There are many dimensions to our sense of value. We have it for the physical objects we possess and desire to have, it’s in our self-esteem, our empathy, how we choose to live our lives and how we treat others. It is intrinsic to our quality of life. It’s the blend of different values that form our standards of behavior. The many different types of value are a multiplex that require balance and harmony. Without values, knowledge would be in vain.
In philosophy, axiology is the study of the nature of values. Investigations include examining the principles that support values as well as the judgements that come from them. Where epistemology is the concern of why a person thinks they know what they know, axiology is the concern of why a person has the values they have. In axiology it’s common practice to assess a researcher’s own values at every stage of their research process, because a person’s values will affect why and how they conduct their research as well as how they interpret the findings. While axiology is important in all fields of the academic, professional and personal world, it’s foundational in the branches of ethics and aesthetics.
Ethics is the philosophy that deals with moral principles. There are three major studies within ethics; meta-ethics, normative ethics and applied ethics. While these three studies have relations that form ethics as a whole, there are also many different theories within them and sometimes they conflict with each other.
Meta-ethics is the study of the fundamental properties of good and bad. Main concerns focus on the meaning of a person’s moral views and how to determine true values. Normative ethics is the study of right and wrong in a person’s actions. Some theories that can apply to normative ethics are virtue, teleological and deontological. Virtue ethics focus on the morality inherent in a person’s character. Teleological ethics base right and wrong on the consequences of actions. Deontological ethics use predefined sets of rules and if actions follow policy it’s right and if they don’t, it’s wrong, and consequences in this case don’t matter. Applied ethics are the practical application of moral considerations in real-world situations. Some examples are decisions that effect the environment, health care, education, law, professions and technologies.
Aesthetics are subjective and sensori-emotional values. These sentiments have the capacity to elicit pleasure. It refers to a quality in things like art work, music, movies, poetry, literature, architecture and landscapes. Sometimes people can feel a unity with the medium that is creating the aesthetic pleasure. When it happens through culture it can build a sense of social identity. The philosophy of aesthetics is the study of the properties, appreciation and over all nature of art, beauty, creativity, inventiveness and the emotional experiences involved.
In aesthetics, an axiological approach is to pursue answers to questions like, why do some people have a sense of beauty in things while others don’t and what are people actually feeling and why? Other studies look into the processes of an artist’s imagination, creation and performance. Aesthetic ethics is the idea that acceptable moral behavior should be beautiful and attractive.
Applying axiology is another requirement on this trip, because it will keep us morally in check while we are working towards answers and it will help us apply the knowledge properly when it is obtained.
“Let us realize the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”
Martin Luther King Jr.