Sacrifice and Value: A Kantian Interpretation

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Sacrifice and Value: A Kantian Interpretation argues that we create values by making sacrifices. Values don't exist outside of us; they exist only when we give a gift without expecting a return. As Sidney Axinn demonstrates, we must have values in order to make decisions, to have friends or lovers, and to choose goals of any sort. Sacrifice is basic to almost everything of importance: care, love, religion, patriotism, loyalties, warfare, friendship, gift giving, morality. Axin uses Aristotle, Cicero, and Kant, and contemporary philosophers Oldenquest, Frankfurt, Friedman, Starobinski and others to analyze the role of sacrifice. A novel feature is the attention given to Kant's use of sacrifice. Sacrifice and Value will interest advanced students and scholars of philosophy_particularly value theory and moral theory_as well as women's studies, religion, political theory, and psychology.

Sacrifice and Value: A Kantian Interpretation Review

At the outset of his commanding study, Sidney Axinn notes that the "grand-prize question of ethics" is that which asks what sorts of things may reasonably be taken to be valued as ends? He then sets out to explore how and why he has concluded that the answer is contained in the word "sacrifice." If that term initially surprises, it is because of its historical association with acts of violence and victimhood, as well as with "noble" behavior. But Axinn makes clear that the word is close to altruism for philosophers. He uses it to mean "A gift without expectation of equal or greater return." When asked, why do it? The answer is to gain nonmonetary value. Sacrifice, he argues, "is the only action that produces things desired for themselves alone, absolute values."

Axinn supposes, with Kant, that inherent value is not something that exists in the outer world, to be discovered. Rather, it is created and imposed on entities by the individual specifically--here is Axinn's gloss on Kant--by the sacrifice made by that individual. But the origin of our values in experience also means that they are often inconsistent, as when liberty conflicts with equality, justice with mercy, etc. Because we derive our values through sometimes conflicting sacrifices, Axinn, along with Kant, Isaiah Berlin, and others, argues that having ambivalent goals is both a normal and desirable thing for humans. The alternative is fanaticism, the commitment to a single absolute value.

This study considers the place of sacrifice in relation to care, love, religion, patriotism, friendship, gift-giving, and more. The author makes a very persuasive case for the centrality of sacrifice in the creation of value, at least where human relationships are concerned. Yet I wonder if we do not also instill value in some aspects of our lives where such relationships are not at issue, at least not directly. I think of the value we place on things beautiful, either in nature or as the result of human workmanship. To enjoy--to value--such things does not seem to entail much sacrifice, unless it is only that of the lazy and unobserving life that does not seek out beauty.

But if Axinn does not have the last word on every possible consideration of value, he has explored most notably this grand-prize question of ethics. He adds much to our understanding of why it stands at the pinnacle of ethical considerations, and why sacrifice is a necessary, if not quite sufficient, explanation for any theory of value in human life.

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