Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 8.djvu/544

 530 CRITICAL NOTICES advantages (besides the freshness of relative novelty) in approach- ing Ethics from the point of view of value. 1 The idea of an ultimate end or good is apt to lead too suddenly into the quagmires of metaphysic, or else to be interpreted in some quite inadequate biological way. The idea of an absolute law is still more mis- leading; and Hedonism, if it is not interpreted as a theory of value (as to all intents it is by such writers as Sidgwick and Gizycki), seems to be nothing but bad psychology. The theory of value keeps prominent the important idea that the good in Ethics is a good for us (something, in Aristotle's phrase, that is irpaKrov KOL KTrjrov dv^pwTrw), while at the same time it leads us to think of an objective end. Yet the attempt to construct Ethics on the basis of a theory of value is not free from danger ; and it does not appear to me that Ehrenfels has been quite successful in avoiding its perils. The first danger, I think, is that of forgetting that value implies a point of view. Ehrenfels seems too ready to pass from the idea of value to that of simple desire, it may be true that all desire (and indeed even all feeling) implies the presence of an inchoate idea of value ; but definitely to value is much more than to feel or desire. 2 It implies some estimation of the object felt or desired in relation to some system to which it belongs. It implies, in short, some idea of a good. Hence I am doubtful whether, after all, the substitution of the idea of value for that of the good does not simplify the problem only by obscuring its ultimate nature. Another closely related danger is that of interpreting value in a purely subjective way. What has value must be valued or be capable of being valued from some point of view ; but does it follow that value is constituted simply by valuing? 3 This of course is essentially the problem that is discussed by Ehrenfels when he asks whether there is any such thing as absolute value. But I think the problem is to some extent misconceived by him. " By absolute values," he says (vol. ii., p. 191), " we are to under- stand such as in their character as values are independent of every actual change of desire." Now, if this is what we are to under- stand by an absolute value, Ehrenfels may be /ight in denying that there is any such thing, 4 just as Aristotle may have been right in throwing doubt on Plato's absolute good. In like manner one might throw doubt on the possibility of absolute truth (some- thing whose truth is independent of the point of view from which it is regarded), or absolute beauty, or any other kind of absolute. But it is strange how utterly one half of the thinking world does not know how the other half philosophises. One would have thought that, since the time of Kant, absolutes of this sort had been a little out of fashion, and that their place had been taken by the relative absolute. To deny that there is any absolute 1 Cf. MIND, I.e., p. 447. 2 Ibid., p. 428. a Ibid., p. 441-42. * Ibid., p. 442.