WHAT IS AXIOLOGICAL ETHICS? - CULTURE VOCABULARY - 2025

The axiológica ethics is that part of ethics referred to securities. Unlike the parts related to morality and social justice, axiological ethics does not focus directly on what we should do. Instead, it focuses on questions of what is worth pursuing or promoting and what should be avoided.

To have a better concept, axiology and ethics must be defined separately. Axiology is the science that studies values ​​and how these values ​​are produced in a society.

Axiology seeks to understand the nature of values ​​and value judgments. It is closely related to two other fields of philosophy: ethics and aesthetics.

All three branches (axiology, ethics, and aesthetics) deal with value. Ethics deals with goodness, trying to understand what good is and what it means to be good. Aesthetics deals with beauty and harmony, trying to understand beauty and what it means or how it is defined.

Axiology is a necessary component of both ethics and aesthetics, because concepts of value must be used to define "goodness" or "beauty", and therefore one must understand what is valuable and why.

Understanding values ​​helps determine the reason for a behavior.

Main characteristics of axiological ethics

Axiological ethics is a specific field of study that presents certain distinctive features of its family branches within philosophy.

Here are the main characteristics of axiological ethics.

History

Around the 5th century and part of the 6th century BC, it was critical for the Greeks to be well informed if success was to be sought. The intellectuals undertook the recognition of discrepancies between the statutes and the morality of humanity.

Socrates' student Plato promoted the belief by establishing virtues that should be perpetuated.

With the collapse of the regime, values ​​became individual, causing skeptical colleges of thought to flourish, forming at last request a passionate ethic that is thought to have influenced and shaped Christianity.

During medieval times, Thomas Aquinas supported a deviation between natural and religious moralities. This conception led philosophers to distinguish between judgments based on facts and judgments based on values, creating a division between science and philosophy.

Objectives exemplified

When children ask questions like "why are we doing this?" Or "how do I do this?" They are asking axiological questions.

They want to know what motivates them to act or to refrain from acting. The father says not to take a cookie from the jar. The child wonders why taking a cookie from the jar is wrong and argues with the father.

The parent often tires of trying to explain and simply responds, "Because I said so." The child will stop arguing if he values ​​established authority (or if he fears punishment for disobeying). On the other hand, the child may stop arguing simply because she respects her parents.

In this example, the value is either authority or respect, depending on the child's values. Axiological ethics raises: “Where do these values ​​come from? Can any of these values ​​be called good? Is one better than the other? Why?"

Theory of values: main and general approach of axiological ethics

The term "theory of values" is used in at least three different ways in philosophy.

In a general sense, the theory of values ​​is a label that encompasses all branches of moral philosophy, social and political philosophy, aesthetics, and sometimes feminist philosophy and the philosophy of religion - whatever areas of philosophy cover some "evaluative" aspects.

More narrowly, the theory of values ​​is used for a relatively narrow area of ​​normative ethical theory, particularly, but not exclusively, of concern to consequentialists. In this narrow sense, the theory of values ​​is more or less synonymous with axiology.

Axiology can be thought of as being primarily concerned with classifying what things are good and how good they are.

For example, a traditional question of axiology concerns whether objects of value are subjective psychological states, or objective states of the world.

Specific theories of axiological ethics

Instrumental and intrinsic value

They are technical labels for the two poles of an ancient dichotomy. People seem to reason differently about what they should do (good ends) and what they are capable of (good means).

When people reason about ends, they apply the criterion of intrinsic value. When they reason, it means that they apply the criterion of instrumental value.

Few question the existence of these two criteria, but their relative authority is in constant dispute.

Pragmatism and contributory goodness

Pragmatic ethics is a theory of normative philosophical ethics. Ethical pragmatists, like John Dewey, believe that some societies have progressed morally in the same way that they have made progress in science.

Scientists can investigate the truth of a hypothesis and accept the hypothesis, in the sense that they act as if the hypothesis were true.

However, they think that future generations can advance science, and thus future generations can refine or replace (at least some of) their accepted hypotheses.

Hypothetical and categorical goods

The thought of Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) greatly influenced moral philosophy. He thought of moral value as a unique and universally identifiable property, as an absolute value rather than a relative value.

He demonstrated that many practical goods are good only in the states of affairs described by a sentence that contains an "if" clause, for example, in the sentence, "the sun is only good if you don't live in the desert."

Furthermore, the “if” clause often describes the category in which the judgment was made (art, science, etc.).

Kant described them as "hypothetical goods" and tried to find a "categorical" good that would work across all categories of judgment without relying on an "if-then" clause.

References

1. The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica. (2015). Axiology. August 13, 2017, from Encyclopædia Britannica, inc. Website: britannica.com
2. Findlay, JN (1970). Axiological Ethics. New York: Macmillan. ISBN 0-333-00269-5. 100 pages.
3. Dewey, John (1939). Theory of Valuation. University of Chicago Press.
4. Zimmerman, Michael. Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic Value ”. In Zalta, Edward N. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
5. Dewey, John (1985). Ethics. Southern Illinois University Press.
6. Freedom as a Value: A Critique of the Ethical Theory of Jean-Paul Sartre. Open Court Publishing. 1988. ISBN 978-0812690835.
7. Schroeder, Mark, "Value Theory," The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2016 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.)
8. Kraut, Richard, 2007. What is Good and Why: The Ethics of Well-Being, Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
9. Brentano, F. Vom Ursprung sittlicher Erkenntnis (1889). Trans. Roderick Chisholm, as The Origin of Our Knowledge of Right and Wrong (1969).
10. Ted Honderich. (2005). The Oxford Companion to Phylosophy. Google Books: Oxford University Press.