ABSTRACT
The proposition that values are essences has had light thrown upon it from two sides. First, values are a conditioning prius of all phenomena of the moral life, in connection with which the apriority of the valuational consciousness constitutes only one partial phenomenon. The values are originally patterns of an ethical ideal sphere, of a realm with its own structures, its own laws and order. In the domain of practice, real self-existence has only "ethical reality": it embraces only whatever is real moral conduct, real action, real disposition, real resolution and purpose: but, likewise, whatever is real valuational judgment, consciousness of guilt, feeling of responsibility. The certainty of ideal self-existence in the domain of theory—which subsists without metaphysical interpretation purely as an objective phenomenon and factum—furnishes the analogy according to which we must understand the ethicoideal self-existence of values.
