ABSTRACT
Value, good, and ought are properties of the object that depend on the needs of the subject, which emerge when the facts of the object are related to the needs, desires, and purposes of the subject. Specifically, they are the utilities of the facts of the object to the needs, desires and purposes of the subject, the relational properties of the object, and the tertiary qualities of the object (the axiom of the essence of the existence of value in ethics). Therefore, “ought,” “good,” and “value” consist of two aspects: the factual properties of the object and the needs, desires, and purposes of the subject. The former are the source from which “ought,” “good,” and “value” emerge and are the carrier, noumenon, and substance for their existence, which is called the “substance of value”; the latter is the condition of their emergence from the former and are the standard of the measurement of the value or good of the former, thus termed “the standard of value”—the purposes are “the real standard of value” and the unpurposed needs and desires are “the potential standard of value” (the axiom of the structure of the existence of value in ethics). Therefore, on the one hand, ought, good, and value are determined by the “particular needs of the subject” and the “particular facts of the object,” hence vary with the different needs of the subject, and consequently are particular, relative, subjective, and arbitrary; on the other hand, ought, good, and value are determined by the “universal needs of the subject” and the “universal facts of the object,” and are same for each subject, hence are universal, absolute, objective, and exist independently of human will (the axiom of the nature of the existence of value in ethics). These three sets of propositions and of their combinations, namely the axiom of the existence of value in ethics, are termed the ethical axioms, because it can solve the question of whether “ought” can be derived from “fact,” and deduce all the propositions of ethics.
