Value

Value names the ideal of self-completion that gives human striving its direction while remaining out of reach. It is neither an ordinary fact nor a free-floating ideal: value has a peculiar mode of being as what consciousness lacks, projects beyond itself, and can never finally possess. In its supreme form, it is the imagined fusion of the for-itself with the in-itself—the ideal of a being that would be conscious and yet fully coincide with itself.

Definition and mode of being

Value cannot be treated as an existent alongside other existents. If it is reduced to a fact or social requirement, the contingency of existing things dissolves its normative force; if it is treated as pure ideality, it loses the being that lets it matter. A noble act can disclose nobility, but the value is not a quality contained in the act as redness is contained in a red object. It appears beyond particular acts, as the limit toward which a series of them tends. Value therefore has being in a distinctive sense: it is, but its being is not the factual being of the things through which it becomes discernible.

This double character explains why value can be described as both being and not being. It is the missing totality toward which a being makes itself; its presence is inseparable from absence. The for-itself does not first exist as a complete self and then compare itself with an external standard. Rather, value haunts the for-itself at the heart of its being: consciousness exists as a lack and as a surpassing toward what it is not yet.

Freedom, lack, and the ideal self

Value is the lacked, not the lack itself. It is the self as an ideal of identity, purity, permanence, and self-foundation that consciousness continually seeks but cannot attain. The for-itself is drawn toward the repose of full coincidence with itself, yet its very mode of being prevents that repose: it is present to itself without becoming a fixed, self-identical thing. Whenever it seems to secure itself as a stable identity, that identity is already fixed as an in-itself; whenever it is understood as living presence to itself, it again surpasses any fixed state.

This pursuit is not imposed by an outside authority or by a force that attracts consciousness as a matter of fact. Value and the for-itself arise together in an unconditioned freedom, while the for-itself also remains factical and unable to found its own being. Value is consequently both contingent and necessary: nothing independently makes it exist, yet freedom makes itself exist in a way that is haunted by it. It is not initially an object of knowledge or an explicitly chosen thesis. At the non-thetic level, value is lived as the concrete meaning of the self’s lack; reflection can later make that lack and its value visible as objects of attention.

The synthesis sought in the world

The ideal fusion of the lacking and what it lacks is named the in-itself-for-itself: a consciousness that would possess the density and permanence of the in-itself while remaining consciousness and the foundation of its own being. This impossible synthesis does not belong simply to the present or the future. It indicates a totality of past, present, and future, and appears in the world as a desired unity of essence and existence.

Beauty gives this structure a particular expression. It is the ideal state in which a thing’s essence and existence would appear as one, and in which the perceiver would likewise be merged with a complete self. Beauty is not an attainable property waiting inside objects. It haunts the world as an unrealizable, apprehended through the world’s imperfection; aesthetic intuition approaches it through an imaginary object and an imaginary realization of the self as a totality. Thus the pursuit of beauty and the pursuit of value share a structure: each points toward a completion that actual existence cannot deliver.

Past and temporal contrast

The past can resemble value because it appears to join what consciousness was with the fixed being of what it has become. Memory presents the former self with a plenitude that lends it a kind of poetry: a past grief remains intelligible as the grief of a for-itself, yet it has the silent fixity of something that simply is. In that respect the past may look like a synthesis of becoming and settled identity.

But the resemblance marks a decisive difference. Value is the for-itself recovering and founding its being through surpassing; the past is the for-itself recovered by the in-itself and fixed by it. A past event is therefore contingent and unalterable, a fact that provides no imperative by itself. It can be taken as an apparent refuge from the anguish of the self’s perpetual absence, but it does not fulfill the ideal of value. The temporal structure of the for-itself reinforces the contrast: it is never simply itself, but is ahead of itself in the future and behind itself in the past, while the repose it seeks would be atemporal coincidence with itself.

Fundamental project and ethical implications

The account of value leads to the claim that the fundamental project of human reality is a project of being. The for-itself is defined by a lack of being; possibility is what it lacks, and value is the totality of being it lacks. Freedom is the concrete mode in which that lack exists. The project cannot be reduced to a particular desire, because it has no existence apart from its expressions in particular tendencies and choices. Jealousy, greed, love of art, cowardice, and courage are among the contingent ways this project becomes manifest in individual lives.

At its furthest reach, the project seeks an in-itself that would be its own foundation: being that is at once fully itself and the foundation of itself. This ideal of the in-itself-for-itself is called God, and the desire to be God names the ultimate direction of the project, not a fixed human nature that predetermines its concrete ends. Each person pursues a mode of being through particular possibilities in a particular situation.

Ontology can disclose how value arises, but it cannot derive ethical commandments from that account. Existential psychoanalysis can instead interpret human projects by bringing out the values they pursue and the ideal of self-cause that gives them meaning. This challenges the spirit of seriousness, which treats values as independent givens and locates desirability in an object’s material constitution—as when bread is regarded as desirable simply because it nourishes. Once freedom recognizes itself as the source through which values exist, it faces the possibility of turning away from the supreme value or willing its own freedom as an end. The work leaves the ethical consequences of that possibility open for a further inquiry.