Almustapha asked:

Describe the difference between objective valuation and subjective valuation.

Answer by Martin Jenkins

Objective Valuation

Objective valuation in ethics, would make recourse to a criteria, an index that is characterised by impartiality or by some absolute authority. It is not up for debate, dependent on people or the product of their feelings, impulses or desires. For example, Immanuel Kant would maintain that his Categorical Imperative is a product of detached, impartial reasoning. It is devoid of subjective impulses or desires for particular results or resting on the same impulses and desires acting as motives (which he would term a Hypothetical Imperative: If you want B then do A). This permits acts, goal oriented acts which could be completed when resting on less than honest motives. For instance, I help the person across the road in hope of monetary reward-or approbation from others or feeling good myself. The acts and its consequence is good (i.e. vulnerable person has crossed the road) but the motive is wrong. Similarly, my motive may be good — to help a vulnerable human being — but the outcome less than good: I help the person across the road only to find that unintentionally, I helped him evade his pursuing and exasperated carers. ‘The road to hell is paved with good intentions’ as Sartre wrote. Subjective valuation does not therefore, guarantee a good motive or consequence.

So for Kant, Reason demands that the Imperative is not subject to confusion or contradiction by its being ‘universalisable’ — it can feasibly be applied to all human beings. It is a matter of deontology: the act alone is good. Regardless of motives or consequences, it will ‘shine like a jewel’.

Subjective Valuation

Although much criticised by Kant, Subjective valuation is for some thinkers, the only basis of ethical valuation. They are and only can be person dependent. For Nietzsche, objective valuation claiming its basis in Judeo-Christian religion, is a myth, part of the two-thousand year valuations of the of Judeo-Christian religion which is ‘Platonism for the people’. In actuality, objective evaluations are social projections of a particular peoples values — a ‘table of values’ as he terms it in Thus Spoke Zarathustra (or, those of its creative thinkers/ philosophers). The value of such values are those of a timid, uncreative, restrictive and repressive mentality which has done untold damage to the culture of Europe. In no sense are they objective. They would, Nietzsche believed, be replaced by the valuations of ‘new philosophers’, initially termed the Ubermensch.

Further, Nietzsche believed that Kant’s Categorical Imperative was, like all evaluations made be humans, a subjective testament to their creator-symptoms of who/ what s/he is. Kant’s objective evaluation was in essence, the subjective valuation of a human being who valued order, timidity and being subject to commands from external authorities-in this case, Reason.

Finally, how could the ‘objectivity’ of such objective valuation be tested? It would have to be contrasted or verified by criteria. This is either self-justifying-assuming the truth of that which has yet to be proven i.e. Kant assumes the truth of Reason. Why? Or, the problem of justifying objective valuation leads to an infinite regress. i.e. the value of Reason is valued by what? by something else? This in turn is subject to another criteria and so on ad infinitum.

Regarding subjective valuation, you might also want to look at the philosophies of Max Stirner and Ayn Rand.

DA asked:

1) What is the message of the Oracle of Delphi to Chaerephon about Socrates?

2) what is Socrates’ response and how does he go about trying to disprove the oracle? What was the effect of his probing on his felloe citizens?

3) How does Socrates finally interpret the message of the oracle?

4) What are the charges brought against Socrates? What are Socrates’ responses to the charges?

Answer by Tony Fahey

1) The Oracle of Delphi pronounced Socrates the wisest of Greeks; and Socrates took this as approval of his agnosticism which was the starting point of his philosophy: ‘One thing only I know’, he said, ‘and that is that I know nothing’. Philosophy begins when one begins to doubt — when one begins to question the accepted wisdom of tradition. Particularly the one’s cherished beliefs, one’s dogmas and one’s axioms.

2) Puzzled by the priestess of Delphi’s statement, Socrates felt obliged to seek the meaning of her remark. By questioning others who had a reputation for wisdom, he came to see that he was wiser than they, because unlike them he did not claim to know what he did not know.

Plato’s dialogue, Apology, professes to be the speech made by Socrates in his own defence at his trial — or rather it is an account of Plato’s recollection of Socrates’ defence given some time after his trial. In a typical Athenian trial of that period the defendant was given a limited time (measured by a water-clock) to answer the charges and, although he had to defend himself, he could, if he so desired, buy a suitable speech from a professional speech writer — a Sophist. Socrates, of course, rejects this approach and declares that he will speak plain and unvarnished truth. It can be argued, of course, that his disavowal of any knowledge of rhetoric (rhetoric is the art of speaking eloquently and persuasively) and that his ambition is to tell nothing but the truth, is itself a form of rhetoric in that it implies that his statements can be trusted implicitly.

3) The Apology, then, is, according to Plato, Socrates’ answer to these charges. Socrates opens his defence by accusing his prosecutors of eloquence (what he means by this is rhetoric- the art off speaking persuasively), and rebutting the same charge which was made against him. The only eloquence he admits to, he says, is that of the truth. If this approach offends the court, he says, the court must forgive him for, not being familiar with the ways of the court, he is not familiar with its un-forensic way of speaking. Socrates goes on to relate the incidence where the Oracle of Delphi was once asked if there was anyone wiser than Socrates, to which the Oracle answered that there was not. Socrates claims to have been bemused by this statement, since he always claimed that he knew nothing. However, he also accepts that the god cannot lie so he set out to see if he could find someone wiser than himself. This sequence is central to the Apology because it is from here that Socrates infers his raison d’etre derives. That is, he regards the Oracle’s reply as a puzzle that has to be resolved. Therefore he sees it as his life’s mission to expose false knowledge.

4) Socrates had been accused of being an ‘evil-doer and a curious person, searching into things under the earth and in the sky, and of making the worse seem the better cause, and of teaching all this to others’. He was found guilty by a majority and was, in accordance with Athenian law of that time, to propose an alternative penalty to death. The judges had to choose, if they found the accused guilty, between the penalty of demanded by the prosecution and that suggested by the defence. Therefore, it was in Socrates interest to suggest a penalty that would be accepted as a reasonable alternative to death. However, he chose the sum of 30 minas. While this was much more than Socrates could possibly afford (the sum was guaranteed by Plato, Crito, Critoboulus and Apollodorus) it was considered insufficient by the court and he was sentenced to death. From this, it can be argued that Socrates actively sought this verdict, since, to suggest an alternative penalty that would be acceptable to the court was tantamount to admitting that he was guilty of the charges against him — this of course he could not do for central to the charges made against him were that he was guilty of not worshipping the gods that the State worshipped, but of introducing new divinities, and of corrupting the minds of the young by instructing them accordingly.

Tracy asked:

Why did Thales believe that water represents the fundamental question of
our reality? Any arguments for this belief.

Answer by Jürgen Lawrenz

The Greeks believed that the cosmos was infused with life throughout. The kind of material universe we believe in would have seemed very strange to them. So when you examine all life forms on earth, you find that the one thing they all have in common in a reliance on water to sustain them. No water, no life. So water is fundamental.

Thales had no instruments to prove his point. You need to bear this in mind. His claim was a philosophical proposition designed to challenge other thinkers to either agree or come up with a better proposition.

Today, 2600 years later, you can find scientific textbooks informing you that 70% of the contents of the universe is hydrogen.

Not a bad guess, then?

Leila asked:

When Nietzsche said that God is dead, what exactly did he mean? What I think is this. That men are making a mistake by believing in a God’s society (the Church) is presenting him, who is supposedly dead because of the society changing and that one should search for a God through their own consciousness and use that for the individual determination of values. I know I must be completely wrong on this.

Answer by Martin Jenkins

How do you know you are completely wrong?! On the contrary, many writers maintain what you propose. Nietzsche could be saying that the Judeo-Christian God has died along with his philosophical/ theological justification (i.e. metaphysical theology/ philosophy). If there is to be a new God (or many gods? See Old and New Law Tables 11. Thus Spoke Zarathustra) it will be either one corresponding to the table of values of a people. For instance, in The Anti-Christian, 16, 17, 18, 25, 26, he traces the alterations of the Jewish peoples’ understanding of their God made in response to their changing material circumstances. In this sense, Nietzsche is similar to the Non-Realist school of Theology. This mode of thought proposes that ‘God’ is a projection of human traits and values. (See the works of Ludwig Feuerbach and Don Cupitt.) It does not objectively exist independently, it is a human creation but non the less, possesses a reality as an ethical construct. So God would be a symptomatic projection of a peoples ‘table of values’ at a given time and place. Nietzsche may well be read as opposing the Judeo-Christian conception of God and opening a space for the re-valuation of It.

However, Nietzsche opposes the equality of human beings because this defies the nature of life itself-which is will to power. As are all supposedly equal as creations of and, as before God, it seems safe to conclude that Nietzsche would oppose this. Let’s not forget that a lot of his writings are an attack of Judeo-Christianity and its descendants in the modern forms of secular equality and democracy! In addition, if equality follows from the one God, that Nietzsche opposes equality, he must therefore oppose the one God. In this sense, he could be opening up the possibility ‘that one should search for a God through their own consciousness’ and their determination of values. Fine, but this seems to me to create more problems.

Firstly, an individual determination of values is open ended: it might result in the very rejection of a God as we know it along with all the Biblical and Theological/ Philosophical architecture which informs us we are talking and thinking of the same entity. Secondly, the ‘individual determination of values’ would be lauded by Nietzsche but it does not prima facie, lead to a single God-it could lead to as many gods as there are creators. Again, a plurality of gods, their natures and characteristics, might be irreconcilable with that of the single God. Thirdly, the concept of God might be superfluous with Nietzsche’s revaluation of values. People remaining true to the earth would realise that they-and not any other entity-are the authors of their values. God would be redundant.

Abi asked:

Does it matter if an artist expresses racist views? Is his/ her work more important than their politics? I am thinking particularly of Wagner.

Answer by Shaun Williamson

Yes it does matter. Their work is never more important than their politics. However Wagner’s political and prejudiced views are not made apparent in his musical works. You could listen to Wagner’s music without ever being aware of the small minded and evil view he had of the world.

We should never forget or forgive Wagner’s ignorant and evil prejudices. His music is greater than he could ever be.

Anais asked:

What colour is a blank canvas?

Answer by Tony Fahey

Anais, the wonderful thing about a blank canvas is that it can be any colour you want it to be. Moreover, what is even better, as history shows, you can project onto this tabula rasa of the mind any ism, philosophical or religious paradigm, definition of a utopian society, idea of God, notion of a metaphysical realm, system of ethics, theory of eternal salvation or damnation, plan for world peace, or world domination, concept of inalienable rights, or any other worldview you care to imagine or invent, and you may even use your rhetorical skills to convince the less fortunate, the naive, the uneducated, the innocent, or the ignorant that the concept of truth you have woven onto this blank canvas is the only truth, and that the path you have charted on this tabula rasa is the only path worth following.