The adequate or inadequate response of a person to the call of objective values. The adequate value-response to the being of the person is affirmation and love. The value-response is a archphenomenon — it cannot be reduced to causal reactions, biological drives, or social conventions (cf. Bexten 2017, pp. 215—225).
Hildebrand disclosed the value-response as the central category of ethics. The person does not stand indifferently before values but is called to respond to the objective value of the being. This response is neither a mere feeling nor an arbitrary stance, but a personal act that is measured against the objective order of values. The adequate value-response corresponds to the value to which it responds. The inadequate value-response fails to meet the value. Indifference toward the suffering of another is an inadequate value-response to that person’s personhood.
The personalistic norm — “The human person is to be affirmed and loved for its own sake” — formulates the adequate value-response to the ontological dignity of the person. Reverence is the most fundamental value-response and the precondition of all other adequate value-responses: only one who stands reverently before the being can grasp its value adequately.
Affectivity is the organ through which the person grasps values and responds to them. The intentional feeling — reverence, joy, sorrow, contrition — is the affective form of the value-response. The adequate value-response perfects the person (Property: perfects). Whoever responds adequately to the good becomes better themselves. The inadequate value-response, by contrast, degrades the person (Property: degrades). Whoever disregards the good or affirms evil fails their personal vocation.
The adequate value-response that has become habitual is virtue; the inadequate value-response that has become habitual is vice. The third dimension of personhood — qualitatively perfected or failed existence — is realized precisely in the value-response.
The cognition of the objective value precedes the value-response without determining it: the person recognizes the value and is free to respond to it adequately or inadequately. This freedom of the value-response grounds the responsibility of the person.
Ontological classification:
- Superordinate concept: archphenomenon
- Types: Adequate value-response, Inadequate value-response
- Properties: perfects, degrades
Chapter assignment: Chapter 4: Personhood, Chapter 5: Oblivion of the Person
Sources: Generated by querying the Personhood ontology.
Further sources:
- Hildebrand, Dietrich von (1973): Ethik. In: Gesammelte Werke, vol. II. Regensburg: Habbel. (German) (Value-response as the central category of ethics)
- Scheler, Max (1913/1916): Der Formalismus in der Ethik und die materiale Wertethik. Halle: Niemeyer. (German) (Material order of values and the rank-order of values)