Six Domains of thePolynomic System of Value
Six Domains of theThe table below summarizes the theory of the polynomic or polynomological system of value, where most domains of value are subsumed under larger domains. Each encompassing domain is ontologically stronger and deeper, but each nested domain is logically stronger and has a more definable content. Note that every form of value is a good, even though "good and bad" are specifically listed for non-moral ethical goods. There are also non-moral uses for "right and wrong," as one says of a mathematical mistake, "That's not right," or asks the mechanic, "What's wrong with my car?" The diagram above at right gives the elements of the table in terms of the underlying system of metaphysics explained elsewhere.
| THE ABSOLUTE GOOD | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| THE PHENOMENAL GOOD | Religion, the sacred and the polluted: the view of transcendent reality or of the ultimate meaning of all existence, free of space and time, and the meaning of death; no rational content; not subject to non- contradiction; forms of obligation completely historical and contingent apart from subsumption of forms of value listed below. | ||||
| ETHICS | Aesthetics, the beautiful and the ugly: theory of art & beauty, the worth of things independent of human purposes, "disinterested" value, the worth of nature, the relation of value and being, things good-in- themselves. Pluralistic and relativistic aesthetic variety, limited by forms of obligation below and by indefinable principles of taste. | ||||
| MORALITY | Ideal Ethics, the good and the bad: non-moral worth in human life, the good of teleological ethics, the worth and meaning of life--happiness, fulfillment, material well being, pleasure etc.--things good-for-us. Pluralistic and relativistic aesthetic variety, limited by forms of obligation below and specified by personal preference. | ||||
| PERSONS | Morality of things, right and wrong: ethics of property, contract, government, and public order; moral force of legislation, restricted by requirements of morality of persons & subject to falsification of utility; liberties and duties of the marketplace and of public life. | ||||
| WILL | Morality of actions, right and wrong: ethics of justice and injustice; evaluation of actions in their own right; causes of judicial penalty and retribution. | ||||
| Morality of intentions, good and ill will: ethics of intention and virtue; moral evaluation of intentions; "mere" morality. | |||||
| obligation: imperatives (commands) | obligation: jussives (commands) | obligation: hortatives (exhortations) | obligation: optatives (wishes) | obligation: pietatives (religious obligations, of piety) | |
 kind |  right |  good |  beauty |  sacred | |
 benevolence |  right |  right |  good |  beauty |  sacred |
 veracious, honest, upright |  righteous, good |  good, beautiful, pretty |  beautiful, graceful |  sacred | |
 true, right, just |  good, beautiful, happy |  sacred | |||
Since each domain of value can vary independently of the others,
| WILL | ACTION | OBJECTS | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PERSONS | THINGS | GOODS | BEAUTY | RELIGION | |
 |  |  |  |  |  |
| INTERNAL | EXTERNAL | ||||
The effect of this, of course, is that good intentions do not necessarily lead to right action or to good consequences -- "the path to Hell is paved with good intentions". The protection of personal rights may, nevertheless, violate property rights, or the other way around. Beautiful things, or good art, may be, in some sense, bad things (e.g. The Triumph of the Will). And, as a saying goes in Japanese, "even a fish head can be an object of veneration," i.e. some ugly, nasty object may be sacred. This independent variation is what produces ethical dilemmas.
| WILL | ACTION | OBJECTS | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PERSONS | THINGS | GOODS | BEAUTY | RELIGION | |
 |  |  |  |  |  |
The semantic range of the value terms in Arabic mades it difficult to assign some of them unambiguously to just one of the categories used here. Thus, the assignment in some treatments does not seem consistent. Under Judicial Moralism, is used for "good," while in The Polynomic Theory, it is used for "beauty." It can mean both, just as can mean both "righteous" and "good." The following table illustrates these different constructions.
| WILL | RIGHT | GOOD | BEAUTY |
|---|---|---|---|
| veracious, honest, upright | righteous, good | good, beautiful, pretty | |
| veracious, honest, upright | righteous, good | good, beautiful, pretty | |
| veracious, honest, upright | righteous, good | good, beautiful, pretty | |
| veracious, honest, upright | righteous, good | good, beautiful, pretty | beautiful, graceful |
benevolence | right | good | beauty |
The force of moral obligation is characterized with terms (mostly) borrowed from grammar. "Imperative" goes back to Kant (the "categorical imperative") and is a term used for the mood of verbs in many languages that expresses a command (Latin impero, to order). That an imperative is different from the indicative verbal mood mirrors Hume's observation that propositions with "ought" do not logically follow from propositions with "is."
"Optative" was introduced by Leonard Nelson as part of the Friesian critique (which began with Schiller) of Kant's moralism (cf. Nelson, System of Ethics, Yale, 1956, p.165). The term "optative" was borrowed from Greek grammar, where it "takes its name from its chief independent use, that of expressing a wish"
| imperatives | jussives | hortatives | optatives | pietatives | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| various, Kant | Arabic, Latin | Greek | Greek, Nelson | neologism | |
kind | right | good | beauty | sacred | |
| | | | | |
The original Friesian division of ethics into moral and non-moral value has here been extended. A wish is often for something outside of one's control, which sounds more like independent objects that can occur in aesthetic value. Nelson's category has thus been subdivided into "optative" and "hortative." The latter is borrowed from Greek grammar again, where it signifies the subjunctive mood that is used "to express a request or a proposal" (Chase & Phillips, p.103). It is therefore an exhortation, with the sense and root of both words from Latin hortor, "to exhort, incite, encourage." Exhortations as "horatives" will be for some good end that is nevertheless not a duty. It shares features with aesthetic value, including aesthetic variety.
Moral obligation has also been subdivided, between "imperative" and "jussive." This term I have now borrowed from Arabic grammar (it also occurs in Hebrew), where it is a mood of the imperfect verb, usually formed by dropping the final vowel (which in Hebrew is already lost). It is often used to express an imperative (Latin iubeo, iubere, iussi, iussum, "to order, command") and indeed the proper Arabic imperative is constructed from it (Ziadeh & Winder, An Introduction to Modern Arabic, Princeton, 1957, pp.123-124, 129). Indeed, in Latin itself, the "jussive" is the use of the subjunctive as an imperative, as the hortative is a use of the Greek subjunctive (Frederic M. Wheelock, Latin, Barnes & Noble, 1956, 1966, p.133).
| imperatives | jussives | hortatives | optatives | pietatives | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| various, Kant | Arabic, Latin | Greek | Greek, Nelson | neologism | |
kind | right | good | beauty | sacred | |
| | | | | |
Finally, "pietative" is a neologism, on analogy with the other terms. This is from Latin pio, "to seek to appease by an offering, to propitiate," pius, "dutiful, pious," and pietas, "dutifulness, piety." Religious duties, of course, concern ritual, that certain activities must be done in a certain way, or that there are specifically religious events, marriage, ordination, burial, etc., for which the proper ritual procedures are prescribed, or that certain precautions or remedies be observed in relation to specifically religious subjects, such as pollution. What is distinctive about these religious obligations is that they are entirely vacated by a change or loss of religion. The atheist may have rituals, but they will tend to fall into the category of an obsessive-compulsive disorder -- which may be how the atheist views religion.
The idea of the different moods of obligation is that they are part of the larger picture of the system of metaphysical modes of necessity (including analytic, a priore, etc. necessity). Also, all the modes of necessity are identical in force in an absolute sense, even as their force seems attenuated as we move from imperatives to pietatives.
This is reflected in the diagram at left, which is constructed on analogy with the magnetic substates in quantum mechanics. The "angular momentum vector," which is a constant length, represents the full and absolute force of necessity, or obligation. Angular momentum on the z axis, however, varies from the full value to zero. Thus, the z axis represents what we see in the phenomenal world, while the full vector is necessity among Kantian things-in-themselves. The pietative Holy, whose rational content is indeterminate and apparently arbitrary in the phenomenal world, not only is as necessary among things-in-themselves as imperative obligation or analytic necessity, but the vector is at a perfect right angle to the z axis, i.e. its force is wholly outside the phenomenal world. This is therefore conformable to the religious sense that all obligation is ultimately a function of religious obligation. Rationally, the prohibition of pork in Judaism and Islam is a very different matter from the prohibition of murder, but in terms of the valence of religious obligation they may be identical. Thus, the Ten Commandments contain no internal distinctions to distinguish the prohibition of "graven images" from those of theft, adultery, or murder. Here, the former is a pietative, while the latter are jussives and imperatives. This goes back to the dispute in Mediaeval philosophy been Ibn Sîna (Avicenna) and Al-Ghazâlî. The former held that the prohibition of wine in Islamic law was prudential (a hortative) and therefore could be overruled by a physician for medical purposes. Al-Ghazâlî, however, held that the prohibition was absolute, an imperative, and could not be abrogated for any reason. Prudential or not, obeying the prohibition was a sign of obedience to God. The idea that God would command things that were not dictated by reason was contrary to the spirit of Greek philosophy and the Hellenizing Islamic falâsifah, 
; but Al-Ghazâlî was not in that tradition.
A New Kant-Friesian System of Metaphysics
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