21 levels of Self-Deception: THIRD EDITION by Tom Wallace - HTML preview

T W E N T Y - O N E L E V E L S

this can mean two very different things. The value may have come from how we have evolved as a species — or it may come from the wider universe.

Western culture has been tracking towards the idea that value is purely subjective. Somehow, as long as there is consensus it is okay to redefine value in terms of what might serve some abstract ideal. Value therefore often ends up being commodified — in other words it is extrinsic rather than intrinsic. In fact, talk of value tends to get closed off altogether. The only implicit values left to us tend to be the tolerance and relativity of liberal societies. I think we need to get back to conversations of value. So, I take up the story again from where we’ve reached in our discussions.

Thus far, compassion, freedom, equality, justice and love have been considered, in the very broadest sense, as values. All of these really have an underlying assumption. That assumption is that the subjects of our compassion are worthy to receive our gift. The assumption is that people have some value over and above mere usefulness. For instance, when Kant spoke about one of the bases of moral action as being to treat others as ‘ends’ rather than ‘means’, he was making this contrast. To treat someone as a means is to treat them as having extrinsic value. But if, by contrast, someone is seen as being of value in their own right then their value is intrinsic. It’s also an assumption of an essential sacredness to humanity and to nature as a whole. If you ask me to explain why nature and people are sacred then I’d have to say I don’t know. You either

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