Dimensions of Value and the Aims of Social Inquiry

Abstract

The articles in this issue of the American Behavioral Scientist present a critique of mainstream social science and outline an alternative hermeneutic or interpretive approach to human science inquiry. This hermeneutic view (a) stresses that the cultural embeddedness of all human endeavors, including social science, prevents us from ever obtaining a strictly objective or value-neutral account of human behavior. It also (b) claims that social inquiry can lead to a better understanding of the good life or what ends are worth striving for by humans. But why does rejecting objectivity not undermine any claim to a better understanding of what is truly good or worthwhile? This article explores how both cultural or historical embeddedness and claims to understanding the good might be harmonized within a conception of four broad dimensions of human values or valuing: elementary value experiences, purposive human activity, pursuit of the excellence of various forms of life, and the human sense of what is worthy from every point of view. A number of implications of this framework for human science inquiry are discussed.