3/ The Concept of Quality

It appears that value has been assimilated to the related concept of 'quality', meaning it is often assumed that seeking the value of a thing is equivalent to seeking its qualities. If we identify qualities in an action, such as 'goodness' or 'generosity,' we might consider that we have determined its value. To speak of traditionally recognised qualities—such as beauty, truth, and goodness—would be, then, to speak of values. As a result, the question 'What has value?' becomes analogous to asking, 'What has truth value?' or 'What has aesthetic value?'

Thus, the assimilation of value with quality necessarily implies a theory that there are multiple kinds of value. If value is nothing more than quality, then, just as there are various kinds of quality (beautiful, good, etc.), there must also be various kinds of value. The effect of equating value with quality is that we speak of value in the plural, thereby referring to 'values' rather than 'value'. It is this shift to the plural that we believe warrants examination.

Thus, Bouglé aptly notes that anything can hold value: Value finds its place within the spheres of political economy, morality, art, and religion. It is not confined to any one of these areas. Indeed, it is a universal category with the capacity for highly varied applications. We can make value judgements about a piece of furniture just as readily as about a gesture, a ritual, or a poem ¹.
Elsewhere, Ruyer highlights the vast range of things that can hold value: We can use any adjectives or forms to approximate the realm of values, as values are infinitely numerous. The classical trinity of the True, the Beautiful, and the Good has contributed to overlooking this infinite variety. It is certainly partly responsible for philosophy's delay in recognising the broad generality of the concept ².

However, Bouglé deduces something quite different from this idea, namely, that there are multiple kinds of values: And this is why we say that there is a world of values. Whether aesthetic or moral, religious or economic, they all solicit our attention, appeal to our sympathies, and demand our efforts ³.
He suggests that the advancement of human civilisation entails an increasing awareness of distinctions between various spheres of value: Men in primitive societies seemed to have little capacity to judge things and people from different perspectives: aesthetic, moral, religious, or economic. This ability grows with civilisation. The increasing complexity of civilisation makes such distinctions necessary, allowing each world of values to gradually gain its own autonomy. Art, morality, and technology each achieve independence in their own ways ⁴.
Though distinct, these spheres of value are interconnected: Does this mean that all relations between these various value systems cease? Far from it. At times, religion and art, or art and morality, for example, work together. In short, alongside the tendency towards dissociation, there is also a tendency towards conjunction within the world of values ⁵.

This theory is shared by other thinkers who, upon recognising the multiplicity of valuable things, infer a corresponding multiplicity of values themselves. They then question whether these values are interconnected or if an irreconcilable conflict exists among them. Mehl favours the first solution: No value subsists by itself. There is no value that does not appeal to other values. There is no truth that is not intended to be good and salutary, no good that is not first true, no value that does not oppose the compartmentalisation of our existence into separate sectors ⁶. Ruyer also shares this view, noting that the absence of truth degrades art, just as politics becomes catastrophic or religion turns into myth...

As we can see, this conflation of value and quality leads us to envision values in the plural, prompting us to investigate whether or not they are interconnected. They must be plural because each quality represents a specific value—such as aesthetic or moral value—and thus the plurality of qualities results in a plurality of value types. This is the theory I will now attempt to demonstrate as unfounded.

1. The Evolution of Values, ch.1
2. Philosophie de la valeur
3. The Evolution of Values, ch.1
4. Ibid., ch.6
5. Ibid.
6. De l’autorité des valeurs, ch. III