A Nonfiction Book
What is “The Value Circle,” and why are we “always already” stuck in it?
As made famous by Heidegger and Gadamer, “The Hermeneutical Circle” is generally the idea that we cannot determine which interpretation of a book is correct because we are “always already” stuck in interpretation, and determining “the right interpretation” would require a transcendental perspective which we simply cannot access — we are “trapped in a circle,” per se (we could also use the language of “immanence,” but I will abstain). We are always interpreting from within a culture, and that transforms the meaning of the text, which transforms us reading the text, which could further transform our interpretation of the text — on and on. Because we are situated in a culture and society, interpretation is always informed, and that makes it impossible to know if our interpretation is “right” except from a place of transcendence, to which we do not have access. No, that doesn’t mean our interpretations are wrong, but it does mean that, if they are right, we cannot know they are right with certainty.
“The Value Circle” is meant to suggest a similar problem, where to determine “the right values,” we need “a transcendent perspective” of all values, but we are “always already” in the middle of exercising, living according to, and thus defending values (which can be associated with “givens”). If we choose to eat a sandwich, we are claiming that eating this sandwich is a value (at this time); if we believe life is meaningless, then our value system is nihilism; and so on. This case is made beautifully and eloquently well by Samuel Barnes in Missing Axioms, which is extremely relevant to the topic of “The Value Circle” (I highly suggest reading and supporting his work). To put the case very generally, it’s impossible to live with values, and that means we are all “always already” in “The Value Circle” (it’s always too late for things to be otherwise). At least the “Hermeneutical Circle” can be escaped when we put down our book, but putting down a book means we’re still in “The Value Circle.”
If we are alive, we are living according to value, and thus we are in “The Value Circle.” Our values are always culturally conditioned (though we shouldn’t be quick to say that they are “just” culturally conditioned), which in turn means we carry ourselves in the culture in a way that further suggests the idea that our values are not just “our values” but “the values” (as “my interpretation” of a book presents itself as “the reading”). This means social orders are vulnerable to “the banality of evil,” which to stop I must realize that “my values” aren’t necessarily “the values.” But how can I ever know if I’m exercising values that aren’t “culturally conditioned?” I can’t, and so I might escape one “banality of evil” only to fall into a different one. To escape this dilemma entirely, I would have to deconstruct “the cultural conditioner” itself, which is society, and that means I have to threaten the structure which makes values determinable and practicable (if there’s no trust or social order, it will be difficult to “meaningfully practice” the virtue of not stealing from my neighbor, for example). Values without a social order are basically meaningless, and yet values conflict with the processes inherent in social orders. I cannot live without values, and that means I cannot live without the potential of suffering “A Conflict of Society.”
To realize “all reading is interpretation,” I must threaten “the act of reading” itself, for people might decide that there’s no point to read if all reading “is just interpretation.” Likewise, if people realize that all values are “just cultural expressions,” people might not bother with values, which will be the loss of “givens” and “the shared intelligibility” society needs to function. Unfortunately, I believe both of these outcomes are indeed occurring in the world today. To handle the “trauma” of realizing that “all reading is interpretation” and that “all values are conditioned” and yet keep reading and keep having values requires a very rare and special mindset, one we can perhaps associate with the “Deleuzian Dividual.” Again, I stress, becoming such a person is indeed a real solution to “the sociological tragedy” we face — but it might not be a solution for everyone.
To realize reading is interpretation, we must read, but reading in its experience and phenomenology fights against us realizing that “it is interpretation.” Similarly, to realize which values are best, we require intellectual skills which values will oppose us developing, for what if we gain those skills and realize values are “groundless?” Values work in concert with “givens,” and to think about “givens” by definition means they are no longer “given” (“thoughtless”). Similarly, to think about values threatens them, for values are things we act on versus think about: if we’re thinking about justice, we’re not creating justice; if we’re studying Christianity, we’re not being Christ-like to someone impoverished down the street; and so on. Despite needing one another, “thinking” and “acting” exist in tension, and this tension is hard to figure out “in thought,” hence why values can oppose thinking about the tension at all. But if we don’t, we are vulnerable to falling into “a banality of evil” and doing something wrong that we believe is right.
Ultimately, all values are “practically groundless” (even if “technically grounded”), which is to say that even if they are “Transcendentally Grounded” (say in a God), we cannot know such is the case for sure from a place of finitude (a point which brings the story “Ludwig” by O.G. Rose to mind), and so gaining intellectual skill will easily lead us to realizing that “values cannot be ultimately justified” (Hume’s “Absolute Skepticism”). But without intellectual skills, we likely cannot keep values from becoming “givens” which cause “the banality of evil,” nor can we determine which “processes” to create that would help us determine which values are best. We also need intellectual skills to existentially handle ourselves if all social processes indeed collapse, but paradoxically the very act of seeking these intellectual skills could contribute to the collapse of the social processes, precisely because we could use the intellectual skills to question them and/or erode the “givens” which legitimize the processes along the way.
By definition, we must “practically believe” our values are “the values” (otherwise we wouldn’t believe them), and that means a “process” to determine our values as “the values” seems irrational and a waste of time — all this process could be is a threat. And yet without a way to “process” our values, how can we even know that they are “values” versus say inclinations, habits, or something similar? We need process to determine values and to check that values are in fact values, and yet values necessarily oppose such processes. And the only way to tell if such processes aren’t a waste of time or threat to justice, freedom, etc. (values) would be for us to be “transcendent” of all values from a place where we could view and compare them all, and that is impossible. Similarly, we would need a “transcendent vantage point” to determine which set of “givens and releases” is best, which is not possible: we are stuck “always already” in the middle of living according to “givens” which examining or “processing” would threaten and possibly deconstruct. To function, we must oppose overly-examining our “givens” (and note that determining the difference between “overly-examining” and “examining” requires examination, problematically), as those compelled by justice must oppose the structures of society which cause there to be “outsiders.” Because we are all “always already” stuck inside “The Value Circle,” we cannot escape having to defend “givens” and having to oppose “injustice”: it is the logical and necessary outcome of the factors we require to function. And this is perhaps why “history repeats.”
To better articulate why we cannot escape living with values (as we cannot escape reading/interpretation), and why values naturally incline us against examining them, consider the following (which is indebted to Missing Axioms by Samuel Barnes):
1. We are alive.
2. We cannot live without living out values.
3. We can only justify values if we are alive.
4. We must be living out unjustified values in order to be able to justify values. Living must come before examination.
5. If we can live with unjustified values, why justify them?
6. If we consciously find out values cannot be justified (because there is no “Transcendental Grounding”), values might cease to exhibit authority over us and thus cease to function.
7. Theoretically, even if we could consciously find “Transcendental Grounding” for our values, they would just continue to work for us like they already do.
8. There is no justified reason to justify values. It is rational to be “thoughtless” and not to think about our values.
Problematic, isn’t it? This entire circumstance is what I mean when I talk about “The Value Circle,” which is to say we are “always already” using values, and once so, there is never “good and/or rational reason” to think about those values, for even if they are “the best of all possible values,” we still couldn’t realize they were “Transcendentally Ground” from this side of finitude (even if they were). Of course, if we don’t think about our values, we could fall into “the banality of evil,” but if we do think about them, we risk losing “givens” and ending up existentially overwhelmed, a state in which totalitarianism becomes appealing. Values to themselves don’t worry much about “the banality of evil” (that’s part of the self-justifying “Value Circle); after all, what does “the banality of evil” matter if society is unjust, unfree, evil, valueless, etc.? Won’t we already have “practically” fallen into a “banality of evil?” Won’t what we fear have come unto us? Why not then just “thoughtlessly” accept values? It’s the most rational option, yes? And so “The Value Circle” justifies itself, preferring to leave us vulnerable to “the banality of evil,” ways people could use values to manipulate us, and the like. A point of thinking is to think well, and we cannot think well about values. (But don’t think about it.)
We don’t need “Transcendental Justification” to live out values, so what is the “value” of thinking and trying to gain that “grounding?” Well, if social processes collapse, perhaps we will need to be “Deleuzian” and “Absolute Knowers” to handle the existential anxiety which results, and that requires an intellectual evolution. Sure, but we wouldn’t have to worry about that if everyone was “thoughtless,” and also the very act of gaining the skills to prepare for the collapse of social processes could be precisely why the social processes fall apart — it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy, and thus unjustified. After all, if everyone just stuck with their “givens” and left them alone, “social processes” would work just fine. Sure, but that would require a “banality of evil” to snuff out Pluralism and “difference” so that our “givens” were not destabilized (seeing as difference inherently causes thinking and existential reflection). Maybe, but if we stuck to our “givens,” we wouldn’t know this was immoral and something we shouldn’t do — we’d be at peace.
This is the “self-justifying” logic of “The Value Circle,” one we are all “always already” in the middle of dealing with and suffering. To themselves, “values” and “givens” can make it be the case that there is never “justified reason” to move beyond them. And this applies on the individual level just as much as it applies on the collective level: “The Value Circle” captures us everywhere we look. We simply must know we need to be “Deleuzian” and “nonrational” (for example), but how can we be sure that we’re not “culturally conditioned” to think that way? How can we be sure that us thinking such isn’t why we need to think that way? How can we be sure that our effort to solve the problem isn’t what creates the problem? God only knows.
Let’s explore another articulation of “The Value Circle”:
1. We can only justify values if we have intellectually unjustified values.
2. Intellectually unjustified values could still be valid values.
3. Even if values are “Transcendentally Justified,” we cannot know this with certainty (for “certainty” is mostly impossible). Thus, relative to us, all values are “practically groundless.”
4. We are all living perhaps valid values which are ultimately unjustifiable (“relative to us”).
5. If all values must be “groundless,” the effort to justify values is a waste of time and even dangerous if values end up deconstructed, values which we must have if we are alive (as argued by Samuel Barnes).
6. If values are not critiqued, they can be sources of “the banality of evil.”
7. To stop injustice, we must critique what is destroyed by critique and that we require to function.
8. To stop injustice, we must stop functioning.
9. If we’re not functioning, we can’t stop injustice.
10. If we’re not functioning, there’s no justice or injustice.
This is the nature of human and social life. To function, we must function in “The Value Circle,” and a reason we stay in it is precisely because we cannot say for sure that our values are bad or shouldn’t be practiced (if that was clear, deconstructing our values would be easy). To determine that, we would have to think about and “process” our values, which our values will inherently oppose. Also, the very act of “processing” our values could be why they stop functioning, which would make it seem like we were wise to “process” them, but that actually might not be the case. To tell, we’d need a “Transcendent Point,” which isn’t available to us.
All lives are organized through values, but determining if those values are “the best” organizers of our lives requires “processing” them, the act of which can deconstruct values and that values will naturally resist, values which if not “processed” could cause “the banality of evil.” Thinking manages values and helps us figure out how we should practice them, but thinking risks both us realizing that values are “practically groundless” and us not practicing them. Values organize our lives and resist management. If we do not manage them, they will “totally” work. Arguably, an advantage of a distributed social structure, say between Local, State, and Federal powers, is that values can be examined and managed on “different levels” without threatening their operation on the other levels. This doesn’t work perfectly, but families can operate according to x value while the State operates according to y, and though x doesn’t “make space for” z, y does, and so the State makes space for both x and z while families operate according to x, which excludes z, but such exclusion (due to “givenness”) is necessary for x to function. “The Value Circle” can be managed in this way while perhaps somewhat avoiding “the banality of evil,” thanks to the distribution of social powers. But as already discussed, for good and for bad, justice will oppose this structure to assure “families don’t exclude z,” leading to greater Central Power “for good.” Yes, distributed power and varying social structure can be a solution, but the solution is still “tragic,” fragile, and problematic, as is “the new kind of being”-solution suggested by the Deleuzian Dividual.
As discussed, values oppose us learning “new ways of thinking,” for if we have x values and are already living them, what value can “new ways of thinking” add other than threaten our “givens” and corresponding values? This suggests why people can dislike ideas and intellectualism (as often most vivid in religious community): thinking always entail a “destabilizing” threat. Values thus can oppose thinking, in a way, and yet values are also ultimately “groundless” (at least relative to us), a reality that we need “new thinking” to handle. This would suggest that values motivate us to act in a way that doesn’t prepare us to face the reality of (“groundless”) values. We need to become “Absolute Knowers” to live without “ground,” and yet “groundless values” would have us not become “Absolute Knowers.” Values would have us never be able to face their truth, a truth we perhaps don’t want to face. Hard to say.
To hide their “groundlessness,” values fight and resist process (and do note that “thinking” is a kind of “processing”), and yet a world without process will be authoritarian and/or anarchist, as must be a world without values. To be without process is to be in trouble, as is being without values, and yet values and process conflict. To figure out how to keep them from conflicting, we need to think, but values resist thinking too, both because we should be enacting values, not thinking about them, and because thinking could unveil their “groundlessness” (even if the values are “right” and best). Values will happily train us not to think about them, to treat them as “givens,” but that means we can’t process the values, and at that point they will become oppressive and authoritarian. And this whole paradoxical situation requires “a new way of thinking” (Deleuzian, “Absolute Knowing”) to handle, and that too is something values will train us not to gain. But if we don’t, “The Conflict of Society” will be difficult for us to handle.
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