4/ A Critical Look at Subjectivism and Eclecticism

Nihilism, in proclaiming that nothing has value, gives expression to explicit contempt. Creative subjectivism and eclecticism, by contrast, present themselves as two ostensibly authentic forms of love.
Subjectivism, by asserting that humanity imparts value to things, appears to propose an idealised conception of love, in which the lover gives the beloved not only love but also intrinsic value. The lover cannot offer a more complete gift to the beloved, which is why genuine love, it seems, can only be conceived through the lens of value subjectivism.
Eclecticism universalises love, suggesting that if everything holds value, humanity's natural response must be to become a universal lover in a world where all things are deemed worthy of affection.

Eclecticism and subjectivism thus appear to share a common ambition: to embody pure love by extending it to its farthest conceivable limits.

We shall now examine this ambition in the light of the insights we have offered into the concept of love. Might these so-called doctrines of love, in fact, conceal a hidden contempt?

If we spell out the nature of the subjectivist's relationship to the things he claims to love, it might sound something like this: 'You have no value of your own; you need me to have one. I am the source of your value'. 'Without me, you would be worthless'. It is not difficult to see what kind of 'love' could arise from such a foundation. In reality, subjectivism is merely disguised contempt for what it professes to love—as I noted earlier in suggesting that it reduces to a form of nihilism.

Eclecticism does not violate this essential condition; rather, it oversteps it by asserting that everything possesses inherent value. As we shall show, however, it violates two other principles of love.

If we claim that 'everything is of great value', the necessary consequence is that nothing stands superior to anything else; the loved object holds no unique place and there is no hierarchy: everything is equally valued. The eclectic, then, is someone who, perhaps unknowingly, says to each thing he loves: 'I love you, but you are commonplace', or 'I love you, but there are thousands like you'. He is not truly a loving being but a contemptuous one.

Moreover, to love justice inherently implies hating injustice; indeed, to love justice is to hate injustice. Likewise, to love peace is to reject violence. The loved object itself—whether justice or peace—demands this of us. The eclectic, who claims to love both justice and injustice and even finds justification for evil, fails to grasp the essence of what he loves. He therefore cannot truly love, for to love something is to embrace its essence—something he fails to understand. Genuine love is, for him, impossible. The eclectic is a kind of 'deaf' lover: he disregards the true nature of what he loves—an attitude that is itself a form of contempt.

Here, we may have uncovered a new essential condition of love: to love something is to value what aligns with it—or, at the very least, what is compatible with it.

Subjectivism and eclecticism share a fundamental failing: their inability to achieve their initial aim of presenting themselves as genuine forms of love. This failure appears to invalidate these doctrines or, at the very least, to reduce them to a consistent alternative: nihilism.

That these doctrines fail to recognise their own shortcomings likely stems from an unawareness that they are, in reality, built upon a flawed understanding of the nature of love.
In essence, to ask 'Is axiological subjectivism possible?' is to ask, 'Is love merely a subjective feeling of pleasure?'
So long as we answer affirmatively without recognising love's cognitive dimension—that is, without understanding that certain judgements or conditions are inherent to love—we risk violating these conditions unknowingly and thereby lapsing into nihilism.

In this discussion, I have put forward a particular theory of the nature of love. What does this theory contribute to our earlier reflections on values and the nature of axiology? Can it genuinely assist us—for instance, in addressing the crucial question of the method that axiology should adopt to determine the value of a thing?
I now propose to examine the connection between this theory of love and our reflections on axiology's methodological approach.

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