This leads Locke to conclude that the primary normative character of value norms is best sought in their functional role as stereotypes of feeling attitudes and as habitual impulses toward certain choices of actions. This would make them culturally specific, as well as temporally and geographically contingent as values can only be habituated and function with any degree of reliability in specific contexts.
Moreover, as in the case of apprehending value-modes, the functionality of a given value is to be discovered experientially; rather than, postulated a priori. Values, then, would only become absolutes—should they become absolute at all—because reason and judgment secondarily re-enforce them as such. In their immediate character and quality values are affective, but they are further mediated by reason and judgment.
Value predication depends on reason and judgment; but the predicates themselves are determined by the modal quality of the value. So, the judgment that an object is beautiful or ugly involves reason and judgment, but that the object is experienced as aesthetic depends on its affective apprehension; its being experienced aesthetically.
Moreover, a functional account of value has the theoretical advantages of being able to account for parallels between values, value interchangeability, and transvaluation.
It is perhaps in taking a functional view of values and their associated imperatives where Locke's theory of value is most pragmatic. A functional view of values emphasizes the fact that values are an essential feature of our lived-experiences. At its most basic level value functionality aims to provide a way of understanding how particular values operate as coordinating mechanisms for individual and collective action. Some values have a specific social role; a societal aim or goal that they have been modified and adapted over time to help achieve or maintain.
Such values are often codified in the customs and traditions of a culture and can sometimes remain ritualized long after their functional role is obsolete. The importance and usefulness of a functional view of values in Locke's social and political philosophy is further explored in section 3. The feeling-quality of a given value necessarily establishes the mode of valuation, i.
However, there is no necessary connection between a given object that serves as the content of a value and any particular emotional response to that object. One and the same object may affect the same person differently at different times, or may at the same time elicit from multiple people different emotional reactions. Transvaluation, then is most simply valuing something in a different way, which requires, at first, having an atypical emotional association with the object of value.
There are multifarious potential causes of such transformations in one's affective responses to an object, and those causes can be immediate or unfold over time. Locke treats transvaluation as inevitable; values are dependent upon social and cultural forces that are always in a state of flux and subject to myriad transformative influences at any given time, hence static values are implausible. Value transformation can take place on the individual level or on the level of widespread social or cultural values.
Locke's hope is that this analysis will bring us closer to a practical understanding of value and the mechanism of valuation, which he hopes will bring us closer to understanding the grounds for both agreements among values and value conflict. Locke offers a schematization of four traditional values—religious, moral, logical and aesthetic—to demonstrate how his theory classifies values into types according to their characteristic feeling-quality see the table below VI The schema also charts the value-predicates and the positive and negative poles associated with each value-type type of value.
Finally, the schema further divides each value according to its directionality; that is, whether the value is primarily introverted, functioning inwardly on the individual subject, or is extroverted, functioning externally in a social context. Locke contends that his position has certain advantages over more logical theories of value. In particular, it is better able to explain certain value phenomena that are troubling for the latter type of theories.
Phenomena such as transvaluation, value merging, and value conflict are able to be explained in terms of the basic doctrine that the mode of valuation is determined by the character of a subject's affective response in a value context.
Locke claims that logical theories of value have historically had difficulty accounting for phenomena such as the aesthetic appraisal of a logical or mathematical proof; moral commitment to aesthetic production; or aesthetic appreciation of religious practice. In particular, logical theories have struggled to make sense of assigning predicates from one value-type to objects that are traditionally the content of a different value-type as when a proof in logic is deemed beautiful or ugly.
Traditional theories treat such value predication as merely metaphorical or analogical. Locke explains value conflict in terms of a more fundamental psychological incompatibility. Not only does the value-feeling determine the qualitative character of a given value, it also establishes broader categories of value by grouping values according to their common affective quality. Value attitudes can be psychologically incompatible, and where they are Locke contends that a hierarchical ranking of values will not resolve the incompatibility.
In fact, he suggests that people resolve the incommensurability of their various value attitudes by shifting from one mode of valuation to another. This is why a functional account of values that determines the various value-modes on the basis of underlying psychological states is desirable.
Such a theory is better able to achieve a reflective equilibrium with our actual value practices. All values have associated with them a set of imperatives.
Locke does not have a great deal to say about how imperatives are formed. Presumably, imperatives are determined, at least in part, by the qualitative character of the value in question. People begin by forming a value-attitude based on one's initial affective response to the object of valuation. As a mediating form of experience a value supplies motivational drives toward acting and refraining from acting in certain ways. Values provide normative direction not only for cognition and psychological drives, but also for action.
Imperatives are partially in place as soon as the affective quality of the value is apprehended. Locke's philosophical worldview is pervaded by a concern for diversity. Locke takes pluralism in all its form—religious, cultural, value etc. His primary focus then becomes one of understanding the multiplicity of ways in which peoples meet, and providing some normative guidance concerning how best to act when they do. Values organize, coordinate, mediate and direct experience.
In so doing, they serve both a valuable epistemic as well as existential function. Values direct and guide our activity, but more than that they color the nature of our encounters with other persons, and frequently function as a source of conflict between individual persons and groups of human beings.
This is a fundamental insight of Locke's philosophy of value as it is applied to social theory. Locke's presentation of his pluralist position proceeds as a response to three obstacles or barriers to pluralism: absolutism, counter uniformitarianism, and arbitrary dogmatism. If individual valuers or value groups are able to avoid these three pitfalls, then either may possibly develop a pluralistic value orientation. The first barrier to pluralism is absolutism.
Values and their associated imperatives are absolute when they are thought to apply to all human beings, at all times irrespective of social or historical conditions. This is because absolutist conceptions of values are derived from, and ultimately justified by something other than the lived-experiences of human beings, be it God, or human rationality. Whereas pluralism is intended to accommodate a wide array of contending values, absolutism countenances one, and only one set of values universally applicable to all human beings.
These newer forms of absolutism, Locke claimed, are the products of older ones. When values are held to be absolute there often results a tendency to discount the legitimacy of rival values. Pluralism avoids conceiving of values in absolutist terms. Setting various value conceptions on equal footing is the aim of Locke's pluralism. Uniformitarianism, the second obstacle to pluralism, is the view that values ought to be uniform within a given community or group.
The experiences of members of a given group are filtered through the same forms of mediation to produce value uniformity. Values are ascribed a single form for all members of a group; rather than allowing for a multiplicity of mediated experiences.
Value uniformity can be achieved violently, coercively or peacefully, but in all instances it is an attempt to replace diversity with homogeneity. Locke suspects that it is the desire to defend one's own culture and to create consensus among competing value claims that is at the root of the quest for uniformity.
Unfortunately, that motivation can easily lapse into an attempt to force one's own value system onto others without justification. Uniformitarianism is a refusal to accommodate the myriad value forms that are essential to pluralism. Finally, Locke warns us to avoid the pitfalls of arbitrariness and dogmatism. Value commitments are arbitrary when one forms them—thereby rejecting viable alternatives—in the absence of any justification for choosing them over other available options.
One holds her values dogmatically when she takes them to be indisputable and is closed-off to the possibility of taking a critical view of her value commitments that could possibly result in her altering or rejecting them. Locke describes pluralism as a functional base, one that can function as a foundation from which to achieve a rapprochement of conflicting values. Pluralism, as Locke envisions it, has the potential to create agreement among competing and conflicting values, through the recognition of common features of various values and value systems.
A closer look at Locke's analysis of values; in particular, the three concepts of basic human values, basic equivalence, and functional constancy will illuminate what it means for pluralism to function in this way. First, is the concept of basic human values, by which Locke means those values that are common to many, or all value systems; values such as belief in god, commitment to one's cultural community, respect for human life, etc. Of course, value communities differ, and no two value communities will be exactly alike, but there does exist substantial overlap of a subset of values across values communities.
Basic human values then, are basic and human in virtue of their common expression in a plurality of value contexts and their pertaining to the lives of human beings, and not as a matter of their universal applicability across all of humanity.
The next two concepts—basic equivalence and functional constancy—are perhaps best understood as two sides of a distinction between formal and functional equivalence.
Basic equivalence refers to a similarity of form and functional constancy refers to a similarity in function. Basic equivalence is a formal resemblance owing to a corresponding value-mode. It is a similarity in the type of value, or better, being particular values of the same type. This notion rests on drawing a distinction between the object of valuation and the way the object is valued.
The object may differ where the value mode does not. As a consequence a single object can be valued multiple ways, and many different objects can be valued in the same way. Take for example the institution of marriage as the object of valuation. Marriage is valuable in least two senses, first, it may be valued as the religious union of a man and a woman, and secondly, the marriage ceremony itself could be valued as a ritualized aesthetic experience.
In both cases one and the same phenomenon is the content of two different value modes. In the first instance, marriage is valued religiously; the characteristic quality of the value, its form, is spiritual. The example goes to illustrate the fact that different ways of valuing can be applied to the same object by the same person or by different people. Valuation works the other way as well, that is, different objects can be valued the same way. As for example, a marriage, a baptism, or a christening can all be valued religiously or aesthetically.
One can recognize a similarity in the form of competing values even though their objects may differ, or a difference in form where the object stays the same. Basic equivalence then speaks to an identity of form not of content. It is a conceptual tool that enables persons to recognize that their respective value expressions are species of the same genus. Locke speaks of the objective comparison of basic human values which leads one to think that his claim is that different groups may regard different sets of values as basic to human beings though these may not be identical, but rather, formally equivalent values.
By functional constancy is meant the ability of basic equivalent values to operate as stable features of value processes and activity within various value communities. Locke envisions that what will be found beneath potentially vast differences in content, and beyond a similarity of form, is a comparable utility of various values across contexts. Every value has an attendant function; a role that it plays within a given value community. Values that differ either in form or in content may still be equivalent as regards their function.
These functional constants are discovered through comparison of fundamental values found across value groups. His pioneering work was not always logically consistent, and it was surely never easy. Locke struggled between presenting a distinct African American identity and integrating it with broader American culture. He rejected absolute conclusions on African American art in favor of an unresolved tension between divergence and unity.
Locke undertook this task with almost no assistance; for a long time, he was one of only a handful of African American art critics. Locke happily obliged, and the result was a wildly popular issue that saw wide circulation and two printings. Locke then expanded the issue into an anthology titled The New Negro , the work for which he is best known.
The anthology contained works by several of the most prominent figures of the Harlem Renaissance, including fiction by Zora Neale Hurston — , poetry and music by Langston Hughes — , and essays by Walter Francis White — and W. Du Bois — Alain Locke, ed. Boni, Johnson, director of the American Urban League. Even with the rude transplanting of slavery, that uprooted the technical elements of his former culture, the American Negro brought over as an emotional inheritance a deep-seated aesthetic endowment.
And with a versatility of a very high order, this offshoot of the African spirit blended itself in with entirely different culture elements and blossomed in strange new forms. In contrast to the approaches taken by many leaders in the African American community at the time—including W.
Du Bois, who saw art as a means of collective uplift—Locke insisted that the value of art lay in its expression of the individuality of an artist. Though he hoped that the art produced by African Americans would repudiate racist beliefs, he did not view this to be its primary function.
Locke also organized traveling art exhibitions of African American artists and mentored many talented writers and poets including Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, and Zora Neale Hurston. Locke identified as gay among his friends and peers, but never disclosed this information publicly. After being in ill health for some time, Locke died from complications of heart disease on June 9, , at age View objects relating to Alain Locke.
Locke also embraced progressive, avant-garde, and, some would argue, unorthodox teaching methods while at Howard which were sometimes viewed with suspicion by more traditionally oriented colleagues and administrators at his institution.
His main contribution to both movements was the promotion and emphasis on values, diversity, and race relations. He challenged African Americans to acknowledge and promote their cultural heritage while at the same time, making the effort to integrate into the larger society and appreciate the mores and customs of other ethnic groups.
He also was a firm believer in W. Locke was a resourceful, intelligent, altruistic, and generous man who managed to serve as a mentor and establish close relationships with Langston Hughes , Countee Cullen , Jean Toomer , Rudolph Fisher , and Zora Neale Hurston.
While Locke was never open about his homosexuality , his sexuality contributed to his various sensibilities and would frequently manifest itself in his works. Skip to content Alain LeRoy Locke, ca.
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