Chapter 4 : Axiology : A Theory of Value (1)

[대태양/김현수]

Unification Thought

The contemporary age is an age of great confusion and great losses. Wars and conflicts never cease, and innumerable vicious phenomena are covering the world, such as terrorism, destruction, arson, kidnapping, murder, drug abuse, alcoholism, declining sexual morals, the breakdown of the family, in justice, corruption, oppression, conspiracy, and slander. In the vortex of this great confusion, humankind's most valuable assets are now almost lost. I am referring to the loss of mutual trust among people, the deterioration of parental authority, teachers' authority, and governmental authority, the neglect of personal human dignity, the disregard of traditions, and the loss of the dignity of life. 

What is the cause of such confusion and losses? The cause is the collapse of the traditional views of value. That is to say, the traditional points of view concerning trueness, goodness, and beauty have been lost.  

Among these, the concept of goodness especially is being weakened, and existing ethical and moral views are rapidly being lost. Then, what are the causes that have brought about the collapse of the traditional views of value? 

First, God is being eliminated from every field, including economy, politics, education, and art. At the same time, religious values are being neglected. Since almost all traditional systems of values are based on religion, a view of value that loses its religious basis cannot but decline. 

Second, materialism, atheism, and especially Communism are infiltrating everywhere. Communism has been working to divide people into two classes and then to foment conflicts between those classes by increasing the sense of distrust and spreading hostilities everywhere. In so doing, it has criticized and attempted to destroy the traditional views of value, claiming that traditional values are feudalistic and intended solely to maintain existing social systems. 

Third, conflicts among religions and philosophies are themselves speeding up the collapse of values. Existing values have been established on the basis of the various religions and philosophies; therefore, if disagreement among religions and among philosophies exist, people will be led to regard these values as merely relative.  

Fourth, traditional religious virtues have lost their power to persuade modern people, who tend to think scientifically. When the teachings of traditional religions either contradict science or are unrelated to science, they become unacceptable to modern people, who tend to place absolute confidence in science. 

When we see this collapse of traditional values, we realize that there is a need for a new view of value. This new view of value, first of all, must be able to embrace the fundamental teachings of all religions and thought systems. It must also be able to overcome materialism and atheism. Furthermore, it must be able to embrace and even guide science. This would be a view of value that is centered on the absolute God. 

Unification axiology seeks to present such a view of value.

This new view of value is presented for the sake of establishing our future society. The future society is a society that will be built by people of original nature, whose intellect, emotion, and will are centered on Heart. Accordingly, the future society will be a society where the activities of people's intellect, emotion, and will are carried out in it harmonious way, centering on heart. Here, new values refer to the values corresponding to the original faculties of intellect, emotion, and will. 

The faculties of intellect, emotion, and will seek the values of trueness, goodness and beauty, respectively, and through these, a society of trueness, an artistic society, and an ethical society will be actualized. In doing so, what is required for the realization of a society of trueness is a theory of education for the pursuit of die value of "trueness"; what is required to pursue a society of "beauty," or an artistic society, is a theory of art for the pursuit of the value of "beauty"; what is required for the realization of a society of "goodness," or an ethical society, is a theory of ethics for the pursuit of the value of "goodness." Since axiology is a theory that deals generally with the values of trueness, goodness, and beauty, axiology is the general theory serving as a basis for these three particular theories. 

The future society will thus be a society where the values of trueness, goodness, and beauty will be realized; in that society, the economy will attain a high level of development through the progress of science, solving, once and for all and completely, all the economic problems of society. People's lives will be focused primarily oil realizing values. The society where the values of' trueness, goodness, and beauty, centered on heart, are realized is a society with the culture of heart, or a society of unified culture.

I. The Basis for Values and Various Kinds of Values

To begin our study of this new view of value, let us consider, first, what values are; next, tile basis upon which the various values come to exist; and finally, the different kinds of value.

A. What Are Values?

Broadly speaking, values can be categorized as either material values or spiritual values. Material values refer to the values of people's daily necessities, such as commodities; in contrast, spiritual values refer to values corresponding to the faculties of intellect, emotion, and will, or the values of trueness, goodness, and beauty. Of these two kinds, Unification Axiology deals primarily with spiritual values. 

Value refers to a quality of an object that satisfies a desire of tile subject. That is, when an object has a certain quality that satisfies a desire or a wish of the subject and which is recognized as such by the subject, then that special quality of the object is called value. In other words, value is something that belongs to an object; yet, unless it is recognized as value by the subject, it does not become actual. For example, even though there may be a flower here, unless someone (the subject) perceives the beauty of that flower, the value of the flower does not become actual. In this way, in order for value to become actual, a subject must recognize the quality of the object and must appraise that quality as valuable.

B. The Duality of Desire, Purpose, and Value

In order to discuss values, we need to analyze the desire of the subject. Philosophical attempts to deal with questions of value (including material value), have generally focused on objective phenomena alone, excluding consideration of human desire. They have, therefore, tended to be weak, like a tree without roots or a building without foundation. A tree without roots cannot but wither; a building without foundation cannot but collapse. Accordingly, existing thought systems are showing their powerlessness today in solving various social problems. For example, economic theories, which deal with material values, have become not very useful in solving the phenomena of the current economic disorder. Many difficult problems, unexpected even by economists, are also emerging one after another, such as the impact that labor-management relations have on business results. Why is that so? The reason is that they have not correctly analyzed the human desire itself Though every economist knows the fact that the motivation of economic activity is human desire, they have not engaged in any serious analysis of desire; so their theories have become like buildings without a foundation. Thus, we begin by analyzing desire in order to understand such phenomena correctly. 

Since people are beings of united Sungsang and Hyungsang in other words, beings with a dual mind (spiritual mind and physical mind) human desires, likewise, are of two kinds, namely, Sungsang desire and Hyungsang desire. 

Sungsang desire is the desire of the spirit mind, that is, the desire for trueness, goodness, beauty, and love, whereas the Hyungsang desire is the desire of the physical mind, that is, the desire for food, clothing, shelter, and sex. 

Then, for what purpose do human desires exist? They exist for realizing the Purpose of Creation. God's purpose of creation is to have joy through loving His object. Conversely, the purpose of creation, especially for human beings, is to return beauty to God and to give joy to God. The purpose for which human beings were created can be fulfilled through the realizations of the three Great Blessings, namely, to be fruitful, to multiply, and to have dominion over all things (Gen. 1:28). Therefore, the purpose of creation for human beings is none other than the completion of the Three Great Blessings. 

If, at the time of creation, God had given human beings purpose but riot desire, then the most they would have been able to do was to come tip with the thought, "There is a Purpose of Creation," or "The Three Great Blessings exist." Yet the Purpose of Creation, of the Three Great Blessings, would never have been realized. Therefore, God had to give people the impulsive willingness to actualize that purpose, the impulse of the mind to do or obtain something. Desire is that impulse. Accordingly, people gradually grow to maturity driven by an innate impulse to achieve the purpose of creation, namely, the Three Great Blessings. 

Human desires include Sungsang desire and Hyungsang desire. In purpose as well, and in correspondence to desires, there are a Sungsang purpose and a Hyungsang purpose. The Sungsang purpose refers to the Sungsang aspect of the Purpose of Creation; and the Hyungsang purpose refers to the Hyungsang aspect of the Purpose of Creation. 

A human being is also a connected body with a dual purpose, namely, the purpose for the whole and the purpose for the individual. Accordingly, the Sungsang purpose and the Hyungsang purpose aim to attain the purpose for the whole and the purpose for the individual, respectively. Thus, the Purpose of Creation is fulfilled through the accomplishment of the purpose for the whole and the purpose for the individual. The purpose for the whole is to serve the family, the society, the people, the nation, the world, and ultimately God, the Parent of humankind; thus it is to give joy to humankind and to God. On the other hand, the purpose for the individual is to live for one's own growth and to seek one's own joy. Not only people, but also all things, have a purpose for the whole and a purpose for the individual. 

The way in which things accomplish the purpose of creation is different from the way people accomplish their purpose. Inorganic substances fulfill their purpose of creation by following natural law; plants, by following the autonomy of the Principle (life) I within them; and animals, by following their instinct. People, however, must accomplish their purpose of creation by following the desire given to them by God, using their own free will and according to their own responsibility. Desire is the impulse of the mind to attain a certain purpose. The desire to attain the purpose for the whole is called the desire to realize value, and the desire to attain the purpose for the individual is called the desire to seek value. Accordingly, the Sungsang desire and the Hyungsang desire each have the desire to realize value and the desire to seek value. 

The Sungsang desire and the Hyungsang desire are called "dual desire"; the desire to realize value and the desire to seek value are referred to as the dual desire corresponding to the whole and the individual. With regard to purpose, the Sungsang purpose and the Hyungsang purpose are called "dual purpose"; the purpose for the whole and the purpose for the individual are referred to as the dual purpose corresponding to the whole and the individual. With regard to value (to be explained in detail later), there are Sungsang value and Hyungsang value, which are called "dual value." Realized value and sought-after value are referred to as the dual value corresponding to the whole and the individual. 

An arrangement of the duality of desires, purposes, and values in relation to one another will give us Fig. 4-1.

Fig. 4-1: The Duality of Desire, Purpose, and Value

C. Kinds of Value

Value is the quality in the object that satisfies the desire of the subject. Desires can be divided into Sungsang desire and Hyungsang desire; as a consequence, there are also Sungsang value and Hyungsang value (Fig. 4-1). Sungsang value is a spiritual value that satisfies 2 the Sungsang desire; it consists of trueness, goodness, beauty, and love. 3 (To be precise, love is the basis for the values of trueness, goodness, and beauty.) Trueness, beauty, and goodness are the values corresponding to the three faculties of the mind, namely, intellect, emotion and will. That is to say, when the subject appraises an element of the object as a value, the subject appraises it as trueness, beauty, or goodness, according to the faculties of intellect, emotion, or will, respectively. 

On the other hand, Hyungsang value, which satisfies the Hyungsang desire, refers to the value of daily necessities, such as food, clothing, and shelter-namely, material value (commodity value).4 Material value is the value necessary for physical life, or the value that satisfies the desire of the physical mind. Physical life is the basis for tile growth of the spirit person and for the fulfillment of the Three Great Blessings. Thus the Hyungsang value is a requisite for the realization of Sungsang value. 

Love is the basis of the values of trueness, goodness and beauty. The more the subject loves the object, and the more the object loves the subject, the truer, the better, and more beautiful the object comes to appear to the subject. For example, the more parents love their children and the more children love their parents, the more beautiful the children will look. And when children look more beautiful, the parents will feel like loving them even more. In that way, love is the source and foundation of value. Without love, true value will not appear. Accordingly, if we experience the love of God and lead a life of love, we will be able to experience and actualize more brilliant value than we have ever experienced before. 

In this way, value includes both Sungsang value and Hyungsang value. Axiology, however, is a philosophical field that deals primarily with Sungsang value.