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In the same way as value can only be established with reference to the
criteria of progress, antivalue can be defined only along these guidelines:
An antivalue is that which contributes to braking progress, to infringing
individual and national freedom, to the mutilation of human personality.
It would therefore be dangerously simplistic to claim that the two terms,
value and antivalue, denote precisely, unequivocally, and exhaustively
all the human creations and potentials belonging to the sphere
mentioned above. The complexity of the problems of our epoch, the
diversity of the social and political forces in confrontation, the variety of
invoked ideals and promoted values force us to understand political
value as a concept of maximum complexity, requiring at all times a
concrete historical analysis. To this we should add a difficulty specific
mainly to politics: Each political regime or form of state claims its
mediating values, they are not inferior to other values; politics cannot be
reduced to the role of ancilla moris or ancilla culturae, since political
values have an intrinsic character. Hence the legitimacy of the concept
of political culture, with its specific content and laws of socialization.
Our age has accentuated the interdependence of values and has
considerably enhanced the impact of political values on other types of
values, including the level of spiritual life and all the other experiences:
individual, group, national, and international. This means that man
today no longer experiences values as autonomous and separate, but as
centered around certain values, mainly political and moral.
VALUE SELECTION
CONCLUSION
Finally, two more remarks: First, unity between the real and the ideal
in the shaping of a political value has its own historical coordinates. In
order that the ideal side may act as a true and effective incentive to
political practice, it should not limitlessly transcend the possibilities of
the real. This is where the line is drawn between a plan of action and
utopia. The countercultures that emerged in the turmoil of the sixties
have exhausted their capacity to influence precisely because of their
utopianism. Secondly, it is exactly by virtue of this ideal moment, or its
components, that one can talk of the capacity and willingness to
develop, to continuously improve values. We should add that improve-
ment is conceivable not only on the level of reality, of existential
objectification, but also on that of the ideal, enriched with new
determinations generated by the material and spiritual progress of
mankind. The dialectic of the real and of the ideal in the field of values is,
at least potentially, an important motive power for improvement: It
fosters &dquo;holy discontent&dquo; that is, as in the individual’s life, a strong
subjective incentive to creativity, a factor generating social innovation
in all fields of human activity. The intertwining of the real and the ideal
in each basic political value also legitimates the necessity of concommitant
philosophical (axiological) and scientific (sociological and politological)
study of political values.
Stressing the concrete, historical, and social determination of
political values, the organic link of stated, experienced, promoted, and
defended values, the organic link of civilization with certain types of
civilization, with specific situations, interests, and ideals of given social
and national groups, we remain aware that, in spite of social, political,
and ideological divisions, mankind today pursues certain basic interests.
For all the differences between contemporary civilizations, and between
social and political systems and their world of values, the common
fundamental interests of all peoples-such as the creation of a new
climate of peace and cooperation among peoples and states, of a new
political and economic world order, and other issues considered to have
a planetary relevance-require the assertion and promotion of common
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