Insights
The fact is often obscured by the widespread confusion about the nature and role of emotions in
man’s life. One frequently hears the statement, “Man is not merely a rational being, he is also an
emotional being”, which implies some sort of dichotomy, as if, in effect, man possessed a dual
nature, with one part in opposition to the other. In fact, however, the content of man’s emotions
is the product of his rational faculty; his emotions are a derivative and a consequence, which, like
all of man’s other psychological characteristics, cannot be understood without reference to the
conceptual power of his consciousness.
As man’s tool of survival, reasons has two basic functions: cognition and evaluation. The process
of cognition consists of discovering what things are, of identifying their nature, their attributes
and properties. The process of evaluation consists of man discovering the relationship of things
to himself, of identifying what is beneficial to him and what is harmful, what should be sought
and what should be avoided.
“A ‘value’ is that which one acts to gain and/or keep.” It is that which one regards as conducive to
one’s welfare. A value is the object of an action. Since man must act in order to live, and since
reality confronts him with many possible goals, many alternative courses of action, he cannot
escape the necessity of selecting values and making value judgements.
“Value” is a concept pertaining to a relation – the relation of some aspect of reality to man (or to
some other living entity). If a man regards a things (a person, an object, an event, mental state,
etc.) as good for him, as beneficial in some way, he values it and, when possible and appropriate,
seeks to acquire, retain and use or enjoy it; if a man regards a thing as bad for him, as inimical or
harmful in some way, he disvalues it
– and seeks to avoid or destroy it. If he regards a thing as of no significance to him, as neither
beneficial nor harmful, he is indifferent to it – and takes no action in regard to it.
Although his life and well-being depend on a man selecting values that are in fact good for him,
i.e., consonant with his nature and needs, conducive to his continued efficacious functioning,
there are no internal or external forces compelling him to do so. Nature leaves him free in this
matter. As a being of volitional consciousness, he is not biologically “programmed” to make the
right value-choices automatically. He may select values that are incompatible with his needs and
inimical to his well-being, values that lead him to suffering and destruction. But whether his
values are life-serving or life-negating, it is a man’s values that direct his actions. Values
constitute man’s basic motivational tie to reality.
In existential terms, man’s basic alternative of “for me” or “against me”, which gives rise to the
issue of values, is the alternative of life or death. But this is an adult, conceptual identification.
As a child, a human being first encounters the issue of values through the experience of physical
sensations of pleasure and pain.
To a conscious organism, pleasure is experienced, axiomatically, as a value; pain, as disvalue.
The biological reason for this is the fact that pleasure is a life-enhancing state and that pain is a
signal of danger, of some disruption of the normal life process.
There is another basic alternative, in the realm of consciousness, through which a child
encounters the issue of values, of the desirable and the undesirable. It pertains to his cognitive
relations to reality. There are times when a child experiences a sense of cognitive efficacy in
grasping reality, a sense of cognitive control, of mental clarity (within the range of awareness
possible to his stage of development). There are times when he suffers from a sense of cognitive
inefficacy, of cognitive helplessness, of mental chaos, the
sense of being out of control and unable to assimilate the date entering his consciousness. To
experience a state of efficacy is to experience it as a value; to experience a state of inefficacy is
to experience it as a disvalue. The biological basis of this fact is the relationship of efficacy to
survival.
The value of sense of efficacy as such, like the value of pleasure as such, is introspectively
experienced by man as primary. One does not ask a man: “Why do you prefer pleasure to pain?”
Nor does one ask him: “Why do you prefer a state of control to a state of helplessness?” It is
through these two sets of experiences that man first acquires preferences, i.e. values.
A man may choose, as a consequence of his errors and/or evasions, to pursue pleasure by
means of values that in fact can result only in pain; and he can pursue a sense of efficacy by
means of values that can only render him impotent. But the value of pleasure and the disvalue of
pain, as well as the value of efficacy and the disvalue of helplessness, remain the psychological
base of the phenomenon of valuation.
