The Humanistic Ethics of Rollo May

Abstract

This article examines the essential role that Rollo May ascribes to values in giving people ("the ethical animal") their "sense of being" or ontology. Values, he argues, result from a courageous process of commitment to self-chosen centers of valuation. This process requires self-consciousness, responsibility, confrontation with anxiety, and presupposes freedom. Although the product of subjective valuation, values are embedded in the collective levels of human civilization and symbolically represented in myths.