Value Theory

Now beauty, as we said, shone bright among those visions, and in this world below we apprehend it through the clearest of our senses, clear and resplendent. For sight is the keenest of the physical senses, though wisdom is not seen by it--how passionate would be our desire for it, if such a clear image of wisdom were granted as would come through sight--and the same is true of the other beloved objects; but beauty alone has this privilege, to be most clearly seen and most lovely of them all.

Plato, Phaedrus, 250D [after R. Hackford, Plato's Phaedrus, Library of the Liberal Arts, 1952, p. 93,
and the Loeb Classical Library, Euthryphro Apology Crito Phaedo Phaedrus, Harvard University Press, 1914-1966, p. 485]

Editorial Essays

• A Lecture on the Good [44.4K]
  • Why I am a Platonist [51.7K]

• The Foundations of Value, Part I, Logical Issues: Justification (quid facti), First Principles, and Socratic Method (after Plato, Aristotle, Hume, Kant, Fries, & Nelson) [80.2K]
  • Bronowski's Knowledge or Certainty

• The Foundations of Value, Part II, Epistemological Issues: Justification (quid juris) and Non-Intuitive Immediate Knowledge (Kant, Fries, & Nelson)

• The Foundations of Value, Part III, Metaphysical Issues: The Theory of the Good
  • A New Kant-Friesian System of Metaphysics [62.5K]

• The Polynomic Theory of Value [99.9K]
  • Pleasure
  • La Belle Époque
  • The Virtues of Franklin and Wooden
    • John Wooden's Pyramid of Success
  • The Motive for the Right and the Good
  • Six Domains of the Polynomic System of Value [24.1K]
  • The "Need to Know" and the Meaning of Life [22.2K]
  • The Emotions [16.9K]
  • Free Will [33.3K]

• The Fallacies of Moralism and Moral Aestheticism [32.9K]
  • The Fallacy of Moralism
    • Anaesthesia and Anhedonia
      • Kant and Schopenhauer on Music
      • The Erotic as an Aesthetic Category [52.0K]
      • The Girl in a Dress
    • Religious and Political Moralism
      • Anaesthetic Feminism
    • Morality, Justice, and Judicial Moralism [69.1K]
    • Varieties of Moralism [1.0K + 84.1K]
    • Moralism in Panayot Butchvarov's Skepticism in Ethics [10.9K]
  • The Fallacy of Moral Aestheticism
    • Varieties of Moral Aestheticism [13.7K]
  • The Fallacy of Moralistic Relativism
    • Exchange with Ted Keller on Relativism and Marxism [69.2K]
  • Logical Relationships of Moralism and Moral Aestheticism

• The Fallacies of Egoism and Altruism, and the Fundamental Principle of Morality [131.1K]
  • Crime and Punishment, Repentance, Restitution, and Atonement
    • Retribution
    • Deterrence
    • Rehabilitation
    • Restitution
    • Penance
    • Absolution
    • Expiation
    • Forgiveness
    • Adam and Eve
    • Conclusion
  • Non-Contractual Duties of Commission and Privileges of Necessity

• Capitalism, the Free Market, and the Duties of Property and Contract [82.9K]
  • "Justly Discredited," Trade, Moneylending, & Capital [35.6K]

• Jury Nullification and the Rule of Law [28.3K]
  • Judicial Positivism [107.7K]
  • Strict Liablity [62.9K]
• The Fiction and Tyranny of "Administrative Law" [32.5K]

• The Kant-Friesian Theory of Religion and Religious Value [44.2K]
  • Kant on Judaism
  • God after Kant [40.0K]
  • Intuition and Mysticism in Kantian Philosophy [70.6K]
  • Jakob Friedrich Fries (1773-1843) [51.1K]
    • Republicanism in Fries
    • Anti-Semitism in Fries
  • Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) [21.5K]
  • Rudolf Otto (1869-1937) [4.2K]
    • Rudolf Otto in Rem B. Edwards' Reason and Religion [7.9K]
  • Mircea Eliade (1907-1986) [19.9K]
    • Terms used in Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane [6.2K]

• The New Friesian Theory of Religious Value [41.9K]
  • What Would God Be? -- with a natural history of the gods [56.5K]
    • God as Love
    • The gods of Euripides
  • Scientific Naturalism and Intelligent Design [8.2K]
  • Childhood's End, the Mystery of Order [29.7K]
  • Thought Experiments on the Soul [79.9K]
    • The History of the Soul
      • The Dry Land
      • The Chinese Soul
    • The Egyptian Soul
    • The Metaphysics of Nothing [21.7K]
  • Faith, Works, and Knowledge [18.3K]
  • The "Need to Know" and the Meaning of Life [22.2K]
  • Cause and Purpose, The World Turned Inside Out [17.5K]
  • Myth, Religion, and Philosophy [7.9K]
  • Religious Value and the Antinomies of Transcendence [16.1K]
  • Shame, Beauty, and the Ambivalence of the Flesh [12.6K]
    • Pornography [4.6K, 29.2K]
  • Religious Morality and Discrimination [68.1K]
    • 2012 Update
    • The War on Religion and Conscience
      • Secular Condemnations of Homosexuality

• Zen and the Art of Divebombing, or The Dark Side of the Tao [67.4K]

Note that most of these items are cross-indexed from the directories for epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and philosophy of religion.

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Copyright (c) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2002, 2004, 2006, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016 Kelley L. Ross, Ph.D. All Rights Reserved