Action, Personhood, and Fact-Value

ACTION, PERSONHOOD, AND FACT-VALUE THE FACT-VALUE issue-whether or not values can be derived from facts or "ought" from "is "-has emerged as the fundamental problem in contemporary ethical and value theory.1 For what is at stake is the validity of ethical and value judgments as such. In its usual form, however , the problem seems virtually insoluble. As we shall see, it is fallacious to derive value solely from fact. On the other hand, it is also mistaken to hold that value has no relation to fact, that values are arbitrarily postulated by private emotive preferences, or that they are somehow mysteriously intuited. The fact-value problem, then, is a dilemma; both alternatives or horns are equally unacceptable. This is enough indication that it is a pseudo-problem based upon a false dualism between fact and value. In our original experience-which we shall see is action-fact and value are not separate but interconnected . In reflection we .separate them and assume that they are also separate in experience, thus creating the fact-value dualism. Our task then becomes one of trying to join together what we have sundered by asking whether value can be derived from fact. However, as is the case with other dualismswhether spirit and matter, subject and object, or thought and action-once a gulf is made between two fundamental categories of reality, bridging it is exceedingly difficult, if not impossible . The aim of this article is to overcome the fact-value dualism by showing how value originates in action, and that action, properly understood, constitutes the primary level of human 1 See, for example, W. D. Hudson, ed., The Is-Ought Question (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1969). See also Kenneth Pahel and Marvin Schiller, eds., Readings in Contemporary Ethical Theory (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1970), pp. 1-IS!'l. 116 ACTIONS, PERSONHOOD, AND FACT-VALUE 117 activity and experience. To make this point, in Part I I shall briefly present three basic aspects of human nature or per.sonhood : mutuality, agency, and reason.2 Then in Part II I shall examine the bearing of this anthropology on the origin and nature of value in general, focussing upon the fact-value issue. Space does not permit me to develop specific modes or types of value. I. Anthropological Foundations A. The Mutuality of the Personal Much of traditional philosophy-especially Modern philosophy since Descartes-has adopted the individualistic conception of the person. According to this view, man is constituted as a person independently of his relations with other per.sons; sociality, culture, and community are peripheral or accidental rather than fundamental or essential to human personhood. On the other hand, there have been other currents of thought, especially in the twentieth century, which are strongly antiindividualistic . Thinkers such as Buber/ Marcel,4 and Macmurray ,5 not to mention the behavioral sciences, have emphasized the mutuality of the personal. According to this view, interpersonal relatedness pertains to the core or essence of personhood ; the unit of personal existence is not " I " but " You and I " ; and the fundamental or primary human reality is the entire field of persons-in-relation. This field by definition in2 For a fuller development of these three themes-especially reason-see my "A Personalist Theory of Human Reason," International Philosophical Quarterly, XIV, No. 2 (1974), pp. 161-80. 8 I and Thou, trans. by Ronald Gregor Smith, Scribner Library (2nd ed.; New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1958) . •The Mystery of Being, trans. by G. S. Fraser and Rene Hague, Vol. I: Reflection and Mystery, Vol. II: Faith and Reality, Gateway Edition (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1960). 5 The Form of the Personal, Vol. I: The Self as Agent; Vol. II: Persons in Relation (London: Faber and Faber Limited; New York: Harper and Row, 1957 and 1961). I am indebted to Macmurray for a number of important ideas in this paper. See also my own study, John Macmurray's Logical Form of the Personal: A Critical Exposition (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Fordham University, 1970). 118 WALTER G. JEFFKO eludes all persons, and is the inclusive context and matrix for all aspects of experience, culture, and...