Die Natur der Werte - eine pragmatistische Perspektive.

Values are neither discovered nor constructed. Pragmatist thinkers, by rejecting both alternatives, are able to develop convincing answers to the question about the place of values in nature. The argument unfolds in three steps: (1)The meaning of the term 'naturalism' is differentiated in the light of Pragmatist insights. Deweyan naturalism rejects both scientism and subjectivism and treats values as being developed naturally in the course of ordinary experience. Values are qualities of the interaction-cycle between organism and environment and accordingly as real as atoms and their interactions. (2) Value-experiences integrate receptivity and reflexivity. The desirable is elaborated as the reflective transformation of the factually desired and thus always retains contingent experiences. (3) The human good as articulated in values is always prone to particularistic, exclusionary interpretations. Hence the importance of universal norms as checking-instances ('Prüfinstanzen', H. Joas) for values. But, conversely, normative universalism remains anaemic without support by actually lived value-orientations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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