Sy, Florge Paulo January 18, 2018

PHIL526 (Environmental Philosophy)

Midterm Examination

What is the Value of the Environment?

Introduction

The phrase “the value of” entails a possession of value and makes that which possesses
value valuable. But what does it mean for something to be valuable? What is value? With regard
to the question at hand, can something so open-ended such as the environment possess value?
What, even, is the environment, and what legitimizes its open-endedness to be able to possess
value? I will argue that things, indeed, do have value but are not intrinsically valuable; rather,
they attain their value extrinsically by means of “ascription.” And that which constitutes the
open-endedness of the environment makes possible, therefore, for the environment itself to
possess value.

Value

In its contemporary usage, the term value is most often interchangeably used with good.
However, according to Austin Fagothey, “value stresses the subjective and relative aspect of the
good over its objective and absolute character.”1 Thus, since value leans more toward how it is
understood subjectively, the object that possesses value cannot be intrinsically valuable because
it is a matter of how the subject comports itself toward the object and consider it as valuable such
that “a thing can hardly have value unless it is somehow good,”2 i.e., good for something. This is
already seen in the etymology of value, which comes from the Latin valere or “to be of worth.”3
Worthiness cannot be intrinsically valuable because to be worthy of something requires an
object’s criteria of worthiness to be recognized and established by an outsider. An example of
this attainment of worth is G.W.F. Hegel’s antinomy between the master and the slave in which
there are two subjects that are striving to gain the recognition of true freedom by becoming the
master over the other and, thus, gaining his worth:

This antinomy, like all antinomies, is based on formal thinking, which fixes upon
and asserts the two moments of an Idea in separation from each other, so that both
are lacking in truth and do not conform to Idea. The free spirit consists precisely

1
Austin Fagothey, Right and Reason: Ethics in Theory and Practice (Charlotte: TAN Books, 1959), 34.
2
Ibid. 34
3
Walter W. Skeat, An Etymological Dictionary of the English Language (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1929),
679.
 in not having its being as mere concept or in itself, but in overcoming [aufheben]
this formal phase of its being and hence also its immediate natural existence, and
in giving itself an existence which is purely its own and free.4

An object, therefore, remains unrecognized and invaluable if it is only in-itself because

its worth can only be realized extrinsically such that its worthiness for-itself is determined by an
external force. Worthiness or value, therefore, is always value for-itself or “value that is for
something” and not value in-itself or “value that is in something.” In other words, for an object to
be valuable, its value must always be ascribed externally. But if being valuable means being
externally ascribed its value, what is this value itself? As mentioned above, for something to be
valuable, it must be good for something. In its degrees, Fagothey states that goodness can be
useful as a means for attaining some further good; it can also be pleasant for the sake of
satisfaction or enjoyment; or it can be befitting for the perfection of oneself.5 But because things
are “for-something,” their value is always dependent on that which demands their worth. Thus,
value, is ultimately redirected “for-something-for-itself.” For example, conventionally, we
consider a pencil to have a value in itself, which is for writing. However, prior to any conception
of writing, one can ascribe a different value to a pencil such as for stabbing and, thus, is a
satisfaction for me. And this is possible precisely because if an object is, ontologically, for-
something, then it can be ascribed a value that can correspond to its utmost potential to be other
than how it is conventionally conceived.

Value, therefore, is always for-something and is determined by its ascription from whom
the value is for. Thus, the value of an object is always understood subjectively because it is we
who interpret the worth and ascribe value to an object. Thus, if there is a dichotomy between the
subject and the object, can the subject truly know the object’s value that is in-itself? In this
regard, we can, for the most part, only ascribe value toward the object but never know whether or
not they are truly valuable in-themselves. Value, therefore, in Immanuel Kant’s terminology, is
“noumenal;”6 and it can only be so because an object, in the absence of its value, can only be
presupposed with value. Thus, an object that is in-itself can only have value when it is for-itself
through an external recognition and ascription. The most concrete example of value-ascription is
labor, which, for Karl Marx, is the “value-creating substance”7 because it is the external force
that inputs the measurement by which the value of an object is determined. It is precisely this
understanding of value-ascription that set the tone of postmodernity pioneered by Friedrich

4
G.W.F. Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, trans. H.B. Nisbet (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2003), 87.

5
Austin Fagothey, Right and Reason: Ethics in Theory and Practice, 34.
6
Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp Smith (Houndmills: Macmillan Education
Ltd., 1929), 267.
7
Karl Marx, Capital Vol. I, trans. Samuel Moore (Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Edition Limited, 2013), 20.
Nietzsche in his notion of “revaluation of values”8 because he rejects the notion of any
predetermined value, for it is the human being—the subject-external—that ascribes value to the
object.

The Environment

Now that we addressed a brief understanding of value that is “for-something-for-itself,”

we can now turn to the other half of the question, which is the environment. Etymologically, the
term environment comes from the French environner, which means “to inviron, encompasse.”9
Environner, in turn, comes from the Latin en, which means “in,” and virer, which means “to
veer, turn around.”10 The environment, therefore, as used today, means that which surrounds us.
But that which surrounds us remains open-ended, for we cannot determine the number of things
that actually do surround us at a certain moment. As Martin Heidegger states: “the environment
is as structure which even biology as a positive science can never find and can never define, but
must presuppose and constantly employ.”11 The environment, then, is not just what is physically
present in our surroundings. Rather, it is an a priori structure that contains a “spatial character,”12
which serves as the possibility of encounter with those that are also within its spatiality; hence,
Heidegger affirms this in saying that “in the environment certain entities become accessible
which are always ready-to-hand”13 that has the potential “for which it is usable.”14

This usability that Heidegger speaks of, however, pertains not merely using that which is
ready-to-hand as a means to an end. The usability is what Heidegger calls a “towards-which”15
an object is used and produced; in other words, it is “a using of something for something.”16
Usability, then, entails not only using something for something else, but also for itself. Thus, the
environment is the spatial totality that surrounds us, which permits an encounter and access to
the usability of entities.

8
Friedrich Nietzsche, “The Antichrist,” in The Portable Nietzsche, ed. Walter Kaufmann (New York:
Penguin Group, 1988), 568.
9
Skeat, An Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, 192.
10
Ibid., 681
11
Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (Oxford: Blackwell
Publishers Ltd., 2001), 84.
12
Ibid., 94
13
Ibid., 100
14
Ibid., 99
15
Ibid. 99
16
Ibid., 100
The Value of the Environment

With these brief understanding of value and the environment, we can now fully attend to
the question at hand: What is the value of the environment? Using the formulated meaning of the
terms, we can rephrase the question as follows: What are entities for? Because value means “for-
something-for-itself,” the entities that are constituted in the environment must have a purpose for
which it exists. Entities exist for what?

As established above, since the value of an object is subjectively and, thus, relatively
ascribed, then there can be no definite or universal value of the environment. Firstly, it is because
value is subjectively “for-something-for-itself;” and, secondly, even if we suppose that value is
objective, one cannot just place any objective value in the environment because the environment
is open-ended and is structured in the plurality of entities that it constitutes. The environment,
then, can only be subjectively and relatively valuable and must certainly be so, for the entities
that are accessible in the environment are accessible as ready-to-hand by default; it is, at first,
without value and purpose unless they are used—and they do have the potential to be used. Thus,
an object can only have value and purpose once we already use it because, in this usage, we
ascribe “for-which” it must serve. In other words, to use the words of Jean-Paul Sartre,
“existence precedes essence.”17

There is, then, no definite value of the environment in itself unless we ascribe value to the
entities that it constitutes. By ascribing value to these entities, they must, then, be “for-
something-for-itself;” and in doing so, we actualize its potential to be used. The value we ascribe
to the environment is, therefore, no other than usability, for if the environment is open-ended,
then it demands to have an open-ended value as well. Like what is mentioned above, a pencil, an
entity within the environment, is for-something other than how it is conventionally used because
it has the potential to be ascribed a different value, which makes it for-something-else; hence,
usability as a value is subjective and relative because it boils down to “what we use something
for.” Thus, the environment is worth using its usability—not necessarily in the sense of using it
merely as means to some end; rather, in ascribing a particular usability to an entity in the
environment, it is, ontologically and indefinitely, always “for-something.”

Conclusion

Having said that the value of the environment is its usability for-something, does it
present implications? Certainly so, it does, on an ethical standpoint. Because of its indefiniteness,
the possibility of placing a subjective value of using something for-something other than it is
presents a danger whether what we use an object for is right or wrong. But precisely that it does
present this danger because value-ascription remains subjective and relative. If it remains so,
how are we, at all, able to establish normativity? This question can be addressed by a matter of

17
Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism is a Humanism, trans. Carol Macomber (London: Yale University Press,
2007), 20.
convention. Because things can be used subjectively, it is not always the case that they are used
each and every single time differently. There are a set number of people who use a certain thing
similarly. This is what makes it relative because it is ingrained in their culture or shared
experience; hence, it is evident at present that there still exists a tension between cultures. It is
only ever ideal to create an objective culture, for people always live according to the context—
the time and place—they exist in. However, this does not permit us to use something at the
expense of another for reasons that are culturally the same; for example, murder is globally
condemned to be “wrong.”

This gives us a psychological imperative that, despite the nihilism or the indifference that
exists in ascribing value to things, we always choose to use something for-something not in a
pessimistic mindset that would be detrimental not only to the self, but also to others; rather, in an
optimistic one because. With the environment’s open-ended possibilities, we are always given
the choice either to use it rightly or wrongly. Ashley Woodward, who writes on Nietzsche, gives
us two sides to this nihilistic view of the world: “passive nihilism,”18 which accepts the total
meaninglessness of the world, or “active nihilism,”19 which seeks to reevaluate and destroy
traditional values in order to ascribe new ones. And I believe that value-ascription itself should
correspond to the latter for it to act according to its open-ended character.

18
Ashley Woodward, “Nihilism and the Postmodern in Vattimo’s Nietzsche,” Minerva – An Internet
Journal of Philosophy, no. 6 (November 2002): 55 [article online]; available from
http://www.minerva.mic.ul.ie/vol6/nihilism.PDF; 12 December 2016.

19
Ibid. 55
References

Fagothey, Austin. Right and Reason: Ethics in Theory and Practice. Charlotte: TAN Books,
1959.
Hegel, G.W.F. Elements of the Philosophy of Right. Translated by H.B. Nisbet. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2003.
Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. Translated by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson.
Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd., 2001.
Marx, Karl. Capital Vol. I. Translated by Samuel Moore. Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Edition
Limited, 2013.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. “The Antichrist.” In The Portable Nietzsche. Edited by Walter Kaufmann.
New York: Penguin Group, 1988.
Sartre, Jean-Paul. Existentialism is a Humanism. Translated by Carol Macomber. London: Yale
University Press, 2007.
Skeat, Walter W. An Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1929.
Woodward, Ashley. “Nihilism and the Postmodern in Vattimo’s Nietzsche.” Minerva – An
Internet Journal of Philosophy, no. 6 (November 2002): 51-67. Article online. Available
from http://www.minerva.mic.ul.ie/vol6/nihilism.PDF, 62. 12 December 2016.