossible to root out the evils of capitalism merely by confiscation and expropriation... The simplest way to exterminate the very spirit of capitalism is therefore to flood the country with notes of a high face-value without financial guarantees of any sort. ...[T]he great illusion of the value and power of money, on which the capitalist state is based will have been definitely destroyed.
Vladimir Lenin