On Value

Abstract

Previous article FreeOn Value The Radcliffe-Brown Lecture in Social Anthropology, 1980Louis DumontLouis DumontPDFPDF PLUSFull TextEPUBMOBI Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreI saw Radcliffe-Brown only once, in this very room. In my memory I can still see him today, though somewhat hazily, delivering the Huxley Memorial Lecture for 1951.2 I must have made it to London for the occasion, from Oxford where I was a new, if not that young, lecturer. As I listened to him, he seemed to have made one step in the direction of Lévi-Strauss, and I felt comforted in my recent structural allegiance. In fact it was only a limited, passing convergence.3In those days I was busy learning a good deal from him, and from British anthropology at large, which had reached unprecedented heights partly under his influence. Yet I must confess that, for one whose imagination had been initially fired by Mauss's genial humanism, Radcliffe-Brown's constricted version of Durkheimian sociology was not very attractive.[208] Today, one feels the need to insist, beyond all divergences, on continuity on one basic point. Reading his Natural Science of Society, one is struck by Radcliffe-Brown's decided holism.4 Whatever the shortcomings of his concept of 'system', the point—should I say the importation?—was probably decisive in the development of anthropology in this country, and it made possible the dialogue with the predominant sociological tradition of the French.There is relatively little about values in Radcliffe-Brown's writings.5 Yet the expression was very much in the air in British departments of anthropology in the last years of his life. My impression was that it figured largely as a substitute for 'ideas', which stressed the relation to action and was therefore less unpalatable to the empiricist temper. No doubt the situation is quite different today. But to state plainly the reason for my use of the term, preferably in the singular, and for my choice of topic: I have been trying in recent years to sell the profession the idea of hierarchy, with little success, I may add. I thought of making another bid, this time by using the professionally received vocable, which I had instinctively shunned heretofore, I suppose because of the forbidding difficulties the term seems to present. May the attempt be taken as an effort to come closer to the Radcliffe-Brownian heritage.In fact, my intention is solely to offer an observation bearing on the relation between ideas and values, or rather to comment on [209] that observation and draw some consequences from it. The modern type of culture in which anthropology is rooted and the non-modern type differ markedly with regard to value, and I hold that the anthropological problems relating to value require that the two be confronted. We shall start from the modern configuration, which represents an innovation, then introduce in contrast some fundamental features of the more common non-modern configuration, and finally return to the modern predicament with a view to setting it 'in perspective' and to thus, it is hoped, throwing some light on the position and task of anthropology as a mediating agency.The modern scene is familiar. In the first place, modern consciousness attaches value predominantly to the individual, and philosophy deals, at any rate predominantly, with individual values while anthropology takes values as essentially social. Then, in common parlance, the word, which meant in Latin healthy vigour and strength and in medieval times the warrior's bravery, symbolizes most of the time the power of money to measure everything. This important aspect will be present here only by implication. (Cf. Dumont (1977)).As to the absolute sense of the term, the modern configuration is sui generis and value has become a major preoccupation. In a note in Lalande's Philosophical Dictionary, Maurice Blondel said that the predominance of a philosophy of value characterizes the contemporary period, following a modern philosophy of knowledge and an antique and medieval philosophy of being.6 For Plato the supreme Being was the Good. There was no discord between the Good, the True and the Beautiful, yet the Good was supreme, perhaps because it is impossible to conceive the highest perfection as inactive and heartless, because the Good adds the dimension of action to that of contemplation. In contrast we moderns separate science aesthetics and morals. And the nature of our science is such that its existence by itself explains or rather implies the separation between the true on the one hand, the beautiful and the good on the other and in particular between being and moral value, what is and what ought to be. For the scientific discovery of the world was premised on the banning as secondary of all qualities to which physical measurement was not applicable. Thus for a hierarchical cosmos was substituted our physical, homogeneous universe (Koyré (1958)). The value dimension which had been spontaneously projected on to it was relegated to what is to us its proper locus, that is, man's mind, emotions, and volition.[210] In the course of centuries, the (social) Good was also relativized. There were as many Goods as there were peoples or cultures, not to speak of religions, sects or social classes. 'Truth this side of the Pyrenees, error beyond' noted Pascal; we cannot speak of the Good when what is held as good on this side of the Channel is evil on the other, but we can speak of the value or values that people acknowledge respectively on one and the other side.Thus, value designates something different from being, and something which, while the scientifically true is universal, is eminently variable with the social environment, and even within a given society, according not only to social classes but to the diverse departments of activity or experience.I have listed only a few salient features, but they are enough to evoke the complex nexus of meanings and preoccupations to which our word is attached, a tangle to which all kinds of thoughtful efforts have contributed, from the romantic complaint about a world that has fallen asunder to the various attempts at reuniting it, and to a philosophy of despair, Nietzsche's, contributing to spreading the term. I do not think that anthropology can disregard this situation. Yet it is no wonder that there is something unpleasant about the term. Being comparative in essence, it seems doomed to emptiness: a matter of values is not a matter of fact. It advertises relativism, as it were, or rather both the centrality of the concept and its elusive quality, to which a considerable literature testifies. It smacks of euphemism or uneasiness, like 'underdevelopment', 'methodological individualism' and so many other items in the present-day vocabulary.Yet there is a positive counterpart, modest but not insignificant, for the anthropologist: we have at our disposal a word that allows us to consider all sorts of cultures and the most diverse estimations of the good without imposing on them our own: we can speak of our values and their values while we could not speak of our good and their good. Thus the little word, used far beyond the confines of anthropology, implies an anthropological perspective and invests us, I think, with a responsibility. But of this more later.We begin with a few introductory remarks about the study of values in anthropology. The prevailing use of the word in the plural—values—is indicative not only of the diversity of societies and of the modern compartmentalization of activities but also of a tendency to atomize each configuration that is in keeping with our culture in general. This is certainly the first point that requires attention. In a paper published in 1961,7 Francis Hsu criticized [211] some studies of the American character for their presenting a bare catalogue of traits or values without bothering about the relations prevailing between those items. He saw conflicts and inconsistencies between the different values listed, wondered at the lack of serious attempts to explain them, and proposed to remedy the situation by identifying one fundamental value and by showing that it implied precisely the contradictions to be explained. The 'American core value', Hsu suggested, is self-reliance, itself a modification or intensification of European, or English, individualism. Now self-reliance implies contradiction in its application, for men are social beings and depend heavily on each other in actual fact. Thus is produced a series of contradictions between the level of conception and the level of operation of the main value and of the secondary values derived from it or allied with it.I for one cannot but applaud both the search for a cardinal value and its identification in this case as some form of individualism. One also notes that Hsu implies, if he does not state it explicitly, a hierarchy between conception and operation. Yet in the end Hsu's distinction between the two levels is still insufficient. He uses a classification of Charles Morris, who had listed three uses of value or sorts of value, among them conceived and operative value, and he goes some way toward ranking these two levels. Finally however, he speaks of 'values' for both, and thus lumps them together again in the8 same way as the atomizing authors he had begun by criticizing. In fact the two levels should be firmly distinguished. For we have here a universal phenomenon. Surely all of us have encountered this characteristic complementarity or reversal between levels of experience where what is true on the more conceptual level is reversed on the more empirical level, a reversal which bedevils our attempts at unifying, for the sake of simplicity, the representation and its counterpart in action. Whatever the peculiarities of the American case, the end cannot be its own means: either what is called 'operative values' are not values at all, or they are second-order values that should be clearly distinguished from first-order values or values proper.In general, there is perhaps a surfeit of contradictions in contemporary literature in general. An author belonging to a different era or milieu will frequently be taxed of contradicting himself simply because a distinction of levels obvious to him and therefore implicit in his writings, but unfamiliar to the critic, is missed.9 It will be seen later on that where non-moderns [212] distinguish levels within a global view, the moderns know only of substituting one special plane of consideration for another and find on all planes the same forms of neat disjunction, contradiction, etc. Perhaps there is a confusion here between individual experience which, while crossing different levels, may be felt as contradictory, and sociological analysis, where the distinction of levels is imperative in order to avoid the short-circuit that results in tautology or incomprehension. Apart from Clyde Kluckhohn, the late Gregory Bateson is one of the rare anthropologists who clearly saw the necessity of recognizing a hierarchy of levels.10There has been in the history of anthropology at least one sustained attempt at advancing the study of values. In the late forties, Clyde Kluckhohn chose to focus attention on values and to concentrate efforts and resources on a vast co-operative long-term project devoted to their study, the Harvard 'Comparative Study of Values in Five Cultures'. There seems to have been in the United States, at the end of World War II, a wide renewal of interest in social philosophy and in the understanding of foreign cultures and values.11 Kluckhohn may have found in the circumstances of the time the occasion to develop what was undoubtedly a deep personal concern. In the late forties, he launched his project, which assembled a number of scholars and issued in an imposing array of publications over the next decade. Today this considerable effort seems largely forgotten. Unless I am deeply [213] mistaken, it has not left a deep mark in American cultural anthropology. Is this one more example of those fashions that disconcertingly displace one another in our discipline, particularly in the US; or are there internal reasons to the discredit, and, in the worst case, are values a mistaken focus or a 'non-subject', something I could hardly believe? I am not able to answer this complex question. I shall only try to draw from Kluckhohn's endeavour a lesson for our benefit. There must be such a lesson if we believe with him that values are a central problem. For Kluckhohn was not naïve: he was obviously a man of wide culture (with a German component, I suppose, as is the case with several of the early American anthropologists), and, moreover, he anticipated much of what I shall have to say here. Yet, whatever contributions the project may have brought to the knowledge of each of the particular groups or societies studied, the results seem disappointing as regards Kluckhohn's main aim, namely the advancement of comparative theory. How can we account for the fact?Clyde Kluckhohn was closely associated with Parsons and Shils in the symposium that was published as Towards a General Theory of Action and to which he contributed an important theoretical essay which can be taken as the chart of the Harvard Project.12 It is clear that Kluckhohn developed his own position while agreeing on the broad 'conceptual scheme' of the symposium. He dissented only from the rigid separation between social and cultural systems.13 To be brief I shall mention only three main points in Kluckhohn and two of his main associates. First, that (social) values are essential for the integration and permanence of the social body and also of the personality (p. 319)—we might say with Hans Mol for their identity14—is perhaps obvious, but it is in practice too easily forgotten, either by anthropologists insisting unilaterally on change, or by philosophers abstracting individual values from their social background. Saint Augustine said somewhere that a people is made up of men united in the love of something.Second, the close link between ideas and values—here 'cognitive' and 'normative', or 'existential' and 'normative', aspects—is clearly acknowledged, as it was by Parsons and Shils (1951, pp. 159–89), under the central concept of 'value-orientation' [214] as defined by Kluckhohn (1951, pp. 410–11). (The concept is open to criticism on another score, as was shrewdly noticed by an anthropologist.)15 Thus the scheme for the classification of values used by Florence Kluckhohn includes by the side of values proper a minimum of ideas and beliefs. One may prefer the more ample treatment of the Navaho case by Ethel Albert, which includes not only the normally unverbalized 'value-premises', but also a complete picture of the worldview as the 'philosophical context' of the value system strictly defined.16The third point is the clear recognition of the fact that values are 'hierarchically organized'. Clyde Kluckhohn's programmatic article had a very lucid and sensitive page on the question (p. 420), but it is perhaps Florence Kluckhohn that most developed this aspect. Early in the research, she proposed a grid for the comparison of 'value-orientations'. It is a scheme of priorities distinguishing, in each instance under three terms, different stresses relative to relations between man and nature, to the conception of man, to relations between men, to time, and to action.17 The author underlines the importance of hierarchy and of nuances in hierarchy. Each value system is seen as a hierarchical combination sui generis of elements which are universal in the sense of being found everywhere. This was a solution to a problem that much concerned Clyde Kluckhohn himself. He was reacting against an excessive stress on relativity in anthropological He to avoid relativism, and he to a of universal Florence Kluckhohn found this universal in the very which was different value in each case, by an combination of particular value a The scheme does not yet enough the recognition of hierarchy, and therefore in a measure of no relation is between the for instance about the relative stress between relations to nature and relations between men and universal seems here to be The scheme thus it is on a American and even a cultures may different but only in derived from the American later by Clyde Kluckhohn adds a scheme of classification of his own to a of those of Ethel and Florence The Kluckhohn's last word on the consideration can be given to it less for the scheme itself for the preoccupations that up to it. The general, universal bearing of the project is while the character of the particular scheme is The effort is to the scheme it of a series of is it is by an effort to by the between features and thus to to some the is it, that a considerable effort so many one finally We are on the with the of which we should be able to the elements of any value It is clear that, Clyde Kluckhohn's last and effort to a or and to the given at the the has its has the I the attempt has been to and hierarchical and that is, classification individual The need for classification was certainly by the attempt to cultures in one and the most of the project are probably the in the of that it somewhat unpalatable namely that a and comparison of values is possible only between two taken as classification is to be it will have to start from and not from For the time being we are closer to to Radcliffe-Brown's science of noticed that the term used in the had come recent the social from He saw in it a of and, probably largely for this individual and values. The term 'value-orientation' itself is indicative of a with the individual all this with a but it is all an of the of our anthropological The is of dimension and Yet we cannot it in an attempt to the anthropological question. I believe that, an anthropological perspective can some light on the and that it is thus possible to a and yet not view of are two kinds of or rather two kinds of in the One itself within modern culture and is to in with its its basic its and its that point of view the that it is impossible to what ought to be from what No is possible from to values. of fact and of value are different in It is enough to two or three major of modern culture to that the is First, science is in our and, as we at the to scientific knowledge possible the of being has been by from it precisely the value the stress on the individual has to to it within the while it is from the other of action and distinguished from and the separation between man and nature have thus the the true and the and have produced a between is and ought to be. This situation is our in the sense that it at the core of modern culture or this situation is or is quite another question. The history of thought seems to that it is for no had this fundamental that his and the German as a in various attempts to It is true that the social milieu was and that German while by were still with in the of their But the has to the present It must be that, for one who from the and attempts to reason from first the idea that what man ought to do is, us to the nature of to the universe and to his in it, will The same true of who account what we know of other or I have said that most societies have to be in the order of as as they have thought they were or their very the of and the to be to from nature and up an We may thus be at first to with those philosophers who have to between and values. attempts to the fact that we have not from the more common of that it is still in some present with us, and perhaps the yet modern But we should be on our attempt can different One in values value are or the expression of or with some are to means: a of they to the existence of values' that is, of values attempts seem to be an of the of some to account to mark a e

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