Axiology

History of Axiology

The philosophical study of values dates back to the 6th and 5th centuries BCE. In the democracy developed in Athens, Greece, people sought to acquire knowledge for the purpose of building a successful life. Philosophers recognized that the laws and morality of human society differ from country to country and across historical periods. This awareness led the Sophists to take a relativistic, skeptical position on values; they held that one's values can change rapidly without consistency across situations and circumstances. In contrast, Socrates sought to save Athens from the social disorder purportedly created by Sophists by establishing absolute, universal virtues. Socrates taught that there is an important connection between virtue and knowledge. He held that virtue is an attitude of seeking knowledge and that knowledge is necessary for virtuous conduct. Socrates' student Plato asserted that there is an unchangeable world of essence behind the changing world of phenomena. Plato identified four virtues—wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice—as characteristics that everyone in the polis should develop. During the Hellenistic-Roman period, the fall of the city-state (polis) rendered useless Greek theories of value that were centered on the state. Philosophers began to emphasize individualistic ways of living under increasingly unstable social conditions. Individuals became preoccupied with seeking personal safety and peace of mind. During this time, cosmopolitanism, transcending the bounds of nationality, was enhanced. The Stoic, the Epicurean, and the Skeptic schools of thought dominated this era. The philosophy of the Hellenistic-Roman period culminated in Neoplatonism, a pagan philosophy, which greatly shaped the Christian philosophy that prominently emerged in the medieval period.

During medieval times, Thomas Aquinas argued for the division of religious and natural virtues. He identified as religious virtues the three primary virtues of Christianity—faith, hope, and love. For Aquinas, natural virtues were the four primary virtues of Greek philosophy drawn from Plato—wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice. In the modern period, views of value can be seen as extensions or transformations of both Greek philosophy and Christian virtues. Philosophers began to distinguish judgments of fact from judgments of value. The task of natural science was to provide judgments of fact (objective propositions). The task of philosophy was to address judgments of value (propositions in which a subjective appraisal of a fact is made). Following that shift, fact and value became recognized as separate issues. The 20th century saw the rise of pragmatism. The significance of value theory was partially eclipsed with the rise of evolutionary psychology, the dominance of rationalism, advancing skepticism about the place of values in the world, and changes in the modern view of morality. Values came to be regarded as tools for the effective processing of ideas and things. The intellectual division between natural science and philosophy parallels separations that emerged in the study of ontology and epistemology—all of which are interconnected in the development of communication theory.

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