‘What is Good? What is Bad? The Value of All Values across Time, Place and Theories’ by John McMurtry, Philosophy and World Problems, Volume I-III, UNESCO in partnership with Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems: Oxford, 2004-11.
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Preface
When the UNESCO-EOLSS Secretariat asked me in 2004 to organize a Philosophy Theme for the Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems, I accepted with an ultimate commitment. We were united in our shared concern for the future of life on the planet, and the world itself needed what philosophy can offer – critical examination of first principles and underlying value assumptions at a system level. The cumulative degradation and collapse of the globe’s life-carrying capacities was by then undeniable to thoughtful people, and I had already published much research on the unexamined value system regulating the globe. With the sciences and economics misleadingly claiming value neutrality, and philosophy and the humanities not engaging the value-system problem at a planetary level, I sought to meet a seemingly impossible task of explaining world philosophy across specialties and areas while coming to grips with the emergent world crisis. Forging explanatory connection between ruling thought systems and the deep-structural problems of civilization had long been central to my research, and so I understood this invitation as a call to enlist the deepest and most comprehensive resources of philosophical analysis to explain philosophy across schools, to lay bare the fatally misguided assumptions and their consequences pressing in upon us, and to spell out a life-coherent way of reason to move forward. “How to live” has been philosophy’s ultimate question since the ancients and “what is good and true”, or not, has been its unifying quest. Common problem and method of understanding it whole were joined by this project.
Organization of the Chapters
The work found in this publication has two major ‘volumes’ of explanatory analysis. The first is my Theme Essay on Philosophy and World Problems which is written in a cumulatively building explanation to fulfill the project in one unified volume. Its 12 chapters are set out in full in the Table of Contents ahead. Here I shall only summarize their research and findings in a very general way. Analysis begins from our current human condition with an anatomy of the global crisis in terms of opposed and unexamined value systems (Chapter 1). The next chapters then critically analyze and move beyond the immutable idea of the good as happiness and release from pain (Chapter 2) to critically excavate other general theories of value across classic and leading contemporary forms (Chapters 3, 4 and 5). The self-evident basis of all that human beings truly value is spelled out from the “primary axiom of value” with the “ultimate value fields of thought, felt being and action” explained and illustrated across problems and domains (Chapters 6, 7 and 8). The human subject and the manifold value systems constructed across cultures are then explained as the rules by which individuals and societies live whose validity or invalidity, justice or injustice can be objectively determined by life-value analysis in theory and practice alike (Chapters 9, 10 and 11). Rational choice and scientific method across contemporary theories are then critiqued in light of the life-coherence principle as the missing imperative of human reason and of the global system itself (Chapter 12).
The second ‘volume’ of original essays is by experts who have been selected to cover all the life-relevant fields of contemporary philosophical inquiry. Their essays cover three meta areas of philosophy, with each meta area consisting of a set of four or five essays. This organizing framework complements the all-inclusive Theme Essay by providing specialist accounts of major topic fields by philosophers with internationally recognized capacities of research in these fields. The three meta areas are: (1) Onto-Ethical Philosophy from the pre-Socratics to the present with overviews from a life-grounded standpoint covering virtually every known figure and school of philosophy up to contemporary environmental theory; (2) Modes of Reason consisting of systematic coverages of logic, science, natural language argument, and market rationality; (3) Philosophy and Society investigating competing historical and contemporary views of human nature, democracy, and human rights.
Conclusions
Philosophy resists conclusions because its method across disagreements – like modern science to which it gives rise – always leaves issues open to counter-argument and furtherance of understanding. This is how philosophy differs from religious, sectarian and other dogmas and closed systems of thinking. Yet agreement across the research contributing to this work is implicit or explicit on one meta principle: whatever is incoherent with organic, social and ecological life requirements through time is false, and evil to the extent of its reduction and destruction of life fields and support systems.
Acknowledgments
Members of the UNESCO-EOLSS Secretariat patiently supported and counseled on this complex “magnum opus” over six years. My former PhD students and now distinguished professors, Jeffery Noonan and Giorgio Baruchello, have been close and outstanding co-researchers and explainers of life-ground philosophy and the method of life-value analysis across philosophy’s domains. James Robert Brown, Alex Michalos, and (as joint authors) Tony Blair and Ralph Johnson have written definitive overview texts for the project as masters in their fields. Kai Nielsen has explained why he thinks that received moral philosophy in which he is a noted leader has been impoverished in facing the world’s problems. Jerry (G.A) Cohen contributed his renowned essay on non-market reason and community before his tragic passing. My longtime partner Jennifer Sumner has been an invaluable social-science researcher into the life-ground and the civil commons and has provided all-sided life support to the project.
John McMurtry,
Editor
PHILOSOPHY AND WORLD PROBLEMS – Vol . I-II –What Is Good? What Is Bad? -The Value Of All Values Through Time, Place And Theories – John McMurtry
©Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems (EOLSS)
Philosophy And World Problems
WHAT IS GOOD? WHAT IS BAD? – THE VALUE OF ALL VALUES THROUGH TIME, PLACE AND THEORIES
John McMurtry
University of Guelph,Guelph NIG 2W1, Canada
Keywords: abortion, abstraction (problem of), action (field of), addiction, aesthetic value, animal rights, anti-foundationalism, antinomies, Aristotle, art, atomic method, axiology, beauty (natural), biodiversity, Brentano, Buddhism, civil commons, civilization, class, collective agency/responsibility, collective goods, collective life unconscious, competition (types), the common life interest, concept thought, consensus (versus life standards), consumer choice theory, crucifixion, death, decision theory, deontology/duty ethics, desires, democracy, determinism, development (types), dualities, ecogenocide, ecology, egocentric predicament, either-or reduction, élan vital, emotions (evaluation of), environment, evil, ethical idealism, evolution (types), evolutionary ethics, excellence, externalist fallacy, felt side of being, fields of life, first people beliefs, fitness to survive, freedom, friendship, game theory, genes, globalization, good (criterion of), God, growth (concepts of), Habermas, happiness, heroic quest, human powers, human value identity, inclusivity principle, inner life value, integrity, internal and external goods, invisible prison, justice, Kant, life sequence of value, life-ground ethics, life support systems, linguistic idealism, Lao Tzu, Logos, love (evaluating), Marcuse, Marx, measures (life value and money value), mechanical reduction, meta-ethics, money sequence of value, MacIntyre, military institution, Moore, moral philosophy, motivation, naturalistic fallacy, needs (criterion and types), Nietzsche, objective values, Olympics, pain (good and bad), Perry, poetry, postmodernism, practices (criterion and evaluation), predatory cycle, poetry model, preference ranking, primary axiom of value, prisoner’s dilemma, proceduralism, Rawls, rationality (principles of), relativism, respect for life, rules and principles, ruling value syntax, scientific method, sacrifice paradigm, second-order shift, self-maximization, self-realization, species, spiritual philosophies, sport, stories, system evil, Taoism, technology, theories (evaluation of), thought value, torture, transcendental deduction, truth (criterion of), unconscious, unifying field theory, universal life goods, utilitarianism, validity, validators, value compossibility, value neutrality, value regulators, value subject, value syntax, value-system, virtue ethics, Wang Yang-Ming, war, yoga, zen.
Contents
1. The Global Crisis of Values
2. The Transcultural Idea: Good as Happiness and Bad as Pain
3. Moral Philosophy in Question
4. Natural Good and Evil: Beyond Fitness to Survive
5. Traditions as Moral Anchor in an Age of Criterionless Relativism
6. The Primary Axiom and the Life-Value Compass
7. Good and Evil Within: Opening the Terra Incognita of the Felt Side of Being
8. The Value Field of Action: Reconciling Humanity and the Beast
9. The Lost Social Subject: Evaluating the Rules by Which We Live
10. Deep Principles of Justice Grounding In Life-Value Meaning
11. The Unseen Global War of Rights Systems and Its Principles of Resolution
13. Human Identity and the Meaning of Life
(Note: This is a comprehensive sequence of essays in which each takes the form of a chapter)
Summary
Values, what is of worth or not, and why, define the human species across differences, domains and ways of life. They construct the meaning of life. The world crisis of life support systems which humanity now faces is explained as a predictable consequence of the long failure of theory and policy to ground in values which enable human life and life conditions – even as the air, soil and water degrade, climates and oceans destabilize, a rising half of the world is destitute, public sectors and services are privatized for profit, and species become extinct at a spasm rate. This analysis step-by-step excavates the core defining principles of the major theories of value across philosophical traditions, and explains why their answers to the questions “what is good, what is bad?” fail to provide any coherently adequate ground of worth. In contrast to known values and value-systems, an underlying “value of all values” is systematically explained and reconnected to lived values and life support systems as the lost life-ground of all human values through place and time.
Biographical Sketch
John McMurtry is a Professor of Philosophy and University Professor Emeritus at the University of Guelph, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He earned his B.A. and M.A. at the University of Toronto, and his PhD at the University of London. His books and articles have been widely published internationally, and are concerned with unexamined and ultimately regulating principles of reality and value.
Volume III
Western Philosophy and the Life-Ground
– G. Baruchello, University of Akureyri, Iceland
Life Responsibility versus Mechanical Reductionism: Western World-Views of Nature from Pantheism to Positivism
– Richard Allen, Formerly of the University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad
– Giorgio Baruchello, Faculty of Law and Social Sciences, University of Akureyri, Iceland
The Embodied Good Life: From Aristotle To Life-Ground Ethics
– Jeff Noonan, Department of Philosophy, Windsor University, Canada
Visions Of Universal Identity In World Religions: From Life-Incoherent To Life-Grounded “Spirituality”
– John McMurtry, University of Guelph,Guelph NIG 2W1, Canada
Logic, Philosophy Of Science And The Quality Of Life
– Alex C. Michalos, University of Northern British Columbia
Paradigm Wars: Competing Models Of Understanding
– James Robert Brown, Department of Philosophy, University Canada
The Logic Of Natural Language
– J. Anthony Blair and Ralph H. Johnson,Centr and Rhetoric, University of Windsor, Windsor, ON, Canada
Why Not Socialism?
– G. A. Cohen, All Souls College, Oxford, UK
Philosophy, Human Nature, And Society
– Jeff Noonan, Department of Philosophy, University of Windsor, Windsor, Ontario, Canada
Human Nature From A Life-Grounded Perspective
– Jeff Noonan, Department of Philosophy, University of Windsor, Windsor, Ontario, Canada
Life-Blind Liberalism And Life Grounded Democracy
– Jeff Noonan, Department of Philosophy, University of Windsor, Windsor, Ontario, Canada
Environmental Philosophy And Its Onto-Ethical Problems: Ancient, Medieval And Contemporary World-Views
– Philip Rose, Department of Philosophy, University of Windsor, Canada
– Jeff Noonan, Department of Philosophy, University of Windsor, Canada
Human Rights And Global Life-Support Systems
– Jeffrey Noonan, Department of Philosophy, University of Windsor, Canada
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