Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introduction: pluralism and uncertainty
- 2 Openness
- 3 The retreat
- 4 The moral sphere
- 5 Fact and value
- 6 Value experiments
- 7 Virtues, excellences and forms of life
- 8 The fourth dimension
- 9 Aspiration
- 10 Wisdom
- 11 Objective worth
- 12 The Bach crystals
- 13 Human flourishing
- 14 The Faust legend and the mosaic
- 15 The good and the right (I): intuitionism, Kantianism
- 16 The good and the right (II): utilitarianism, consequentialism
- 17 The good and the right (III): contractualism
- 18 Politics, public morality and law: justice, care and virtue
- References
- Index
8 - The fourth dimension
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 September 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introduction: pluralism and uncertainty
- 2 Openness
- 3 The retreat
- 4 The moral sphere
- 5 Fact and value
- 6 Value experiments
- 7 Virtues, excellences and forms of life
- 8 The fourth dimension
- 9 Aspiration
- 10 Wisdom
- 11 Objective worth
- 12 The Bach crystals
- 13 Human flourishing
- 14 The Faust legend and the mosaic
- 15 The good and the right (I): intuitionism, Kantianism
- 16 The good and the right (II): utilitarianism, consequentialism
- 17 The good and the right (III): contractualism
- 18 Politics, public morality and law: justice, care and virtue
- References
- Index
Summary
INCLUSION AND TRANSCENDENCE: NON-RELATIVE VALUE
To many moderns, the first three dimensions of value exhaust the dimensions of human value – as the three familiar dimensions of ordinary experience exhaust the dimensions of space. What might be meant by a fourth dimension of value is not so easily described and many thinkers would deny it exists at all. But, while the existence of a fourth dimension of value may be controversial, it seems to be presupposed by much of what humans have had to say about the good and the right.
Without such a dimension, for example, what we call ethical or moral value would not be what most people take it to be. This is not to say that all fourth-dimensional value is ethical or even that all value people call ethical lies in the fourth dimension. The virtues and excellences that comprise third-dimensional value (loyalty, friendliness, trustworthiness, and the like) are an important part of many ancient and modern views of ethics. But a crucial part of what we call ethical or moral value does I think lie in the fourth dimension – including (of special importance) that part explored in Chapters 2–4, which implies that each person is to be treated as an end by every other person and no one as a mere means.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Ethics and the Quest for Wisdom , pp. 95 - 108Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010