Critique of Axiological Reason: Why the Idea of Values has Achieved the Totality in Modern Culture

Abstract

The article deals with the question of applicability limits of the Value Theory in cultural studies and validity limits of contemporary value-based consciousness. This limit is set by differentiating between the Good and the Value; the difference was clear to ancient Greek and medieval philosophers, and the necessity of acknowledging which is returning to the philosophy today. The Good exists independently, it is a source of life and, therefore, supposes gratitude; values and evaluation come into question when “there is choice and its declination, when it is up to us to choose between action and inaction”. But the fact is that collective consciousness is now dominated by axiological rationality. Gnoseologically, the characteristic of this rationality is the substitution of the classical idea of truth by evaluation. Contemporary philosophy sees the question of how these or those Values emerge as a field of the critical analysis. No prominent school of philosophical thought places critical importance on Values, but Values are regarded as derivatives from various foundations: interests of a social class or a group, structures of the unconscious, language or communication logic, the nature of human existence, the sense of being. Consequently, axiological reason is seen as mythologically “naive”, which is also a reverse side and a victim of cynical reason. Theories, that attempt to define Values as foundations of the culture, reflect naivety of collective consciousness. Their major theoretical drawback is of the same nature: they oversee the difference between the Value and the Good. The author analyzes the essence of culture from the hermeneutical point of view, according to which culture is based on comprehension of meanings constituted by language, and Values are just what meanings manifest themselves through.