Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 8.djvu/539

 CHRISTIAN V. EHBENFELS, System der Werttheorie. 525 is determined by a present feeling of pleasure or pain (10), and holds instead ( 11) that the active l states of desire and will arise when the condition that they tend to bring about stands higher in the scale of feeling than the condition that would be brought into being without their action. This mode of statement seems con- siderably better than that usually adopted by Hedonists, in that (1) it does not represent feeling as the actual object of desire, and so avoids what is known as psychological hedonism, and (2) by its reference to a ' scale of feeling ' it avoids that conception of feeling as an object possessing extensive magnitude, which has been so misleading in the English Utilitarian school. Indeed, the statement of Ehrenfels might be accepted as entirely satisfactory if the existence of a scale of feeling could be regarded as an ultimate fact. Its defect seems to lie in the ignoring of what I have else- where ventured to describe as universes of desire the fact, that is to say, that our desires imply points of view. If this had been adequately perceived by Ehrenfels, I cannot but think that he would have seen that the consideration of the point of view from which things are valued is the most fundamental question in the whole theory of value. 2 This he seems on the whole to ignore. In setting forth his conception of value, Ehrenfels is led to discuss various conflicting theories. He criticises Brentano's theory of Feeling and Desire as being special cases of the more general states of Love and Hate, and Schopenhauer's view of Feeling as an affective condition of Will. He also discusses the various hedonistic theories of desire, and brings his view into relation to the definition of value given by Meinong. But perhaps more interesting than any of these is his discussion of Brentano's doctrine of absolute value (pp. 43-51). Brentano holds that there is an absolute distinction between good and evil, as there is between truth and falsehood ; and that the former has the same sort of independence of our subjective valuations as the latter has of our subjective opinions. Against this, Ehrenfels contends that value is entirely dependent on desire and is consequently purely sub- jective. It would obviously be impossible in such a review as this to give any adequate discussion of the great issues here involved ; but I may express my conviction that Ehrenfels is at this point led into a serious error by the absence of some such recognition of universes of desire as I have already referred to. Doubtless value involves desire, as truth involves opinion ; but Ehrenfels seems to fail to perceive that in both cases systematic methods of determina- tion are involved which are not merely subjective. 8 The ethical significance of this point of view of Ehrenfels comes out more definitely in the second volume (chap. vi.). The second part of the first volume, in which transformations of value are discussed, contains perhaps the most solid part of 1 See the account of the third part below. a Cf. MIND, I.e., p. 445. * Ibid., p. 431.