III/ About the State of Mind Required to Understand the Problem of Values

We might imagine that, beyond its content, a discipline is defined by a particular state of mind it demands of those who wish to study it. Without adopting this psychological stance, a researcher might easily dismiss the discipline's findings by simply professing a lack of interest.
To put it more simply: poetry invites its audience into a contemplative, dreamy state of mind; physics appeals to a curious temperament inclined to organise observations; and mathematics suits a mind drawn to the strangeness and abstraction of its objects. History, on the other hand, rarely attracts the forward-looking man of action (unless he seeks lessons to feed his ambitions); rather, it tends to draw those who see the past as an inexhaustible source of captivating insight.

If we accept this view, it seems essential, when embarking on the study of a new discipline, to consider not its content first but the state of mind it demands if one is truly to resonate with it. Without this attunement, the researcher may acquire knowledge of the discipline without ever reaching a deeper understanding.
One might argue, for instance, that a philosopher seeking to understand Marx must in some sense adopt a Marxist viewpoint; likewise, someone aiming to understand Augustine might need to approach the text as a Christian would. What is involved, essentially, is living—on an existential level—the intuition that sparked a given line of thought and carried it through to its conceptual form. This requires long, patient meditation: an effort to recapture that original intuition.
While this meditative effort is ultimately personal, we can attempt, however imperfectly, to sketch the conceptual foundations on which the researcher might meditate in order to approach this insight.

The true significance of axiology emerges only when we acknowledge that the problem of values is, indeed, a problem—one that resists the researcher's grasp, admits of no obvious answer, and may even defy any conceivable solution.
This realisation brings into view what amounts to a kind of scandal: the absence of any solid foundation for values, which persists from the most ancient to the most contemporary thought. We must therefore allow ourselves to engage with the provocative challenges posed by radical axiological doctrines. Only then can the researcher arrive at the state of mind that the study of axiology demands—one that requires the suspension of all value judgements.
This is the spiritual journey we shall now describe, examining each of its stages in turn.