For Further Reading: Wiley

59

In his philosophy of history, Augustine saw two cities engaged in struggle since the Fall—the City of God (now represented by the Church) and the earthly city, human society apart from God.

The Reformation, begun by the Franciscan Martin Luther (d. 1546), can be seen as a revival of Augustinianism in some respects. The Re­formers professed to follow much of Augustine's doctrine (notably Calvin on predestination), but not his Neoplatonist philosophy. The distinction is not so easily made, however, and much West­ern Christianity is still pervaded by Augustinian concepts and assumptions. These include the concepts of eternity as timelessness, of man as a mind-body dualism, of grace as an impersonal influence, and of the "spiritual" as esoteric and other-worldly.

See pelagianism. calvinism, wesleyanism, armin­ianism, protestantism.

For Further Reading: Heick, A History of Christian
Thought, 1:130-42, 196-206; Chadwick, The Early
Church, 216-36. T. A. NOBLE

AUTHENTIC EXISTENCE. This is a term intro­duced by the existentialist philosopher Martin Heidegger and later taken over by Jean-Paul Sar­tre. It should be paired with its correlative term, inauthentic existence, and relates to the exis­tentialist stress upon individuality and self-determination. Existence is authentic to the extent that the individual has taken possession of himself and determined his own life-style. Inau­thentic existence, on the other hand, is molded by external influences whether these be circum­stances, moral codes, or political or ecclesiastical authorities.

Heidegger felt that in the everyday routines of life, one may, and he thought usually does, be­come absorbed in the world. He tends to become part of the system, to be caught up in the pro­cesses which man himself has originated, and to become just another part of the machinery, an "organization man." This is an ironical destiny, yet it is one that has overtaken millions of people in industrial societies. This reflects one of the reasons for the existentialist reaction to the tech­nological age which stifles individuality. In inau­thentic existence the individual turns the "self" into an object among other objects and thus in Heidegger's special sense, ceases to "exist." One who lives authentically refuses to be dehu­manized by becoming subservient to a system of things; or in Sartre's version, refuses to play roles that do not truly express himself. Authentic exis­tence in relation to others involves a concern for the other which helps him to freedom and to his own unique possibilities for selfhood.

From the Christian perspective, authentic exis­tence would be better expressed by the theistic existentialist, Soren Kierkegaard. For S. K., man is created in the image of God, and thus his es­sentia/ nature entails his relation to God. His exis­tential predicament is that he is in a state of alienation from God, producing anxiety, and this would be inauthentic existence. Authenticity, in this context, would occur when man exists in right relationship to his Creator. It would not re­sult in the kind of individualistic existence out­lined by Sartre and others but rather in dependence on, radical faith in, and obedience to God.

See existential (existentialism).

Apparently, Tertullian {De prascr, haer., 16) was the first to use this word with regard to the sa­cred books. Authenticity became a category for denoting books accepted as fully inspired in op­position to apocryphal writings. Books that were said to be authentic were accorded infallible au­thority. Canonical books were treated as authen­tic documents of divine revelation.

61

To be thus awakened is to experience a quick­ening (Eph. 2:1, 5) or a reviving. And this experi­ence is not limited to the individual but can also be shared corporately.

See convict (conviction), revival.

For Further Reading: Kittel, 2:333-39; Orr, The Light of the Nations; Smith, Revivalism and Social Reform.

Robert A. Mattke

AWE. See reverence.

AXIOLOGY. Axiology is the theory and study of value and disvalue; it is an investigation of the nature, types, and metaphysical status of value. The word is a compound of two Greek words, Axios (worth), and logos (reason, meaning).

In modern philosophy the word axiology has generally been replaced by the phrase value the­ory.

Axiology (or the theory of value) has (1) a wider and (2) a more narrow meaning. In its wider use, it means the general theory of all pre­scriptive predicates about what ought or ought not to be valued, and it includes the disciplines of moral theory, psychology, the social sciences, and the humanities. In its more narrow sense, "value" is limited to moral theory, in which case axiology is a part of the field of ethics.

Axiology has its roots in the pre-Socratics who asked the question of the "really real"; what is the foundation of all other values, what is it that per­sists in the midst of change? Axiology is devel­oped in Plato's theory of the Forms or Ideas which are the metaphysical archetypes of all val­ues. In the Dialogues, he discusses the meaning of the right, obligation, beauty, virtue, moral judg­ment, aesthetic value, and truth. How are all these related? Plato believed that all questions about value belong to the same family and that they finally cohere in the good, the crowning and unitive form.

For Aristotle axiology is a constant topic of in­terest. It receives treatment in the Organon, Ethics, Poetics, and the Metaphysics. For him the highest value is the ultimate final cause, God. For Thomas Aquinas also, the summum bonum (the highest good or value) is God, who is the sole Ground for all other values.

The belief that questions about the good, the right, the beautiful, etc., could be answered through metaphysics was not seriously ques­tioned until Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Ac­cording to Kant, the inherent epistemological limitations associated with the categories, and the two forms of knowing (space and time) make such knowledge unobtainable through specu­lative reason. The second and third Critiques, as well as the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Mor­als which led to the second Critique, sought to establish another basis for value.

Hegel restored the metaphysical basis of axiol­ogy (value as the expression and self-realization of Absolute Spirit). But this restoration collapsed under the criticism of such people as Bauer, Feu-erbach, and Marx.

In the 19th century Plato's idea that questions of value belong to one family was reborn. Ac­cording to this position, questions about the good, the right, obligation, virtue, aesthetic and moral judgment, the beautiful, and truth are bet­ter dealt with when systematically thought of as components of a general theory of value and val­uation that includes economics, ethics, aesthet­ics, jurisprudence, education, and perhaps even logic and epistemology. The idea of a general theory of value was very popular early in this century on the Continent, in Latin America, and in the U.S. (e.g., Ralph Barton Perry, John Dewey, and Paul Taylor).

Value theory holds a very important place in the process metaphysics of Alfred North White­head and Charles Hartshorne. For both, God is the Comprehensive Valuer who offers to the world ideal aims, the fulfillment of which satis­fies value.

Ralph Barton Perry and Paul Taylor, who un­derstand axiology in its wider sense, distinguish eight "realms of value": morality, the arts, sci­ence, religion, economics, politics, law, and cus­tom (or etiquette).

Several meanings or forms of "value" or "the valuable" can be distinguished: (1) extrinsic or in­strumental value, i.e., valued as a means to some­thing else that is believed to be desirable or good; (2) intrinsic or inherent value or goodness, i.e., that which is judged good or valuable as an end in itself; (3) contributory value, i.e., value that contributes to a whole value of which it is a part (a violin contributes to an orchestra); (4) moral value, i.e., the sort of value or goodness that be­longs to a virtuous person, or to a morally ap­proved trait of character. (Some philosophers make an even sharper distinction between util­itarian and extrinsic or instrumental value, and



62

BAALISM


between inherent or intrinsic value. But these distinctions seem to be forced.)

A distinction is also made between normative and nonnormative values. For those who believe that this is a proper distinction, some values are held to be normative, i.e., binding on everyone. Values that are judged normative are indepen­dent of the valuer's preferences. They ought to be valued; hence they are judged to be religiously or morally compelling. By contrast nonnormative values do arise from preference, e.g., when a per­son prefers one form of art over another. In this case it is, or should be, understood that the value is not generally binding; it carries no religious or moral authority.

Partly through the influence of language anal­ysis philosophers, there is significant disagree­ment over whether values are cognitive or noncognitive in nature. Those who hold the first view believe that some values are normative, that they ought to be adhered to because they express ontological realities whose authority is indepen­dent of human preference, i.e., they have a purely objective basis. Such values denote a real property that transcends the desires and esti­mates of the valuing subject. Some phenom-enologists, for instance, say that our experience of "normative values" is actually an experience of objective ethical essences that are recognized or discovered and that do not depend simply on one's choice of them.

Noncognitivists such as A. J. Ayer and Bertrand Russell deny the objectivity of values. They insist that all values are expressions of societal or indi­vidual preference. They express no absolutes, but are wholly expressions of attitudes, desires, and emotions. Accordingly, values are not pre­scriptive, i.e., they cannot tell us what people ought to value, but descriptive, i.e., they simply indicate what people in various times and under various circumstances choose to value. The philo­sopher's task is not to tell people what to value, but to examine the meaning of value language. What are we doing when we say that something is valuable? How do communities employ this language?

For some only one thing is valuable. For Aris­totle this is Eudaemonia (excellent activity); for Augustine and Aquinas it is communion with God; for F. H. Bradley it is self-realization; for Neitzsche it is power. Other philosophers are more pluralistic; they hold that a number of things are good or good-making in themselves. These thinkers include Plato, G. E. Moore, W. D. Ross, Max Scheler, Nicolai Hartmann, and Ralph Barton Perry. Their list of "the valuable" include two or more of the following: pleasure, knowl­edge, aesthetic experience, beauty, truth, virtue, harmony, love, friendship, justice, freedom, and self-expression.

For some recent Protestant theologians, such as Bonhoeffer, Brunner, and Barth, the good is what God wills, vis., His word of creation, re­demption, and fulfillment, spoken preeminently through the incarnation of God in Christ and His sanctification of human life in the world.

See values, values clarification, absolutes,

duty, beauty.