Logico-ontological Remarks on Henryk Elzenberg’s Theory of Value

Abstract

The subject of the paper are selected aspects of ontological structures of perfect values in reference to the analyzes and comments of Henryk Elzenberg. The definitions of various types of values and the ontological premises of such definitions are discussed. The subject of attention was also logical relations between different concepts of perfect value and introduced in the paper notion of intrinsic value. An important feature of the Elzenberg analysis of the perfect values is their strict connection with the states of affairs which should be the case. According to the author, at the level of logical analysis of this issue, however, it is necessary to move away from the subject-predicate structure of the state of affairs and to treat the content of the phrase ‘should be the case’ as a modality that refers directly to the situation (or state of affairs) taken as an integral whole. However, this requires a more detailed characterization of the relationship that can occur between situations (or states of affairs), ie. something that can should be the case, and objects that can be subjects of these situations and, therefore, can be valuable. Also considered is the connection of the concept of value with not what should be the case, but to what is good when it is the case, which is closer to the approach of Tadeusz Czeżowski. A certain multimodal logical calculus with quantifiers binding propositional variables is used to analyze the issue at hand.