Book I / The Confusion Between Ethics and Axiology

I / A Necessary Distinction

Axiology, the discipline (logos) concerned with values (axio), must be carefully distinguished from ethics.
It is often claimed that the problem of values is an ethical one, to be addressed by ethics or moral philosophy—a discipline concerned with our duties, or with the attainment of wisdom and happiness.
In fact, the study of values does not fall within the remit of ethics. To ask whether something has real value is a different matter from examining our duties, their nature, or the means of attaining wisdom or happiness.

The association of values with morality is perhaps explained by our habit of speaking of moral values. Yet moral values are merely one species among many. For example, when a critic denounces a film as worthless, is the critic suggesting that the film fails to make us morally better? Certainly not. When an aesthete praises a perfumer's achievement, is he suggesting that the perfume itself is moral? Similarly, one may admire a pastry without implying that eating it is a moral obligation.

Moral values thus form only one part of the broader field of value. The clearest evidence that 'value' and 'morality' are not synonymous is that we can meaningfully ask whether morality itself has any value, as both the immoralist and even the authentic moralist might do.
If these terms were synonymous, such a question would not arise; saying 'Morality has value' would be equivalent to saying 'A car is a car'. However, the fact that the question 'Does morality have value?' remains open indicates that value is distinct from morality, making the ascription of value to morality a genuine problem—the problem of values—which is therefore an axiological matter, not a moral one.

In other words, there exists a discipline distinct from ethics, with a truly distinct object: axiology.

Axiology addresses the value of all things=X, with the value of morality being just one particular question among many. It also seeks to determine the value of various entities, such as music, specific pieces of music, art, truth, wisdom, madness, matter, spirit, space, time, being, nothingness, among others.
In fact, before undertaking this search, we likely need to determine whether the concept of value has meaning, and if so, what that meaning might be.
If we succeed, this will allow us to frame the problem of values properly, and so to grasp what it genuinely involves. Only then, perhaps, will we be able to solve it.

It may be that the problem of values has been inadequately framed or has never been properly addressed. As Aristotle remarked, It is necessary, with a view to the science which we are investigating, that we first describe the questions which should be discussed because It is not possible to untie a knot of which one does not know. Indeed, in such cases, we do not know what we are looking for, and we are like people who do not know where they are going; besides, one does not even know whether the thing required has been found or not ¹.

However, conflating axiology with morality has led to the problem of values being framed in moral terms, and approached through moral rather than axiological concepts.
What are these concepts? This is what we will now examine.

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1. Metaphysics, B, 1