INCLUSION AND TRANSCENDENCE: NON-RELATIVE VALUE

To many moderns, the first three dimensions of value exhaust the dimensions of human value – as the three familiar dimensions of ordinary experience exhaust the dimensions of space. What might be meant by a fourth dimension of value is not so easily described and many thinkers would deny it exists at all. But, while the existence of a fourth dimension of value may be controversial, it seems to be presupposed by much of what humans have had to say about the good and the right.

Without such a dimension, for example, what we call ethical or moral value would not be what most people take it to be. This is not to say that all fourth-dimensional value is ethical or even that all value people call ethical lies in the fourth dimension. The virtues and excellences that comprise third-dimensional value (loyalty, friendliness, trustworthiness, and the like) are an important part of many ancient and modern views of ethics. But a crucial part of what we call ethical or moral value does I think lie in the fourth dimension – including (of special importance) that part explored in Chapters 2–4, which implies that each person is to be treated as an end by every other person and no one as a mere means.