Quid Pro Quo
Quid pro quo: what is valuable
The question of value is a question of equivalence and exchange—quid pro quo—exchanging one thing for another; like for like or what for what; of one essence in lieu or in stead of another. The value of exchange on either side of this transaction is one thing. The gestural fact of exchange and transaction—that is, the capacity to move and to be moved between two things or two conditions—is another. This second fact is bond up in the word `value,' which derives from the etymon *WEL, to turn. But this turning is fundamentally altering: it is to turn something into something else. Because of the transaction, something changes fundamentally. Something new comes into being. Evaluation, then, is not simply a passive accounting of extant value; it is a creative practice that produces worth.
The worth of something is a function of two conditions—either it is valued in relation to what it is in itself and as such; or it is valued in relation to what it does, in its efficacy, its capacity to act, its lasting usefulness, its forbearance, its endurance. The capacity for something to last and persist is related to its adaptability and resilience, according to which it becomes more or less indispensable. Two registers or calibers of worth then: one in terms of inherent value, another in terms of effective, executive or implementational value. Inherent value—what someone or something is in itself—is its quiddity, its what-ness, identified with its genus. Quiddity is from the etymon *KWO, who, which; Latin quidditas, from quid, is-ness, essence of things. Related is hacceity, this-ness, the discrete qualities, properties or characteristics of a thing that make it a particular thing; from Latin haec, this; equivalent to Greek estein, essence, Being. The counterpart of this noumenal quality is hypokeimenon, the substance that persists throughout a Being, its material substratum, equivalent to Latin subjectum, the subject of change that remains consistent throughout.
What we value we also esteem. `Esteem value' is a familiar criterion in the evaluation of research excellence. The word is from Latin aestimare, to determine the value of, to appraise; from Greek eis and the etymon *ES, be and *TEM, Greek temnein, cut, demarcate (mark-out the boundaries of). Alternatively the sense is from Greek esti, to be + ma, measure—that is, esteem is the measure of a being, its caliber, its determining principle. Esteem is cognate with `aim,' to estimate the number or size of, to calculate, count—originally `to calculate with a view to action, to an intended plan.' The inestimable would then be something whose value is indeterminable; whose boundaries cannot be demarcated; whose being is immeasurable; whose aim, purpose or destiny is incalculable or unable to be articulated. And if we are unable to rate or rank something, we cannot establish or locate it according to a measuring system; we cannot not reckon it, ascertain its usefulness, agency, capacity to do work or accomplish something. The inestimable is valued as an indispensable apparatus.
Axiological frameworks
There are multiple theories of value, and theories of value have a history. The generalization of value criteria is likely initiated by Socrates and reported in the Platonic dialogues. For Plato, beauty is a value calibrated in terms of the degree of a being's or a work's `imitation' (mimesis) of and `participation' (methexis) in its archetypal or paradigmatic idea (Greek eidos, Latin forma)—a chair in chairness, a tree in treeness, and so forth. Yet, absolute participation being structurally impossible—since it would necessitate identity between idea and work—the mimetic equation is unsolvable, and the imitation irremediably destined to failure.
In classical and realist philosophies of value, applying equally to the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, properties such as beauty and utility inhere in the beings or works of which they are predicated. In the sixteenth century, however, nominalist and humanist views of value discredited archetypal registers of value in favor of relativist and scientifically measurable characteristics or qualities such as shape, colour and sound. Across the seventeenth and eighteenth century, with Shaftsbury's concept of disinterestedness in aesthetic judgment and Hume's evaluation according to the arbitrated consensus of good critics, the shadow of Plato's statist guardians loom large: who selects the guardian, who evaluates the valuer? In the eighteenth century, for Adam Smith beauty and elegance is a function of form and colour at the level of perception and of fitness in terms of ingenuity and utility—through always to the extent that these benefit the overarching system of production economy. (Smith, 1982: 183) In the nineteenth century, by extension and for Marx, 'production determines the creation of value and it shapes the intellectual superstructure to which the Arts belong. New production relations will lead to new forms of art.' (Ginsberg ands Throsby, 2006: 187)
New forms of art, new forms of production call for new means of evaluating worth. More recently there has been a marked shift in what we value and how we value it—specifically the privileging of instrumental over intrinsic value, of applied over pure research, of impact over veracity, of ends over means, of praxis over poesis.
In what follows I propose to work through two ideas drawn from the literature of value theory—the problematic relationship between intrinsic and instrumental value, and Robert S Hartman's definition of value as meaning and as `richness of properties.' (Schroeder 2016): In a similar vein, Michael Hutter and Richard Shusterman define ten kinds of artistic value—economic value increasing when several varieties of artistic value are combined in a single work (Hutter and Shusterman, 2006: 197): moral or religious vision; expressiveness; communicative power; social and political value; cognitive value; experiential value; formal, design values; art-technical value; art-historical value and artistic-cult value.
Calculus of value
In his Formal axiology and the measurement of values, Robert S Hartman develops an approach to quantifying value. He proposes a `Calculus of Values'; a 'science which does for value situations and value sciences what mathematics does for natural situations and natural sciences.' (Hartman, 1967: 38-46) Hartman's 'formal axiology' is a logic that frames value and practices of valuation. In it, value and meaning coincide: a full life is meaningful; a meaningless life is valueless. Hartman defines meaning as 'the total set of properties connected with the thing. Thus, the meaning of life is the total set of properties connected with life, its richness of features, qualities, characteristics; and the loss of meaning of life is the loss of this richness.' Valued is what has richness of properties or predicates; the richer or more numerous these are, the greater the value. The set of predicates that characterize a thing determines its meaning, its content, and the 'intention of the thing's concept.' For Hartman, a thing's 'concept' is identical with its function:
'Thus, if the intension of 'chair' is "a knee-high structure with a seat and a back" then a thing which is called "chair" will be the more valuable a chair the more of the chair properties it has, and the less valuable a chair the fewer of the chair properties it has. A chair which has no seat is not a good chair but a bad chair.'
This identity of value solely with function—limited to the form and utilitarian componentry of a thing—is clearly problematic: at least where a whole is held to consist in more than the sum of its parts, or where the essence of something—esse, quidditas—is of a different order to its agency or action—energeia, acta. Nevertheless, Hartman's argument for developing a means of measuring esteem by establishing a frame of reference, axiology or `science of value' "which does for value situations and value sciences what mathematics does for natural situations and natural sciences' is worthy of contention.
Consilient discrepancy
The part-whole relationship in Hartman's `richness of properties' is a critical question for evaluation. Normatively, to be valued are works in which parts are subservient to a whole that eclipses them—generally an abstract or transcendent whole, such as in Plato's eidos; or an aesthetic, narrative or other degree of wholeness. The parts are either tempered or adjusted to form relationships and situate themselves within a larger entity; or their differences are totalized or erased in favor of the `same'—a species of singularity, however defined. Elsewhere, I've sought to propose a different kind of wholeness—one characterized by `consilient discrepancy.' (Tawa, 2010, 2011) By this I mean a whole in which parts co-exist in parallel and produce resonance between them, rather than attaining any overarching harmony—whether morphological, aural, narrative, cinematic or architectonic. Hence the value of a whole is an emergent rather than predetermined property that eclipses by not being attributable to any component part or to any sum of component parts. The parts coexist in suspension rather than cohering to form permanent bonds. This allows the various rich layers of a work to remain available to indefinite recombination and reconfiguration—a foundational characteristic of resilience and endurance.
In his S/Z, Roland Barthes asks himself how one might establish the value of a text.
To be valued is the capacity of a work to call not for reception but for production, whereby a reader is no longer a passive consumer but a 'producer of the text,' (Barthes, 1974: 3-4) 'gaining access to the magic of the signifier, to the pleasure of writing.' Evaluation then proceeds by a second, 'more delicate' operation, that of interpretation:
'To interpret a text is not to give it a (more or less justifed, more or less free) meaning, but on the contrary to appreciate what plural constitutes it. Let us first posit the image of a triumphant plural, unimpoverished by any constraint of representation (of imitation). In this ideal text, the networks are many and interact, without anyone of them being able to surpass the rest; this text is a galaxy of signifiers, not a structure of signifieds; it has no beginning; it is reversible; we gain access to it by several entrances, none of which can be authoritatively declared to be the main ones...' (Barthes, 1974: 5)
Barthes' criteria for interpreting value pivots on two characteristics: multiplicity of registers that give the work a multivalent, imbricated and porous texture; and conjugational potential that enables the work to be indefinitely and differentially reconstituted. Evaluation is not a question of veracity or truth-value, but of operationality, of use value.
Plural, polysemous, multivalent texts can be appreciated by connotation – an 'average appreciator,' a 'modest instrument,' 'at once too delicate and too vague to be applied to univocal texts, and too poor to be applied to multivalent texts, which are reversible and frankly indeterminable.' (Barthes, 1974: 6) And the way into polysemy is connotation, producing the computable trace of a certain plural of the text, a 'correlation immanent in the text' rather than an association of ideas produced by 'the system of a subject.' Such connotative plurality builds according to 'two spaces: a sequential space, a series of orders, a space subject to the successivity of sentences, in which meaning proliferates by layering; and an agglomerative space, certain areas of the text correlating other meanings outside the material text and, with them, forming "nebulae" of signifieds,' a 'dissemination of meanings, spread like gold dust on the apparent surface of the text disseminated.' (Barthes, 1974: 7-9)
Valuing the inestimable
Following Barthes, the texture of a connotative architecture—its architexture—is topologically dense: its meanings woven and coded so as to be recuperable; although the architecture will thereby corrupt 'the purity of communication.' It will produce a deliberate and deliberative 'static,' a 'countercommunication,' an 'intended cacography.' (Barthes, 1974: 7-9)
But what might a cartographical architecture — an architecture of consilient discrepancy — look like? Why should it be valued? How might it be evaluated?
A common quality of enduring architecture, a quality that renders buildings and designed environments worthy of valuing, and consequently of conserving, is a certain density of register, of connotative potential (we might say of `meaning'). Such density constitutes what might be call atmosphere or circumambience. It is built by overlay and juxtaposition so that several possibilities of sense coexist as compossibles, simultaneously or side by side, each equally valid, each equally valuable, and which together produce concatenation and intensification. This kind of heightening renders a work resilient and adaptable, since its integrity does not depend on one or another singularity, but on the natural capacity of a network to adjust itself to circumstance. Sense proliferates; as do functions, agencies and capacities to produce differently. The work is indefinitely flexible, adjustable and recombinable—its shape shifting propensity antithetical to the necessity for archetypes and hierarchies. Such characteristics of enduring valuableness apply across multiple degrees—from function to aesthetics, metaphor, allegory or symbol. The more registers and degrees are engaged with by a work, the more multiple the conjugations it fields and operates, the more resilient it will be to the vagaries of what constitute value at any given time. Hence it will endure because it will be cared for, and it will be cared for in recognition—not of its usefulness, although that goes without saying—but because of its longevity; because it is compelling and interesting.
Let me venture a banal example—compare two kitchen knives: one, a mass-produced light-gauge serrated bread knife, of the kind that can be purchased in any supermarket; another, hand-built tempered steel knife of similar size but heavier weight and handle. The first will do very nicely for slicing bread of a certain density and crumb, but little else. The second will do the same, but its weight will cut a sharper tranche from a denser loaf, and additionally crush garlic, chop herbs, cube meat, debone a chicken, finely slice vegetables... I value the second knife more than the first. One is disposable, the other indispensable.
We value certain buildings or designed environments, it seems, when we realize that we risk losing them, that they may become irreplaceable or at least unlikely to be replaced—because of cost, or because the knowhow now escapes us. Maybe they have become rare; maybe they have become valuable. The same quality of connotative potential plays into this realization at a number of levels. Functionally, a resilient environment makes possible or affords multiple kinds of inhabitation, appropriation and personalisation. It operates as a species of infrastructure or armature providing a rich framework, open to diverse configurations, available to be indefinitely reconfigured. This means that the environment—a room, a house, a street, a public square, an urban garden, a landscape—is furnished: that is, according to the etymon fournir, given-over to provisioning whatever might arise or emerge in it.
Returning to Hartman and his `richness of properties,' consider this architectural project—Peter Zumthor's Saint Benedict Chapel, Sumvigt (1988). The building brings together multiple semantic and tectonic registers. Scanning fairly quickly these include a geometric dimension—the plan form is a Vesica Pisces, which symbolically represents the intermediate region between two intersecting circles and is identified with Christ; an atmospheric dimension—the solid wall occludes any sense of the outside, other than a continuous highlight that causes the interior space to expand and contract depending on ambient light conditions and weather outside; a scriptural dimension, in line with the Old Testament descriptors of the Temple as a fabric tent or shade (Greek skene)—the columns, which normally uphold the roof and visually rise from the ground, are detailed so as to appear to hang from the roof, and the whole space to be suspended from above; a liturgical dimension, placing the site of worship between divinity and humanity, sacred and secular—the floor is detailed so as to appear as a hovering plane levitating between ground and roof; a metaphorical (and symbolically nautical) dimension, expressing the church as a vessel conveying the believer to heaven—the roof is detailed to appear as an inverted ship's carcass; a technical and material dimension, according to which the weight and gravity of the architecture is dematerialized—the thickness and base of the surrounding silver wall is effectively occluded and seems to hang in the space like a fabric veil.
These kinds of reference pullulate the more closely the building is observed and the longer it is experienced. Importantly though, none of the references are explicitly highlighted; nor are they fused into a coherent `concept.' As parts, these dimensions retain their independence from each other. Yet, over time, they begin to resonate and the space begins to vibrate with semantic presence and narrative potential.
Saint Benedict is a palpable example of a `richness of properties,' of emergent sense and of consilient discrepancy that, in this case and in line with the building's purpose, builds into theological circumambience or sacred atmosphere. One can sense these dimensions tacitly, haptically, kinesthetically or viscerally without having to isolate and identify them. They subsist roundabout, like a keynote, pedal point or drone. Together they create a mood, a disposition, a mode of being-there. At the same time, one can read these diverse layers singularly, one after the other, and consider or analyze them separately. They coexist in parallel, without fusing, and in this way remain open to indefinite assemblage and reconfiguration.
Evidently I am here valorizing notions of worth that exceed normative, instrumental or functional registers by touching on metaphorical, allegorical and symbolic, if not ethical and spiritual registers. The esteem of a work is in the enduring capacity of its multiple layers to produce multiple narratives, in the free-floating gathering and dispersal of those narratives, in the connotative reverie nourished by that weighty richness of properties and in the authorship interminably vested in the `reader' or `user' of the work. Such value is inestimable according to any measure of quantitative calculation: there is no scale, no ruler, no checklist—it has to be calibrated qualitatively, in relation to phenomenological instantiation and evidence that can only be communicated and shared discursively and hermeneutically. And this is the enduring asset of estimable worth—that a work is capable of unclenching and sustaining what Maurice Blanchot called `the infinite conversation'; that, through the transactional exchange of evaluation, is capable of producing and not merely accounting for worth.
Notes
BARTHES, R. (1974). S/Z. Translated by Richard Miller. Oxford: Blackwell.
GINSBERG, V. A. and Throsby D. (eds.). (2006). Handbook of the economics of art and culture. Elsevier.
HARTMAN, R. S. (1967). Formal axiology and the measurement of values. The Journal of Value Inquiry 1(1), pp. 38-46.
HUTTER, Michael and Shusterman, R. (2006). Value and the valuation of art in economic and aesthetic theory. In V. A. Ginsberg and D. Throsby (eds.), Handbook of the Economics of Art and Culture. Elsevier, pp. 170-207.
SCHROEDER, M. (2016). Value Theory. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy [online] Fall 2016 Edition). Available at: <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2016/entries/value-theory/> [Accessed 10 Aug. 2017].
SMITH, A. (1982). The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Indianapolis: Liberty Classics.
TAWA, M. (2010) Agencies of the Frame: Tectonic Strategies in Cinema and Architecture. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Press.
—(2011) Theorising the Project: a Thematic Approach to Architectural Design. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Press.