VALUE. The general thrust of the existentialist view is that values cannot be spoken of independently of human projects, in whose light they appear, and thus that the traditional fact/value distinction does not apply unproblematically in human experience. Martin Heidegger argues that the concept of objective reality as a kind of neutral “matter,” onto which human meanings are subsequently appended, is an illusion. Rather, the world is irreducibly meaningful; the idea of neutral things “present-at-hand” is derivative of a more fundamental experience of things as intrinsically useful and valuable. Jean Paul-Sartre is the main existentialist to discuss the issue of value explicitly. His claim that values are “chosen” and not “discovered” does not mean that one’s core values may be changed at a moment’s notice, or that they may be created ex nihilo. Rather, his point is that there is no single value perspective built into the nature of things that one is thus required to assume; one chooses to accept a given perspective, whether or not one is aware of this choice. For example, religious values gain legitimacy not from divine commandments or from other religious authority but from one’s choice to accept them as directives for action. Being aware that one has chosen one’s own directives for action is an essential part of authentic existence. In contrast, appealing to values as pregiven facts is symptomatic of what Sartre calls the “spirit of seriousness,” which underlies a major form of bad faith.
VIAN, BORIS (1920-59). French writer. Vian was a true polymath; an accomplished novelist, playwright, and poet, he was also a dedicated jazz trumpeter, song writer, and jazz critic. A friend of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simon de Beauvoir in the 1940s and early 1950s, Vian was admired as “the most versatile” of Sartre’s social entourage. His popular novel L’Écume des jours (1947) celebrated the early years of “existentialist” revelry in and around Saint-Germain-des-Prés. See also CAFÉ EXISTENTIALIST.
VITALISM. The core of vitalism is the idea that life cannot be reduced to material causes. The term is often applied to the position of Henri Bergson, Wilhelm Dilthey, and Friedrich Nietzsche, where it is understood in a sense equivalent to the expression “philosophy of life.” However, vitalism also may refer to a range of theories in biology and the history of science. Thus “philosophy of life” more accurately describes the intentions of thinkers like Bergson, Dilthey, and Nietzsche, whose interests were primarily philosophical rather than empirical or scientific in a narrow sense. See also ÉLAN VITAL; WILL TO POWER.
VOLITION. See WILL.
VOLUNTARISM. See ETHICAL VOLUNTARISM.